Two interesting lists

I happened upon Kindle's list of Most highlighted passages of all time today. What this refers to is the way in which you can highlight (like the old idea of using a highlighter in a book with real pages) a section of a book you're reading because you think it's important, or it struck you as of interest, or whatever.  These highlighted sections can be tracked later, if you want.

Considering that this list has the most highlighted passages of all time, they're a strange bunch. (All time being somewhat hyperbolic, I think.) Passages from the various books in The Hunger Games prevail, which presumably means that a huge number of people are not only reading these books on Kindle, but are highlighting more than ever.  Initially it's almost hard to find anything else in the list, but wait! Jane Austen is there, third in line with It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. (Let's hope they read further than the first paragraph.)  She manages to sneak in at eighth place as well.   Sherlock Holmes makes an appearance in the top 25 along with a book entitled: Heaven is for real: a little boy's astounding story of his trip to heaven and back.  Hmm.  


Dorian Grey gets in at around number 27, and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People makes more than one appearance in numbers 26-50.  After that it becomes open slather, with a real mix of books turning up.   The interesting thing about this list is that, unlike those lists produced by retailers and other places, where the greatest books of all time will include Harry Potter and suchlike, this list is actually related to what people are reading and highlighting.  The highlighting is the relevant factor.  It will be worth checking out this list again when The Hunger Games has run its course.


The second list is related to Twitter, and appears in the NZ Herald, where a list of NZ's Twitter top 50 appears today.  Taika Waititi, who made the film, Boy, appears first on this list, with 11,520 followers, though he's actually the second most followed tweeter.  Comedian Rhys Darby has over 79,000 followers, Cory Jane (the All Black) has around 53,000, nearly twice as many as TV3's John Campbell, who almost ties with another commentator, John Lai.  Except that Lai is a social media commentator.  


The interesting thing about this second list, for me, is that I don't follow a single person on it, although a few of the names turn up in retweets now and then, notably Hamish Keith.  There are quite a few New Zealanders I do follow, but none of them appear on this list.  Maybe they'll turn up on the Herald's second list, which is due out soon. 

Blame

Yesterday, a person I follow on Twitter drew my attention to an article by Paul Holmes that appeared in the NZ Herald on Saturday.   Holmes is ranting on about Waitangi Day and calling it repugnant and a waste of time - amongst other things.

The tweeter was appalled at Holmes' gall, and had to read the article 'three times' because he was so full of disbelief that anyone could write anything so 'racist.'    Certainly Holmes uses plenty of strong and emotive language, but I suspect he's saying what a lot of people actually think.   And are maybe too scared to say because of an invariable backlash.

I had a bit of a debate about the subject with this tweeter, and didn't really get anywhere - although at least, after an initial possibility that there might be angry words between us, we managed to maintain a reasonably respectful tone.  However, there wasn't going to be any change of mind.  What Holmes was saying was rubbish, according to this person, and basically the Maori are still being treated badly by Pakeha in New Zealand.

It seems to me we've progressed, in our history, from a state of Maori bad/Pakeha good, to Maori good/Pakeha bad.   The initial state wasn't right, but it came in a time of colonialism, and was by no means uncommon.  It took us some time to get past it.   Nevertheless, within that, there were many good things, not least the understanding by some Pakeha that the Maori people had a great deal to offer, and the understanding by some Maori that the Pakeha also had a great deal to offer.

In our present state, the Maori have turned themselves into 'victims.'   Everything that's wrong is the fault of someone else.  (When I say 'the Maori' of course I'm talking about those who want to think this way; there are plenty who don't, many of them now living in Australia!)  The problem is, when you make yourself a victim, or behave as if you are one, someone else has to become the 'oppressor', whether they like it or not.  The victim approach automatically turns the other into the person to blame for all that's wrong in their world.

I'm not saying that everything that Pakeha do is right; by no means.  Much of what those in leadership do affects everybody in the country, not just the Maori.  Much of what leadership do or has done has been opposed by the whole population, to no avail.

But continuing down our present path will not aid the country as a whole.  Somehow we've got to get to a point where we think: Maori good/Pakeha good.  Any other variation on this will just keep on leading us into a blind alley.

Two small, lightweight soccer nations....

I care only marginally more about the soccer World Cup than I do about the rugby World Cup (bring on the Composers' World Cup, I say!), but I have to laugh at this comment from Stuart Dye in the NZ Herald. In his list of eight off-field highlights from the opening week of the World Cup, he includes the following:

The Wall Street Journal's pre-match analysis of the All Whites:

"Does anyone in South Africa really want to go see 22 white, unknown players from a couple of small, lightweight soccer nations on a Tuesday afternoon in Rustenberg - a small town best known for its platinum mine and Sun City casinos? The New Zealand - Slovakia game...is looking like this World Cup's biggest dud."

Slovenia has 4.5 million new fans for its upcoming game against the US.

I haven't been able to trace the origin of this quote, but let's hope the author is eating his hat by now. And just remind me....the USA - a great soccer nation, non?

Security

In response to an article in the NZ Herald with the heading: Would you be happy to have your eye or fingerprint scanned to prove your identity, someone - supposedly from Iraq - wrote:

This is a stupid proposal. What's wrong with the current process? This will only cramp our hospital's with people suffering from missing finger's and empty eye socket's. Let's focus on technology which can identify fraudulent document's, liscence's etc.

Plainly the apostrophe/plurals thing hasn't quite penetrated this person's grammatical radar as yet, but more than that, it's very hard to work out whether this is a tongue-in-cheek response or a genuine one. If the latter, it presents a worldview that's rather different to that of the average New Zealander...

Photo by Thomas Christensen

Viewers galore!

In February this year, the New Zealand Herald published a list of things that are great about the country of New Zealand. The other day I had another look at the list, and added a few comments of my own.

My article appears on Trifter.com, one of the many offshoots of the Triond.com site. For some reason it's taken off; it's had more readers than any other article I've published on that site - at least in terms of how long it's been on there (about three days). I don't know why it's taken off, that's the funny thing, but it's already been dugg on Digg quite a few times, and it's probably visible in other places too - I haven't yet checked.

Anyway, it's a pleasant surprise. After months of slogging along on Triond with very slow viewing stats, it's great to have something go over the top.