Tag: 2021

A diverse life

Marie Stopes, born in 1880, was variously a coal geologist, an international advocate for birth control, and a writer. Her diverse life makes Marie one of my heroes, although her belief in eugenics isn’t something I aspire to.

How about thia?

Could we please have a new 3rd person English pronoun that is gender neutral to simplify life? Rather than having to tell everyone our pronouns on emails, it would be much easier if pronouns could be the same for everyone.

Customary practice

The Speaker of the House tried to force Rawiri Waititi (Māori party co-leader) to wear a tie but had to back down after commentary including Waititi calling a tie a ‘colonial noose’. Cultures and times change…there’s a related challenge in the Māori community over the rights of wahine Māori to speak on marae.

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?