Thank you . . .

. . . to whoever planted the pohutukawa on the road side between the centre of Wellington and the airport.

They look glorious.

An introduction to snails

Escargot sounds better than snail, but whatever they’re called I’ve never summoned the courage to eat one until last night.

Then it came served to each diner on a china spoon as a pre-dinner offering and it would have been rude to turn it down.

I looked, lifted it slowly to my mouth, tasted it somewhat gingerly and to my surprise I liked it.

The dominant flavour was mild garlic and the texture was similar to a tender scallop.

The dinner was an end of year gathering at the Museum Hotel in Wellington. The meal was delicious – groper accompanied by steamed vegetables and followed by crème brulee. The service was superb and my fellow diners delightful.

Knowledge is power

I came across some old school reports last week.

They were pretty positive but there was nothing in them to indicate how the child being reported on was doing in relation to the norm for her age and stage or, just as important, in relation to her potential.

In light of that the aim of providing school reports in plain English which show parents how their children are performing doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.

Teachers say that they already know which children are failing and they ought to. But if this is the case why don’t parents know too?

An Education Review Office report to be released today has part of the answer:

. . . some teachers and principals are ignoring achievement data for year 1 and 2 pupils that does not show positive results. In some cases the information has not been given to boards of trustees and parents.

Knowledge is power and at the moment teachers have knowledge about children which isn’t being shared with parents.

The move to national standards ought to change that but identifying children who aren’t learning well is only the start.

Giving them  the help they need to ensure they reach their potential must follow and the responsibility for that doesn’t lie only with schools.

Not all children turn up at school ready to learn. Some don’t speak English and some who do have poor language skills. Some haven’t been read to, some don’t recognise numbers or colours. Some are hungry. Some lack social skills, some have behaviour problems.

National standards will indentify children with literacy and numeracy problems. They may identify teachers who aren’t up to scratch and they will also point to families where the parents are failing their children.

The success of national standards won’t rest on what they show but what’s done about it. The focus will be on schools but some of the problem, and the most difficult part to address, is what happens, or doesn’t happen, in homes.

Red now or blue later?

He needed a new ute.

The dealer had one is stock which he could have immediately or another on order which would take six weeks to arrive.

The one in stock was red and he was a National Party director.

He waited six weeks for the blue one.

How’s that for dedication to the cause?

December 16 in history

On December 16:

1431  Henry VI of Englandwas crowned King of France at Notre Dame in Paris.

1485  Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England, was born.

1497  Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope, the point where Bartolomeu Dias had previously turned back to Portugal.

1653  Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.

1707  Last recorded eruption of Mount Fuji in Japan.

1770  Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer was born.

 Portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820

1773  Boston Tea Party – Members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawks dump crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.

 This iconic 1846 lithograph by Nathaniel Currier was entitled “The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor

1775 Jane Austen, English writer, was born.

 A watercolour and pencil sketch of Jane Austen, believed to be drawn from life by her sister Cassandra (c. 1810)^[A]

1787  – Mary Russell Mitford, English writer, was born.

1790  King Léopold I of Belgium, was born.

1850 The Charlotte-Jane and the Randolph brought the firs tsettlres to Lyttelton, New Zealand.

1882   Sir Jack Hobbs, English cricketer, was born.

 Jack Hobbs (left) walks out to the SCG with his opening partner Herbert Sutcliffe.

1883 Max Linder, French pioneer of silent film, was born.

Max Linder

1888  King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, was born.

 

1893  Antonín Dvořák‘s Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, “From The New World” was given its world première at Carnegie Hall.

1899  Sir Noel Coward, English playwright, actor and composer, was born.

Noël Coward, c. 1920s

 1905  Piet Hein, Danish mathematician and inventor

Piet Hein (Kumbel) in front of the H.C. Andersen statue in Copenhagen

1905 A great rugby rivalry was born when a last-minute try to All Black Bob Deans was disallowed, handing the Welsh victory.

1907 The Great White Fleet (US Naval Battle fleet) began its circumnavigation of the world.

 Map of the Great White Fleet’s voyage.

1915  – Turk Murphy, American trombonist, was born.

1917  Sir Arthur C. Clarke, English writer, was born.

1920 The Haiyuan earthquake, magnitude 8.5, in  Gansu province in China, killed an estimated 200,000.

1938  Adolf Hitler institutd the Cross of Honor of the German Mother.

 Mutterkreuz

1943 Tony Hicks, English guitarist (The Hollies), was born.

1944 The Battle of the Bulge began with the surprise offensive of three German armies through the Ardennes forest.

1946 Benny Andersson, Swedish musician, singer and songwriter (ABBA), was born.

1947 Ben Cross, English actor, was born.

1947  William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain built the first practical point-contact transistor.

1949 Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget, later knons as SAAB, was founded in Sweden.

1952 Joel Garner, Barbadian West Indies cricketer, was born.

1955 – Prince Lorenz of Belgium, Archduke of Austria-Este, was born.

1960  1960 New York air disaster: While approaching New York’s Idlewild Airport, a United Airlines Douglas DC-8 collided with a TWA Lockheed Super Constellation in a blinding snowstorm over Staten Island, killing 134.

1971  Bangladesh War of Independence and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971: The surrender of the Pakistan army brings an end to both conflicts.

1971 – Independence Day of the State of Bahrain from British Protectorate Status.

1972  Angela Bloomfield, New Zealand actress, was born.

1991 Independence of The Republic of Kazakhstan.

1997  Dennō Senshi Porygonan episode of Pokémon, was aired in Japan, inducing seizures in hundreds of Japanese children.

2003  President George W. Bush signed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 into law. The law established the United States’ first national standards for the sending of commercial e-mail.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

Love Child

Happy birthday Cindy Birdsong – 70 today.

Tuesday’s answers

Monday’s questions were:

1. How many letters in the Maori alphabet? 

2. What is  a Sophora microphylla? 3. What are Frankincense and myrrh?4. Who wrote, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus . . .”? 

5. Who said, “Christmas is the one time of year when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ.”? 

PaulL gets a point for justifying his answer to #2 and a half for his answer to #4.

Andrei gets 2 and a half for his answer to #4.

Since it’s Christmas I won’t deduct a mark for pedantry. I don’t know enough about linguistics to know if he’s right about the Maori alphabet, but the intent of the question was to determine how many letters of the alphabet are used when writing the Maori language.

Gravedodger gets 4 plus a half for his answer to #4.

David gets three.

Paul Tremewan gets three and a bonus for humour.

PDM gets a bonus for honesty.

Tuesday’s answers follow the break:

There are two ways . . .

. . .  to prepare for an overnight trip to Wellington.

The first is to think about what you need, pack carefully and leave in plenty of time to chat with an elderly aunt when you drop off some food for her en route to the airport.

I did it the other way this morning, packing in a rush, leaving home later than desirable with just enough time to give my aunt the food, have a very quick catch up on her health and run.

Then I got to Dunedin airport to find the flight was delayed for at least an hour.

It’s not the airline’s fault I was disorganised. But given they get a phone number and email address when you book online, how difficult is it to email or text a message to let intending passengers know when there’s more than a short delay?

Flagging the future

The news that the Maori flag will fly on Auckland Harbour Bridge, Parliament and Premier House hasn’t been universally welcomed.

The opposition comes from Maori and non-Maori and for a variety of reasons.

There’s no surprise in that.

Some don’t like the idea of any Maori flag and some don’t like that particular flag.

If anyone suggested it’s time to fly a new New Zealand flag there’d be a similar range of opinions.

But there is a website which is aiming to do that.

 NZflag.com ;

 is a  Trust established to promote debate about New Zealand’s national identity and, in particular, about New Zealand’s flag. We believe that the time has come for New Zealanders to choose a flag which represents New Zealanders as we see ourselves today – to respect and reflect our history as a nation, to represent us to others as we would we would like them to see us and, importantly, to carry us forward with our hopes and aspirations for New Zealand’s future.

The website gives reasons why the flag should change, looks at various designs which have come up before (I like John Hepbrun’s and Jason Paul Troup’s). Then there are  several new designs  which have arisen during the debate and comments on them.

There is a lot of emotion tied up in a flag and some won’t welcome the debate but I would like a flag which is distinctively New Zealand’s and not likely to be confused with Australia’s as ours is now.

SIT beats Oxford & Cambridge

Southland Institute of Technology has top spot on the list of most popular education downloads on iTunes.

The institute’s Intensive English series has spent the past three weeks atop a list of content offered through iTunes University, a free education area within the Apple iTunes online music and video store.

SIT is the first organisation outside the United States or United Kingdom to occupy the No1 spot, from a stable of more than 300 education providers worldwide.

Internationally renowned universities Cambridge and Oxford in the UK and Stanford, Texas A&M, MIT and UCLA in the US are some of the bigger names in SIT’s cyber shadow.

I wonder how the students cope with the New Zealand accent and if they learn to roll their Rs?

Health Boards’ merger less certain

Otago and Southland District Health Boards have been developing a closer relationship for some time.

They have a single chief executive and chair and have been consulting on a full merger.

Public meetings on the proposal haven’t been well attended which indicates people don’t have strong feelings on the issue.

The most heat about the the proposal was from Central Otago where people who are caught between board boundaries were in favour of the merge. They gave the example of someone in Queenstown who needs chemotherapy who has to go to Invercargill under the current structure but would be able to make the shorter journey to Dunstan Hospital if there was a single board.

However, Southland Hospital doctors wrote an open letter opposing the merger, just a day before submissions closed.

Dr Charles Lueker, who chairs the senior medical staff committee in Southland, said the letter was signed on behalf of “well over 90%” of senior doctors at Southland Hospital.

The doctors expressed concerns about services being centralised to Dunedin and the loss of the board’s advocacy for the people of Southland.

Reducing costs, sharing resources and providing more convenient service for many rural patients has a lot to recommend it.

It would be a pity if the merger which would do this was to fail at this late stage.

December 15 in history

On December 15:

37 Nero, Roman Emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, was born.

1791  The United States Bill of Rights became law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly.

1832 Gustave Eiffel, French engineer and architect (Eiffel tower), was born.

1863 The mountain railway from Anina to Oravita in Romania was used for the first time.

1891  James Naismith introduced the first version of basketball, with thirteen rules, a peach basket nailed to either end of his school’s gymnasium, and two teams of nine players.

 

1892 J. Paul Getty, American oil tycoon, was born.

As I See It, J. Paul Getty’s Autobiography

1905 The Pushkin House is established in St. Petersburg to preserve the cultural heritage of Alexander Pushkin.

 

 

1906 – The London Underground‘s Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway opened.

  

1915 – World War I: Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig replaced John French, 1st Earl of Ypres as Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force.

1930 Edna O’Brien, Irish novelist and short story writer, was born.

1933  – Donald Woods, South African journalist and anti-apartheid activist, was born.

1939 Cindy Birdsong, American singer (The Supremes), was born.

 The Supremes Jean Terrell (left), Cindy Birdsong (center), Mary Wilson (right) circa 1970

1939  Gone with the Wind received its première at Loew’s Grand Theater in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

1944 The Finance Act (No. 3) abolished the Chinese poll tax, introduced in 1881, which was described by Minister of Finance Walter Nash as a ‘blot on our legislation’.

1951 The towering Belmont railway viaduct, which bridged a deep gully at Paparangi, northeast of Johnsonville, Wellington, built in 1885 by the Wellington and Manawatu Railway Company, was demolished by Territorial Army engineers.

1955  Jens Olsen’s World Clock started by Swedish King Frederick IX and Jens Olsen’s youngest grandchild Birgit.

 The back of Jens Olsen’s World Clock

1965  Gemini 6A, crewed by Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford, was launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida. Four orbits later, it achieved the first space rendezvous with Gemini 7.

1973  John Paul Getty III, grandson of American billionaire J. Paul Getty, was found alive near Naples, Italy, after being kidnapped by an Italian gang on July 10, 1973.

1978  President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States will recognize the People’s Republic of China and cut off all relations with Taiwan.

1997 The Treaty of Bangkok was signed allowing the transformation of Southeast Asia into a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone.

2000 The 3rd reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was shut down due to foreign political pressure.

2001 The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopened after 11 years and $27,000,000 to fortify it, without fixing its famous lean.

2006  First flight of the F-35 Lightning II.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

Fairy Tale of New York

Happy birthday Spider (Peter) Stacy) – 51 today.

P.S.

Jim Mora and this afternoon’s Panel (part 2) discussed Kirsty McColl’s death.

The Whole of the Moon

Happy birthday  Mike Scott – 51 today.

Monday’s quiz

1. How many letters in the Maori alphabet?

2. What is  a Sophora microphylla?

3. What are Frankincense and myrrh?

4. Who wrote, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus . . .”?

5. Who said, “Christmas is the one time of year when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ.”?

10 years and they’ve done what?

The Greens have been celebrating 10 years in parliament.

They might think that’s an achievement but it’s been 10 years not in government.

Given their left leaning social and economic agenda it’s not surprising they weren’t offered a place in the National-led government.

But for all but the last year of their decade in parliament there was a Labour led government. If they couldn’t get around the cabinet table in three terms with Labour they ought to be taking a serious look at themselves, what they want to achieve and how best to achieve it.

They should especially look at their environmental agenda because as David Cohen points out there’s not much green about the few things which can be attributed to the party or its MPs.

Too chilly for cherries

Very cold weather in October combined with recent wet, cool weather is taking its toll on Central Otago cherry crops.

We bought some at a road side stall near Roxburgh on Saturday.

The woman serving us said the unseasonal weather wasn’t just slowing down ripening and that the fruit wasn’t as flavoursome as usual.

The weather is also reducing the yield, with some orchards expecting their harvests to be down by at least a third.

North Otago cherries ripen later than those in Central and they are expecting smaller crops here too.

In MMP you need partners

Remember the coloured graphs on television before the last election?

The ones that showed Labour with lots of friends – New Zealand First, the Greens, the Maori party and Jim Anderton; and National with just Act and Peter Dunne?

The commentators took great delight in explaining MMP 101: It’s most unusual for a party to be able to govern by itself. A major party needs one or more parties which will give it enough support to govern in coalition.

What will the graphs look like in the lead up to the next election?

Labour and Phil Goff might take some heart from the rise in the latest 3 News Reid Research Poll.

But the small increase in support from a very low base doesn’t take it anywhere near power when it’s done on the back of a speech almost guaranteed to allow the Maori Party to win all the Maori seats and spurn Labour as a coalition partner.

The options for 2011 look like National plus the Maori Party and/ or Act on one side or Labour and the Greens on the other.

I’m counting Anderton as Labour (if he stands again) and assuming Dunne will do the sensible thing and not stand again.

I’m ignoring New Zealand First.

If it looks as if its approaching 5% support, I hope that enough floating voters will be so appalled  at the prospect of a Labour, Greens, New Zealand First coalition they’ll vote for any other party to stop that happening.

December 14 in history

On December 14:

1287 St. Lucia’s flood: The Zuider Zee sea wall in the Netherlands collapsed, killing more than 50,000 people.

1503 Nostradamus, French astrologer, was born.

1542 Princess Mary Stuart beccame Queen Mary I of Scotland.

 1751 The Theresian Military Academy was founded as the first Military Academy in the world.

 

1782  The Montgolfier brothers’ first balloon lifts on its first test flight.

 A 1786 depiction of the Montgolfier brothers’ historic balloon with engineering data.

1843 The first Auckland A&P Show was held.

1895  King George VI  was born.

1896 The Glasgow Underground Railway was opened by the Glasgow District Subway Company.

1900  Max Planck presented a theoretical derivation of his black-body radiation law.

                    Black body spectrum

1902 The Commercial Pacific Cable Company laid the first Pacific telegraph cable, from Ocean Beach, San Francisco to Honolulu, Hawaii.

1903 The Wright Brothers made their first attempt to fly with the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

 

1911  Roald Amundsen‘s team, Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting and Amundsen, became the first to reach the South Pole.

1918 Friedrich Karl von Hessen, a German prince elected by the Parliament of Finland to become King Väinö I, renounces the Finnish throne.

1922 Don Hewitt, American creator of 60 Minutes, was born.

 1932  Charlie Rich, American musician, was born.

1946 Patty Duke, American actress, was born.

1948  Kim Beazley, Australian politician, was born.

1949 Cliff Williams, English bassist (AC/DC), was born.

1958  The 3rd Soviet Antarctic Expedition became the first expedition to reach The Pole of Relative Inaccessibility in the Antarctic.

1958  Mike Scott, Scottish singer-songwriter (The Waterboys), was born.

1958 Spider Stacy, English musician (The Pogues), was born.

1962  NASA‘s Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to fly by Venus.

 

1964  Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States – The United States Supreme Court rules that the U.S. Congress can use its Commerce Clause power to fight discrimination.

 1972 Apollo programme: Eugene Cernan was the last person to walk on the moon, after he and Harrison Schmitt completed the third and final Extra-vehicular activity (EVA) of Apollo 17. This was the last manned mission to the moon of the 20th century.

1981  Israel‘s Knesset passes The Golan Heights Law, extending Israeli law to the area of the Golan Heights.

1994 Construction began on the Three Gorges Dam in the Yangtze River.

2004  The Millau viaduct, the highest bridge in the world, near Millau, France was officially opened.

2008 President George W. Bush made his fourth and final (planned) trip to Iraq as president and almost got struck by two shoes thrown at him by Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi during a farewell conference in Baghdad.

 Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

What’s not going on in the blogosphere?

Monkey with Typewriter has disappeared.

The Tumeke! blogosphere rankings haven’t been updated since October. That’s an observation, not a complaint. Tim Selwyn must have put hundreds of hours into compiling the stats and if he chooses to stop doing so that’s entirely up to him.

And today Kiwiblog has only one post – the general debate. That’s also an observation not a complaint. If the country’s most prolific blogger wants a day off he’s entitled to have it, but it’s most unusual for David to disappear without telling the world. 

What’s going – or in this case – not going on in the blogosphere and why?