NZ Herald, 13 February 2006
This article from the NZ Herald reports on a call by the National Party for an Education Ministry internal website containing data on the comparative performance of schools to be made accessible to the public -
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Slate.com February 10, 2006
I think New Zealanders have a fascination with what outsiders think about the place. I thought this article in slate.com was interesting (not just the title – “Girls Go Wild, Adventures in NZ” 
), especially this comment -
I was in a far-away, windswept South Pacific idyll, where the headlines are as often as not about algae, troubled whales, and overturned sheep trucks. The news of the world resonates with a muffle.
I spent a lot of my vacation at Pakiri Beach, north of Auckland. It’s one of my favorite places – a long (about 9km / 5.5 miles) white sandy beach north of Leigh, facing the Hen and Chicken Islands which are around 20km offshore. It’s a bit off the beaten track – an hour and a half from Auckland, and accessible from the south via a steep, winding gravel road. In summer it is fairly popular, but most people stay within about a quarter mile stretch at the southern end of the beach. And even there it’s not crowded at all. So it’s a great place to get away from it all. It’s a good place to swim and it has fairly gentle surf which attracts a few board riders.
These photos were taken on several different days, most of which were beautiful. I did take a trip up there on one day when it was cloudy and windy, but even then it’s a great place to be.
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I’m am slowly getting my holiday photos sorted out. Those worth sharing are now loaded on to the server and I will get them published here over the next few days. Here is the first lot – some photos taken at Michelle (my sister) and Jeremy’s (my brother-in-law) in mid-January.
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I found this interesting snippet today in an article about architecture in the NZ Listener (January 28 – February 3 2006, Vol 202 No 3429):
“Timber requires one megajoule per kilogram to process from the log state to a milled section. It takes altogether five megajoules to go to its finished state, such as door, architraves, beautifully finished. Steel takes 43 megajoules per kilogram, aluminium takes 142 megajoules per kilogram.”
Of course this may be a simplistic analysis, since it does not account for the energy involved in maintaining structures made from each of these materials.
I’ve added a new link to Radio New Zealand’s website to my News web links section. In the past RNZ has resisted providing streaming audio, but I discovered a few days ago that they have now made the great leap forward into the modern world. So I can now enjoy the great talents of Geoff Robinson, Kim Hill and other lesser luminaries. I’m listening to Checkpoint as I type. Life is good!
I left Mum and Dad’s place in Northcote at about 4pm NZDT Saturday and arrived at home in Lake Zurich at about 9pm CST – 4pm Sunday in NZ – 24 hours door to door. The trip went fine. At check-in in Auckland I was offered a seat on the LA flight next to one that wasn’t occupied, which was a nice bonus. I slept pretty well across the Pacific with the help of some Melatonin, and read most of the way from LA to Chicago.
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Well, my vacation has come to a close. I’m easing my way back into work with a conference in Sydney and will be back in the US in a few days. Although I hadn’t intended to, I have pretty much taken a break from the website while I’ve been in Auckland (although have been writing some stuff that I haven’t yet put up on the site). But I’m eager to get back into the swing of things. Here’s something that caught my eye today in the Times – an article about David Bellamy (who I hadn’t heard of for years), suggesting that global warming is not to any significant degree caused by human activity. Apart from the substantive issue here, one thing that I find interesting about this is his suggestion that the mainstream scientific community effectively censors alternative points of view. If this is true (and I have no way to gauge whether it is ot not) it would represent an interesting parallel to what some people believe happens in the area of evolutionary biology. Here’s an excerpt -
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It was a pretty windy day in Auckland today. I went down to Devonport this afternoon with Mum and Dad and took a few photos of what little action there was on the harbour.
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I haven’t been very diligent in updating this since Christmas, partly because I haven’t been doing much of note apart from running and reading. However, last weekend we (Mum, Dad and I and Michelle, Jeremy and Thom) went to Cornwall Park for a picnic.
Cornwall Park is one of Auckland’s iconic spots, the location of One Tree Hill, and a place I used to go running with the Wesley Harrier Club years ago before I left NZ, not to mention the location of the restaurant where Mum and Dad had their wedding reception in ’62.
The park wasn’t too crowded, which was nice. There were a few other people picnicing, and people playing touch rugby and kite-flying. Photos below.
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