It has been 65 years since Hawaii became a state, but the Hawaiian Supreme Court appears to be having second thoughts. In an extraordinary ruling, the unanimous Supreme Court rejected the holdings of the United States Supreme Court on the Second Amendment as inapplicable to the 50th states. Hawaii apparently is controlled not by the…
Three years ago a friend of mine who’s a District Court Judge asked me if I would be guest speaker at the annual DCJ shindig, scheduled that year for the Hilton in Taupo. Despite a feeling of significant intellectual inferiority, I accepted on the condition that all I would talk about were personal experiences from…
On February 1 Sean Plunket re-played the audio of Don Brash’s 2004 Orewa speech at The Platform. To listen to the entire speech, go here. Alternatively, the full text of the speech is reproduced below. Today Don reflects: “It’s very long – really far too long for a Rotary Club speech. I should have taken…
Heads Up: Jeremy Corbyn’s greatest mistake was to give the ruling elites and their enablers advance warning that he was coming for their power, their purse, and their privilege. Candidate for the Green Party co-leadership, Chloe Swarbrick, appears to share Corbyn’s naïve assumption that those who own the system will sit idly by while a…
Last Sunday, the Sunday Star-Times recalled on its front page the “fiery debate” triggered by my speech to the Orewa Rotary Club just 20 years earlier. Articles by several authors in the same paper brought the debate up-to-date and warned of the dangers of ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill, which the National Party’s coalition agreement with…
One hope that has occasionally been expressed since the beginning of the modern era of Treaty of Waitangi (ToW) settlements, has been that the Iwi showered with money and empowered with control of hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars worth of assets, would be able to then make a difference to all the […]
Shane Jones deserves full support for his round-arm swing at the Waitangi Tribunal which is now fiddling about with a constitutional inquiry and deciding who can take part in it. A clause in New Zealand First’s coalition agreement with the National Party commits the government to amending the Waitangi Tribunal’s legislation so that the body…
Using textual analysis of 173,031 works printed in England between 1500 and 1900, we test whether British culture evolved to manifest a heightened belief in progress associated with science and industry. Our analysis yields three main findings. First, there was a separation in the language of science and religion beginning in the 17th century. Second, […]
I’ve written a lot about New Zealand lately, in particular the schools’ and government’s attempt to force the teaching of “indigenous ways of knowing” (mātauranga Māori) into the science classroom as a system coequal in value with modern science. That means not only equal classroom time, but equal respect, treating indigenous ways of knowing as […]
Over the last several months, I’ve seen and read about demonstrations on our campus by the pro-Palestinian group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which apparently has roughly 200 campus branches in the U.S., Canada, and New Zealand. SJP has been particularly active since last year’s October 7 massacre of Israelis and others, which they […]
Screeds have been written about the Treaty of Waitangi. And there’s more to come as division over race and rights ramps up.Its content and meaning are getting lost in the crossfire and the danger of ‘contestants’ talking past each other looms, if not already happening.When matters get murky, and misunderstandings abound, there is also a…
Geoffrey Miller writes – New Zealand is reshaping its foreign policy via the Middle East. A decision to provide intelligence support for future US and UK airstrikes on Yemen is highly symbolic. The Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, announced the deployment of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) troops to support the US-led military response to the attacks […]
Global News reports Federal Court finds Emergencies Act for ‘Freedom Convoy’ violated Charter. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. The Federal Court has ruled the Trudeau government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act during the so-called “Freedom Convoy” that descended on Ottawa in 2022 violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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