Singing to a bear
What do you sing to a bear five metres in front of you? And, if you had to choose, would you rather it was a bear or a man five metres away from you in a Canadian conifer forest?
Author: Jane Shearer
Everything is Connected
We are related to everything on the planet, inaminate and animate, through our shared ancestry. Whether you believe this from a spiritual or earth science viewpoint, it seems self evident, doesn’t it?
Improper Thoughts
When can we use stereotypes as a useful heuristic to interact with other people? And when are stereotypes abhorrent? Some of the time? All the time? And would you put a pink flamingo in your garden?
Dots, Crickets and Kissy Faces
What do dots, crickets and kissy faces have in common? They are all slang, slang having become as much written as spoken in the digital age. Read on to find out what they mean.
Politics and Corruption
This week it was revealed John Key got to buy a $2 million dollar section in Gibbston Valley Resort for $400,000 to help with marketing. How long a stretch is it from ex-politicians influencing marketing to influencing political decisions? It may not be very far at all.
Coffee & Cadiz
Life was pleasantly slow and coffee was cheap in Spain. And there were no takeaway coffee cups. Is this a state New Zealand could aspire to?
Weaponising of Woke
How woke is my meal? And how did we get to a point where we are concerned with the ‘wokeness’, or otherwise, of edibles?
Purpose
Why did we walk from the the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Sea on the south coast of Spain? Probably no good reason, but that’s humans for you.
Taylor Swift Everywhere
Taylor Swift is as ubiquitous as AI but no more immune to its effects than the rest of the population.
AI Everywhere
How fast is AI developing? Faster than I, or Geoffrey Hinton – the ‘father of AI’ – would have believed. Here’s a story of AI chatbots replacing friends that shifted from fiction to fact in less than 5 years.