Posts by B Jones
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
I would say that the name Shylock is more or less unknown to the majority of Pakeha New Zealanders, let alone the PI and Asian ones
A lot of us came across it in 7th form English, which not everyone takes, but it's not one of the more obscure plays. And there were definitely PI and Asian kids in my class.
And while Shylock's a problematic stereotype from a time gone by, he does get some damn good lines:
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means,
warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer
as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us,
do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?
Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his
sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge.
The villainy you teach me, I will execute,
and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.(Act III, scene I)
-
I can't decide whether I'd rather they went the full contrails and Celts monty, thus alienating 99% of the electorate, or toned it down, stopped contributing to racial disharmony and got more influence as a result. It's easier to be academic about it when I'm not the one facing negative stereotypes.
-
I think they're trying to be down with the kids. I actually read once on one of those sites a sort of strategy that involved attempting to recruit the grandkids (presumably the ones over 18). Because there's nothing that shapes the views of young people like their racist grandparents.
-
It's certainly courageous to call out the leader of a political party two months out from an election.
But she's not the first in her role to do what she's done, and be attacked for it.
-
Whyte carefully exempts the work of the Waitangi Tribunal from his criticism
Very carefully indeed:
Whyte:
The reparations made to iwi by the Waitangi Tribunal are NOT an example of this. The Treaty of Waitangi gave Maori property rights over the land they occupied. Many violations of these rights followed. The remedies provided by the Waitangi Tribunal are not a case of race-based favouritism. They are recognition of property rights and, therefore, something that we in ACT wholeheartedly support.
The Waitangi Tribunal almost never provides reparations. Most of its reports recommend that iwi and the Government negotiate a settlement, and those settlements are agreed separately from the Tribunal's processes. Which leaves politicians free to fulminate against the negotiated settlements while paying lip service to respecting the Treaty and property rights. I don't believe Act has ever voted for any Treaty settlement, and has a long history of opposing the process: http://web.archive.org/web/20060518141006/http://www.act.org.nz/policy_treaty_details.aspx
Because of that history, I see a silver lining to this cloud. Act's not publicly using the rank language they've used in the past (and some of their folk still use, in some weird corners of the internet), and it's not likely to get them the same sort of success that Brash had with Orewa ten years ago. It would be nice if this wasn't a regular feature of our political discourse, but I'm glad it's now having its voice among tiny parties not likely to contribute heavily to the makeup of government, rather than being a major opposition policy platform running up to a close election.
-
I'm pretty sure they do this with carbonated ginger beer too. It's hard to find one in shops that gets its fizz from the fermentation rather than added gas. but without knowing much about the process beyond a few ventures into making my own, I suspect it's because natural fermentation is harder to control. You don't want your product exploding because it's stored in the backroom of a hot dairy, and temperature control from production to consumption is expensive.
I wonder if the same logic dictates when yoghurt is thickened with gelatin. It's not as efficient, but it's more stable, and stability is useful thing in a consumable product.
-
Hard News: Te Reo Māori in schools:…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
What percentage of school students will end up in a role where they author academic papers in the sciences? One in a thousand?
If that. Furthermore, the one person I know of with whom I went to school who's been published in the sciences, in an international field, was the same guy who topped the Te Reo class all the way through school.
It's one data point, but it undermines the original thesis that too much language can squeeze out fluency in English-dominated academia.
(edit - working out what I'm arguing with helps).
-
My mum's school had Maori names for their "houses": a mispronounced lip service paid to the great waka - Aya-teeya, etc.
My school, in the 80s, introduced a programme called Taha Maori. The bits of it I can remember include a few songs - Ma is White, Karangatia Ra, E papa waiari and so on. Still mostly mispronounced - although we were taught the right vowel, WH and R sounds, it's hard not to revert to your basic language model.
My daughter's kindergarten, in one of the whitest suburbs in Wellington, has a Maori teacher come in every week. She teaches new kupu, along with the sign language that goes with the words, and songs and actions - they're up to Toia Mai, which I first encountered as an adult. My daughter has a far better vocab than I picked up in school, and she's not even 5. She's learned the R sound completely independently of the English R (which is still more like a W for her) - she pronounces the Maori R closer to L - wrong, but in the opposite direction from most Pakeha NZers. I think that's the language acquisition window, before their preconceptions are fixed about how things should sound. Despite what I've learned since, I still find it more natural to mispronounce the words I first learned as a young child. I'm glad my kids won't have that.
-
A friend of mine was recently pressed to try a salt water and seaweed beer. Now that's stunt.
-
Being legally permitted and being capable of effective resistance in real life are two different things. We're not talking about women who've gone to jail for self defence here, we're talking about kids, pregnant women, people who are much smaller than their attackers and perfectly capable of remembering what they look like.