Author: Jane Shearer

Am I a grown-up yet?

As an adult, it’s so easy to get thrown back into the feeling of being a child again. Feeling like there are other people who know more than you, have more than you, are better than you. But, if there’s no bus driver, feeling grown-up or not you still need to step in and drive the bus.

Goodbye Loki

Pets are a critical part of human lives. We share emotions with pets, as with humans. People see human-human relationships as superior to human-animal, but where’s the evidence for this?

Our stories

Telling stories to each other is a critical part of being human. We need to take the time and make the space to be able to tell our stories and listen to the stories of others.

A cleft stick

We have employed a water diviner. Why? As a household of scientists who think the right way to look at COVID-19 is to assess the data. In the case of the Swedish experiment, the data say a lot more people died as a result of their approach. What the economic outcome will be remains to be seen in the longer term.

Future insights

Cameron Bagrie has come clean and said he doesn’t know what is going to happen to NZ house prices. However, people don’t like, “I don’t know.” They want certainty from their fortune tellers.

Elastic people?

How far do people shift behaviour? Over what period of time? And how much pressure should be applied? This is relevant in COVID times when the government wants people to change their social behaviours, and their hand washing, to reduce transmission of disease.

Politics & people

Is there a ‘right’ political system? Democracy is seen as such but it has its own flaws. Our local democratically elected candidate just fell on his sword because he sent the media a list of people with COVID-19 provided by his party chair person. Few ‘right’ politicians, either.

Fool’s Paradise?

Media reactions were strong this week to a paper from Peter Gluckman, Helen Clark and Rob Fyfe saying we need to consider how and when NZ opens its borders. The media implied they thought this should be soon, which is in no way what they were suggesting, backed up by rising COVID cases worldwide.