Archive for August 27th, 2008

Rugby legend strikes out on s59

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

Today’s Herald reports former All Black coach Sir Brian Lochore as saying, ‘Yes, I smacked my children, but I’ve never hit them.  Yes, I smacked other peoples’ children, but I never hit them.’
In making these comments to a Parents Inc breakfast attended by more than 1000 fathers, Sir Brian is repeating the common fallacy that […]

$1 billion of warm homes

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

The have been the usual voices in favour and against the Greens’ decision to back the Emissions Trading Scheme, and I’ll talk more about that later. But I also just saw a media release coming from a different angle from the Director of the University of Otago Wellington’s He Kainga Oranga/Housing and Health Research Programme […]

Time to pledge to end shark finning

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

You may remember I wrote recently about how shark finning (cutting off the high-priced fins of sharks and dumping the rest of the body at sea) is contributing to the decline of shark species worldwide.  While the practice is illegal in many countries, it is still permitted in New Zealand.
Forest & Bird is asking the […]

Animal magnetism

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

I just came across this science blog from Seed magazine on the tendency of sheep and cows to face the same way when grazing.
In a new paper, Sabine Begali from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany spied on aligned herds of cows and deer using satellite images from Google Earth.
The images revealed a striking behaviour […]

Jamie and the chicken

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

As promised last night.

See also here.

4 ways to smack

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

John Caldwell has taken the seemingly unusual step of reading the child discipline laws in the Crimes Act before rushing to comment on the section 59 amendment petition and referendum.
Thus his commentary in The Press yesterday morning [off line] is enlightening.  It seems we do not currently have an anti-smacking law but a law with […]