Posts by dyan campbell
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Coffee snobbery, slightly sillier but four times more tedious than wine snobbery (at least wine gets you drunk) but neither are anywhere near as bad as olive oil snobbery.Its oil. From olives. I get it.
Dude, have you no palate??!??
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I mean Tupaia, lazy typing here.
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dyan correct me, but Tupaia was an actual chief, whereas (O)mai wasn't - it was just that when he was in England that he was treated as such, and did nothing to discourage the idea.
Mai was indeed "a commoner" according to Anne Salmond's book The Trial of the Cannibal Dog .
Leafing through her bookI can't quite find where Cook and his men first meet Tupia - but if I remember correctly he was not a chief either, but was as important as a chief - in some ways more important. He was regarded in his own country as a very learned man in spiritual beliefs as well as being an authority on all things practical, from sailing and navigation to natural history and botany. He was hugely respected but I don't think he was one of the chiefs.
Cook's men disliked him very much as they felt he was insufferably proud and there was much ill will generated by his close friendships with Parkinson, Banks, Cook and other officers, as the english sailors were irked by their commanders behaving in such a deferential and respectful way to a Tahitian.
Anne Salmond's book is by far the most fascinating (and meticulously researched) of all the many books on this subject I've read.
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I was interested in Omai, who Cook took back to England and was celebrated in aristo circles, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds and written about (poems to porn) extensively. Is Omai the same person as Tupia?
Mai - dubbed Omai ("OhMy") coined by the English media of the time) was a young man who sailed to England on The Adventure , was feted by English society as you describe. The name Oh-My was created to market a musical stage show about Mai and Cook, and the name was considered cuter and catchier than just "Mai".
Mai died a couple years after his return to Tahiti, as did the two young Maori boys whom Cook was going to take to England, and then return to NZ, but instead dumped in Tahiti, ostensibly under the protection of Mai, who had fallen out with the chief himself.
Tupia was a bit older, much more learned and, when he sailed on __The Endeavour_ was instrumental in teaching Cook about the Tahitian navigation and geography and he proved to be a particulary valuable addition to the crew when he piloted them through the Society Islands. Tupia was also the artist of several sketches that had been attributed to Joseph Banks, and had acted as interpreter - both linguistic and cultural - for Cook thoughout their voyages. He died of scurvy/typhoid - along with half of Cook's men - when their ship was in Batavia.
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this kind of tribal history is something we need more of, and the more and the sooner, the better. It’s still too easy to consign New Zealand history to a single story of colonial exploitation.
Agreed, we need to do it before it's all been buried deeper. Looking forward to the new Ward film, long been fascinated with Rua Kenana and Tuhoe country. I'm currently a history undergrad and it keeps amazing me how much history we do have - so many stories to tell.
I saw Vincent Ward's new film and was quite overwhelmed by it - it's really sad, really interesting and you are certainly right that as many of these stories must be recorded before the very last of them fade out.
Ward's earlier film River Queen was criticised more here than in other countries and I wondered if it was because it touched on a painful and unresolved part of NZ's history. The criticisms were oddly petty and hugely beside the point of the film. One of the criticisms was, for instance that a character was named "Boy" - which was a perfectly acceptable name of the day - one of Canadian novelist's Robertson Davies's protaganists is named Boy. Another criticisms was that the characters' situations were left largely unresolved. Well, yes, kind of the whole point.
There's a fascinating book The Fox Boy by Peter Walker that tells the true story of a Taranaki boy of five or six that was captured by the English and given to Prime Minister Fox and his wife to adopt. They educated him as an Englishman, but the Englishness didn't really stick, and he became a lawyer who fought against the Crown's interests.
Walker's book was also criticised for "never quite resolving anything" but Walker's book told a true story, and true stories don't tend to have a tidy resolution after a story arc. Walker's book is fascinating, very well written and irrestistable if you have any interest in NZ's history, but hardly anyone read it.
I was astonished Walker's book was damned with faint praise, criticised on points that seemed not valid to criticise, then seemed to sink from national consciousness. Ward's film River Queen seemed to suffer a similar fate, but I was among those who absolutely loved it, thought it had a fascinating story to tell and thought the inchoate, fragmentary, unresolved nature of the film worked well as it mirrors the history in that respect.
Anne Salmond's book The Trial of the Cannibal Dog talks more about the Tahitian navigator Tupia that about Maori of the time, but she does mention some of Cook's encounters with Maori, and she talks about how most histories talk about indigenous people as though they were part of the flora or fauna to be described, without ever attempting to tell their stories. This is very true around the world, and it's interesting where fragments of human history from the indigenous point of view do survive. Ward's personal account of his friendship with Puhi and her son Niki is only a backdrop to the sad, sad story of the Tuhoe and the shameful past of the English wars, as my mother in law insisted on calling them.
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You shall always be read Keith, though we're all sad it's not here.
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Well how about a little philosophy from one of the more interesting (sadly now late) Americans, John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith is an interesting late Canadian.
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I mean, does this speculative detail matter?
apparently not to you mr shattered spine, or was it crushed? :)
yeah, I think its really important considering how emotive this is,
did he throw her down the stairs or not?Your fixation on the difference between "shattered" and "fractured" is pointless and irrelevant - and you are also incorrect to assume "fractured" does not mean "shattered".
If you are casting around for the correct term for "shattered" when referrring to serious bone fractures (as opposed to not so serious, undisplaced bone fractures) then the term would be "comminunated fracture" which is a clinical term.
The victim is certainly very likely to have had comminunated fractures if she was kicked repeatedly by someone. That is to say, she is likely to have had "shattered" bones as a result of a sustained and vigorous kicking by a fit, energetic person, even if he is tiny.
As Raybon Kan observed in his column, can we just start at a charge of GBH and work back from there?
The raising of these points - "shattered" or "exactly how many hours" etc is an example of how, if someone cannot construct a logical argument is out-debated, they will try to split hairs - i.e. debate a point that is irrelevant to the point being argued - and they will use "red herrings" i.e. introduce points that are irrelevant to both the argument at hand and also the topic itself.
Study some logic, Robbery. Learn how to construct an argument and not, as you did on the music thread, simply derail the discussion by introducing irrelevant points that do not pertain to the discussion, then complain that somehow your "argument" is being overlooked. It's annoying, but ultimately irrelevant to the topic being discussed.
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There are sports-related activities which can explore that list of things more than others. Soccer for example, is not a high user of the upperbody, and has very little hand-eye coordination, though I'm sure it's good in other areas. Ice hockey is tremendous for balance (as is figure skating, and roller-blading etc), and hand eye coordination
For me it's a chicken and egg thing - soccer, ice hockey, figure skating - these are all things that should only be taken on once all the primary muscles, reactions, propriceptors, core strength, thigh strength and all groups of abdominal muscles - and all the joints of the body - have been trained to do the biomechanically correct thing. And the easiest way to do that is to take all the sports out of the equation and leave it over to specifically designed, non competitive, joy, humour and information filled play for those first 8 or 9 formative years. You can play at playing the games, but keep it informal, keep it unstructured and pay attention to the technique, not the score.
It is also only in this form of unconstructed play that you will find any leeway to develop any fancy new techniques (you can bet the bicycle kick was developed during a non competitive soccer game) as structured games call for a strictcly administered set of rules where there is no room for playing around and being silly. Or incredible.
There are specific physical skills that have been taken by all other previous generations as a matter of course - that are not being achieve d by the current generation in childhood. These include running, tumbling and - this is hard to believe but true - even sitting upright unsupported. This is becoming difficult for some children of normal ability, because they are so weak.
Even in previous generations lifelong injuries (not to mention massive aversions) were instilled in kids by introducing sports too early. To introduce sports like the ones you described to children with underdeveloped balance, proprioception, core strength, endurance, thigh muscles, hand eye coordination is to doom them to certain injury. So much better to practice hand eye coordination with a bean bag instead of a hockey puck.
And if the biomechanics of running, tumbling, catching, throwing etc are all learned in specific, correct ways, and all the muscle groups are brought up to a tested standard before the activity is taken on, then there is much less chance of injury, burnout or developing a lifelong bad technique at a specific sport. You will find more athletes in your general population this way also.
Another thing I forgot too mention above - the "lifestyle ambassadors" SPARC chooses - a nice idea perhaps, but the wrong ambassadors. They choose sports people - not inspiring at all, sports people are already fit. When I was growing up a had a younger brother with cerebral palsy - he died before he grew up, from weakness, from the bad physical therapy advice that was given in that day and age (the 1960s) - god, they told people to bind their CP children's limbs in fibreglass and velcro splints, to counter the muscle spasms - it couldn't have been worse advice. How painful, how counter productive, how weakening. My Mum's agonised instinct that this was absolutely the wrong thing was correct, but she was too cowed by medical science to ignore their directives. It destroyed her when she found out that they had been just plain wrong, and their advice - however well meaning -
and her following it - had been part of what caused Tom's death.Hinewehi Mohi who founded the music therapy centre here is my hero.
But Tom's suffering at being trapped in a body that simply wouldn't work made me far more conscious of what a precious resouce physical ability is, how not to be squandered, how much it is a gift more than something we should take for granted. When someone dear to me but lazy used to complain he didn't like to walk I suggested to him rather acidly that maybe he'd be lucky and wind up in a wheelchair one day. He never complained (to me anyway) about walking again.
So I suggested to SPARC that maybe a better ambassador than a physicially lucky athlete might perhaps be someone achieving their best with a disabiility - whether CP, amputees, etc. There is much to be learned by the example of those who excell with less than us, rather than those who are professial athletes. Good idea they said but I don't think they have changed their focus from sports people at all.
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I was one of a small group of people (working under the auspices of the Australasian Society for the Study of Obesity) who have held two Sci/Med conferences on obesity, one at the School of Population Health, the other at AUT.
SPARC's approach to changing habits through social marketing and the use of purpose built stand alone websites rather than using existing p2p networks out there is of particular concern to me - in the past 3 years I have exchanged more than 40 pieces of correspondence with SPARC on these issues. "We're interested" they say "we're planning to fly you down here for a planning session" they say, "send us more of your ideas" they say, but so far nothing has happened.
Social marketing is a fine tool, but it is useless if the responsibility for this is put into the hands of advertising agencies; avertising agencies are there to sell products which is an entirely different thing than altering behaviour. One involves changing consumer choices, the other involves altering specific habits and activities. These things are not even related, if you really look at what drives people to make choices.
the question is whether it will lead to a measurable outcome of the sort SPARC is supposed to produce (increased activity, better diet).
Our keynote speaker at the first conference, Prof Louise Baur is Professor of Paediatrics & Child Health at the U of Sydney, as well as co-chair of the International Task Force's Working Group on Childhood Obesity - in other words a leading authority on the subject. One of her most salient points was that it is pointless to lecture anyone under 14 on food choices or nutrition as they do not make any of the food choices.
More effective would be a program to introduce food appreciation in a school setting - as most children need to try a new food between 10 and 20 times before they can make a decision as to whether they like it, and as children are many, many times more likely to try a food with their peers than with their family. These programs are even more effective if the chidren are growing (some of ) the fruit and vegetables they try.
The Otago Children's Nutrition Survey paints a grim picture of paediatric nutrition in this country: deficiencies in iron, vitamin D, calcium are frighteningly common. Telling children what's good for them will do very little, but getting them to develop an actual liking for nutritious food is much more effective.
30 minutes compulsory activity every day at school - hacky sack would do.
Yes, this is true and a great idea. The emphasis needs to be taken off sports (which is not a very good vehicle for either teaching fitness or delivering an actual workout) and put on more physically intense, non competitive activity. Also the focus needs to be taken off weight and put on fitness,
I'm also not knowledgeable enough to know if a whole of Government approach is being taken to child health, looking at housing, food, transport, sport and physical activity, health, and media/television/internet etc. I know the moves of the Government to tackle bad foods in schools etc takes on some of these issues. It is, predictably, savaged by National as an act of the "nanny state".
In the wake of the two conferences described above, I was keen to see some kind of integrated program delivered in schools.
The "walking school buses" that have sprung up around Auckland are brilliant, and it's in this everyday activity that real life long fitness habits are to be found.
Hacky-sack, bean bag catch, dance, tai-chi - any of these would be better than the sports. Sports eliminate the children who need exercise the most, and almost all sports bypass the specific muscle weaknesses that are becoming more and more common.
Activity that can target 1) balance 2) propioception 3) endurance 4) core strength 5) abductor and adductor strength and 6) hand eye coordination would be much more useful, and when it came time to move into sports (about 8 or 9 years old) to have achieved these specific things would produce better athletes who will be less prone to injury.
I have been trying for nearly three years to get SPARC to look at a proposal I have to use existing p2p networks in a classroom setting to encourage physical activity and to integrate that activity into their lessons. For instance a class of 10 year olds in one town could take an page on Facebook or Myspace and each child's resting heart rate, HR after 100 metres spring and time it takes for HR to return to normal could be posted. Averages could be calculated and posted as well, neatly integrating mathematics, physiology and physical fitness.
This data could be compared to another similar class in any part of NZ, and a timetable of when to repeat the exercise and compare data could be set. In this kind of environment (class setting, school time, collective participation, teacher supervision) it would be possible to integrate other health information about tobacco, alcohol, drugs, sexual health as appropriate to the ages of the classes. This would be both cheaper to deliver than constructing a website, and it would ensure participation.
It also seems to me that the incentive programs built on an altruistic theme would be greatly appealing to children. For instance, a class of 12 year olds all run/jog or walk and every km a child does could result in a small donation to the SPCA, UNICEF, OXFAM, Starship - whatever the class decides - this donation could be made by a sponsoring company in exchange for that publicity. People will work harder for others than they will for themselves. This is counter-intuitive perhaps, but it's true, and it's most true of the very young and idealistic. Tell a child to run or they'll get heart disease and they will look at you like you're crazy, tell them if they run they might win an ipod and they'll shrug and tune you out - unless they like running already, but tell them if they run the SPCA can save a puppy or a kitten then even the most sedentary will start moving.
In fact, I'd say school sports are often detrimental because they turn kids off exercise by making them associate it with sports they don't enjoy and aren't necessarily very good at. Team sports are hell if you're not good at them. Which isn't to say kids shouldn't do PE or be encouraged to exercise, but more enforced participation is not going to magically make more people do sports. Probably the opposite.
YES! I completely agree - so many people are put off physical activity for life because of the way sports is presented at the only form of physical activity. There are many other ways to deliver phsical activity without involving competitive sports. More joy, more laughing, less competition. Also we need to be integrating academic lessons with physical activity.