That is the sort of feeling I get when reading silly newspaper articles full of sensationalist speculation as to the motives and failings of the Captain of the Costa Concordia, Francesco Schettino. Of more interest is the article (not yet online) entitled “Making a Monster of Human Frailty” by Theodore Dalrymple. Dr. Dalrymple starts: Courage is a [...]

100 years ago this year the Titanic struck and iceberg and, despite the claims for her being unsinkable, sank in arctic waters taking 1517 souls with her. In an uncanny (but fortunately less deadly) replay, the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia struck a reef and sank, listing sharply to one side. Although the passengers are likening [...]

Dear Mr. McCarten You seem to be a bit up yourself, lately. Your column in the Herald on Sunday absurdly compares the recent life-threatening, regime-changing protests overseas with the history of New Zealand left-wing protests. You even manage to include an entirely prospective protest against “asset sales”. Aside from the fact that this comparison is [...]

The MacDoctor post drought is over. Some idiot ran into the telephone pole outside of our house and succeeded in knocking us off the internet for a week. I confess, I rather enjoyed reading books and watching movies instead of rambling away on a MacDoctor post, but it was too painful to stay offline. Too [...]

‘Finally, we are free’ And ‘Egyptians are breathing freedom’ Does anyone else, besides me, consider that Egyptians have a seriously weird idea of freedom, considering they have just swapped their dictator for a military junta? I suspect that the Burmese would be glad to enlighten them. Add a Comment

The UN committee on the rights of the child are concerned that we have insufficient rights for children in New Zealand. They imply that this is the cause of our “staggeringly high” infant mortality statistics. This would be impressive if we actually had high infant mortality stats, but we don’t. New Zealand’s infant mortality rate [...]

And after spending several days blaming Sarah Palin for Jared Loughner’s shooting spree based on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence, we appear to be now castigating the woman for inappropriate metaphors. Except that the use of the word “blood libel” is entirely appropriate in these circumstances For those who don’t know what the phrase means, [...]

When a 23-year-old university student pulled out a gun and shot dead his teacher and 31 students, he was declared insane. When 22-year-old Jared Loughner pulled out a gun and shot US congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, and 18 others today, it was suddenly all due to the inflammatory rhetoric of the right-wing Tea Party and, in [...]

Tim Parke, the Clinical Director of Auckland Hospital Emergency Department, has written an opinion piece in today’s Herald, extolling the virtues of state health care. “Universal” health care, as he calls it. That word immediately alerts me to the socialist thinking that will be behind the article. The most obvious aspect of state health is [...]

I wanted to title this post “much ado about nothing” but it’s just too hackneyed. But that is exactly what I think of the Russell Norman Protest Saga. I’ve seen a lot of outrage over Norman’s treatment with, hilariously, a great deal of nationalistic fervour from the left. Even some of my right wing compatriots [...]