Triumphs of science
Science delivers many great new ideas, including COVID vaccines and chilli concoctions to prevent cramp.
Tag: New Zealand
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?
A meaning of ‘whanāu’
Whanau – a Māori word now in common general usage. To me it has connotations of a broad concept of family, beyond the sense of a traditional western nuclear approach.
To those that have, more shall be given
Rising house prices and unaffordable housing – a decadal problem in New Zealand (and much of the world) that appears intractable to the economic policy approaches governments use to solve it.
Lands of hope and stories
Hope is sold in many forms – at container stores, through politicians promises and by vaccine companies. Let’s hope Pfizer’s promises are more robust than Trump’s.
The paradox of predictions
Why does the voting in the US election differ substantially from the poll results? Could be the polls were wrong. Or it could be the polls influenced people to act differently.