Word of the day

Genetrix – the biological mother of a child; mother.

Beautifying the blogosphere

Have you ever seen Venus like this?

An impressive near infra-red photo of Venus' nightside captured by the Akatsuki spacecraft. pic.twitter.com/968MxU3pZU

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 24, 2024

Women of the day

Today’s women of the day are the mothers with more than enough love:

The mothers with more than enough love but too little sleep.

The mothers with more than enough love but too little money.

The mothers with more than enough love but too little time.

The mothers with more than enough love but too little help.

The mothers who know you need sleep and money and help and time and that they matter but some days more than enough love is all you have.

 

 

 

The Women Before

A Mother’s Day poem from Scottish poet Donna Ashworth:

THE WOMEN BEFORE

It is not just your mother who may walk with you in spirit, it is her mother too. And her mother’s mother. And her mother’s friends, who loved by choice and not blood. And the women before them. Generations and generations of female energy, watching in admiration as you forge ahead living better, feeling better, accepting better, than they ever did. As they were much hoped you would.

So, when you feel low, lonely or unloved. Remember them, feel them. They are with you, and they burn brightly with their boundless light, in everything you do. You, my friends, are the ‘moment in time’ of many women gone before, and you will lay pathways, like they did, for those who come up next.

What a beautiful, unending legacy.

From her book Wild Hope

Aurora Australis/Southern Lights spectacular

One of our staff took this photo yesterday morning:

 

The solar storm that made the Aurora Australis, Southern Lights, so spectacular was only just visible with the naked eye at home last night, but my phone camera captured these shots:

The ODT covered the spectacle here.

The NZ Herald covered it here.

 

Word of the day

Bibliomania,– a passion for books; an extreme preoccupation or passionate enthusiasm for collecting and possessing books; a symptom of obsessive–compulsive disorder which involves the collecting or even hoarding of books to the point where social relations or health are damaged.

Sowell says

Those who say that all cultures are equal never explain why the results of those cultures are so grossly unequal.

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) May 7, 2024

Woman of the day

Woman of the Day stockbroker, publisher and women’s rights campaigner Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) of Ohio, who became the first woman to be nominated for President of the United States OTD in 1872. She and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, became the first women stockbrokers on… pic.twitter.com/7j7jhtatK8

— The Attagirls (@TheAttagirls) May 10, 2024

From good reads to good deeds

Oamaru Rotary Club’s annual Bookarama opened yesterday with 10s of thousands of books for sale.

A small but dedicated team of book lovers, not all of whom are Rotarians, have spend the past three weeks collecting, sorting, pricing and displaying the books.

We’ll be there every day until Sunday next week when everything gets packed up and moved out.

All the proceeds will be donated to local community projects.

It’s a huge effort for a small team but well worth it to turn good reads into good deeds.

Word of the day

Slench – an idle fellow; a big piece or lump of anything; to hunt about privately with a view to stealing food; to creep or slink away; to sneak;  to quench one’s thirst; to prune a hedge; to cut one side of it only.

Sowell says

Instead of trying to propagandize children to hug trees and recycle garbage, our schools would be put to better use teaching them how to analyze and test what is said by people who advocate tree-hugging, recycling, and innumerable other causes across the political spectrum.

The…

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) May 6, 2024

Woman of the day

Woman of the Day German Resistance activist Sophie Scholl born OTD 1921 in Germany, a student at the University of Munich and a member of the White Rose passive resistance group, executed at just 21.

Sophie was enthusiastic when the Nazis first came to power in 1933. She… pic.twitter.com/Vs3MYwLSHm

— The Attagirls (@TheAttagirls) May 9, 2024

Labour’s legacy

If you’re reading this before 9am, perhaps you should stop, turn your computer off and put on more clothes to keep warm rather than using a heater.

Transpower is asking us to save power for a couple of hours.

I can’t be the only one who sees the problem with the previous government’s policies.

They taxed the productive sector – tradies, farmers and others who need utes for work, to subsidise buyers of electric cars when we don’t have enough power.

One reason for that is that Labour stopped exploration for gas which resulted in the need to import more coal – and Genesis is having to do that again:

Power generator Genesis Energy expects to be buying coal again by the end of this year, in part due to a quickly diminishing gas supply.

Genesis said it aimed to maintain its solid fuel stockpile “to keep the lights on” for its customers through the “yo-yo” effects of the energy transition away from carbon dioxide emission. . . 

They put the green cart in front of the alternative power source horses.

That’s Labour’s legacy – a policy that was supposed to be better for carbon emissions making them worse and a potential power shortage just as winter bites.

Word of the day

Monoxylous – made from a single piece of wood; working with a single trunk or piece of timber; made out of a single trunk or piece of timber.

Sowell says

Much confusion comes from judging economic policies by the goals they proclaim rather than the incentives they create.

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) May 3, 2024

Woman of the day

Doctor and politician Ethel Allen was born OTD 1929 in Philadelphia. Describing herself as “unbossed and unbowed”, she served as the first African-American woman member of Philadelphia City Council and was appointed by the State Governor as Secretary of the Commonwealth of… pic.twitter.com/3bgk54UduB

— The Attagirls (@TheAttagirls) May 8, 2024

Voting too easy

Voting in New Zealand is easy – maybe too easy.

If you’re 18, a citizen who lives here, or has been in the country in the last three years, or a permanent resident and have lived here continuously for 12 months or more.

If you meet that criteria you can enrol to vote even if you’re on remand, home detention, serving a community-based sentence, or serving a sentence of imprisonment of less than 3 years in a New Zealand prison.

It’s not compulsory to enrol to vote but you must be enrolled to vote.

In most countries people have to enrol before polling day. In 2020 and last year people were able to enrol on election day and the Auditor General found that caused problems.

The right to vote is a fundamental plank of democracy. It’s a right that is often taking lightly and the ability to enrol on election day contributes to that.

That could change:

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says very few countries allow voters to enrol on election day, and New Zealand should consider changing the rules.

A report by the auditor-general released on Tuesday found an unprecedented number of special votes were cast in last year’s general election, leading to rushed final checks and mistakes. . . 

Paul Goldsmith, the current justice minister, was keeping an open mind.

“There’s some basic, basic stuff that the auditor-general pointed out, so we’re obviously concerned about that, and I will be making my expectations absolutely clear to the Electoral Commission around performance. So that’s absolutely the case,” he told Morning Report.

“The broader question though is whether the design of the system, particularly with the same-day enrolments – enrolments on election day, which is … a new idea – is adding much more pressure to the system.

“And remember that they used to be out of count everything in two weeks. This time, they were in a mad rush to count it in three weeks. We were waiting and waiting and waiting and still mistakes were made. And so that’s the issue.”

Goldsmith said it already cost $227 million to run an election.

“Rather than, you know, just throw even more hundreds of millions at the problem, wouldn’t it be more sensible to ask, have we overcomplicated? Have we made it too, too complicated? Can we simplify it in some way?” . . 

It’s not hard to enrol – it can be done online or phoning to have an enrolment form posted to you ; or at polling booths once advance voting starts.

Requiring people to enrol before voting day would simplify the election process. More than 100,000 people enrolled to vote on the day last year which necessitated them making special votes.

If enrolments closed sooner it would reduce the number of special votes by 10s of thousands.

That would speed up the vote count and also improve the integrity of the voting system.

It might also make people realise that the right to vote comes with the responsibility to put at least a little thought into doing so.

Making voting too hard would undermine democracy, but enabling it to be too easy with the ability to enrol on election day makes it too easy.

Word of the day

Craxis – the unease of knowing how quickly your circumstances could change on you—that no matter how carefully you shape your life into what you want it to be, the whole thing could be overturned in an instant, with little more than a single word, a single step, a phone call out of the blue, and by the end of next week you might already be looking back on this morning as if it were a million years ago, a poignant last hurrah of normal life.

Sourced from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

 

Sowell says

It is easy to give up freedom and hard to get it back.

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) May 3, 2024

Women of the Day

Today’s women of the day are the millions worldwide who have ovarian cancer.

It strikes about one woman in 70 and is the deadliest of the five gynaecological cancers.

Symptoms can include:

*Bloating Eating less and feeling fuller

*Abdominal, pelvic or back pain

*Needing to pee more or urgently

*Bowel habit changes

*Fatigue

Indigestion, abnormal vaginal bleeding or discharge, unexplained weight changes and painful sex are also possible symptoms.

These symptoms might not be ovarian cancer but if they last more than a few weeks, you should see a doctor and keep going until the cause of the symptoms is found.

The earlier the diagnosis the better the survival rate.

Ovarian cancer is not detected by a cervical smear. The tests for the disease are a CA-125 blood test and transvaginal ultrasound.