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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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, ...
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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 ...
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Monday, June 25th, 2007
Nathaniel's Nutmeg - How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History
By Giles Milton
The island of Run is pretty much forgotten, now just a small speck in the larger Indonesian archipelago. But during the 1600's, Run was the name on every European trader's lips, for it had been identified as ...
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Saturday, June 9th, 2007
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared M. Diamond
Jared M. Diamond; there's a super-hero alter-ego name if ever I have heard one. By day, Jared lives the buttoned down life of a professor of geography, by night he becomes a maverick author. His secret power is being able to write worthy ...
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