Ever got a scented owl candle in a Secret Santa exercise and wondered how soon you can dispose of it (like before leaving the party)? Christmas traditions are peculiar things. Whatever your Christmas situation, here’s wishing you a relaxing holiday break.
Sorry frog, you’re in the road when it comes to progress. Shane Jones is out to provide jobs for neffs at the expense of the environment. What’s a neff? Should their jobs overrule the rights of frogs?
We’re soon getting a Ministry for Regulation. Should we be pleased? Or not? And just how Orwellian might this title be?
Where the Labour government was about doing too much all at once, our new coalition seem focused on undoing all at once. They have announced forty-nine steps for their first hundred days – where will those steps take us?
‘Black’ days are generally not days you want to remember. What’s the origin of ‘Black Friday’ and what’s to like about it?
NZ is waiting to get a new government. Winston Peters, stalwart politician since 1979, is influencing the outcome and I’m having to like him more than I thought I did.
Halloween has been and (thankfully) gone. Superstitions galore. Can a scientist have superstitions? I have a short list I allow myself to indulge in.
My age cohort talks frequently about retirement. But does anyone ask Margaret Atwood when she’s retiring? I had an epiphany about retirement while planting onions this week.
The line between truth and fiction is stretched thin to the point of invisibility. We encounter this line constantly, in the media, and in memoir. Memories are fallible. Do we care?
Mullygrub – an excellent word with a four-hundred-year etymology that has taken it from referring to a headache to referring to an Australian bowling an underarm cricket ball. Or is that the same thing?
