NZ top cricket test team

The Black Caps have had a very good series:

New Zealand win by an innings and 176 runs 🌟

An all-round performance has helped 🇳🇿 to a big victory over Pakistan in the second Test.

They take the series 2-0 👏 pic.twitter.com/SuySqGLpHe

— ICC (@ICC) January 6, 2021

🇳🇿 NEW ZEALAND ARE NO.1️⃣🎉

Victory over Pakistan has sent Kane Williamson's side to the 🔝 of the @MRFWorldwide ICC Test Team Rankings!

They have achieved the feat for the first time in rankings history 👏 pic.twitter.com/8lKm6HebtO

— ICC (@ICC) January 6, 2021

We could have listened to the commentary on Magic Talk but a whole lot of people who would have watched it on television didn’t/couldn’t because Spark won the TV rights.

It was a business decision by NZ Cricket, we might never know whether what they gained from that compensated for audience loss.

Word of the day

Locution – a word or phrase, especially with regard to style or idiom; an utterance regarded in terms of its intrinsic meaning or reference, as distinct from its function or purpose in context;  a particular form of expression or a peculiarity of phrasing especially : a word or expression characteristic of a region, group, or cultural level; style of discourse; a phrase or expression connected to an individual or a group of individuals through repeated usage.

Sowell says

What is called "social justice" is government imposition of the notions of third parties, who pay no price for being wrong.

— Thomas Sowell (@ThomasSowell) January 4, 2021

Rural round-up

Why it was good to be a farmer in 2020 – Ben Speedy:

 2020 has been full of surprises. I’m not sure there has been a more disruptive year in my lifetime. For many across New Zealand, 2020 suddenly morphed into the year of “resetting”; a year to take stock, re-evaluate priorities and stay close to home. But for many Kiwi farmers and growers, it’s also been a year to make hay while the sun is shining.

The outlook wasn’t always so rosy. Back in January and February, the north and east of the North Island were officially in drought – some regions for a sustained period – significantly impacting production outputs for many. No one knew what the future would hold and what they’d need to get through.

Then, Covid-19 – and later the rain – arrived.

For an exporting country like ours, initial predictions the pandemic would result in a broad slowdown in international trade amid border closures, logistics difficulties and reduced demand did dampen the economic outlook. However, fears Covid-19 would send globalisation into reverse have so far proved unfounded. . . 

The High Court bombshell that has pig farmers facing an uncertain future – Jason Palmer:

Last month, the High Court dropped a bombshell. A judge in Wellington made a decision which left pig farmers like me facing an uncertain future almost overnight.

The judge ruled that two regulations and two minimum standards in the Pig Code of Welfare, that permit the use of mating stalls and farrowing crates, are now unlawful and invalid.

Now, the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (NAWAC), which provides independent advice to the Government minister responsible for animal welfare, must assess the validity of New Zealand pig farmers continuing to use the most common indoor farrowing system globally, to raise pigs.

The Court also directed the Minister to consider recommending new regulations that provide a transition period to phase out the use of farrowing crates and mating stalls. . . 

Maintaining our slice of heaven – Jacqueline Rowarth:

Investment in primary sector research and development will assist in maintaining our “slice of heaven”, Dr Jacqueline Rowarth writes.

“May you live in interesting times.”

What has been described as the translation of a Chinese curse is, in fact, a western and modern invention.

Probably the same is true of “May all your children be daughters”. And in the same way that most people have come to accept that girls are as good as boys, and for different reasons, we also accept that if times aren’t interesting, we’re bored. . . 

Beaut evening after rain over the Kaipara. Mist forming on the ridge across valley as moisture rises from hot, north-facing slope that’s been headed for weeks towards drought ….. 👍 pic.twitter.com/DrjMfy7cpJ

— Jake Smith (@GreenhillStud) January 3, 2021

Culture shock almost overcome – Mary-Jo Tohill:

Just imagine having been brought up in highly urbanised London.

You’ve spent your career working in hospitality and you have only a rudimentary idea of where milk comes from. Then your Kiwi girlfriend tells you she’s got you a job on a dairy farm in the wilds of rural New Zealand.

That’s exactly what happened to Daniel Bergin (26) when he and Kerryn Brunton moved back to her hometown, Tapanui, from the United Kingdom in July.

More accustomed to pulling pints than a dairy cow’s teats, he’ll never forget his first day in the cowshed.

“I walked in and thought, ‘What have I done?’.” . . 

An 11ha avocado orchard – Brent Melville:

New Zealand produces just 2 percent of the world’s avocados but is the ninth-largest exporter of a fruit that has been touted as the ‘superfood’ of the 21st century. 

Horticulture was the bright spark in New Zealand’s primary export world last year, with fruit, vegetables and wine generating $6.5 billion in export receipts, a healthy chunk of total primary sector revenues of $47.5 billion.

And the Ministry for Primary Industries expects horticulture to continue being the star of the show, with forecasts of a 9 percent increase to $7.1 billion for the 2021 season. 

The biggest contributor to that is kiwifruit, which saw exports valued at $2.5 billion this past year followed by wine, which bottled up $1.9 billion in exports. . . 

The sunset this evening was amazing. #redskyatnight pic.twitter.com/bLl84EVIWf

— ShaneHalpin132 (@ShanHalpin132) January 3, 2021

Resilient agriculture requires trade barriers be removed – Grace Bwogi Namukasa :

The average person in Uganda eats 660 pounds of bananas each year.

That’s a lot of bananas: It’s at least 50 percent more than the weight of a full-grown male mountain gorilla. Ugandans eat more bananas per person than the people of any other nation.

I’m a banana farmer in the Rakai district of Uganda, so you might think that I’d have trouble keeping up with our country’s strong demand for bananas. The vast majority of Uganda’s bananas supply local markets, but we also export them. More than 1,000 tons each year head to Europe. Many of the bananas on my farm make their way to the United Kingdom, and other Ugandan farmers send bananas to Belgium and Germany as well as neighboring African countries. . . 

Yes Sir Humphrey

‘Controversial’ only means this will lose you votes. 'Courageous' means this will lose you the election.

— Sir Humphrey Appleby (@YesSirHumphrey) December 16, 2020

Changing language to change world

Abigail Shrier writes that one of the first acts of the USA’s new House of Representatives could be to cancel mothers:

On Sunday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic majority proposed to eliminate “father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister” and all other language deemed insufficiently “gender-inclusive” from House rules. They would be ­replaced with terms like “parent, child, sibling, parent’s sibling” and so on.

“Mother” — among the most important concepts in human life — would be erased from the lexicon of the US House of Representatives. It’s important to recognize how radical this is. And no, it isn’t akin to updating federal law to replace “policeman” with “police officer,” a rational corrective sought by feminists for generations. . . 

Those changes were to reflect fact that jobs weren’t the preserve of one gender. That’s very different from trying to eliminate biological reality.

But “mother” is a fundamental biological, emotional, familial reality. It captures the irreplaceable bond between a baby and the woman who bore her in her womb. That others can be excellent guardians — a fact no one disputes — can’t justify extirpating Mom from our vocabulary. (For that matter, the political erasure of “dad” is also dehumanizing, because it ­entails the loss of our capacity to describe relationships that define what it means to be fully human.)

House Democrats don’t pretend to seek this change merely for the sake of “streamlining” congressional language. The explicit point is to advance “inclusion and diversity” and to “honor all gender identities.” Pelosi & Co. are desperate to accommodate an ­aggressive gender ideology that ­insists “man” and “woman” are fuzzy, subjective categories, rather than biological ones.

This desperation for acceptance and inclusion ironically doesn’t include and has no tolerance for those who maintain that there is an important difference between biological sex and what some people might choose for their gender.

Remember the trouble that J.K. Rowling got into when she tweeted ?

‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud? 

She was labeled a TERF (a trans-exclusionary radical feminist); people burned her books and called for her publisher to blacklist her.

And if you think that’s mad, what about this? (back to Abigail Shrier):

Lest you think this a harmless alteration, consider the ways California’s Democrats have run wild with Newspeak. As Quillette reported last week, California’s insurance commissioner has ­issued a directive to reclassify double mastectomies of healthy breasts from “cosmetic” procedures to “reconstructive,” necessary to “correct or repair the abnormal structures of the body caused by congenital defects.”

You read that right: The “congenital defect” is a young woman’s healthy breasts, provided that young woman subjectively identifies as “nonbinary” or anything other than “woman.”

It matters what we call things in the public space: Just ask the ­female prisoners now housed with violent biological men in California if our lawmakers’ words matter. This lie — that a girl’s breasts constitute “developmental abnormalities” depending on her subjective state of mind — carries the result that female patients of all ages would suddenly become eligible for insurance coverage for double mastectomies. A small change in language grants doctors the green light to remove the normal, developing breasts of an 11-year old girl. Still just words?

By all means, call people what they prefer. But language in the law, by definition, ushers words into action. Words grant rights or take them away. Words can enhance or diminish status, placing people and concepts beyond the bounds of legal protection. . .

If “mother” is now a useless concept under House rules, why shouldn’t it pose an equally offensive presence in federal law?

That’s where we’re headed, isn’t it? Erasing “mothers,” and “women,” because the concepts are insufficiently inclusive to gender ideologues. The rights women struggled to win become undone, paradoxically, in the name of ­inclusion.

The female body loses its significance in language and in law: no need for doctors to regard the healthy breasts of young girls as anything more than noxious lumps. The dystopian threat to individuality lies in this: Without mother and father, we all become atomized and fungible, losing our true individuality.

Those pressing for these changes do so precisely because they know there is no more effective means of upending society than by deleting the women and the natural bonds that make society possible. Congressional Democrats move us, by Orwellian fiat, one step closer to a sterile world with sterile words. We shapeless humans — fungible as pennies — are left to await further instruction.

The cancelling of gender specific terms for family members is an extension of the idea that those who have undergone puberty as males can compete equally and fairly in sports with those born female. Or as the proponents of this madness would say, that trans women are women.

In doing so they are blind to biological differences and the fact that whatever drugs and surgery do to change gender, nothing can make someone born a boy a natal woman, regardless of what he, she, or whatever other pronoun is chosen, identifies as and what words are used to denote that identity.

People who want a different gender from the sex assigned to them at birth face many hurdles and often are victims of discrimination. But accepting some people born boys can be trans women and some born girls can be trans men, that this isn’t always easy for them and they have rights, doesn’t mean we have to disregard biological facts, cancel family labels and undo progress that came from decades of activism to give women equality and safety.

Nor does it mean that those who speak out against this are transphobic.

As J.K. Rowling wrote in defending her tweet:

. . . It isn’t enough for women to be trans allies. Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves.

But, as many women have said before me, ‘woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive. Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating. . .

I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk. Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.

So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth. . . 

I have met only a couple of trans-women and enjoyed the company of both. I accept that some people aren’t comfortable with the sex assigned at their births, have the right to change their gender and not face discrimination because of that.

I don’t accept changing language to to deny biological reality.

People wanting social change use language to advance their agenda.

That can be sensible, for example changing gendered job titles to those that are gender neutral for occupations done by men and women. It can be good, for example changing offensive labels to ones that aren’t.

But it can also be political manipulation – changing the language to in a misguided attempt to change the world.

This linguistic trickery of cancelling family titles and denying biological reality is many radical and dangerous steps too far.