Did you know

ENCOURAGED BY an annual  $23 million dollar advertising campaign Kiwis spend $1.5 billion a year on Lotto tickets. Only 25% of the dollars ‘invested’ actually end up supporting good causes , the rest is swallowed up in the advertising and running costs. A ticket’s chance of winning Powerball is estimated to be one in 38 million.  

ONLY THE FRENCH could come up with such a name as the National Interprofessional Union of Transformed Vegetables (Unilet) for a trade group. This is the name  chosen for the horticulturists group who produce vegetables for the French freezing and canning industries.

GOOD JUDGMENT comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment Rita Mae Brown 

AL CAPONE the notorious Chicago gangster who dominated American organized crime for six years including the infamous Valentine Days massacre all the time outsmarting the American legal system. On October 24 th 1931 The law finally made charges stick when he was jailed for eleven years – for Tax evasion.  

WELLINGTON’S ATHLETIC PARK hosted the first All Blacks test match played in New Zealand in 1904. The opponent was the British Isles, forerunner to the Lions. The following year, Dunedin’s Tahuna Park hosted the All Blacks’ second test, against Australia. By 1908, Carisbrook was in play and hosted a return trip by the British Isles, with the Auckland test match on that tour being hosted at Potter’s Paddock (in the area now containing Alexandra Park and Greenlane Hospital). … Continue Reading

Country Dog City dog

Cooking corner

Tuna salad 

Ingredients

¼ packet, wholemeal pasta

1 onion, peeled, finely chopped

1 capsicum, finely chopped

½ cucumber, finely chopped

1 can tomatoes, drained  and chopped

½ cup fresh herbs, finely chopped

1 x 300g can of tuna in spring water, drained and flaked

2 tbsp lemon juice … Continue Reading

Book review – Human kind

Historian Rutger Bregman’s studies have shown that right from the time of the ancient Greeks the great thinkers like Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Luther, Nietzsche, and Freud have doctrined that humans are innately selfish. A negative outlook which permeated Christianity from its early days Augustine writing: ’no one is free from sin’. 

Bregman’s book is about a radical idea – it sets out to prove that most people, deep down, are pretty decent. The question he asks is : are we humans more inclined to be good or evil? He set about carefully studying history for examples one way or another. 

It is not until reaching the 1700s that Bregman could find a philosopher who shared his positive view of human nature, the French Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  By then Bregman already had strong evidence to back Rousseau’s contentions.

This generously long (470 pages) book records in interesting detail actual events through the ages to support his view. Many of these had been ‘hushed up’ at the time as they didn’t serve the current leaders aims.  Along with these are descriptions of the results of numerous current experiments carried out by university researchers, plus the writings of more recent philosophers.  … Continue Reading