Author: Jane Shearer

Patterns & Conspiracy Theorists

What leads people to believe in conspiracy theories? Three components are being individualists, seeing patterns in random designs, like Jackson Pollock paintings, and not being interested in investigating the patterns once they have seen them.

Ferrets and dichotomies

Humans use dichotomies as an easy heuristic to know how to react. Ferrets are bad. Rabbits are bad. But ferrets kill rabbits. Does that make a team of tame, neutered, rabbit-killing ferrets good? Or still bad?

Hope & reality

For any sort of normal to reappear in the world, we need the vaccines that have now been developed to be rolled out to achieve herd immunity. For New Zealand, it looks like that won’t happen until 2022 given we don’t yet have vaccines in the country. That’s a long time staying home…

The crevasses open

Crevasses in glacier ice often remain invisible until you fall into them. To stay safe you need to be roped to your friends. The world currently feels like unexpected gulfs are opening up between people, like about vaccination. How do we prevent these differences from dividing us?

Hijabs and hair

I find it hard to accept women choosing to wear clothing that limits their physical freedom, whether that is a chador or high heels. Similarly, it seems a pity that women will choose not to go swimming because of how their hair will look post-swim. Are there any men out there who feel the same way?

It’s the little things

Little things can have huge impacts, as in our toilet cistern, where manufacturing flaws result in serious water wastage. Or the Hubble Telescope where a 1.3mm error resulted in blurred images from a multi-billion dollar installation.

Christmas characters

Christmas and primary school folk dancing are intertwined in my head as occasions where it is required to have fun. Being required to have fun is no fun at all. Why can’t I just relax and enjoy the season?

Human Endeavour

Humans are capable of such amazing feats, both of creation and destruction. Gold miners built water faces across mountain faces in pursuit of the precious metal in the Wakatipu and vaccines are being developed apace in the face of the COVID pandemic.