in case you were wondering how the Wellington area was alienated from Maori ownership, a brief (but reasonably accurate) version lives at the Waitangi Tribunal site here.
It includes information about the tenths trust. There is also some history from the 20-year period before the Treaty was signed which makes interesting reading if you like longer history. And, in case you were wondering, the sale wasn't exactly what you'd call a fair deal.
One of the things that has bothered me for a long time as a Wellingtonian has been my lack of knowledge about who was where when. It has been really nice to learn that the Kapiti Coast was strategically important because it connected with the Sounds (and pounamu). And that quality made it more important than Wellington. Each piece of info makes travelling through this area make much more sense to me.
And Awakairangi is a much, much better name for the river that runs through Heretaunga.
My main impression about blogging is how similar it is to live music. Particularly the type of live music where no one involved is expecting to earn any more than enough to cover the drinks for the night (and possibly the petrol and strings).
There is the same somewhat low expectations, and the same delight at how good people actually are. I certainly rate stonesoup as a good read. Which is unsurprising given that many of the inmates are friends. But still. Impressed with the ideas, impressed with the delivery, impressed with the openness. All good.
No really. This had me doubled up in something between hysteria and terror.
I was heartened to hear that Muslim children contributed to the christian science fair. If somewhat bewildered.
I rather wish the seniors had prayed that the bacteria would become less resistant to the antibiotic they were exposed to.
Seriously. This is a fine example of the sort of argument and analysis that is so far into the outer, that it is hard to know where to begin drawing them back. Anyone who will give a prize to someone who uses physics to prove that women are physically designed to carry shopping and laundry baskets, is in a special basket of their own.
The woman on the MacLean's toothpaste add. Assuming that the advertising agency wasn't validating the reality and attractiveness of the naturally thin. Too skinny! Not what I want to associate with oral hygiene. Mind you, the guy is pretty horrible too.
Having nothing better to do, I too this test. I seem to remember taking it about 5 years ago... and came out as androgene then too. Which I find a little odd.
I suppose I occur as soft butch or something similar to the outside world. But I definitely don't see myself that way. Neither am I on a mission to out-butch everyone else. I just have no interest in being prissy. And I don't want anyone else getting in my way if I want to play with the boy's toys (ooooh. hammer drill. pretty!). Though, when I do start to play with the hammer drill, I'm likely to be thoroughly cautious with it.
Damn, I think I just validated the test.
But seriously. I'm interested in the ways we construct our wardrobe and habits to allow us access to different bits of society. You can see it all the time. People tend to dress to suit the people they want to hang around with. And the tend to wear clothes that set them up to participate in activities they enjoy. For me, much of gender construction is about that. If you aren't wearing the cowboy hat, you'll end up in the kitchen.
Odd. It seems that everyone else uses it as a form of self expression. I'm not at all sure that it expresses myself, so much as it allows me to do the things that express myself.
well, maybe I'm a little late for formal Friday thing. but nevermind....
Tonight (as I walked home from town) I picked up a golden retriever. Or it picked me up. It was hard to tell.
It was happily wandering along peeing on things (the way dogs do) and I was walking home. I said "Go Home!" So it followed me home. A distance of 1-2 km. Which wasn't quite what I meant.
I was somewhat ambivalent about this. On the one hand, a young, smallish woman walking about seems less vulnerable if she is accompanied by a large dog. On the other hand, the dog appeared to have no fear of roads and I worried that it was getting far too far away from home, and was too stupid to get home okay. I wonder if it will be alright. I suppose it will. The irony was that I was leading it in the direct direction of the city pound.
I hope it knows what it is doing.
Just came home from playing at the Bluenote open mic night (big ups to Tyree for shepherding it so well over the last two years). It went okay! Yay! Though currently feeling very priviledged indeed getting to be on the same stage with the other really beautiful players. Standard definitely improving over the beginning of spring.
Next on list of things to overcome is my knees shaking like I have palsy while I play. Strangely they don't do that in my living room. :)
Tyree is leaving and her last week is next week, so anyone who has been meaning to come; get organised and get there early for a table.
Now must try and calm down to sleep. Have odd sense of futility.
One of the interesting things about Shane Arden's current troubles is the idea that it was in some way an attack on Parliament. I'm remembering here the treatment of the 72 students who were arrested for trespassing (charges later dropped). A goodly part of the justification of the treatment of the students (and the MAGE lot) is the idea of either interfeering with the ability of Parliament to do its job, or attacking Parliament (even if that basically comes down to making the MPs feel uncomfortable.
Normally the attacker comes from outside Parliament. They are not an MP (or usually Parliamentary staff), so it is easy to see them as attacking Parliament. Not unlike how you would feel if a stranger walked up to your flat and started shouting at you.
But Shane Arden is different, he belongs to Parliament and has certain constitutional rights to be there and do the necessary to get the country functioning. Or something.
The interesting bit is that the big grey building contains both the House of Representatives (of which he is a member) and the physical location of the Government (to which he is an opponent).
So, in this sense, the Government could be understandably upset that an opponent drove a tractor at it. Which the House of Representatives isn't so much.
It also makes the distinction between Tizard doing in in 1987, while he was a Minister.
However, the Speaker is supposed to be impartial, and only associated with the House (not the Government). Which suggests that J Hunt is failing to make a fine but important distinction.
Currently on at Toi Whakaari.
Very, very good.
Music by Strike.
Acting by students.
Words by Will Shakespeare.
Very pretty costumes.
You'll laugh, you'll cry.
Go and see it.
It's well worth it.
I'm struck that the UK government still has an Official Secrets Act. As a citizen of the UK, you still have to prove that it is in the public good to release information before the government will respond to your inquiry. In NZ, the Official Information Act has the opposite assumption.
It occurred to me this morning that the current Corngate upset is an interesting measure of exactly how open NZ governments are expected to be.
Mark Prebble's discrimination about which documents he would release would appear to me to be the natural reaction of a career public servant. Public servants are obliged to consider whether or not they are blabbing a government secret on a constant basis. Someone in Mark's position would have been living in that mindset to a greater degree than most.
So it was quite normal for Mr Prebble's first thought to be about whether or not any document *should* be released. Interestingly, he is being judged against a much, much higher standard of disclosure than that, namely that he should not consider whether or not it was in the public interest that the document be released, but only whether or not it related to the Corngate issue.
I am left thinking that Mr Prebble is indeed honourable, if a little bound by habit.
And also wondering if the Prime Minister was wise to issue such a command.
I was just going through my change (looking for appropriate amounts to give to workmate who is leaving) and noticed I had three 20 cent coins, one from 1967, one from 1987 and one from 2002. I noticed because the 2002 one was very shiny and had a new style pic of the Queen. She's aged a bit...
Anyhow, this rather led me to thinking about the relevance of the royal family to NZ. Obviously there are serious historical links, but there are few and far between live links. Only occasionally does anyone from the royal family get this far away from home. They almost never actually do any of the tasks that the NZ Head of State is supposed to do (avoiding consitutional incidents, meeting foreign digitaries, handing out honours, etc.)
Do I want a President instead? No thanks. An elected Govenor General will avoid the Bush associations, and allow us to recognise our British heritage just fine.
or...
Someone (who will remain nameless) thinks Charles should abdicate the British throne and come out here instead. That way the Treaty of Waitangi would still have the two signitories recognised, and He'd actually be here to worry about it.
(and no, I have no idea how the succession should be handled.)
Perhaps we should try for someone else (there must be some distant royal relative who'd do a good job in return for living in the Governor General's residence).
I was thinking about bad documentation recently, and was wondering how to classify different standards. Based on my experience and conversations with some others, T've built a list. I'm having difficulty getting them to line up on a continuum (is irrelevant actually worse than irritating).
Here are the results:
prophetic
telepathic
helpful
salient
insightful
informative
accurate
well-organised
pretty
uneven
misguided
irrelevant
enthusiastic
irritating
ugly
overwritten
confusing
inflammatory
incorrect
vexing
incomprehensible
infuriating
misleading
promotional
and you thought documentation was all the same...
As I was driving through Plimmerton this afternoon, I passed two guys skateboarding down the road in the opposite direction. The cool thing was, they were being propelled down the road by a large tarpaulin that they were holding stretched between them. And it worked! They were pootling along taking up the full width of their side of the road and looking at the view.
If they ever start a company, I'm investing.
The guy who was killed in Florida, because he was convicted of murdering an abortionist and an assitant at the abortion clinic...
Given that he knew he'd be killed for it, isn't that perilously close to suicide? Rather like the suicide bombers...
And what it always makes me wonder is, what about their families? They've now had 10 years of dad being in prison and in the media. It isn't like hes being a very supportive husband. But he's off to heaven tonight, so I suppose it doesn't matter about those he leaves behind.
I was just reading chinashop and thinking it was amazing that there was a small bit of mind to spare for the meaning of life question.
Multi-thinking just isn't something I can do. I can only run one program at a time. Okay, let me qualify that. I can actually walk and chew gum at the same time. In fact I could probably hold down a conversation *and* wave my arms around (and possibly avoid other pedestrians) in addition. I'm sort of permanently impressed that I can hold down a bass line and improvise singing over the top of it (though I've always been able to do that with guitar chords).
Yet I know that some people literally have more than one train of thought happening at the same time.
How?