Posts by Sacha

Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First

  • Hard News: Blackout Bingo!,

    everyone dash to the toilet to lighten the load before checking themselves in

    Not such a bad idea - seriously.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Public Bad,

    I guess I'll never get invited into RIANZ again

    Only if you send them a copy - although the mug would seem especially appropriate.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Public Bad,

    get PAS t shirts done in NZ

    Yay - let's talk some time about a tasty domain I have in mind for such a purpose.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report

  • Hard News: Emma Hart is a werewolf,

    Rob, Out of Sight was on telly a few years ago - because that's where I saw it - but I've never heard anything further about the eugenics project. Google is not much help in either case..

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report

  • Hard News: Emma Hart is a werewolf,

    And New Scientist is always beautiful to look at, which helps.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Public Bad,

    Genius! (both of you)

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report

  • Hard News: Emma Hart is a werewolf,

    Joe, have you seen "Out of Sight, Out of Mind"?

    Te Listener briefly noted in 2004:

    Film-maker Gerard Smyth was asked in 1995 by parents of Templeton residents to produce a documentary that would help keep the Christchurch institution open. However, he found that, overwhelmingly, the residents wanted to leave as soon as they could.

    Smyth’s inquiries led back to eugenics, or controlled breeding, a once-respectable movement that had legs until Hitler gave it a bad name. For many years before World War II, it was thought that disability could be bred out and, in 1928, the government here passed the Mental Defectives Bill, which established “psychopaedic” hospitals where the disabled were housed.

    Denis Welch also did a good review in a later edition:

    As Otago University professor Warwick Brunton explained, eugenics was a fashionable creed in the early 1920s, when the “scientific approach to having children” (remember Plunket and Truby King) held sway.

    Many in the white West feared the adulteration of European blood by miscegenation. And not only was racial pollution considered a risk, but also the “mentally defective” were regarded as poor breeding stock. Theodore Gray, director-general of mental hospitals in 1927, said by excluding colour and those unfit to breed, New Zealand could have one of the “finest white strains” in the world.

    Hence racist immigration policies and the tendency to lock away anyone thought likely to weaken that strain – and, as a further precaution, to segregate the sexes as well. (In the US, inmates were often sterilised.)

    I understand Gerard was keen to do a follow-up doco broadly about eugenics in NZ.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report

  • Hard News: Blackout Bingo!,

    Quick, someone get extra twinkies into Limbaugh. :)

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Public Bad,

    The problem with Lagavulin is certainly the price. Can't think of any others. :)

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Public Bad,

    Huia do a fine local bubbles too.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report

Last ←Newer Page 1 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 1971 Older→ First