Film Review : Paper Solder (Bumazhnyy Soldat)

Monday, July 27th, 2009

The New Zealand Film Festival is on at the moment, giving us all the chance to see exciting, stimulating cinema from around the world; and also this film. Paper Solder is a Russian production set in the weeks before the launch of Yuri Gagarin's famous day trip. The story focuses on ...

Book Review : Three Books

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel by Susanna Clarke Possibly going for the title of "Most English Book Ever Written", Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell tells the unlikely story of two magicians in the early 1800s, a time when magic is all-but forgotten. The two title characters have very different ...

The Minimum Wage vs. The Edict of Maximum Prices

Monday, February 9th, 2009

I see today that the minimum wage is going to rise from $12 to $12.50 this year. This is something I support, not only to keep up with inflation but also because it puts more money into the lowest section of the economy - always a good move in a ...

Hitler, the Universal Simile

Saturday, September 20th, 2008

It is a sad fact that in any Internet debate on any topic, one side (or more probably, both sides) will eventually be compared to Hitler. This is often called Godwin's law, after a man called Mike Godwin who first proposed it in 1990, although another term, Reducto Ad Hitlerum, ...

The National Library of New Zealand Photostream

Sunday, July 27th, 2008

I just found out that the The National Library of New Zealand has a Flickr photostream. One thing we don't have in New Zealand is a lot of history, so it is great that this kind of material is being made available, the images are even available for reproduction on ...