Armchair economists

First published in Column 8 on the 27^th May, 1992

On the bus home the other evening, a neighbour and I (he also bearded and bespectacled) solved the whole matter of the cost of public transport. Such things are easily achieved by armchair economists.

Believe it or not, we didn’t even consider the silly idea of adding a couple of cents onto the petrol prices in order to make people use the buses. Whatever dream-world economist came up with that one ought to go back to the first year commerce class. Petrol prices have gone up and down so often in the past few years that a couple more cents per litre are hardly going to be noticed. Just another tax to bear.

To make motorists sit up and take notice, the price of petrol would have to triple, or worse, petrol would have to be completely rationed.

In the past, my neighbour and I agreed, the city’s approach to public transport problems has invariably been to reduce the buses and increase the prices.

Our solution, which needn’t involve the Government at all, is to increase the buses and cut the prices. My neighbour, more radical than I, even said, ‘Make the buses free!’

People go for something free, after all. That’s why we think it’s cheaper to pop in the car to go to town. We have this mental block about the cost of running our cars: because nobody makes us pay as we get in the door we think it’s free. As for kids brought up with wheels for legs, they think cars run on fresh air.

The great advantage of our own private motor vehicles is that we can drive from door to door. In fact, if we can’t, we say: Parking’s such a problem in the city.

Cars are preferred over public transport because in the city they’re acceptable, parkable and convenient.

In that case, let’s cut out their acceptance and parkability and convenience. Make cars illegal in town. Make a belt round the city area (the Seat Belt?), and only let vehicles through that have commercial reasons to be there, or which are needed to transport people with disabilities.

Remove all parking buildings, and parking spaces. In one stroke you’d remove an awful lot of the hassle of going to town in the first place. Gone would be that dreadful searing of the soul: where will I find a park? Gone would be the aggression engendered by vying with another driver for the single parking space left outside the shop you want to visit, or the confrontation with a parking officer.

In fact, the city could save a good deal of money on parking management and meter maintenance.

Once cars were unwelcome, the city would have to provide frequent mini-buses. I’d be pleased if they got rid of their present smelly diesel, raucously noisy, quacking and grinding buses altogether.

In the past trolley bus public transport used to be super silent – unless the driver lost his pole! And the only noise cable-cars made was the clang of the bell. Neither left pollutants behind.

If the buses weren’t free, all the money the city earned in public transport as a result of our solutions would allow them to bring a combination of these modes back.

Armchair economics. Just think of the creative energy hundreds of public transport passengers would release, if we all did this amount of lateral thinking on a 10-minute bus trip.

Courtesy: Time's Up! Environmental Organization

I’m somewhat horrified to read this column thirty-four years later, because it seems that the City Council, over the last few years, has taken the words of this article seriously and is attempting to remove cars from the city forever. Bikes are the only mode of transport given a hearty Yay by our Councillors, forgetting that Dunedin, a city of hills, isn’t the greatest place to cycle around – especially if you’re older – and that bikes are more than useless when it comes to moving things other than people from place to place. There is a place for bikes, but not as a replacement for vehicles with a bit of get up and go.

I can’t remember now who my bearded and bespectacled neighbour was in this instance, and I can’t remember whether this was actually a tongue-in-cheek piece or not. I hope it was.

Dalai Lama

 First published in Column 8 on the 20^th May 1992 

I was pleased to see hundreds of people packing the Town Hall to hear the Dalai Lama speak. I was pleased because it meant New Zealanders haven’t yet lost sight of the fact that we’re not just physical creatures set in physical bodies living in a physical environment.

The enthusiastic hundreds proclaimed that a desire for insight into spiritual matters isn’t yet dead in the hearts of New Zealanders, in spite of what we may be inclined to think when we look each day at the news.

The words that the Dalai Lam was reported as saying mightn’t immediately appear to have a spiritual ring about them, but to deny their spiritual content would be foolish. The man is, after all, primarily a spiritual leader, not a political one.

The Dalai Lama was right to say that compassion is a necessary basis for world peace. It’s no wonder the audience resoundingly agreed.

He’s right to say that tolerance and forgiveness for one’s enemies are also necessary. We love to hear a man say these kinds of things, because we know there is truth there.

But as the courtroom oath states, we are to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. As much as I’d like, I cannot accept as the truth his thought that people are naturally gentle. To say such a thing is to be at odds with the facts surrounding us. And not just the facts surrounding us, but the true truth that’s within us.

We know in our inner hearts that we’re not naturally gentle, any more than we’re naturally kind, or generous, or peaceful or tolerant. To blame the failure of humankind on the military establishment begs the question. Isn’t the military establishment made up of human beings too?

Yes, we would all love peace on earth. Yes, we would all love to see human beings living tolerantly, compassionately and unselfishly with each other. Yes, we know it has to start with us, as individuals. None of these things are wrong in themselves. But a tree with bad roots won’t ever be a good tree.

As any of us know when we’re trying to give up some ingrained habit, it ain’t easy. When we try to be generous and tolerant and compassionate we succeed in our own strength, for a time. Then along comes some person who by a piece of quite perverse behaviour wipes away all our generosity and tolerance and compassion with one swift stroke. And down we fall again.

I agree, we have to start with ourselves. Trying to force other people to act rightly will never work. But as we all know in our heart of hearts, there’s a cross-current that sweeps through every good action we try to do and sucks us under. The good that we want to do, we don’t, and the evil we don’t want to do, we do.

Who will save us from the perversity that’s in our own nature? There’s only one person, and it isn’t the Dalai Lama, nor even his Buddha.

This person, who also preaches tolerance and compassion and forgiveness of one’s enemies, preaches something more: He insists on telling people where the real problem lies, that we’re not gentle by nature, but warped. And because many people won’t listen to His message, they fail to hear the solution, which is also in Him: Jesus Christ.

I love to ride on the train that puffs out Generosity, and hoots Tolerance, and whistles Compassion. I can forget my disagreeable nature and feel good – for a time.

But it still leaves me with a problem: all the positive noises in the world won’t get us to our destination if the train is going the wrong way.

Dalai Lama, 1992, courtesy O Globo

This column received a number of letters to the Editor.

27.5.92

Regarding Column Eight by Mike Crowl (Wednesday, May 20), Mike Crowl, it seems, didn’t clearly understand the message the Dalai Lama was offering. The Dalai Lama says people are gentle by nature. He means exactly this, and is not at odds with the facts surround us. we are all born without any predisposition to violence, cruelty, etc, we learn all of these things from our environment. Mr Crowl writes that in his inner heart he knows he is not gentle. I suggest that he has to look deeper, exactly the Dalai Lam’s message. By finding compassion for others within ourselves we are attaining the highest spiritual goals, and it is there within reach of us. The teachings of the Dalai Lama parallel that of Jesus Christ. They are both on the same train, heading for the same destination.

J. Watson.

We thought Mike Crowl’s dismissal of the Dalai Lama’s teachings as misguided and inadequate (Midweek, May 20) was disappointing and ungenerous. The Dalai Lama’s message of compassion, toleration and forgiveness is not very different from the biblical injunction to ‘love thy enemies.’ What is particularly significant is that he and his followers, who of all the people in the world have cause to hate, put their own beliefs into practice and steadfastly refuse to translate their own brutally enforced exile from their own country into hatred and violence. They work patiently for the day when their land will be restored to them. If followed more widely, the Dalai Lama’s example could transform our world. It deserves both our praise and our emulation.

Tim Jones and Barbara Frame – Peace Action Dunedin.

31.5.92

We would like to congratulate Mike Crowl on the very good column in each Star Midweek. We read with interest his comments and it is very pleasing to have someone standing for Christian values on a regular basis.

Lance and Lois Woodfield.

Letters must have continued into the next two issues on the 3^rd and 10^th June, but I don’t appear to have these.

17.6.92

In a letter in the Weekender (7/6/92) a correspondent under the cover-name ‘Truth’ criticizes the religion of Buddhism with a quote from The Road to Mandalay. It is just a hundred years since Kipling’s poem was published in Barrack-room Ballads. It still makes a stirring song. But the British soldier is interested only in memories of the Burma girl and the flying fishes. For any understanding of Buddhism he gets no marks at all. the last thing that the Buddha would have wanted was to be called ‘the Great Gawd Budd;’ he was a teacher of his way of enlightenment and compassion. Images of the Buddha are reminders of this and to call them ‘idols’ is just to repeat and old soldier’s ignorant dismissal. The Dalai Lama represents the Tibetan form of Buddhism. All are free to agree or disagree with this teaching, as with any religion in our world. But the first requirement surely should be to listen first, in order to get the picture right without misrepresentation or prejudice. Some of the Dalai Lama’s compassion and warm humanity might help us on the way.

Albert C Moore.

I agree with your correspondents (7/6/92) regarding the greatness of the Dalai Lama but I cannot sit by any longer without comment when they (and others) promote the cults of personality and belief in the name of truth. Listen. There is only one way to God and that is to love God. Jesus Christ certainly recommended it. Loving God has nothing to do with childish cults of dependency created by short-sighted people misinterpreting the teachings of enlightened beings such as Jesus Christ, Krishna, Buddha or Mohammed. Such cults are divisive and lead to bigotry, racial and cultural intolerance and unhappiness. Of course loving God includes loving your neighbour.

G.F.G

The Dalai Lama’s visit to Dunedin seems to have unleased a tremendous response via the very worthwhile platform provide by ‘Mailbag.’ From the torrent of Christian drivel (apparently based on the writings found in old books) to the karmic blatherings of some would-be Buddhists, devout atheists such as myself are enjoying a smorgasbord of entertainment. See you in hell!

Lucifer

The only conclusion one can draw from the correspondents’ recent letters is that New Zealand is still a Christian country, because the population is not tolerant to those having a religion other than Christianity. What we can learn from the Dalai Lama is that when the Chinese invaded Tibet, all they did was take that country’s political freedom. Although Tibetans have no freedom of politics, they do have a freedom of religion in that they are not involved with Christianity. The Dalai Lama has made Buddhism easier to follow than Jesus who made it impossible to be a good Christian (Matthew 7, v 13-14). Although New Zealanders are free to choose any political party, they do not take advantage of religious freedom which is enjoyed in many countries.

C.J.

I am saddened by the majority of the correspondence about the Dalai Lama’s message which is treating Buddhism and Christianity as rivals. Surely religions are not sports teams. This area of life is more important than winning an argument by defeating a rival with quotes from ‘authorities,’ or simply saying ours is the best way therefore we can’t learn from others. At the Dalai Lama’s morning talk I noted he did not indulge in negative comparisons. Instead he described the essential features of the major religions, with reference to what they had in common and where they differed, and then he went on to describe the Buddhist path without putting down other religions. The view of Mike Crowl, and his supporters, is based on the doctrine of original sin. His is an interpretation of the Bible which I see as a major reason for many people rejecting this type of Christianity as it engenders much guilt and anxiety in people brought up with this view of humanity. Just [as] the fatalistic interpretation of the karma conception in Buddhism can be seen as a misunderstanding, the doctrine of original sin is also a source of misunderstanding in Christianity. No religion is free of abuses or misunderstandings perpetuated by people who claim to be its adherents. A ‘we are right, they are wrong’ attitude increases the likelihood of this. There is a lot of wisdom in the Bible, especially in the sayings of Jesus Christ. Is he not the one who preached love and forgiveness, and said, ‘Judge not lest you be judged?’ See Matthew 7:1-5. I look forward to the day when all people can respect our common spirituality, as it is expressed in most religions, and learn by sharing the wisdom and insights from these sources.

Eli Kerin

For those of us who were fortunate enough to hear and see him, the visit of the Dalai Lama was a real event. His humility, humanity and courageous witness to non-violence lifted the spirit. His infectious humour was a delight. It is sad therefore, that there have been some rather extraordinary negative reactions to his coming. One hopes that they do not dismay those who organised his visit with such exemplary courtesy, and that they are not taken to be in any way representative of the wider Christian community. Let us hope rather that this visit will provide a catalyst for an informed and self-critical dialogue between Christian and Buddhists. One suspects that this is what the majority of the Dunedin community would like to see, too.

Rev Peter Matheson.

In the latest Listener, A K Grant mentions that the Dalai Lama wrote a poem praising ‘gentle’ Chairman Mao, one of the most evil, bloodthirsty, tyrants of all time. Since the Dalai Lama was part of Tibet’s dictatorship of Buddhist monks, it is yet more proof that he is a cunning politician now doing a hypocritical ‘human rights’ U-turn to curry favour with other politicians. Jesus Christ warned: ‘By their fruits you shall know them.’ The fruits of Buddhism are poverty, disease, child brothels, absence of women’s rights etc – quite unlike NZ. A letter, June 10, implies that a person born blind must be extremely evil, and richly deserving to suffer. Jesus Christ was asked if a man born blind had sinned, or his parents had sinned to cause the blindness. He emphatically said no (John 9). Since karma victimises the less well off, they can expect no help. The rich and healthy were so good in a past life, they must be super spiritual. Rather like the Dalai Lama’s beloved Mao, no doubt. The writer seems to be anti-abortion although many karmic believers may disagree on that. It seems that one can decide what is sin and what is not so how can anyone know if they are near to being perfect after all these fictional lives they cannot remember? Most people should be perfect by no – crime, wars, greed etc prove the opposite. Why be punished for a past life which is unknown? Where do all the extra souls come from as world population explodes. They obviously are not evolving to perfection. Are they rats, snakes and sacred cows from past lives? They certainly get treated better than people in the karma-believing countries. The utter absurdity and destructiveness of karmic beliefs is still self-evident and always will be.

Realist.

 

Second adolescence

 First published in Column 8 on the 29^th April 1992

Everyone has heard of second childhood. However, this may be preceded by an earlier stage in people’s lives – particularly men’s – which we could class as Second Adolescence.

It’s a time when you play roughhouse with the kids and within minutes are puffing and panting. You’re so exhausted your arm muscles have turned to jelly, and you’re not even strong enough to lift the remote control to turn of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

It’s a time when your weight hasn’t merely gained ground on you, it’s shifted location, and now waddles along in front, giving the impression that in a few months you’ll go into labour.

I’ll never forget the day I first realised my body line had altered. I was in the Moray Place Post Office. In those days its design was Fancy Metallic, with reflections flung from all angles.

While waiting in the queue, I glanced up and saw some character dressed in clothes that looked remarkably like mine. Even the face was familiar. The only difference was that this person had a much more rounded front that mine.

I was not impressed on second glance to realise it was me, and wondered where I could go to get a quick corset job.

These days I avoid checking my reflection in shop windows, or standing sideways in front of the bathroom mirror. Anyway, inside I still see myself as the straight-up-and-down sort of person I used to be.

Second adolescence is a time when you can be charming with the experience of 40 years one minute, and a grizzling, whining, pitiful, blubbering booby the next. As your tears drop on to the dishes in the sink, your wife will ask, which do you prefer, death or divorce?

During second adolescence your friends always seem to have appointments on the other side of town.

Your body and brain are curiously uncoordinated: forgetting the names of people you’ve known for years, missing your mouth when eating, and generally trying to convince yourself that you haven’t really been in residence for nearly half a century.

I never had the pangs of first adolescence. In my teens I led a charmed existence, and all the ‘normal’ rigours of those years passed me by. I’m making up for it now, it seems.

Second adolescence is the time when you ‘Want to Break Free,’ and rebel against all the feelings of being utterly hemmed-in, only to find the mortgage must be paid today, the rates bill has just arrived in the post, the car is making a rumpity noise, three of the children have been told they’re going to camp in a fortnight and the fees have got to be at school today!

You open the chequebook and your conscience says you’ll have to stay in employment or there won’t be anything to cover the overdraft. All your Break Free desires go toddling away leaving you to struggle off to work on your own.

This is the time of life when you no longer possess a single item of clothing that you can call your own (except maybe your underpants). Your kids are all into larger sizes, and anything of yours that isn’t ‘gross’ will do. (If they think it’s gross, anyway, how can you bear to wear it in front of them?

Your only tracksuit trousers wind up in your son’s wardrobe by mistake, and he commandeers them because they ‘only need to be slightly rolled up at the bottom to fit.’

It’s a time when you think that getting up in the morning will probably initiate World War III, so you lie there until everybody’s ready to leave. World War III, however, is only waiting for you to arise.

It’s a time when you feel crumply, stressed out, unwanted, useless, permanently tired, merely an appendage to the family unit. And just when you decided that enough is enough and any bit of rock will do to crawl under, one of the kids comes along and spontaneously says, ‘Dad, you’re magnificent.’

They tell me that Adolescence Part Two doesn’t last forever. Who knows, I might even be done with it by next week.

Courtesy iStock

Timeless

First published in Column 8 on the 8^th April, 1992

It’s a truism that as we get older the years seem to go by faster. Most of us have become used to it. But it’s pretty disturbing when kids who haven’t even reached their teens say that the years are going too fast.

When I was a kid, and no doubt when other people of my generation were kids, there seemed to be all the time in the world.

Time to spend all day doing things. Holidays lasted forever, and parents weren’t desperate for us to get back to school. A week was an eternity, and a year was such that you could barely contemplate it.

These days it’s not only the adults who suffer greatly from lack of time. Why?

The reason I ask, in my rather rhetorical way, is that I’ve felt as though I’ve been chasing my shadow all year. (And I don’t just mean Column 8 deadlines.)

Not only did the holidays shoot past before I could regain my breath, but I was plunged into the New Year in the same fashion as a stone tossed into a pool by a thoughtless boy, and ever since I’ve been trying to stop sinking.

Last year I had free evenings. Now they’re so cluttered I can hardly find to spare. And I don’t mean cluttered with family matters – I’m talking about outside things impinging on them; the evening meal is barely finished before it’s off to this, or quick, someone’s coming round.

Last year weekends seemed long enough to get at least one or two things done. Now they’re a frenzy of activity, driving someone in the family from A to B and someone else from C to D, and not forgetting to pick someone else from E on the way. That’s if all the best laid-out plans don’t slide into some totally chaotic schedule.

Which is why I ask where the time has gone, or rather, who’s snaffled it?

The telephone is one culprit. This creature is superlative for getting messages across quickly, but it’s major power lies in its facility for making last minute arrangements. ‘Yes, we’ll pick up so and so on the way – no, we’ve got plenty of time…’

The car is another time-consuming beast. There’s a paradox. The worst thing about a car, especially in Dunedin, is that you leave leaving till the last minute. Consequently, you try and fit something else into the time saved which means you’re worn out before you go where you’re going.

Television is bugbear number three. I find it a very unrelenting tyrant. It steals so much time you’d use better for something else; then those other things have to be squashed around it. Whole evenings (and cricket-watching days) can be sacrificed to the monster, while the more useful things you’d planned are pushed onto tomorrow, making tomorrow a nightmare.

Most of our labour-saving devices reduce the time taken to do the job, but insist on a payment – the eating up of real relaxation and leisure. Constant Sunday trading is another devourer, making real rest an almost extinct species.

This year I haven’t had time to make a New Year resolution, but now I’m determining to set aside at least half an hour a day just to sit around and do nothing.

Even if I have to get up at five in the morning to do it.

My 1992 self would perhaps be appalled at the lifestyle we now live, where leisure is practically a forgotten thing. You have to make time for it – if you can.

Then there’s the cellphone, streaming TV – and of course, the computer.

Photo courtesy of the Noun Project: aartiraghu

Blood Secret in Spanish...

My wife and I have been learning Spanish through Duolingo for around 600 days and have made some progress, but for the last few days I’ve been trying a different approach to learning the language. 

I haven’t given up on Duolingo – at present I’m using it primarily for the chess component, which is helpful even though I’m very slow to pick up on seeing what best to move. I think in a real game you’d have a lot more idea which pieces were where and how you’d got to the position rather than starting from the position and having to work it all out – which I don’t tend to do anyway. I use their tool of knowing which is the best piece to move, but that still catches me out at times. But I do enjoy the full games, which I often win. I think the bot is a bit odd, perhaps, in some of his moves...

Anyway, on the Spanish side of things I’d got to the point of feeling as though I was just going through the motions because there’s so little variation in terms of the style of lessons: either it’s a combo of reading a sentence, or translating a sentence (usually with the English words given randomly below), or writing a Spanish sentence only from hearing it (but again the Spanish words are randomly laid out to choose from, along with some ones that don’t belong). 

There are occasional vocab exercises, which are usually very easy, and tests where you have slightly less help overall. There are also stories to simultaneously listen to and read, but these don’t require a lot of input on the student’s part. And sometimes there are exercises entirely in spoken Spanish where you have only a modicum of an idea what’s going on. Most of the words go over your head.

However, I was having a snooze the other day and woke up with the idea of using AI (Grok on X) again. I'd used it before when I was trying to write in Spanish around a subject, and it took a huge amount of effort in spite of Grok’s endless encouragement and help. 

This time I had the idea of using one of the books I’d written – in this case The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret - and giving him a few paragraphs at a time to translate into Spanish, and then I’d work on the Spanish from there. I hoped that by gradually moving through the book the more consistent context would help me to grow more familiar with a consistent vocab (for the most part), and the way the Spanish words don’t follow the English format, and getting more familiar with phrases that can’t be straightforwardly translated into English – idioms, in other words, of which English has plenty too. And anything else that was useful.

Of course, Mr Grok (or maybe it’s Miss Grok), is infinitely helpful, going out of his/her way to offer suggestions, being willing to improve the translation where I didn’t feel it was quite cutting the mustard – no da la talla, in other words.

For the first time in a while I feel more enthused about keeping on with learning Spanish. Which is good. It’s not a criticism of Duolingo, which at least in the early stages is very good for getting the language under your belt. But after a while you find it lacks variety, it lacks a personal touch, it’s not good at explaining difficulties, and it doesn’t really teach you to speak the language for yourself.

Here are the opening paragraphs in Spanish: 

William Dylan Mumberson —normalmente conocido como Billy— calculó que había tenido  cuarenta y cinco cortes de pelo en su relativamente corta vida. Todos habían sido tranquilos y sin incidentes. Sin embargo, aquel jueves por la tarde en particular, su corte número cuarenta y seis resultó fuera de lo común.

No era porque el señor Frizzer, el dueño de la barbería, estuviera de vacaciones «tomando el sol ». El cartel en la puerta decía que regresaría en un par de semanas.

Tampoco era porque el sustituto no se hubiera presentado —como habían hecho otros barberos de reemplazo— ni porque no hubiera entablado  ninguna conversación. El hombre era alto y enjuto, y la bata de barbero que llevaba le colgaba floja de su delgada figura. Parecía haber aprendido el oficio en una escuela especializada en cortes de pelo extravagantes. Billy no dejaba de mirarse en el espejo  y se preguntaba qué diría su padre cuando volviera del trabajo. «¿Te has peleado con el cortacésped, Billy?», probablemente preguntaría.

La falta de conversación y el curioso corte de pelo no fueron las cosas que Billy recordaría más de su visita a la barbería aquel día. Lo que hizo memorable la ocasión fue el pequeño corte que recibió en la oreja cuando el barbero lo pinchó con las tijeras, justo al recortar los últimos pelos.

Allegiance

 First published in Column 8 on the 1^st April, 1992

 When you see those crowded terraces of monitors behind the newsreaders on television, you realise there’s no way all the news that’s available can actually get on screen.

The same thing happens with the newspaper services. Each day dozens of items fail to find their way onto the printed page because of lack of space.

I am reasonably informed that the following are some of the items that didn’t make it last week. I don’t claim to have verified their accuracy, so you’ll note that I often use the word ‘allegedly.’ I’ve been fascinated with the word ever since I read that a woman allegedly bit off her husband’s nose.

One report told us the real reason why banks have to collect tax on your interest. Rather than going to pay off our national debt, it is (allegedly) paying off the huge sum of money the BNZ (Bank of New Zealand) was found to be short when the present Government came to power.

The second item of interest is a little more trivial. We now discover that all the televisions manufactured since 1990 have a two-way transmitting ability. This means that if ‘they’ want to watch you watching them, they can.

Seeing you supping your savouries in front of the telly isn’t very exciting, so the makers of that Candid Camera-type programme (allegedly) came up with a profitable use of the system.

Watch out as you doze in front of Holmes: a maniac actor my break into your living room and shout ‘Boo!,’ upsetting your lukewarm cuppa into your lap, causing the cat to tear its way up the curtains, and your wife/husband/spouse/partner to crash the new crystal bowl into a pot-filled sink. The ensuing chaos is intended to provide El Cheapo television.

On another front, in an attempt to give new meaning the concept of job sharing, Fran Wilde, member of Parliament, has allegedly claimed that when – not if – she also becomes Mayor of Wellington, she will insist on wearing her mayoral chains in the House. Her aim is to clank them like the ghost of Jacob Marley at any debate with which she does not agree. There could be a lot of noise.

(I’ve always been impressed by another of Fran’s unreported remarks: Democracy is a matter in which government decides what is best for the people, however much petitioning the people may do.)

Transcendental Meditation devotees didn’t make the news this week, although allegedly they should have. While practicing their ‘flying’ exercises, a group of meditatees at the TM headquarters suddenly bounced up and struck their heads on the ceiling. All were treated for concussion.

However, one meditatee said, ‘I think the concussion gave me much inner peace.’

And talking of words like meditation, when the Association of Presbyterian Women’s conference was held in Dunedin last weekend, a break-away group allegedly questioned why it’s good enough for the Anglicans to have a female bishop, when they haven’t got a female moderator. To show superiority over the incumbent patriarchal model, they suggested the one elected should be called a Moderation.

And one more item from Dunedin. The new tiles in the Civic Centre are due to become a source of much controversy amongst the councillors. Subject to intense scrutiny from irritable ratepayers, who felt there was nothing wrong with the old set, they (the tiles, that is), have begun a melt-down process. Consequently, they may well have to be replaced with the lino taken out of the old mayoral loo.

(Allegedly this is the first of April.)

Fran Wilde

‘All the news that’s available’ was the catchphrase on one TV station for a period of time.

As of this date (30.1.26) the Presbyterian Moderator for the past year has been the Rev Rose Luxford. In fact, the first female Moderator, Mrs Joan Anderson, had appeared back in 1979, and she was an elder, but not a minister though female ministers had first arrived in 1964. Rev Luxford was the fifth female Moderator.

Rubbish

 First published in Column 8, 25^th March, 1992

With all the discussion about the placement of a new tip, I can no longer avoid putting my oar in.

An occasional trip to the tip is good for the soul. The artist in me even finds a certain aesthetic pleasure in it.

Doesn’t the sight of countless seagulls swooping and swerving make your soul sing? I could sit and watch them for hours if it wasn’t for the smell. (You will have noticed, of course, that the latest generation of seagulls have evolved a small peg-shaped flap over their nostrils which enables them to go about their work at the tip without inhaling the odours.)

Don’t the car bodies heaped four and five-storeys high give you a feeling that man is still superior to the machine?

And best of all, isn’t there a marvellous sensation of off-loading when you toss heaps of rubbish into the pit and see it chewed and mangled by raging bulldozers? All your cares and woes and gripes discarded and forgotten. Wow!

I’m just fresh home from a trip out to Green Island and my only unpleasant memory of the journey was the feeling that my car’s suspension was suffering permanent seizure because of the pot-holey road. These holes brought back memories of a trip to Milford Sound, where avoiding the craters in the road was about as easy as missing rain drops in a storm.

As a result of casting all my cares upon the void, I now have a clean and tidy shed, having managed to overcome sentiment sufficiently to throw out all manner of things that survived last year’s clean-up. (But not yet the picture with the broken glass – from my childhood – of the QE II’s predecessor.)

Humans have an amazing desire to hang onto things that have outlived their usefulness, as though one day we’ll find a purpose for all manner of broken bits and pieces. Yes, I know there are times when we wish we’d kept that spare wheel to replace the one that’s just fallen off the kid’s trike, or even grandfather’s rusty hoe-head with the withered handle.

Attics and basements full of junk have a certain romance about them: they’re always the places where you’ll find the treasured antique that everyone else in the family has forgotten, or the secret diary, or the key to a strongbox containing untold wealth.

The trouble is these sort of antiques and diaries and keys always turn up in other people’s attics and basements. In our case the rubbish around our house threatens to overwhelm us, and devour all spare space.

Modern persons (that doesn’t have half the ring of ‘modern man’) have to decide what items are junk so that they can jettison them without fear.

Built-in obsolescence means things are constantly having to be replaced (toasters, for instance) and there’s an element in us (as well as the toasters) that hates throwing away something which only a few years ago we paid good money for.

Our collection of fading television tubes, spare vacuum cleaner hoses, chipped chisels, and worst of all, quarter-full paint can, will all survive barely a week after take our own last trip on this earth. There’s a certain irony that most of us wind up buried under the same kind of earth as our worn-out material possessions.

At least we rid ourselves of the material that’s clung to us during the course of our journey once and for all.

Without rubbish, smelly or aesthetic, man is born, and without it he will die.

I told you tips were good for the soul.

Landfill, Riverhead,West Auckland.New Zealand
Notice how tidy it is compared to tips of the past. 
Courtesy GPS 56Wikimedia Commons

I’m a bit amazed that decisions over the placement of a new tip were taking place when this was written, nearly 35 years ago, and the decision is still in the process.

I’m interested to read that also at this time, care bodies were being dumped at the tip. That hasn’t been the case for two or three decades.

In spite of my making it sound as though we were hoarders, in fact, we were a relatively tidy family. Far more junk went out that was kept. Thankfully.

Tips are no longer called tips in New Zealand: they’re now ‘land fill.’  

Unsafe sex

First published in Column 8 on the 18^th March, 1992

Though it’s more than a fortnight since I first saw it, a news photo has continued to haunt me. In the background a group of students wait to enrol; closer to the camera a girl is carrying a basket of condoms, to promote ‘safe’ sex.

Let’s get  real. There’s no such thing as safe sex. Sex is dangerous, and you’d better believe it. And no amount of condominiuming between couples will help. While the attitude is ‘I’m all right as long as I wear a condom’ we’re missing a dangerous truth in sexual behaviour.

We have this notion that somehow the world has now grown up because we talk loudly about sex in every place and at every moment. Many would have us believe that in the past no one ever mentioned the subject, and that consequently everyone was quite ignorant. Piffle. Humanity has managed sex just as well in the non-promiscuous  times as in the promiscuous. The big difference in the former was that marriages and families were more stable, and societies weren’t plagued by nonsense about sex at every turn.

I said sex was dangerous. You think I mean pregnancies. Sure, they’re part of the matter, but to look at the world’s attitude to pregnancies would take another column. I’m talking about other dangers, such as being under the delusion that a quick one-night stand is okay. You might get by without contracting Aids, as long as you wear your famous condom. But no condom will protect you from the consequences that the purveyors of ‘safe’ sex don’t talk about.

The problem isn’t really the wearing of the condom or the contracting of Aids. The problem is treating another human being – male or female, it makes no difference – as though they were there merely for the first person who came along to have their way with them. In the end everybody involved is prostituted. Safe sex is prostitution under another name, only the price isn’t usually in dollars.

We all look down on the world’s supposedly oldest profession, but hopping into bed with all and sundry isn’t the slightest bit different. We’ve believed the lie that adultery and affairs and one-night stands and sleeping around are all somehow better than rape and abuse and pornography and other evil sexual practices. In fact, any form of sex that uses others is evil. And any form of sex that takes place outside of a committee permanent relationship is already debased.

We’ve mocked the idea of commitment for so long now, few of us think it has any worth. No wonder people today – and it isn’t just the kids – find it isn’t worth the struggle to hold onto something valuable when the going gets rough. There’s no encouragement to do so. In fact, we’re lambasted from every corner with encouragements to give up what we’ve got and go find something else.

The trouble is the grass is green on the other side of the fence for only a little while. And it has to be mown just as often.

I’m  not even a partially raving royalist, but it sickens me the way much of the media seems hell-bent on destroying the marriage of Prince Charles and Diana. The assumption is that no one, from pauper to royal, has a hope of sticking together for long, so let’s take the lot down into the gutter as quickly as possible.

Forget all the crowing about ‘safe’ sex at every turn. I want to start crowing about Unsafe Sex; sex that debases; sex that hurts and causes emotional pain (not just the bobby-sox pain that occurs in soap operas but real cutting twisting pain); sex that leaves lives in a shambles from which the only escape may be death itself.

Sex is dangerous.

 

The following two letters to the editor were printed in response to this column; I don’t have a date for one of them, and I don’t know if there were more. These are the only two I managed to keep a copy of.

 Sir – I would like to record my support for the contribution of Mike Crowl in the March 18 edition of the Star Midweek. It takes courage to go against popular conceptions. His remarks are something that should have been said long ago, most certainly by those who have a much wider range of influence. My congratulations to Mike, keep up the good work. I hope the message will reach much further than the area covered by the Star Midweek.

S B Harlow.

 

26.4.1992

Sir – I wish to thank Mike Crowl for Column Eight ‘Safe Sex’ (Midweek 18/3/92). Few, in spans of years have tackled this subject of sex with such clarity, so soundly in such truth. Many readers, especially those among the young, may never before have had the opportunity to regard the matter in such a manner. Mike Crolw has given in a short space, plenty to think about. This article should be published far and wide.

Mary Wickliffe

 

Slaters (also known as woodlice)

First published in Column 8 on the 11^th March 1992

To avoid the atrophy of the brain as I grow older, I continue to ask questions. Thus I often puzzle as to why slaters climb walls, especially in the morning.

Some gardeners may not think the peculiarities of slaters are worth considering. However, to me the slater is a much-maligned creature, worthy of more attention than it usually receives.

I’ve always had a lot of time for the slater, although I know many gardeners regard them as a pest. I think this view is wrong. (Is it true that the Chinese intended eradicating slaters next?) Slaters are humble creatures, never making a show of themselves.

You will not find them, like spiders, insisting on putting their webs across doorways to catch your hair first thing in the morning. You won’t find them going crazy in the rain like worms and spreadeagling across pathways. Slaters prefer anonymity and humbly hide themselves under the nearest something, be it wood, rock, or even weed.

Perhaps their treatment as pests gives a partial answer to my question: Maybe slaters are being driven up the wall? Condemned to live in rotting wood, or compost, they may have little self-esteem.

How would you feel in their shoes, reader, supposing they wore any? Since they don’t, they must courageously clamber barefoot through your compost. A slater never knows when some burly black beetle will tread on his toes, or when he’ll slip in the slime left by a slug, or find the earth move under his feet as a worm power-drives his way past.

And think of the things slater’s feet get into – rotting apples, mouldy carrots, the unspeakable remains of things that have already passed onto a better compost pile.

My dictionary barely defines them under ‘slater’ – that word belongs officially to a person who puts slates on roofs. Slaters appear as an afterthought – ‘another name for the woodlouse.’

No wonder they’ve changed their name by deed poll. When you check out the woodlouse, the description is of any of the various small terrestrial isopod crustaceans having a flattened segmented body and occurring in damp habitats. (I thought dictionaries were supposed to explain words.) A crustacean is of the mainly aquatic class Crustacea, which includes the tortoise, lobster and water flea.

In spite of being related to magnificent creations like the tortoise and lobster the slaters’ family escutcheon doesn’t do them any good.

So why should slaters be the namesake of a man who puts slates on a roof? Is it their colour, or the design of their shells?

Perhaps some primitive and imaginative entrepreneur once considered slaters might have an ant-like potential for working together: he envisaged thousands of trained slaters lifting slates straight up the walls of the house. Perhaps slaters now climb walls because of some deep instinctive memory of what might have been. On the other hand, maybe they’re merely checking to see if the slates have been put on right.

I’m glad slaters are small. Knowing that they’re related to lobsters might inspire people with peculiar palates – the sort who delight in dropping lobsters into boiling hot water and seeing them sizzle - to attempt to fatten them up. If people can eat frogs’ legs, a hardly sizeable delicacy, why should they stop at slaters?

Meanwhile, I ponder on slaters’ penchant for heights, and marvel that any creature could drop the equivalent of a 50-storey fall (as the slaters sometimes do when I’m trying to redirect them) and survive.

 

A slater (Armadillidium vulgare)
courtesy Franco Folini, Wikimedia Commons 

Armadillidium vulgare. Hmm, the first part of their scientific name is impressive, although speaking it out loud, with its 'dillidium' in the middle is a bit like a children's nursery word. But 'vulgare' - how rude. There's nothing vulgar about the slater/woodlouse. Plainly those who named him had no real sense of his excellent purpose in the world. 

Progress

First published in Column 8 on the 4^th March, 1992

Put progress in the driving seat and she takes some curious turns. This week we bought a four-slice toaster to replace the old two-slice job. The latter had indicated it was on its last legs by burning the bread alive after refusing to pop it up.

However, once we’d unpacked the new four-slicer, and tried to toast in it, we found that the bread sat up above the top of the toaster by a good inch.

Now the bread we use isn’t abnormally-sized. When you purchased a toaster in the past you could assume you’d fit the bread into the machine and get the whole slice cooked. You don’t expect to carry a slice of bread around in your pocket to measure the depth of toasters.

Wouldn’t you think that a manufacturer would build this machine to take ordinary sliced bread? Maybe it’s a weight-watching plot to get us all to eat less bread. But there’s a problem with that: what do we do with the inch we have to cut off the top (or the bottom, depending on which way you choose to insert your bread)?

Toasters aren’t the only item to have missed the march of progress. I remember Katherine Whitehorn, the English columnist, saying that taps were no longer made merely to turn on and off. Instead of being consumer-friendly – as things usually were, long before computers arrived on the scene -they’d become designer-focused.

You know the sort I mean – you go to turn the top piece, and it swivels and swivels. Eventually you realise that the swivel motion is merely a pretty design – the tap only works when you press it down firmly. When pressed, these taps then emit a gush of water which you may or may not have time to get your hands under. And some stay stuck on: you have no way of knowing whether it will eventually turn off again by itself or whether you’re wasting gallons of hot water – and being unecological into the bargain.

Some public basins have foot controls. They’re very water-economical, since most of us take so long to discover how the tap works that we give up in disgust and leave our hands unhygienised.

I didn’t intend to talk about design progress, but about progress of a different sort. What caught my eye during the week was a snippet about dwarf-tossing, that mediaeval-sounding fad that recently took some European countries by storm.

Seemingly, just as we thought we were on the right bandwagon by expressing disgust that anyone should toss ‘people with a physical difference’ through the air, because it was an ‘intolerable attack on human dignity’ and an ‘exploitation of the handicapped,’ we find that at least one dwarf has campaigned to have the whole thing continued.

This man’s livelihood was being threatened by those who viewed the ‘sport’ with distaste and had banned it. His company, Fun Productions, was in danger of going bust.

Now wouldn’t you have thought that he’d been the person to ask in the first place as to how he felt about being used as a mini-caber? I mean, does a dwarf normally walk into a bar and find himself (in the process of being hoisted on to his bar stool) catapulted through the air by some burly fool? Or does he get the idea creatively, and decide, like any other entrepreneur, that this isn’t a bad way to make a living?

After all, there are rougher sports, such as rugby league. I think if I was a smaller person, and inclined for a bit of a thrill, I’d go for dwarf-tossing any time. (With knee, elbow and bum protectors of course.)

Rugby league seems to do nothing but bring out the violent in anyone with a bit of muscle. And there ain’t no inflated mattress to land on when someone forces you to the ground by pulling your shirt, your hair, your eyes, or any other loosehanging part of your anatomy.  

What a fine line we tread between deciding what’s best for other people and trampling on their rights.

 

Four-slice toaster, though not the one we own. 
Photo courtesy of SimonTrew, Wikimedia Commons

(2026) We bought a new four-slice toaster recently after our previous one gave up the ghost, and have had no end of trouble with it. Of course it comes with fancy gizmos, but doesn’t actually do the job it’s intended for. The side I normally use has been turned up to full throttle since not long after we got the thing, yet apparently it chooses to produce the ‘toasted’ bread at whatever heat it desires. So a piece put in straight after the toaster is started up will come out light, as though it’s barely seen the heat. The next piece is likely to make up for the lightness of the other and be cooked to death, or, if the toaster’s in a different mood, it will somehow bake the bread so that it’s nicely-coloured but hard to the point where it cracks and crumbles when you try to butter it. My wife normally uses the other half of the toaster, and her toast is mostly what you’d expect: toasted bread. A sexist toaster, apparently.

Since this column was written many public taps (as in restrooms) have no visible means of turning them on or off: you wave your hands around like an idiot, trying to get the thing to start, and then out of the blue it starts when you least expect it, and you still don’t know what caused it to do so. Nor how to turn it off again.

Meanings

First published in Column 8 on the 26th February, 1992

Words have a funny way of shifting meaning when used by differing groups. In a news report this week the liquor industry claimed it is a reputable body. ‘We are the peak organisation working with alcohol and drug addiction and treatment.’ Check out that word, ‘reputable.’

In the same report, the Television Commercials ApprovalBureau rebukes the claim that a certain television ad depicts that association of drinking with water sports, driving and sexual or social success. Check out that word, ‘association.’

In the ad a group of youths are headed for the surf, but it takes longer than expected because they have to push their non-starting car. And when they get there, the surf is sulky and low. Meanwhile, an energetic young lady sits on the top of the car getting a sun-tan – I presume. It’s an ad for beer.

Look again at the TCAB’s rebuttal. Okay, there are no water sports, because the surf ain’t up. Even the best surfies would find this water flat. Okay, there’s no driving, because they have to push their car. Okay, there’s no sexual success. The young lady in question (who legally should have been over 25 when the ad was made but was in fact 23) isn’t seen drinking, and remains aloof on the roof, one might say.

However, we don’t have to see people doing something to have a strong suspicion about what they might do. Isn’t that what the advertising campaign by the police is  based on? The possibility that the person wandering around your neighbour’s property might not be looking at the flowers? (Unless, of course, the flowers are poppies.)

It’s only an assumption, but presumably these people in the ad would have gone surfing if the surf had been up. I suppose in these days of meditation, they might have sat and gazed adoringly at the waters. Presumably if the car hadn’t refused to start, they would have driven it. Or did they feel the exercise gained was a source of exercise to them, and that their sweaty bodies would ultimately delight in a dip in the briny?

I don’t think the young lady would have stayed on the top of the car for long either. In that sun, melanoma would be round the corner, if she hadn’t turned into a fried egg first. As for the sexual angle, we can infer little – that’s a relief – except to say that the young lady in question is certainly not a shy, retiring wallflower!

The makers of the ad said they had complied within the letter of the law. Sure, but many things got away with in the name of the law’s letter still have the spirit of lawlessness about them.

In a society that increasingly condemns drunken driving, why are we advertising booze on television at all, where it has the potential to be advertised most potently?

(And, to go off at a slight tangent, why, if we hate drunken driving so much, do pubs by law have to have such large areas of parking space? Do you seriously mean to tell me that each person leaves the pub with a sober chauffeur?)

I don’t think the Government really says what it means when it comes to liquor. They’re like a mother telling a child it can’t have any more sweets before it goes to bed, then popping one into the freshly-toothpasted mouth as the lights go out.

The only thing about the new advertising is that it’s blatant, instead of covert, as before. There’s a pitiful modicum of honesty in that.

And when are we going to hear from the feminists on the subject of alcohol. It seems to me that beer is regarded in the advertising world as a man’s drink, to the point of sexism. One of the new spate of ads confirms that alcohol takes pride of place over relationships: one country gent is reeling off to another the worth of his Auckland (wow!) girlfriend. In the end he decides he’d sooner stay down South. Why? Because the beer is better.

This kind of advertising goes a long way to improving relationships between the sexes. I don’t think.

At the end of the column (as opposed to the day), it’s all a matter of the meaning you give to worlds. When the liquor industry says it’s the peak organisation working with alcohol, check out the word, ‘working.’

 ()()(()()()())()()

Regrettably I haven't been able to track this ad down online. 

 

Trillions

First published in Column 8 on the 12^th February, 1992

We used to have a discussion in our house (of the more heated sort) in which my son insisted there was such a figure as a centillion. He was right: the centillion is one of those numbers that needs hundreds of noughts to make its presence felt.

However, who needs centillions, when the mere fact of a trillion is enough to make me want to sit down, my legs all atremble. I read that the United States is 3.8 of these (and probably more) in debt. $3.8 trillion! That makes our balance of payments problems look quite piffling, doesn’t it?

A trillion is a million million in the States – their billion is only one thousand million, so I’m informed. Only. No wonder their debt goes up faster than everybody else’s. (If you’re in the UK and they start talking about debts of £3.8 trillion, run for cover: Over there a trillion is a million million million, or a number trailing 18 zeros.)

All this exposition of erudition (that is, showing off), is merely leading up to sharing some figures I came across recently. If you thought that the arguments last year over ministerial flowers and MPs’ lounge suites were either the height of trivia or pettiness, then take a gecko at some of the nonsense that’s helped put the US federal spending into trillions of debt.

I take these figures from a book recently published in the States called The Coming Economic Earthquake, by Larry Burkett. I can only assume Mr Burkett knows what he’s talking about, being a native of the country.

In the face of national collapse – there’s something we could show the Yanks a thing or two about – the federal government spent $49 million for a rock and roll museum. (That’s getting up towards $NZ150 million.) Plainly King Elvis still has the hearts of some Americans by the purse-strings.

Talking about hearts, they only spent a paltry $84,000 to study why people fall in love. That’s a leap from the sublime to the ridiculous. (Yeah, year, I know: a lover’s leap.) I’d be interested to bone up on some of the findings in this case. Hopefully they weren’t taken from television.

There people only fall in love, it seems, so that circumstances will get in their way and cause them temporary heartbreak until the last few moments of the episode’s half-hour are up. Of course, if it’s a soap, next week they’ll be forced to fall out of love almost as quickly, and probably reveal that they have some dim dark secret that hadn’t previously been known about by either actors or scriptwriters.

Back to US spending. $19 million to study whether belching by cows and other livestock harms the ozone hardly comes as a surprise, but $219,592 to teach college students how to watch television? I thought most American college students would be beyond this teaching.

Actually that’s a little unfair. If people I know are anything to go by, many of them need to be taught how to watch television. First lesson is to know where the off-button is – you’d be surprised how hard that off-button can be to find. They also need lessons in discernment. This would help them appreciate that the sitcom they’re now watching is exactly the same as the four other sitcoms they’ve viewed in the last two hours.

Of course, the Senate spent a good deal of money on itself, $6.5 million between the subway system and the beauty parlour. But my two favourites were the following: $500,000 to study the effects of cigarette smoking not on people, but on dogs, and, wait for it, $46,000 to determine how long it takes to cook breakfast eggs.

Doesn’t that make you feel as though New Zealand is partially sane?

 

‘Take a gecko’ seems to have been an expression I made up, or else it’s a piece of very outdated slang. Google doesn’t recognise it at all. I possibly meant ‘take a geek,’ which actually is a piece of slang meaning ‘have a look at,’ and has nothing to do with dealing in any way with a human nerd.

As for NZ being partially sane, perhaps they in 1992, but I frequently see tweets nowadays on X (was Twitter) telling us how much has been spent by Creative New Zealand on various arts applications. In 2020 the Taxpayers’ Union summarised a number of the applications that were funded – you can read about them here.

Incidentally, the US national debt is currently over $38 trillion.

Larry Burkett’s book has apparently stood the test of time: his predictions didn’t always reach their target as far as the year was concerned, but for the most part they have come about as he said they would.