New Zealand ~ Aotearoa

Flight of the Conchords gets three Emmy nominations

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:56:24 -0700

Great news! Flight of the Conchords has received three Emmy nods for directing, writing, and original music and lyrics. It didn’t get an Emmy nomination for best comedy series, which I think is a sin.
   Not bad for a show conceived by a bunch of Kiwis, even if it did take American money and HBO to get it off the ground.
   And thank goodness it did—how else would it have become so widely received? I can’t see a TV3- or TVNZ-funded Conchords cracking the US market—it would, like Outrageous Fortune, have been remade at best.
   Good luck to Bret, Jemaine and the others associated with the show.

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Irish-owned newspaper tries to drag down Miss New Zealand using racist agenda—and fails

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 04:15:50 -0700

It’s quite easy to work out the agenda of the mainstream media when it comes to an article like this, trying to harm Samantha Powell’s chances at Miss Universe tomorrow night.

Personal aggrandizement of the journalist, or, if not the journalist, then the newspaper editors or management trying to look like they can set agenda. (The part about Val Lott hanging up the phone, I understand, is total fiction—so if something so minor is untrue, can we trust the rest?)
Trying to cause a split between pākehā and Māori when in fact there is none. Fact: the photograph of Samantha Powell doing the pukana was actually published in mid-June—and even ran in a rival newspaper here! There were no complaints from anyone, Māori or any other group, until the Herald made it a race issue yesterday. Or the Herald is trying to play catch-up because it missed the photos a month ago and was desperate for a fresh angle.
Racism: come on, the headline is clearly poking fun at Māori and the pukana. I don’t appreciate the newspaper doing that, and I would say my Māori friends would be more upset at that than the Herald’s false defence of the haka. Like a newspaper owned by Australians and the Irish really understands Māoridom.
Implying that two beauty queens are at odds with one another. False. Samantha Powell is in communicado for the most part in Nha Trong, Vietnam, and I severely doubt Miss World New Zealand, Kahurangi Taylor, would risk criticizing another pageant for fear of damaging her own chances when she goes to Miss World.
Tall-poppy syndrome. (The newspaper failed there: the judges decided their top 15 last week.)
Lack of patriotism: you would never drag the All Blacks down a peg the day before a big international. And places like Venezuela treat Miss Universe with greater fervour than we treat a rugby match. But an absence of supporting New Zealand is understandable, since The New Zealand Herald is owned by a company listed on the Australian exchange and in turn owned in part by a company based in Dublin. Pity: their business pages are good, so it’s a shame some of these others are dragging them down.

   My views about the appropriateness of Samantha Powell’s haka are at the Lucire blog. I agree that Māori culture should be defended. But you couldn’t really call it a haka. She just did a few moves. It would be like a Caucasian donning a lion mask and moving two metres and calling that a Chinese New Year’s lion dance.
   As I said in Lucire: ‘I know of no Māori who, while rightly guarding against improper use of their culture, would deny a chance for it to be promoted or be rendered so “untouchable” to those who came later to Aotearoa. In fact, one kaumatua I spoke to says it is our duty, regardless of our ethnic origins, to be promoting Māori culture when we are abroad.
   ‘Sometimes, because we have not been immersed in the culture, we err. It is to be expected. And, when the one who errs is not of our own race, we forgive and we educate, but we do not criticize.
‘All New Zealanders should be proud to propagate Māori culture as the alternative would be to ignore it and pretend we are mere facsimile of Great Britain, as many Kiwis did 50 years ago.’
I’d hate to see us head back to those monocultural times—though it looks like the Herald wants that to happen by running a story like this.
Since the newspaper has been shifting a lot of its work to Australia, I imagine an Anglicized monoculture makes it easier to take more editing work away from Kiwis.
   Any time you see a story about over-sensitive Māori getting upset about the way the culture has been portrayed, think again about the agenda.
All the Māori I know put mana ﬁrst and actually see this as an opportunity to reach out and educate in order to promote their culture.
   A big fail for the Herald. Sam’s still going to wow the world tomorrow night.

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The Big Kumara

nobody@vox.com(Whenua.biz) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:00:00 -0700

"Hurry up and take the foto"

This big kumara (aka 'sweet potato') was one of several dug up from a garden in Tauranga which uses liquid vermicast last weekend. We can't be sure how much credit to give the worm juice but this giant of the Convolvulaceae family has some impressive statistics:

Circumference 45cm
Length 27cm
Width 15cm
Weight 2.4kg

By the way, a recent carbon-dating study indicates that of the ancient middens found so far which contain varieties of kumara, those from Papua New Guinea appear to be significantly older than those from Central or South America - no real surprise there

Anybody got a good recipe?

The big kumara with fruit

The big kumara with bottle of wine

Waiting for dinner

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Got a spare $6200 lying around?

nobody@vox.com(Brenda) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:40:28 -0700

That's what it will cost you to use an iPhone in New Zealand on the only "practical" plan being offered by Vodafone. Three plans offering either 250MB, 500MB, or 1GB of data per month, with the last being $250 per month on a 24-month contract.

Apple has designed the iPhone to be *used* ... not to sit idly in your pocket waiting for someone to ring you. As such, it was designed for the US market, with its unlimited data plans... 250MB is not going to cut it... might as well just use a regular phone than to have to think everytime you press one of those little buttons on the iPhone that you might be using data... oh no!

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"Intelligent Design" comes to NZ schools - ARRRGHHH

nobody@vox.com(paikea) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:24:20 -0700

you know, while i am not surprised that this stuff is happening in the US, i was hoping that that NZ would not be interested in dumbing down their students - "Intelligent Design" is not science - it is religion - and as such, should not be taught in school, period the end of it

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4599856a10.html

Christians challenge teaching of evolution

A Christian group promoting intelligent design theory over evolution has sent teaching material to schools that critics say is religious propaganda and sloppy pseudoscience.

The Education Ministry says the unsanctioned material does not breach the Education Act and there are no plans to ban its distribution.

But officials stress the theory of evolution underpins the science curriculum and schools have a responsibility to teach theories that are subject to accepted scientific scrutiny.

Focus on the Family has sent The Privileged Planet CD and booklet to 400 high schools, asking that they be made available to science teachers and school libraries.

Waikato University biological sciences senior lecturer Alison Campbell says the material champions creationism - the belief that God created the world as described in the Book of Genesis - claiming the universe is too perfect to have been produced by chance so must be the work of an intelligent designer.

It represented a religious viewpoint, she said, not a scientific one, and had no place in science classrooms.

"It's an underhand way of getting creationist material into schools."

Similar debate in the United States led the Supreme Court to ban public schools from teaching creationism. In 2005 a court banned the teaching of intelligent design at a Pennsylvanian high school.

Focus on the Family's executive director Tim Sisarich said the material was intended to expose pupils to an alternative theory of cosmology.

"We're a Christian organisation so we believe that God made the planet and God made the cosmos ... Science takes a theory and tries to establish it as the truth, and that's all this is."

Education Ministry senior manager Mary Chamberlain said parents had a right to withdraw children from religious instruction.

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In the Counties

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:41:26 -0700

Counties' Hunting & Fishing

Photographed on the way back to Auckland Airport: Counties’ Hunting & Fishing. If it were not for the Japanese truck outside, this could have passed for a similar store in the US, according to colleagues who have been to the southern states. There are hunting and fishing stores in New Zealand, but seldom signposted so strongly.

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Vox Hunt: Happy Flag Day

nobody@vox.com(Then) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 08:22:50 -0700

Show us a flag.

Wellington, New Zealand:

The Beehive, Parliament

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Kiwi troops greet First Lady Laura Bush; race debate emerges on YouTube

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 01:13:07 -0700

Warrior Dancers Greet Laura Bush

Finally, one of the Bushes meets some New Zealanders—the First Lady is greeted by New Zealand soldiers and police officers in Afghanistan. The haka is a customary greeting, borne from Māori culture.
   I was going to go in to a bit more depth on this video about how nice it was for Mrs Bush to have some contact with our country. However, I am embarrassed by some 19-year-old New Zealander on YouTube who has entered several racist, anti-Māori comments at this video’s page.
   If any Kiwis want to comment on JZZ’s anti-Māori rhetoric, which I think embarrasses our country as it is hardly representative of what most New Zealanders think, please head on over to that page.
   Normally I would just consider him a teenage troublemaker and troll, but there’s another part of me that says if we keep turning a blind eye to our young people’s misbehaviour, then are we telling them that it is acceptable?
   Slamming a single race is hardly productive.
   I assume for the purposes of this discussion that the teenager is Caucasian, statistically speaking. I realize he could be another race.
   In one comment, while calling Māori unkind, a ‘wishy-washy race are full of fakes, liars and cheats,’ he also mentions that no Māori has over 50 per cent blood. Anyone see the easy target there? Using JZZ’s logic: the Māori were, after all, living in relative harmony before the arrival of the English—ergo dilution of their blood by pakeha has introduced criminal genes.
   In another comment, Māori are branded uncivilized because they only had a written language since the 1800s. I guess using that logic, that must make my own race superior since the Chinese have had a written language a few thousand years before Christ.
   And a teenager who posts videos of a Toyota Soarer is hardly, as he describes himself, a ‘car connoisseur’. The Soarer can only trace its automotive lineage to 1981, 96 years after the internal combustion engine automobile was first devised.
   Of course these are all silly arguments. By taking JZZ’s logic we get nowhere.
   This is not a politically correct demand for all New Zealanders to “just get along”. But we are obviously creating a generation of some New Zealanders who by their racism will impede national progress.
   The root causes of, say, there being a large Māori–Polynesian prison population stem from colonization and a failure to integrate cultures.
   We cannot turn back the clock but we can become steadily more open-minded to our own solutions that are distinct from the monocultural Westminster system.
   And as a community that once enforced its own standards, perhaps it is time we extended that same thinking to the online world.
   YouTube isn’t a forum to educate in any depth with its limited space. However, it is a place where we may signal disapproval of behaviour with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, and perhaps the odd pithy comment pointing out the faults of racist thinking.

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Stella Enting: Dedicated to Life

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Wed, 21 May 2008 05:26:19 -0700

Stella Enting art première 3

You can’t help but smile when you see Stella Enting’s art. They give off a positive energy and I think it’s due to Stella herself, who radiates goodness. Her first exhibition, Dedicated to Life, is at Farsite Gallery in Petone, New Zealand (in the Doreen Doolan Mall on Jackson Street, under the clock tower). In my opinion, most of the items were underpriced and she had plenty of sales. Well known New Zealand artist Shayne Tuffery also admires Stella’s creativity and her style. I can see why. Runs till June 8, 2008—well worth a visit.

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A great Horowhenua spa: Horrobin & Hodge

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sat, 03 May 2008 23:43:45 -0700

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of visiting the Horrobin & Hodge spa in Manakau, north of Levin, for a future issue of Lucire. These are just random shots; the real 35 mm and digital ones will appear online and in print in due course. You can get great spa treatments there with products from Hema and other top-end lines, and I was pampered with a massage. A big thank-you to Sarah and Jacquie for making me feel so welcome, for an amazing lunch (meat from the farm next door and vegetables grown on site) and for letting me sleep on the day room couch when I was in sublime relaxation!
Basically you are looking at world-class treatment but country-style hospitality—which makes the hour’s drive from Wellington well worth it.
The first four shots are from the day room, both inside and the views toward the west and north.

Horrobin & Hodge fireplace

Horrobin & Hodge table

Horrobin & Hodge 1

Looking north from Horrobin & Hodge day room

The reception is way cool: the lights are 110 ml milk bottles in a crate, acknowledging the rural heritage of the site. The old-fashioned telephone is actually push-button and not rotary, but it looks great alongside the Dell computer screen.

Horrobin & Hodge reception lights

Telephone and computer at Horrobin & Hodge

And, nearing sunset, one last shot before driving back to Wellington.

Horrobin & Hodge sunset

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