Going Wild - InvestigateDaily

Transcription

HIS Jihadis Next Door | Sharia Watch | P G Wodehouse remembed | 02/2015
HERS Waitangi Ruling | Baby Einsteins | Sugar | 02/2015
CURRENT AFFAIRS & LIFESTYLE
FOR THE DISCERNING WOMAN
BABY
EINSTEINS
NEW RESEARCH SAYS
TOO MUCH LEARNING
MAY HARM CHILDREN’S
DEVELOPMENT
THE FUTURE OF
NEW ZEALAND
A NEW WAITANGI TRIBUNAL
RULING LEAVES NZ AT A
CROSSROAD. WHAT IF IT
IS WRONG?
SUGAR ME
THE TRUTH ABOUT
THE SWEET POISON
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Going
Wild
ALONE: REESE
WITHERSPOON
+
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HEALTH
TRAVEL
& MORE
Feb/Mar 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 49
publiceye-INVES6014
Contents
www.investigatedaily.com
Issue 148
Feb/Mar 2015
08 Waitangi Daze
The tribunal has ruled Ngapuhi never ceded
sovereignty, is it telling the truth? IAN WISHART
argues no, and lays out the evidence
16
Baby Einsteins
We’re told we should be educating kids younger and
younger, but new research says pushing toddlers
academically can stunt their mental development in
other areas. SARAH SPARKS has the intriguing story
20 Sugar Me
Just how poisonous is sugar?
24
Reese Goes Wild
Witherspoon draws inspiration from new role
Contents
34
26
30
38
Formalities
04 Miranda Devine
06 Chloe Milne
Health & Beauty
26
28
30
34
Cancer treatment
Ignore pandemic warnings
Boutique
The colour of the year
Cuisine & Travel
36 Kitchen wars
38 Lake Como
Books & Movies
42 Michael Morrissey
44 Avoid Bruce Willis
Family & Music
40 Lana Del Rey
46 Rules for life
42
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HERS
DEVINE
By Miranda Devine
Climate of fear
H
igh-profile climate alarmists such as Wal- burn dung and wood to cook and keep warm. Three
laby flanker David Pocock and IPCC author million a year die prematurely from breathing the
Professor Colin Butler are the useful idiots polluted air inside their homes. How many people
of green hypocrisy.
die from climate change?
Along with the other “fly in-fly out” activists at
Greenies seem convinced the planet is going to
mining sites across the state, they are doing their fry and we are all going to die if we don’t cut the
best to destroy the coal industry, which underpins carbon dioxide emissions which come from fossil
Australia’s wealth.
fuels. Yet they oppose the only viable low-emission
“How can we try to prevent catastrophic climate alternatives, coal seam gas and nuclear energy.
change while opening coal mines?” Pocock wrote
Nuclear is the only option with zero emissions,
in a rambling essay on his “tumblr” site.
and you only have to look at how the US fracking
The pair were arrested last month after bolting boom has slashed its emissions to see the potenthemselves to machinery at Whitehaven Coal’s tial of coal seam gas. But most greenies are just as
Maules Creek Mine, near Boggabri, 750km from opposed to these greenhouse-friendly alternatives
their Canberra homes. Chances are they didn’t as they are to coal.
walk there.
The same professional activists locking themselves
Their protests are only possible because of the on equipment at Maules Creek turn up at anti-CSG
energy provided by fossil fuels, whether it’s the coal blockades and anti-uranium protests.
which provides the electricity to charge the smart
Australia has a lot of uranium but, unlike Europe,
phones Pocock used to tweet a picture of himself we haven’t resorted to nuclear energy because we
“locked on” to a digger, or the fuel that powers the have been spoiled by the easy availability of cheaper
cars and planes they use to travel around.
fossil fuel.
They are convinced of the evil of Big Coal, our
But as Foreign Minister Julie Bishop sensibly
second biggest export, yet they offer no alternative pointed out, the nuclear option is the “obvious conto keep the lights on.
clusion” if we are serious about
They want Australia’s abuncutting emissions. With honourdant coal resources kept in the
able exceptions like economist
ground. They demonise the
Ross Garnaut, climate alarmenergy source which has created
ists refuse even to consider the
They want
our prosperity and which allows
nuclear option, and instead cynius the luxury of creating a clean Australia’s abundant cally exploit community fears.
environment.
They offer no plausible subcoal resources
Worse, they want to deny that
stitute for the fossil fuels which
kept in the ground. provide 81 per cent of the world’s
prosperity to millions of poor
people across the world.
energy needs. Wind and solar is
They demonise
As Danish statistician and
their mantra, and they demand
the energy source
climate realist Bjorn Lomborg
billions of dollars in subsidies
keeps pointing out, billions of
to prop up renewable industries
which has created which just cannot replace coal
people around the world are so
our prosperity
desperately poor they have to
for baseload power.
4 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Feb/Mar 2015
But greenies don’t trouble themselves with details, which Carlton says is “sheer fiction”. Referencing
as long as they feel good.
Wikipedia, Carlton says the Americans did not fly
Just like the bien pensants who made that silly the Vultee Vengeance in combat. But Colebatch only
Live-Aid style video about children in immigration says they were American planes, that is, Americandetention, it’s not really about solving the problem, made. As the same Wikipedia entry records, the
but about parading their virtue. The “We’re better planes were used by the RAAF, and as a history of
than this Australia” music video featuring celeb- RAAF memoirs, another of Colebatch’s sources,
rities from actor Bryan Brown and author Tom confirms.
Keneally to the Human Rights Commission presiColebatch: 2, and Carlton a big fat zero.
dent Gillian Triggs should have been made years ago.
No one likes a sore loser.
“We’ve all read a lot (about this issue) over these
As one commenter wrote:
last few years and been very troubled by it and not
really known what to do,” Brown admits.
“As for the Vultee Vengeance dive bomber planes,
Lo and behold, now a conservative government
I can assure you that my father flew those planes
is fixing the problem, they know exactly what to do.
for the RAAF in dive bombing operations in New
If it were really about the children, activists would
Guinea. The details of all this are within the Ausnot have stayed silent during the Labor years. And
tralian War Memorial records and silly old Carlton
if it were really about the climate, greenies would
can access those records which will prove Colesupport coal seam gas and nuclear energy.
batch’s history.
Instead their model is North Korea, the world’s
Furthermore, my father was ordered/volunteered
most successful nation at reducing greenhouse
to fly from New Guinea to East Coast Ports in Ausgas emissions – by two-thirds – thanks to famine,
tralia at extreme danger to himself and his aircraft
disease and general economic collapse. The lights
to secure basic supplies of food and ammunition
have literally gone out. Pocock and friends should
being denied the troops in New Guinea by the
move there.
Unions as set out in Colebatch’s important book.
If anyone cannot accept what he has written,
2
then do get off your lazy and ignorant backsides
and research at the Australian War Memorial in
Great news that Hal Colebatch won a Prime MinCanberra and other places available to you. For his
ister’s Literary Award for his best-seller, Australia’s
small part in this disgraceful episode, my father’s
Secret War, which exposes the shameful secret of how
war records are also available in Canberra.”
Australia’s unions sabotaged our troops in WWII.
The award will only drive more sales.
But not everyone is delighted, especially not former Fairfax columnist Mike Carlton, who began a
tantrum on twitter.
“Naturally I’ll be accused of sour grapes” he wrote,
as he railed against Colebatch.
Well, yeah.
Carlton had entered a book in the same category
and hadn’t won. So he tried to trash the winner.
Yet the attack piece he wrote in December for
Crikey proves only that Carlton is a sloppy researcher.
He cites two incidents from the introduction of
Australia’s Secret War:
1. The arrival of HMS Speaker into Sydney in
October, 1945, which Colebatch says was delayed by
strikes, but which Carlton claims, “simply did not
happen”, citing an online history of HMS Speaker’s
service written by one of its officers. Yet this is what
that history says: “It was unfortunate for us that this
period should have coincided with a wave of strikes
ashore which put Sydney on a real austerity basis
for lighting, cooking, transport and entertainments
and made it difficult for many men to get away on
leave.” Colebatch: 1; Carlton: 0.
2. The crash of a squadron of Vultee Vengeance
dive bombers after they made a raid on Rabaul,
HERS
GEN-Y
By Chloe Milne
The art of
impatience
I
t was on a broken down train between Stansted me appreciate things at home. New Zealand may
airport and London’s Kings Cross Station that I be a country of only 4.5 million, but we still like
decided patience is overrated. Not only had I just to make things happen. We talk fast, we walk fast
flown into London’s most inconvenient airport, I and if the recent road tolls are anything to go by,
had also just spent the last 5 or so hours trying to we also drive fast.
get from Lisbon to London with Ryan Air; possibly
If something is broken we fix it, if there’s an issue
the worst airline on the planet, (although I’m yet to we solve it and if there’s something to be done – we
fly Turkmenistan Airlines) and now, after running do it. We don’t tend to stand around, look at the
through immigration to reach the train in time, I issue, talk about the issue and then ponder if we
wanted badly to be home.
should “call someone.”
The driver informed us that there was something
One of the most frustrating phrases I heard
wrong with the train and that he would “look into while living in the UK was “Oh, that’s not in my
it”. Looking into it obviously didn’t mean what I job description.” It’s no wonder that New Zealanders
think it meant, because 15 minutes later he got back with our DIY, “give it a go,” attitudes, are thought
onto the intercom and said he was now going to of as hardworking around the world.
get off the train and “take a look” at the tracks. I’m
Personally I would have rather helped to fix the
not exactly sure what he was looking into for the train than endure the 45-minute wait and I’m sure
previous 15 minutes, but taking
most other Kiwis would have
selfies for his Facebook timeline
been in the same boat. My fellow
does spring to mind.
train mates, however, seemingly
It was another 40 minutes until
unfazed by the delay sat glued to
we were told that the issue (details
their Apple technology, without
Slow-moving
of which were lightly skimmed)
so much as a sigh or eyebrow
Europe makes me raise to the other passengers.
could be ignored and that we did
have permission to continue to
people are the movappreciate things at ersImpatient
London. By that time I had writand shakers of this world,
home. New Zealand they are the ones who will invent
ten half of this article, fantasized
about getting a private jet and
a better way, push themselves to
may be a country
living in a city less inconvenient
the limit and get things done –
of only 4.5 million, at least that’s what I’m telling
than London and made a small
bed for myself on the seats of the
myself.
but we still like to
half empty carriage.
Slow-moving Europe makes make things happen www.chloemilne.com
www.epson.co.nz/precisioncore
Waitangi
Why is the
Tribunal lying
to Maori?
As another Waitangi Day rolls
past, the Waitangi Tribunal’s
latest ruling suggesting Ngapuhi
never ceded sovereignty to the
Crown has been echoing through
the intelligentsia. It marks a fresh
push to set up joint rulership of
New Zealand with the public –
ordinary Maori and Pakeha alike –
treated as mere ‘subjects’ of the
edicts of a ruling group of elites.
IAN WISHART wades into the
debate to show how the modern
generation are being conned
DAZE
T
here comes a time in any society dominated by
ruling classes when someone from the peasantry
has to stand up and ask the age-old question:
“Why is the Emperor wearing no clothes?”
That time, in New Zealand’s case, is now.
For the past 40 years, New Zealanders both
Maori and Pakeha have been backseat spectators as the
Treaty of Waitangi has gradually been re-written, re-interpreted and ultimately tortured to become something it never
was, and two recent Waitangi Tribunal rulings show it’s
time to blow the whistle before players get hurt.
In late November, the Tribunal issued a ruling, praised
by some radio commentators, that claimed Maori in the far
north had never given up sovereignty to the British Crown.
Then in December, the Tribunal issued a 618 page ruling
attempting to enforce that new Maori ‘sovereignty’ by suggesting Parliament has no power to change laws relating
to Maori and that such issues must be decided by Maori.
Both of these rulings are demonstrably wrong – not
because I say so, but because Maori who ratified the Treaty
of Waitangi back in the 1800s say so in their own words.
Both rulings hinge on the same premise: that Maori never
ceded sovereignty to the Crown. Clearly that is the view
that now dominates the Waitangi Tribunal’s thinking, so
the question remains, is it right?
Some commentators argue that because
the Waitangi Tribunal has the sole ‘power’
in New Zealand to interpret the Treaty,
that means the claims must be right; the
only body in New Zealand with authority
to make a ruling has made its ruling, so
live with it! The people who follow that
logic are however, with respect, displaying
intellect as shallow as a birdbath. Although
parliament has the power to pass a law
ordering the death of all blond, blue-eyed
babies at birth, having the power to issue
an edict does not by definition make the
edict right or even sustainable in logic.
Adolf Hitler issued lots of edicts that were
lawful in their time, even if factually and
morally wrong.
And so it is with the Waitangi Tribunal. It might have the power to push the
government around but it does not have
the power to push the people of New
Zealand around. If what the Waitangi
Tribunal is saying is false, the Tribunal
should be disbanded pending an inquiry
into philosophical and scholarly corruption of the unit in my view.
I can prove the Waitangi Tribunal is
wrong when it says Maori never gave up
sovereignty over New Zealand. In fact,
not only ‘can’ I prove it, I already have.
Exhibit A, my smoking gun, is my book
The Great Divide.
“You are aware there are no laws in
New Zealand; there is no king. They feel
the want of this, and they cannot make
a king from their own chiefs, as every
chief would think himself degraded if
he should be put under the authority of
a chief of their own.”1
Those are the words of missionary
Samuel Marsden in 1837, explaining
why Maori wanted an outside sovereign
to rule the country. His key take home
point was that there could be no Maori
sovereignty because each tribe considered itself supreme – a position that kept
causing tribal wars and bloodshed. They
wanted the Brits to take over and establish peace under a sovereign everyone
could respect.
A
n argument raged between two factions in Britain. One faction saw
Maori society as a basket-case, as
indeed Maori saw it themselves, needing
a sovereign to step in and bring Western
enlightenment. The other faction saw
Maori society as a museum piece in need
of isolating and protecting so that Maori
could continue living without contact with
the civilised world. This faction came to
dominate in Australian settlement, treating the native Aboriginals as a race to be
sidelined in the outback rather than welcomed into cities. The logic was that primitive cultures should be allowed to maintain
their culture unmolested by modernity.
As explained, while some Maori agreed
with the latter sentiment, wanting to turn
back the clock and send the whites home,
most Maori fell into the first camp, wanting all the benefits of Western civilisation
under British rule so that decades (in fact
hundreds of years) of bitter tribal wars
could be ended.
Queen Victoria, through her officials,
told Captain William Hobson that the
best interests of the Maori people would
probably be served by surrendering sovereignty in return for British protection:
“Believing, however, that their own
welfare would, under the circumstances
I have mentioned, be best promoted by
the surrender to Her Majesty of a right
now so precarious, and little more than
nominal, and persuaded that the benefits
of British protection and of laws administered by British Judges would far more
than compensate for the sacrifice by the
natives of a national independence which
they are no longer able to maintain, Her
Majesty’s Government have resolved to
authorise you to treat with the aborigines
of New Zealand for the recognition of
Her Majesty’s sovereign authority over
the whole or any part of those islands
which they may be willing to place under
Her Majesty’s dominion.” [quoted in The
Great Divide, page 149]
The Waitangi Tribunal would have
the public believe that ancient Maori
society was civilised and they all lived
in Smurf-like village settlements, at one
with nature. This is far from the truth, a
typical Maori village in the early 1800s
committed more beheadings than ISIS
and al Qa’ida ever have in modern times:
“Not less than 40 canoes came into
the harbour from a war expedition,
with prisoners of war, and the heads of a
number of chiefs whom they had slain in
QUEEN VICTORIA, THROUGH HER OFFICIALS, TOLD CAPTAIN
WILLIAM HOBSON THAT THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE MAORI
PEOPLE WOULD PROBABLY BE SERVED BY SURRENDERING
SOVEREIGNTY IN RETURN FOR BRITISH PROTECTION
battle. I went onshore and saw the prisoners and the heads when they landed. The
sight was distressing beyond conception,”
wrote Samuel Marsden at one point. [The
Great Divide, page 118].
Another missionary, Samuel Leigh,
stumbled across the beheading of a child:
“One day, as I was walking on the
beach, conversing with a chief, my attention was arrested by a great number of
people coming from a neighbouring hill.
I inquired the cause of the concourse,
and was told that they had killed a lad,
were roasting him, and going to eat him.
I immediately proceeded to the place, in
order to ascertain the truth of this appalling relation. Being arrived at the village
where the people were collected, I asked
to see the boy.
“The natives appeared much agitated
at my presence, and particularly at my
request, as if conscious of their guilt; and
it was only after a very urgent solicitation
that they directed me towards a large
fire at some distance, where, they said, I
should find him. As I was going to this
place, I passed by the bloody spot on
which the head of this unhappy victim
had been cut off; and, on approaching the
fire, I was not a little startled at the sudden appearance of a savage-looking man,
of gigantic stature, entirely naked, and
armed with a large axe. I was a good deal
intimidated, but mustered up as much
courage as I could, and demanded to
see the lad. The cook (for such was the
occupation of this terrific monster) then
held up the boy by his feet. He appeared
to be about fourteen years of age, and
was half roasted.
“I returned to the village, where I found
a great number of natives seated in a circle, with a quantity of coomery (a sort of
sweet potatoe) before them, waiting for
the roasted body of the youth. In this
company were shown to me the mother
of the child. The mother and child were
both slaves, having been taken in war.
However, she would have been compelled
to share in the horrid feast, had I not
prevailed on them to give up the body
to be interred, and thus prevented them
from gratifying their unnatural appetite.”
– [cited at page 115 of The Great Divide]
In one battle in Auckland cited by
historian Paul Moon in his 2008 book
on cannibalism, This Horrid Practice,
thousands of Maori were killed and eaten
where Glen Innes and Mt Wellington
now stand.
Lest critics accuse me of being racially
insensitive, I am married into iwi, my
children can trace their whakapapa.
This is not being written to inflame,
but to inject some reality about the life
that Maori tribes were desperate to leave
behind by signing the Treaty.
So how do I prove that Maori knew
they were ceding sovereignty?
L
ike it or not, the perception being
sold to Maori and Pakeha on a daily
basis is that the tribes always kept
their own supreme sovereignty, never
relinquished it, and deserve to be treated
as equals to the New Zealand government
for the purposes of setting the laws of
this country. This all hangs on the word
“kawanatanga” allegedly not meaning
sovereignty.
If, as Michael King wrote, Maori at
Waitangi truly did not equate kawanatanga with sovereignty, then what are we
to make of the comments of Ngapuhi’s
Rewa at Waitangi in 1840, quoted here
directly from King’s own book:
“What do we want of a governor? We
are not whites nor foreigners. We are the
governor – we the chiefs of this land of
our ancestors!”
You couldn’t get a clearer example that
Maori knew kawanatanga was interchangeable with sovereignty: “We are
the sovereign – we the chiefs of this land
of our ancestors”.
King – perhaps because it would have
shot his thesis down – did not quote the
end of Rewa’s speech, where he stated:
“Do not sign the paper. If you do
you will be reduced to the condition of
slaves, and be compelled to break stones
on the roads. Your land will be taken
from you and your dignity as chief will
be destroyed.”
It is hard to believe that academics and
authors have been able to draw taxpayer
funded salaries and study grants to argue
that Maori had no awareness they were
transferring sovereignty at Waitangi.
There was also Te Kemara’s speech:
“Were we to be an equality, then perhaps Te Kemara would say yes. But for
the Governor to be up and Te Kemara to
be down – Governor high, up, up, up, and
Te Kemara down low, small, a worm, a
crawler. No, no, no.”
Does that sound like a “partnership”
arrangement? Does that sound like Ngapuhi – as is now claimed – did not know
they were signing away their sovereignty?
Another Ngapuhi leader, Kawiti, told
those gathered at Waitangi:
“We Native men do not wish thee to
stay. We do not want to be tied up and
trodden down. We are free. Let the missionaries remain, but, as for thee, return
to thine own country…I, even I, Kawiti,
must not paddle this way or paddle that
way because the Governor said ‘No’,
because of the Governor, his soldiers
and his guns.”
How can anyone reconcile these paragraphs with the claim that Maori did not
know the Treaty involved a transfer of
sovereignty and control?
But a legalistic word-by-word approach
to decoding the Treaty is not necessarily
the last word, so to speak. There is another
way to find out what Maori understood.
When courts have difficulty under-
standing the context (and therefore precise meaning) of an Act of Parliament,
they sometimes go back to the parliamentary debates that accompanied the
passing of the law in question, to get a feel
for what legislators actually intended. In
the same manner, concentrating on the
precise wording of the Treaty of Waitangi
only gets you so far.
T
o get a proper handle on it, we jump
forward now 20 years, to a gathering
of ariki – paramount chiefs – and
rangatira, at Kohimarama in Auckland in
July 1860. The purpose of this “runanga”
– or tribal council – was to discuss how
Maori had fared in the 20 years since
Waitangi had been signed, and seek their
views on current issues affecting them.
The proceedings, and thus the speech
transcripts below, were published in Te
Karere, the main Maori newspaper, that
month.
To those who argue that Maori never
intended to sign away sovereignty over
New Zealand to the Crown, and never
understood that to be the case, we produce
chief Wikiriwhi Matehenoa of Ngati Porou
on the East Cape, who told the up to 200
chiefs gathered (a much higher number
than those who had gathered at Waitangi):
“We are all under the sovereignty of the
Queen, but there are also other authorities
over us sanctioned by God and the Queen,
namely, our Ministers.”
The Maori translation is illustrative of
what he understood. He used the words
“te maru o te Kuini”, where the word
‘maru’ means literally “power, authority” translated in 1860 at the conference
as sovereignty.2
Wikiriwhi further backs that up in
his phrase “sanctioned by God and
the Queen”, rendered in Maori, “mana
whakahaere o te Atua raua ko te Kuini”.
The word “raua” in this sense means
“combined” and refers back to the
“mana” of both God and Queen”.
To flip Michael King’s analysis back
on itself, the chief did not use the phrase
“te kawanatanga o te Kuini”, if governorship was all they actually understood the
Queen’s sovereignty to be.
It is abundantly clear that Ngati Porou
fully understood Queen Victoria’s sovereignty over New Zealand. Te maru; the
power, the authority.
The Ngati Raukawa chief Horomona
Toremi, of Otaki, went so far as to explain
that – post Waitangi – “You over there
(the Pakehas) are the only Chiefs. The
Pakeha took me out of the mire: the
Pakeha washed me. This is my word.
Let there be one Law for all this Island.”3
Then there’s Te Ahukaramu’s position:
“First, God: secondly, the Queen: thirdly,
the Governor. Let there be one Queen for
us. Make known to us all the laws, that
we may all dwell under one law.”4
The concept that the Queen set the
law for all New Zealanders, Maori and
Pakeha alike, was clearly understood, as
was the Queen’s position under God, and
the Governor’s ranking underneath the
Queen. Beneath the top three, Maori and
Pakeha citizens. “Kia kotahi te Kuini mo
tatou” – one Queen over all of us.
Te Ahukaramu was even more explicit
about the evolution of the Maori king
movement, describing it as a usurpation
of the Queen’s sovereignty, and noting
that the recently deceased first Maori
king had recognised the authority of “the
Queen, and the Government”.
“If any of the tribes should set up a
Maori King, then let them be separated
from the Queen’s ‘mana’.” In Maori, it
reads, “me wehe ratou i runga i te mana
o te Kuini”.
A few paragraphs back we looked at
why Maori had invited the British monarch to become sovereign over New
Zealand, because they needed to unite
behind someone with higher mana than
any individual New Zealand chief.
As chief Wiremu Patene told the
Kohimarama gathering, even the Maori
King’s mana was next to nothing against
Victoria’s:
“But remember, Governor, that (the
Maori King) is child’s play. The Queen’s
mana is with us. Let me repeat it, that
work is child’s play.”
With the huge inroads that Christianity
made in the 1830s, it’s actually important
to realise in this discussion that most of
the Maori chiefs at Waitangi probably had
a better and deeper understanding of the
Bible than many people today. For Maori,
the concept of submission to a higher
authority was something many of them
had now personally done, and that was
part of the understanding they brought to
Waitangi; they knew they were submitting.
“Let me make use of an illustration
from the Scriptures,” chief Hamuera
of Ngaiterangi told the runanga. “Jesus
Christ said he was above Satan. So the
Governor says he is above both Pakeha
and Maori – that he alone is Chief. Now,
when Satan said, I am the greatest, Christ
trampled him under foot. So the Queen
says, that she will be chief for all men.
Therefore, I say, let her be the protector
of all the people.”
Others were even more strident, well
and truly nailing their futures to the Pakeha ways, not the ancient Maori customs:
Te Ngahuruhuru (Ngatiwhakaue):
“The deceits do not belong to the Pakehas, but to the Maories alone. The Maori
is wronging the Pakeha. I am an advocate
for peace. Shew kindness to the Pakeha.
Shew good feeling to this Governor. Look
here, Maories! My word will not alter. I
belong to the mana of the Queen, to the
mana of the Governor. As to the setting
up o a King – not that. Do not split up, and
form a party for the Queen, and another
for the Maori King: that would be wrong.”
It is this July 1860 runanga, or tribal
council, that provides vital clues about
how both Crown and Maori saw their
relationship post Waitangi. As a tribal
council where chiefs were required to
vote in favour or against, and where – like
Parliament today – a Hansard was taken
of each speech and given to the speaker
to double check its accuracy before being
published, it was also an important and
binding ratification of the terms of the
Treaty which were now clearly expressed,
both in English and in Maori.
If there was any ambiguity arising out
of the 1840 Treaty regarding the cession of
sovereignty, there was no ambiguity this
time, and any honest debate of the “treaty
principles” cannot take place without
consideration of the 1860 speeches.
F
or the Waitangi Tribunal to lie to
all New Zealanders about the sovereignty issue is a disgrace, and
one that risks putting members of the
Tribunal first up against the wall when
the revolution comes, as it will if they
continue down this divisive pathway.
If anyone wants an honest appraisal of
the truth about Waitangi, in the actual
words of the chiefs themselves, read the
historical reports.
Take the modern debate about “taonga”.
Amazing, really, how a word that once
simply meant “property procured by spear”
is now an esoteric mystical word worthy of
a Hindu guru and meaning whatever its
21st century translators want it to mean.
The problem for ordinary New Zealanders, Maori or Pakeha, is that the
Waitangi Tribunal has official dibs on
interpreting the Treaty, regardless of
what ancient dictionaries or documents
tell us the words really meant.
Did the Maori expect every last inch
of their lives to be controlled by British
law? Probably not. Nor did Britain expect
to intervene in their customary habits
except to the extent alluded to by Lord
Normanby in his instructions to Hobson: “Until they can be brought within
the pale of civilised life, and trained to
the adoption of its habits, they must be
carefully defended in the observance of
their own customs, so far as these are
compatible with the universal maxims
of humanity and morals.” That paragraph, right there, is tino rangatiratanga
in action – the governance of daily life
retained by Maori until such time as they
seek further access to British laws, and
subject to exception for matters like cannibalism and human sacrifice.
It is submitted that no one in 1840 was
really in the dark about what the Treaty
meant. Overall sovereignty would transfer
to Britain, day to day life would continue
as normal for most Maori. Where there
was intertribal conflict, or major crimes,
British justice would intercede and adjudicate to the extent they were able. For
routine matters, the rangatira – the ‘mayors’ – would sort it out within the hapu.
In practical terms, with no army and
next to no police force, the British colonial administration was pretty much
powerless for its first few years, so Maori
justice continued to exist by default, tempered by missionaries and the appointment of native assessors, or magistrates.
To be fair, there was confusion within
colonial ranks. In 1842 after Hobson’s
death, upon reports of a tribe – who had
not signed the Treaty – killing and eating members of a tribe who had – the
Acting Governor Willoughby Shortland
decided to impose the long arm of the
law on the culprits. Chief Justice William Martin, Bishop Selwyn and Attorney-General Swainson tried to dissuade
Shortland from his mission, primarily on
the grounds of biting off more than they
could chew, and secondly upon the novel
legal argument that tribes who had not
signed the Treaty were outside its juris-
diction. Historian and politician William
Pember-Reeves would later describe this
as “an opinion so palpably and daringly
wrong that some have thought it a desperate device to save the country.” Certainly,
the Colonial Office in London gave the
New Zealand administration a swift kicking when it heard about it, “Her Majesty’s
rule, said Lord Stanley, having once been
proclaimed over all New Zealand, it did
not lie with one of her officers to impugn
the validity of her government.”
Since 1972, however, the Treaty of Waitangi has taken on a modern spin of its
own that appears to bear no resemblance
to the way the Maori who signed it saw it.
Lawyer and passionate treaty activist Annette Sykes summed up the views
of many within Maoridom today when
she wrote: “The … tribes have reached
a crossroads in their journey to protect
their sovereignty and self-determination.
In recent decades these highly articulate tribal nations have been leaders in a
number of political, legal and economic
strategies that promote the recognition
of individual tribal entities as sovereigns
enjoying government-to government
relationships with the New Zealand Government. Their cries for self government
having being made in forums from the
Waitangi Tribunal through to the United
Nations, and from the hallowed halls of
political power in Wellington through
to rank and file protests on the street.”
Yet here is what the 200 chiefs assembled at Kohimarama in 1860 were told
by the Governor:
“In return for these advantages the
Chiefs who signed the Treaty of Waitangi
ceded for themselves and their people to
Her Majesty the Queen of England absolutely and without reservation all the rights
and powers of Sovereignty which they collectively or individually possessed or might
be supposed to exercise or possess.
This is a key passage, so please note
AMAZING, REALLY, HOW A WORD THAT ONCE SIMPLY
MEANT “PROPERTY PROCURED BY SPEAR” IS NOW
AN ESOTERIC MYSTICAL WORD WORTHY OF A HINDU
GURU AND MEANING WHATEVER ITS 21ST CENTURY
TRANSLATORS WANT IT TO MEAN
the Maori translation read to the chiefs
in 1860:
“…tino tukua rawatia atu ana e ratou
ki Te Kuini o Ingarani nga tikanga me
nga mana Kawanatanga katoa i a ratou
katoa, i tenei i tenei ranei o ratou, me
nga pera katoa e meinga kei a ratou”. The
word “tukua” means “cede” or “surrender” and “nga tikanga” the laws and lore,
and “mana Kawanatanga katoa” means
all sovereign authority.
G
overnor Gore Browne went on to
read every clause of the English version of the Treaty, translated into
Maori, into the record at Kohimarama
for the chiefs to vote and comment on.
If you were looking for clarification on
what the Treaty of Waitangi meant at the
time, you’ve found it. Every main concept
in the English version of the Treaty was
re-stated in Maori, before a congress of
Maori leaders – the biggest gathering of
Maori leaders ever held to that point.
If there was ever a time to shout out
“liar!”, this was it. If there was ever a
time for Maori to say, “that’s not what
we agreed to!”, this was it.
So what did the paramount chiefs say?
Sixty percent of those attending spoke
in absolute explicit agreement with the
way the Governor had described the
Treaty and what it meant, and pledged
their allegiance to Governor and Queen.
A further 17% expressed similar sentiments, without making an outright declaration about it. Twenty one percent didn’t
state an opinion on the matter, but talked
of other things. Two percent appeared to
be leaning against the Governor.
The tribes, as they would say on Survivor, had spoken, and in doing so had
ratified the Treaty of Waitangi as most
people understand it:
Eruera Kahawai (Ngatiwakaue,
Rotorua): “Listen, ye people! There is
no one to find fault with the Governor’s
words. His words are altogether good.”
Menehira Rakau, (Ngatihe, Maungatapu): “Let us inquire into the character of
the Governor’s address. I did not hear one
wrong thing in the speech of the Governor.”
Rirituku Te Perehu, (Ngatipikiao,
Rotoiti and Maketu): “The Governor’s
address is right.”
Henare Pukuatua, (Ngatiwakaue,
Rotorua): “Listen my friends, the people
of this runanga. I have no thought for
Maori customs. All I think about now is
what is good for me. I have been examining the Governor’s address. I have not
been able to find one wrong word in all
these sayings of the Governor, or rather
of the Queen. I have looked in vain for
anything to find fault with. Therefore I
now say, O Governor, your words are full
of light. I shall be a child to the Queen.
Christ shall be the Saviour of my soul,
and my temporal guide shall be the Governor or the Law. Now, listen all of you. I
shall follow the Governor’s advice. This
shall be my path forever and ever.”
Tamihana Rauparaha, (Ngati Toa,
Porirua): “The words we have heard this
day are good.”
Karaitiana Tuikau, (Ngati Te Matera,
Hauraki): “The Governor’s words are
good.”
“The words of the Governor are good.
Let the Queen be above all,” exclaimed
Tohi, a Ngatiwhakaue chief.
The list could stretch on and on. Suffice
to say not one chief accused the Crown of
lying when it said it had taken absolute
sovereignty over New Zealand when the
Treaty was signed.
Constitutionally, their speeches and
votes at the Kohimarama runanga
amount to a full ratification of the English version of the Treaty, and it seems
clear from the quotes above and on the
preceding pages that the chiefs fully
understood the concept of sovereignty.
However, this is also the reason the
so-called Littlewood Treaty document
becomes irrelevant – it was superseded
by Kohimarama.
For those who take issue, for example,
with the “forests and fisheries” aspect of
the Treaty, on the grounds that the words
don’t appear in the Maori version, here’s
the bad news: Governor Gore Browne
read them into the record at Kohimarama, as you can see in his clauses listed
earlier. This issue of attention to historical detail applies to goose and gander
alike. The conference ratified sovereignty,
but it also ratified forests and fisheries.
So let’s pause for a moment and return
to contemporary scholarship.
In 1990, Professor Ranginui Walker
wrote that rangatiratanga meant sovereignty and kawanatanga was merely a
limited form of governorship:
“The chiefs are likely to have understood the second clause of the Treaty as
a confirmation of their own sovereign
rights in return for a limited concession
of power in kawanatanga.
“The Treaty of Waitangi they signed
confirmed their own sovereignty while
ceding the right to establish a governor
in New Zealand to the Crown. A governor is in effect a satrap…a holder of a
provincial governorship; he was a subordinate ruler, or a colonial governor. In
New Zealand’s case he governed at the
behest of the chiefs…in effect the chiefs
were his sovereigns.”
In this respect, Walker follows
treaty historian Claudia Orange who
says rangatiratanga would be a “better approximation to sovereignty than
kawanatanga.”
And yet, you’ve seen what Maori – and
some of the Kohimarama attendees had
actually signed the Treaty personally
– understood the Treaty to mean, and
sovereignty to mean. Can the academic
claims about the Treaty actually be reconciled with historical fact?
It’s an important question. The meaning
of the Treaty of Waitangi as it is currently
pitched dominates public policy in this
country, and it dominates the school curriculum. Our children are learning the
academic version of the Treaty. There are
many jobs you cannot be appointed to in
the public sector unless you can demonstrate an acquaintance and allegiance to
the modern interpretations of the Treaty.
None of this is written to belittle
the wrongs that were done to Maori in
breach of the Treaty. That’s not what this
is about. Those grievances in many cases
are real and require settlement. But if we
are going to be honest about our past, it
cuts both ways. We cannot move forward
unless we have a clear understanding
of the foundations. If our opinions and
beliefs about the Treaty in the 21st century are based on a misunderstanding
about what 1840 Maori thought, then our
opinions and beliefs are founded on a lie.
What actually matters is what Maori at
the time really did think they were signing. The only way to find that out is to listen to their voices, rather than engage in
endless debates about the meaning of the
words as we currently understand them.
Anyone who wants to argue that Maori
never ceded sovereignty can only do so
by ignoring the Kohimarama runanga
transcripts.
For twenty or so years after Waitangi,
tribal Maori pretty much had continued
to enforce their own laws and customs,
because the British colonial apparatus
of state in New Zealand was weak and
spread too thinly to administer British
justice against Maori by force. It was either
voluntary compliance, or it was nothing.
What we see at Kohimarama, constitutionally, however, is an evolution of
consent. After 20 years of partial integration, the chiefs not only ratified Waitangi
in full but expressly called for a complete
adoption of Pakeha tikanga.
L
et’s hear the chiefs on how they perceived sovereignty operating. Was
the Governor a ruler in name only,
or one with the power to enforce the law,
even to hold these same chiefs to account:
Hemi Metene Te Awaitaia: “I shall make
the Governor’s address the subject of my
speech. I shall speak first of the 4th clause,
namely, – ‘In return for these advantages
the chiefs who signed the Treaty of Waitangi ceded for themselves and their people
to Her Majesty the Queen of England,
absolutely and Without reservation, all
the rights and powers of sovereignty which
they collectively or individually possessed
or might be supposed to exercise or possess.’ That was the union of races at Waitangi. I was there at the time, and I listened
to the love Of the Queen. I then heard
about the advantages of the treaty.
“In my opinion the greatest blessings
are Christianity and the Laws. While God
spares my life I will give these my first
concern. When I commit a wrong, then
let me be brought before the Magistrate
and punished according to law. Those are
the good things.”
Winiata Pekamu Tohiteururangi: “The
only thought that has occurred to me,
is this – in former times I had but one
lord (ariki), and now I shall have but one
lord – only one. I shall have but one rule
– not two.”
In early December, Gareth Morgan
lashed out at the Waitangi Tribunal
rewriting history, saying “There is definitely a conversation to be had about
Maori aspirations, but the Waitangi
Tribunal is not the place to be having it.
In recent weeks the Waitangi Tribunal
found that Ngapuhi and other Far North
tribes did not intend to cede sovereignty
when they signed the Treaty of Waitangi.
If taken to its logical extreme, this means
that Maori who signed the Maori version
of the Treaty didn’t hand over the reins
of sovereignty to the Crown.
“This finding,” railed Morgan, “contradicts not only earlier tribunal findings but also the reality that sovereignty
does lie with the Crown – after all it’s the
Crown Maori have been negotiating with
and which taxes New Zealanders to pay
settlements.”
Later in the article Morgan said the
idea of an equal governing partnership
“seriously undermines democracy in
New Zealand.”
He concluded his Herald piece with
these words:
“Sadly, many non-Maori are uninformed on the Treaty and particularly its
modern interpretation. This renders the
public vulnerable to some seriously misguided and offensive proposals emanating from the Treaty industry, and gives
no lasting solutions to Maori aspirations.
It’s a lose, lose.”
That was December 4, 2014. What a difference four weeks makes on Planet Morgan, because in the first week of January
he published a new series of commentaries in the Herald, stating:
“The reason the post-1975 Treaty process has been successful is that the Treaty
is now taken to mean whatever Maori
leaders and the Crown, as the public’s
representatives, agree it means. On the
face of it this “fluidity” may seem to be
a weakness, but actually to date it has
served the process well…”
Among Morgan’s solutions…establishing a new Upper House of parliament on
race lines:
“The Upper House would refer back to
Parliament legislative changes it considers
require more work. It could be small – say
20 members – and it could have 10 Maori
and 10 non-Maori representatives with
Maoridom appointing their members and
Parliament appointing the others.”
Of one thing Morgan is right: the time
is long overdue for New Zealand to have
a serious debate about what the treaty
really means, rather than what the Treaty
industry wants it to mean.
References:
1. Letter, Marsden to Jowett, 11 August 1837,
see http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/
tei-McN01Hist-t1-b10-d79.html
2. The 1844 Maori Language Dictionary by
William Williams translates ‘maru’ primarily
as power, and gave the example, “Na te maru
i a ia koia matou i matuku ai,” meaning, “In
consequence of his power we were afraid”.
3. In Maori: “Whakarongo mai e nga rangatira Pakeha. Na koutou i tu mai ai ahau
inaianei. Ko koutou anake te rangatira. Kia ki
atu au kahore kau he rangatira o tenei motu,
kahore rawa, kahore rawa. Na te Pakeha ahau
i huhuti mai i te paru, nana ahau i horoi. Ko
taku kupu tenei, kia kotahi te Ture mo te
motu katoa.”
4. In Maori, the words were expressed: “Ko
te Atua te tuatahi, ko te Kuini te tuatua, ko
te Kawana te tuatoru. Kia kotahi te Kuini mo
tatou. Whakamaramatia mai nga ture katoa
kia noho ai tatou i roto i te ture kotahi.”
To teach, or
not to teach?
Research finds pushing kids too early
might limit all-round development
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION IS NOW ALMOST COMPULSORY, AND
PARENTS ARE BOMBARDED WITH REASONS TO EXTEND THE BRAIN
DEVELOPMENT OF THEIR CHILDREN. BUT NEW RESEARCH FROM
AMERICA FINDS IT IS A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD: YES, CHILDREN
CAN LEARN MORE THAN WE THINK, BUT IT CAN COME AT A COST.
SARAH SPARKS PROFILES THE DEBATE
T
he push for earlier and more academically rigorous preschool
for 3- to 5-year-olds comes during something of an Enlightenment explosion in the research. Fields such as psychology and
neuroscience are showing that young children can understand
and benefit from deep learning at the beginning of their lives.
Yet early-childhood researchers caution that the same studies showing what pupils are capable of also suggest that efforts to push
down elementary-style instruction to preschool could undermine the
exact cognitive development educators hope to build up.
“Over the last 15 years, there’s been a tremendous revolution in the
way we see very young children,” says Allison Gopnik, a professor of
psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-author of
the 1999 book, The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us
About the Mind. “They are learning in very sophisticated ways, playing
in ways that help them find information. It’s not just that children are
defective grown-ups; when you look at children’s brains, they really seem
to be designed to learn in this way.”
At the time Craig T. Ramey started working on the now-famous ongoing Carolina Abecedarian Project preschool study in North Carolina in
1972, “there was a real suspicion that the environment really didn’t matter
much as long as the kid had been fed regularly and not physically abused.”
Most educators and researchers followed the model put forth by Jean
Piaget, a Swiss developmental psychologist who helped found modern
child psychology. Piaget studied children through direct questioning
and observation and determined those younger than school age were
incapable of reason.
“How children learn hasn’t changed very much” since Piaget’s work
gained wide American prominence in the 1960s, says Ramey, a professor
and distinguished research scholar at Virginia Tech. “What we know
about how they learn has changed a good bit. Children are learning all
the time from early infancy; we have just been too ham-handed to see it.”
As researchers move instead to measuring how babies and children
pay attention, react, and solve problems – “letting them answer in their
own language, rather than ours,” as Allison Gopnik puts it – they have
identified extensive, complex thought in infants and young children.
In fact, a new wave of research suggests the very traits educators are
desperately trying to cultivate in high school graduates – critical reasoning, lateral thinking, creativity, autonomous learning, and a host of other
“college-and career-ready” skills – are not just present but the natural
learning mechanism of young children.
SOME 4-YEAR-OLD PRESCHOOLERS MAY ACT MORE
LIKE 7-YEAR-OLDS, WHILE OTHERS MAY APPEAR
CLOSER TO 2, DEPENDING ON THEIR BACKGROUND,
DEVELOPMENTAL TRAJECTORY, AND HOW MUCH
EXPOSURE THEY HAVE HAD TO ACADEMIC SETTINGS
In a 2014 study, Gopnik and her colleagues found that 4- and 5-year-olds
were better than adults at recognizing
when an event depended on multiple,
related causes rather than a direct line of
causation. Preschoolers were more open
to evaluating all evidence, even that with
unlikely or unusual connections, while
adults tended to fall back on their established modes of reasoning.
T
hat’s the kind of insight required
to understand how the interplay of
high blood pressure and genetics
can lead to a heart attack – or how an
early strength in critical thinking could
combine with access to strong content in
middle school to make a student more
likely to graduate from high school.
At the same time, researchers and
educators are starting to take a morenuanced look at how early-childhood
programs should work.
“What we’re seeing is like a tsunami
of research on the science of learning at
early ages,” says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a
distinguished faculty fellow in psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia.
“Instead of saying, ‘Oh gosh, kids are
behind by age 3 or 4,’ we know what curricular pieces are missing and what we
need to focus on.”
Those in the field have more than a
half-century of programmatic research
to draw on. Federal Head Start and Early
Head Start programs improved the
health of children in poverty, but results
have varied from site to site. Small-scale,
but highly intensive, programs like the
Abecedarian preschool study and the
Perry Preschool Project in Michigan have
shown significant improvement in academics and quality of life over decades,
but have been harder to replicate in larger
populations. And a host of state, local,
and private preschool programs have
shown varying effects.
Critics have pointed out that many programs, even highly intensive ones, show
fading effects as students grow up. In part,
that may be because the range of “normal”
is wider in earlier grades, Ramey says.
Some 4-year-old preschoolers may act
more like 7-year-olds, while others may
appear closer to 2, depending on their
background, developmental trajectory,
and how much exposure they have had
to academic settings. But these differences
often smooth out as students age.
Moreover, “preschool is not a vaccination,” says Barbara T. Bowman, a professor
in child development and a co-founder of
the Erikson Institute, a graduate school in
Chicago specializing in early-childhood-
development studies. “If you don’t have a
very good kindergarten program, by 1st
grade, you’ve lost your benefit. Unless they
are building on that prior learning, why
would they be any smarter? Preschool
builds a foundation, but you have to keep
teaching them.”
Tomoko Wakabayashi, the current
director of the center that launched the
landmark Perry Preschool Project, a
study of an intensive early-child education program, argues that research on
preschool and early-childhood education must take the long view – as the
Perry Project did – because many of the
benefits in executive function and other
noncognitive skills don’t start to show
up until much later in life.
“Some of the effects that came out,
you never would have found them in
preschool,” says Ms. Wakabayasi, who
directs for Early Education Evaluation
at the HighScope Educational Research
Foundation. “If Perry hadn’t followed
students for so long, a lot of the discussion around preschool would have been
different; there would have been just a
fade out of IQ [benefits], and that would
have been it.”
Yet David J. Armor, a professor emeritus in policy and government affairs at
George Mason University, argued in a
recent critique of preschool studies for
the Washington-based Cato Institute
that researchers and policymakers may
be too quick to generalize findings from
the prior programs.
“It’s a really complex behavioural
model that says you see fade-out in the
present but [benefit] shows up in the
future,” Armor said. “Before we extend
this to universal preschool, we need to
find out what is going on.”
T
hat’s tough to do, because modern
preschool policy is both spurred
by and pulled between the twin
concerns of anxious middle- and upperclass parents trying to find the “best”
academic foundation for their children
– often enrolling them in programs
designed for highly at-risk children –
and disadvantaged parents often unable
to access preschools at all.
“The vast majority of our research has
occurred in children with extremely
low-resource homes; very often, we’re
taking information from studying an
extremely high-risk, vulnerable group
and trying to apply it to all children,” says
Sharon Landesman Ramey, a psychology
professor at Virginia Tech. “But there’s
no evidence that children from uppermiddle-class families and beyond have
need of public pre-school.”
In fact, an analysis of Head Start data
from October found that about a third
of the differences other studies have seen
in the effectiveness of different sites is
accounted for by differences in the format and audience of the centers. Full-day
programs improved children’s cognitive
skills most, and programs with home visits were most effective at boosting socialemotional learning. Moreover, children
with less-educated mothers got the most
benefit from the centers.
A separate study by the National Center
for Research in Early Childhood Education at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, published in the journal Early
Child Development and Care, found preschool programs universally available had,
as one would expect, more middle- and
upper-income and white children than did
programs that targeted children in poverty. Universal programs tended to run
for longer hours and have teachers with
more education, but teachers in targeted
programs rated higher on teacher-student
interactions and classroom climate.
More recently, a study of Tools of the
Mind, a preschool and kindergarten curriculum designed to improve executive
functions like attention and reasoning,
showed better effects for pupils in highpoverty schools than in wealthier schools.
“The concern is, there will develop a
preschool inequality: The middle- and
upper-class kids are going to Montessori
and Waldorf preschools, ... but for poor
kids, we just have to get them reading
and writing to get them through school,”
Allison Gopnik says. “That would be a
terrible waste.”
Moreover, early-education researchers
repeatedly voice concern that both ends
of the socioeconomic spectrum would
end up poorly served by making preschool more “formally” academic.
“I’ve been in some classrooms that
make me want to pull my hair out,
because the 4-year-old program looks
like a bad, dumbed-down 3rd grade program,” Craig Ramey says. “If you walk
into any program and don’t see kids
laughing and deeply engaged, you are
looking at a bad program.”
Neuroscience and cognitive researchers may be partially to blame for encouraging educators and parents to “run after
and do the next best thing,” and apply it
too broadly, says Nathan A. Fox, a distinguished professor and interim chairman
of human development and quantitative
methodology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Take a hot K-12 (school years 1 to 12)
focus like inhibitory control, for instance.
The classic Stanford University “Marshmallow Study,” in which young children
tried to delay gratification in order to
get more treats, showed later benefits
for students who were best able to resist
temptation. But it also showed that the
ability to wait develops naturally with
age, and that 5-year-olds are better
able to hold off for an extra marshmallow than 4-year-olds.
Trying to push that skill earlier has trade-offs, argued Yuko
Munakata, a psychology professor specializing in developmental cognitive neuroscience
at the University of Colorado
at Boulder. “Just because we
can improve inhibitory control
and executive function doesn’t
mean we always want to,” she said at the
International Mind, Brain, and Education Society meeting in Fort Worth,
Texas, in November.
Brain-imaging studies by Munakata
have found 8-year-olds’ brain activity for
impulse control looks “pretty similar to an
adult’s,” but “3 1/2 -year-olds’ [brain activity] seems nothing like adults. They show
no planning; they react in the moment.”
Pushing 3- and 4-year-olds to think
more like adults may “impair statistical
bottom-up learning, like that used to
learn language and social conventions,”
Munakata warned – removing the mental flexibility preschoolers showed in
Gopnik’s study on causal effects.
“The problem is, there’s a misinterpretation: When scientists say, ‘Children are
learning a lot more than we thought,’
people think that looks like what people
do in schools,” Gopnik says. “The message that children are learning and [that]
this is a really critical stage has gotten
through. But people are misinterpreting it to mean that children should be
in scholastic settings earlier and earlier.”
Just as they changed how they viewed
young children’s ability to learn, Ms.
Hirsh-Pasek says researchers and educators may benefit from changing how
they view the goal of early education,
from closing potential achievement gaps
to building students’ intrinsic skills and
motivation to learn.
“What we’ve been doing is teaching
kids how to build the tower,” she says,
“but we are not giving them the context
to explore the ...[other] things they can
do with the blocks.”
I
Words by Barbara Sadick
s sugar making us sick?
A team of scientists at the University of California in
San Francisco believes so, and they’re doing something
about it. They launched an initiative to bring information on food and drink and added sugar to the public by
reviewing more than 8,000 scientific papers that show
a strong link between the consumption of added sugar and
chronic diseases.
The common belief until now was that sugar just makes us
fat, but it’s become clear through research that it’s making us
sick. For example, there’s the rise in fatty-liver disease, the
emergence of Type 2 diabetes as an epidemic in children and
the dramatic increase in metabolic disorders.
Laura Schmidt, a UCSF professor at the School of Medicine
and the lead investigator on the project, SugarScience, said
the idea is to make the findings comprehensible and clear
to everyone. The results will be available to all on a website
(SugarScience.org) and social media platforms like Facebook
and Twitter.
Added sugars, Schmidt said, are sugars that don’t occur naturally in foods. They are found in 74 per cent of all packaged foods,
have 61 names and often are difficult to decipher on food labels.
Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires food
companies to list ingredients on packaging, the suggested daily
values of natural and added sugars can’t be found.
Sugar,
SOURCE OF DISEASE
The FDA is considering a proposal to require
food manufacturers to list information on sugars in
the same way they do for fats, cholesterol, sodium,
carbohydrates and protein. But because so much
added sugar is dumped into so many products, one
average America breakfast of cereal would likely
exceed a reasonable daily limit.
“SugarScience shows that a calorie is not a calorie
but rather that the source of a calorie determines how
it’s metabolised,” said paediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig, a member of the SugarScience team and
the author of Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against
Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease. Lustig
said that more than half of the US population is sick
with metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors for
chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and
liver disease that are directly related to the excessive
consumption of added sugars in the Western diet.
Figures from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention show the category of heart attack/stroke as
the leading cause of death in the United States. Every
day, 2,200 Americans die of cardiovascular disease.
That’s about 800,000 a year, or one in three deaths.
T
he latest statistics from the American Diabetes Association show that 29.1 million Americans, or 9.3 per cent, have diabetes. Of that
number, 21 million have been diagnosed and
8.1 million have not, and the numbers continue to
grow, according to the association.
It doesn’t stop there. The American Liver Foundation says at least 30 million Americans, or 1 in 10,
has one of 100 kinds of liver disease.
Clinicians widely believe that obesity is the cause
of metabolic disease. Although it is a marker for
these diseases, Lustig said, it’s not the cause. “Too
much sugar causes chronic metabolic disease in
both fat and thin people,” he said, “and instead of
focusing on obesity as the problem, we should be
focusing on our processed-food supply.”
The average American consumes 19.5 teaspoons
(78 grams) of sugar a day, substantially more than
the amount recommended by the American Heart
Association. The association sets these limits: 6
teaspoons (24 grams) for women, 9 teaspoons (36
grams) for men, and 3-6 teaspoons (12-24 grams) for
children, depending on age. Just one 12-ounce soda
contains 8 to 9 teaspoons (32-36 grams) of sugar.
Liquid sugar in sodas, energy drinks and sports
drinks is the leading source of added sugar in the
American diet. That represents 36 per cent of all
added sugars consumed, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. And because
liquid does not include fibre, the body processes it
quickly. That causes more sugar to be sent to the
pancreas and liver than either can process properly,
and the resulting build-up of sugar leads to heart
disease, diabetes and liver disease.
Consuming too much sugar causes the level of
glucose sugar in the bloodstream to increase. That,
in turn, causes the pancreas to release high levels of
insulin that cause the body to store extra calories as fat.
Too much insulin also affects the hormone leptin,
a natural appetite suppressant that signals the brain
to stop eating when full. But the imbalance of insulin levels caused by the intake of too much sugar
causes lipid resistance, and the brain no longer gets
that signal.
Another member of the SugarScience team, Dean
Schillinger, is a professor of medicine at UCSF and
a practicing primary care. He believes the overconsumption of added sugars is a social problem, not a
problem of individual choice and freedom.
“People are becoming literate about the toxic
effects of sugar,” Schillinger said, “and have more
understanding of the idea that high doses are bad
for one’s health.” He sees evidence that those in a
higher socioeconomic bracket are taking steps to
LIQUID SUGAR IN SODAS,
ENERGY DRINKS AND SPORTS
DRINKS IS THE LEADING
SOURCE OF ADDED SUGAR
IN THE AMERICAN DIET. THAT
REPRESENTS 36 PER CENT OF
ALL ADDED SUGARS CONSUMED
limit intake of sugar when compared with poorer,
less literate people.
Healthy food is expensive and less readily accessible in poorer neighbourhoods, and because corn
is so abundant and cheap, it is added to many food
products. “Dumping high fructose corn syrup into
cheap foods, sodas, sports drinks and energy drinks
is toxic to the body, causing epidemic metabolic
diseases and a serious health crisis,” Schillinger said.
To underscore the scope of the problem, he pointed
out that during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 1,500
American soldiers lost a limb in combat. In that
same period, 1.5 million people in the US lost limbs
to amputations from Type 2 diabetes, a preventable
disease. “We have yet to mobilize for a public health
war,” he said, “but the time has come to do so.”
Such a war would have to take on the root causes
of the problem. We would need to look at our food
policies, food pricing, availability of healthy foods,
and the marketing being carried out by food and
beverage industries to hook the public on unhealthy
choices loaded with added sugar.
Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, is not
a SugarScience researcher, but he agreed that the
amount of sugar consumed by the American public
is too high. SugarScience, he said, is being helpful
by bringing the information about added sugar to
public attention.
“It’s just about impossible,” Hu said, “to know
DUMPING HIGH FRUCTOSE
CORN SYRUP INTO CHEAP
FOODS, SODAS, SPORTS
DRINKS AND ENERGY
DRINKS IS TOXIC TO THE
BODY, CAUSING EPIDEMIC
METABOLIC DISEASES AND
A SERIOUS HEALTH CRISIS
from food labels what kinds and amounts of sugars
are in a product.” That’s why he thinks the FDA
should require food companies to list those amounts
on all food labels so people know what they’re eating, in what amounts they’re eating it, and what
amounts are safe.
Food labels are important, Schillinger said, and they
need to be revised, but the most important change
needed is to make the healthier choice the easier choice.
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Reese
goes wild
Words by Rebecca Keegan/ LA Times
Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern
find inspiration in their new film
S
etting aside the perky, cute-girl persona
that serves her so well on screen, Reese
Witherspoon brings a gritty, stripped
bare (literally and figuratively) performance to her role as Cheryl Strayed in
the film Wild. An adaptation of Strayed’s
bestselling 2012 memoir of her 1,100-mile
solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, the
film interweaves her struggles in the
wilderness with her recollections of
the painful and often reckless life she’s
leaving behind. Laced through it all are
poignant memories of her mother, Bobbi,
played by Laura Dern. We spoke to Witherspoon and Dern at a recent Envelope
Screening Series event. Here are excerpts
from the conversation.
Reese, you bought this story after reading
it before it was published with your own
money. What was it that motivated you
to do that?
Witherspoon: She sent it to me and I read
it in two days, and I was just in awe of
her writing. I thought her gritty, emotional truth and the way that she spoke so
openly about her past was such a healing
thing. I got to the end and I was like, “I
don’t know who this woman is, but I just
want to hug her.” I feel like I went on that
journey with her. And I called her the
next day and said I would love to turn it
into a movie. And she asked me a lot of
questions, and we talked about it. And
then she called me a couple days later and
said, “I’m going to give you the option.”
What did she ask you? What’d she want
to know?
Witherspoon: She had a lot of things that
she didn’t want it to be.
Like what?
Witherspoon: Well, it’s interesting because
I said, “Why did you send it to me?” and
she said, “Because I know you’re from
somewhere. I know you’re from Tennessee.” And it was really important that it
wasn’t about, like, white-girl problems,
you know? I told her that so many people
in this world have nothing, and that’s
what I really responded to, that you get to
the end of this movie and this woman has
nothing. She has no man and no money
and no parents and no job, and it’s a
happy ending. And that’s extraordinary
in this life because so many people don’t
know where to turn or what resources are
going to lift them up out of their grief or
their despair, and she did this for herself
with nothing. And I felt like it could be
inspirational to other people.
Laura, there’s a scene where Cheryl
says something like it must be hard for
you that I’m so much more sophisticated
than you. It’s one of those conversations,
I think, anybody who’s been a parent or a
kid probably feels some empathy toward.
How much of your own experience as a
mother and as a daughter did you bring
into the role?
Dern: Oh, you know, everything and
so much more. I mean, everything I’ve
experienced and certainly my own love
and good fortune in my relationship
with my mother and all that I’m trying
to figure out as a mother. And, you know,
something Cheryl said that impacted me
so much. In one of these Q&As recently,
she talked about that scene specifically
and the gift of writing the book at this
point in her life because she said, “I lost
my mother before I was the age where
you look back and apologize for the kid
you were, that didn’t know how lucky
you were. So, in a way, my book was my
opportunity to heal that and say that.”
Reese, the opening scene where you throw
the boot is such a beautiful shot and such a
dramatic sequence. Can you tell me where
you guys were and how you shot that?
Witherspoon: It was actually the hardest
sequence to shoot in the film. We were on
top of Mt. Hood in Oregon, and we had
to – we’re already staying at an elevated
hotel, and then we had to take two ski
lifts and then hike for about 30 minutes
with all the equipment, including the
portable toilet that absolutely nobody
used. It was ridiculous. But then we had
to rope ourselves in and walk single file
on this tiny precipice. It was really scary.
Laura, you had a kind of unusual experience in that the little girl who played
young Cheryl is actually Cheryl Strayed’s
daughter whose name is Bobbi. What
was that like?
Dern: It was incredible. First of all, she’s
an amazing person. We were all particularly moved because when Cheryl first
saw Bobbi and I work together, and the
first shot was Jean-Marc wanting her to
run into my arms in the hallway of the
school, Cheryl was standing at the monitor and I think she was stunned by a realization. Later she said, “You know, when
my mother died, one of my thoughts was
she’ll never know her grandchildren if
I have children one day. And here I am
with this experience watching my daughter meet the grandmother I thought she’d
never know, through this storytelling.”
So, it was incredible that every time we
were doing a flashback with her, we all
couldn’t help but consider that for Cheryl.
When we walked in, Reese, we passed
the giant backpack, a sort of display of it,
and you said almost affectionately, “Oh,
Monster.” Do you actually feel affection
for that pack?
Witherspoon: I know it sounds bizarre,
but I do. I miss Monster, I do. The first
couple weeks were horrible and I hated
Monster, and I’d kick it every time, and
I would take it off my back every single
time after he’d say cut. And then after
five weeks I just got so used to it. It was
like an appendage. And you know what’s
funny is Cheryl still has Monster in her
basement. The reason Monster is an exact
replica of her actual backpack is because
she still has it. And she still has all of
her camping gear and all of her cooking
equipment and all of the outfits she wore.
Is there a point at which you will attempt to
re-create any part of this trek on your own?
Witherspoon: It’s so funny. I got home
from the movie and it was about to be my
birthday, and I said to my husband, I was
like, “Jim, you know what we should do
is get the kids and then we’re just going
to go out there to the trails and we’re
just going to do this, you know, just for
seven days, us and the kids.” And he’s
like, “That sounds like the worst idea
I’ve ever heard. Next time right before
your birthday can you do a movie in the
South of France.”
HERS health
Specialized treatment helps
cancer patients to eat
Words by Karen Garloch
A
s a paediatric oncologist, Dr Peter Anderson long ago noticed that, when children
are diagnosed with cancer, parents often
ask what foods or supplements will help during
treatment.
That got him thinking. And he realised it’s not so
much about what to eat as it is about being able to eat.
It’s often difficult for cancer patients to eat because
of mouth sores.
Also called mucositis, this inflammation of the
mucous membranes in the mouth and digestive tract
is a common and painful side effect of chemotherapy
and radiation therapy. And it’s a major reason why
cancer patients don’t get all the nutrition they need.
Anderson started working on the problem in the
early 90s, and last year the physician announced his
solution to the world at an international medical
conference in Toronto.
It’s not a drug or a food. It’s a special mouthwash
called Healios.
Developed by Anderson with multiple collaborators, Healios has been shown to minimize mouth
sores and enable patients to eat enough to keep up
their strength.
Anderson’s interest in the subject goes back about
20 years, when he worked in a bone marrow transplant unit at the University of Minnesota. One day
he noticed that 11 of 12 patients were on morphine
drips because “they had really bad mouth sores.”
When he searched the medical literature to find
out “what makes healing faster,” he learned that
“critically ill patients did better if they had some glutamine.” It’s an amino acid that is “the fuel for your
intestines and the lining of your mouth, just like
glucose is the fuel for your brain,” Anderson said.
But the answer wasn’t as simple as buying gluta-
mine in a health food store. Sprinkling glutamine
on food wouldn’t help if mouth sores made it hard
for a child to chew or swallow.
So Anderson consulted a pharmacist who helped
him develop a sweetened glutamine liquid that was
tested in three randomized, double-blind, placebocontrolled studies. And the results were good.
“There was strong evidence that glutamine in a
good-tasting solution works,” Anderson said. “It
reduced mouth sores.”
And that enabled patients to eat. “If you can maintain your weight, usually you’ll tolerate the other
side effects of chemotherapy better,” Anderson said.
While he was at the Mayo Clinic for 10 years,
Anderson continued testing the product. When one
pharmacist worried the sweet liquid might cause
cavities, they switched from sugar to NutraSweet.
It didn’t work, but it led to an important discovery.
Anderson said they learned that sugar helped
get “100- to 1,000-fold more glutamine into cells”
than NutraSweet. “It took both the sugar and the
glutamine to get the glutamine into the cells,” he
said. “I was a paediatrician trying to make it good
tasting. It was not science. It was serendipity.”
Later, Anderson collaborated with Labrada, a
company that sells nutritional supplements, to
improve the product and get it to market.
“We needed a good-tasting powder that could be
easily stored and shipped,” Anderson said. Instead of
the “messy, sticky solution,” they came up with Healios,
a powder of glutamine and sugars that can be mixed
with water. It comes in orange or grape flavours.
“It tasted better than I thought it ever would,”
said Anderson.
Healios has been on the market since September
2013, according to Alex Rodriguez, a representative
with the Healios Oncology Nutrition.
Rodriguez said the “all-natural product” is sold
directly to patients as well as pharmacies for $49.99
(USD) for a 30-serving supply. It can be purchased
online at www.healiosproducts.com. Anderson,
who holds the patent, does not benefit financially.
The company is just getting started, and Rodriguez
is preparing paperwork to begin selling Healios in
countries other than the States.
Patients who use it are advised to “swish
and swallow” Healios twice a day. To prevent mouth sores, they can start using it
even before they begin treatment.
Valerie Miniex, a dietician, said she has
20 patients with head and neck cancer
who are using Healios, and she’s been
“amazed at the results.”
She learned about it three months ago
from a patient who had used it at M.D.
Anderson. Separately, Miniex said she
had been reading about the effects of glutamine to hasten healing. Miniex said
dry mouth and mouth sores are “major issues” for
patients with head and neck cancer. “We’re always
treating the symptoms. Here was an opportunity
to prevent them.”
Only one of her patients has been unable to tolerate Healios, because of acid reflux, Miniex said.
“That’s huge to get that kind of response. ... It’s such a
problem that we’re all just excited to have something
that is working.”
This fall, Anderson shared the Healios story at the
International Society of Paediatric Oncology Congress, before 1,900 doctors from 92 countries. His
poster presentation was prepared by Katrina Ashlin, a
Davidson College senior who interned with Anderson.
Ashlin, a biology major who plans to become
a dentist, developed educational materials about
Healios and distributed them to nurses and nutritionists, those most likely to work with patients on
treating mouth sores.
Ashlin’s work was paid for by Joedance Film Festival, an event that raises money for research into
rare paediatric cancers. The festival was created in
memory of Joe Restaino, who was 20 when he died
in 2010 of osteosarcoma. Over five years, it has raised
more than $55,000 for Levine Children’s, where
Restaino received some of his care.
His mother, Diane Restaino, said her family is
proud to have sponsored Anderson’s project because
mouth sores were a “very painful side effect for Joe.”
“He couldn’t eat. It was painful for him to even
drink water,” she said. “This would have taken
so much pain away from Joe through all of that
chemotherapy.”
Because Joe died before Anderson arrived, Restaino
hadn’t tried Healios mouthwash when she met with
the doctor. He mixed up a dose and
offered it to Restaino, who took a swallow and declared: “It’s really good.”
“This is a huge deal to know that
you can go right downstairs to get
this,” Diane Restaino said. “It seems
like a small thing, but it will make
a huge difference to a lot of cancer
patients.”
Instead of
the “messy,
sticky
solution,”
they came up
with Healios,
a powder of
glutamine
and sugars
that can be
mixed with
water
HERS althealth
Ignore predictions of gloom
Words by Wendy Orent
P
rophets of doom have been telling us for
decades that a deadly new pandemic – of
bird flu, of SARS or MERS coronavirus, and
now of Ebola – is on its way. Why are we still listening?
If you look back at the furore raised at many distinguished publications – Nature, Science, Scientific
American, National Geographic – back in, say, 2005,
about a potential bird flu (H5N1) pandemic, you
wonder what planet they were on. Nature ran a
special section titled – “Avian flu: Are we ready?”
– that began, ominously, with the words “Trouble
is brewing in the East” and went on to present a
mock aftermath report detailing catastrophic civil
breakdown.
Robert Webster, a famous influenza virologist,
told ABC News in 2006 that “society just can’t accept
the idea that 50 percent of the population could
die. And I think we have to face that possibility.”
Public health expert Michael T. Osterholm of the
University of Minnesota, at a meeting in Washington of scientists brought together by the Institute
of Medicine, warned in 2005 that a post-pandemic
commission, like the post-9/11 commission, could
hold “many scientists ... accountable to that commission for what we did or didn’t do to prevent a
pandemic.” He also predicted that we could be facing
“three years of a given hell” as the world struggled
to right itself after the deadly pandemic. And Laurie Garrett, author of what must be the urtext for
pandemic predictions, her 1994 book “The Coming
Plague,” intoned in Foreign Affairs that “in short,
doom may loom.” Although she followed that with,
“But note the may,” the article went on to paint a
terrifying picture of the avian flu threat nonetheless.
And such hysteria still goes on: Whether it’s over
the MERS coronavirus, a whole alphabet of chicken
flu viruses, a real but not very deadly influenza pandemic in 2009, or a kerfuffle like the one in 2012 over
a scientist-crafted ferret flu that also was supposed
to be a pandemic threat. Along the way, virologist Nathan Wolfe published The Viral Storm: The
Dawn of a New Pandemic Age, and David Quammen
warned in his gripping Spillover that some new animal plague could arise from the jungle and sweep
across the world.
And now there’s Ebola. Osterholm, in a widely
read op-ed in the New York Times in September,
wrote about the possibility that scientists were afraid
to mention publicly the danger they discuss privately: that Ebola “could mutate to become transmissible through the air.” “The Ebola epidemic in West
Africa has the potential to alter history as much as
any plague has ever done,” he wrote. And Garrett
wrote in Foreign Policy, “Attention, World: You just
don’t get it.” She went on to say, “Wake up, fools,”
because we should be more frightened of a potential
scenario like the one in the movie Contagion, in
which a lethal, fictitious pandemic scours the world,
nearly destroying civilization.
But there were fewer takers this time. Osterholm’s
claims about Ebola going airborne were discounted
by serious scientists, and Garrett seemingly retracted
her earlier hysteria about Ebola by claiming that,
after all, evolution made such spread unlikely.
The scientific world has changed since 2005. Now,
most scientists understand that there are significant
physical and evolutionary barriers to a blood- and
fluid-borne virus developing airborne transmission,
as Garrett has acknowledged. Though Ebola virus
has been detected in human alveolar cells, as Vincent Racaniello, virologist at Columbia University,
explained to me, that doesn’t mean it can replicate in
the airways enough to allow transmission. “Maybe...
the virus can get in, but can’t get out. Like a roach
motel,” wrote Racaniello in an email.
H5N1, we understand now, never went airborne
because it attached only to cell receptors located
deep in human lungs, and could not, therefore,
be coughed or sneezed out. SARS, or severe acute
respiratory syndrome, caused local outbreaks after
multiple introductions via air travel but spread only
sluggishly and mostly in hospitals. Breaking its
chains of transmission ended the outbreak globally.
There probably will always be significant barriers
preventing the easy adaptation of an animal disease to the human species. Furthermore, Racaniello insists that there are no recorded instances of
We need to stop
listening to the
doomsayers,
and we need
to do it now.
Predictions of
lethal pandemics
have always
been wrong
viruses that have adapted to
humans, changing the way
they are spread.
So we need to stop listening to the doomsayers, and
we need to do it now. Predictions of lethal pandemics have
– since the swine flu fiasco of
1976, when President Ford
vowed to vaccinate “every
man, woman and child in the
United States” – always been wrong. Fear-mongering wastes our time and our emotions and diverts
resources from where they should be directed – in
the case of Ebola, to the ongoing tragedy in West
Africa. Americans have all but forgotten about Ebola
now, because most people realize it isn’t coming to
a school or a shopping mall near you. But Sierra
Leoneans and Liberians go on dying.
HERS boutique
Monster created the World’s
thinnest, lightest and most versatile
headphone for athletes. This was
made possible by the integration of
an innovative flat battery and folded
circuit design. It is joined by the
iSPORT Bluetooth Wireless, which
also brings the powerful Monster
music listening experience to
virtually any tough workout routine.
www.monsterproducts.com
Come out and play with Lancome’s
gorgeously hydrating lipstick, Rouge
in Love. Combine vibrant colour with
a feather-light texture that lasts up
to 6 hours. Choose from 24 colours
to achieve a look you love – from
natural to sophisticated. Let your
lipcolour show your mood.
www.lancome.co.uk
This high-precision mascara
achieves instant volume and
intensely lush colour in a single
stroke. Its innovative formula
expands, plumping lashes to
their fullest. The exclusive new
‘Snowflakes’ brush combines long
and short bristles to deliver an
extreme, eye-opening effect.
www.chanel.com
PartyLite is continuing its exciting collaboration with
iconic potter, designer and author Jonathan Adler with
an all-new collection. The Safari Chic Collection will
encourage candle lovers all over the globe to explore
their wild side. Jonathan’s Safari Chic Collection for
PartyLite features pieces inspired by his iconic animal
sculptures. The Lion Votive Holder, Zebra Tealight
Holder, Elephant Tealight Holder and Elephant Candle
Holder have shapes that radiate modern style.
www.partylite.eu
Galatea gives Momento jewelry its voice by implanting
an NFC chip deep inside the pearl. The tiny computer
runs without a battery by induction energy. When
the Galatea app is downloaded, the user records a
message or uploads an audio file. By tapping the pearl
against an NFC-enabled mobile device, the audio
is played and other digital material displayed. From
words of love and encouragement to wedding vows
and Biblical passages, the emotional connections the
Momento Pearl can make are truly endless.
www.galateausa.com
Yes, it’s official. Beach Blonde favorites are
back on shelves. The John Frieda Hair Care
Experts, the first to bring you innovative
products for that “beachy” style years ago,
couldn’t ignore your demands. So say hello,
once again, to wondrous windswept waves,
brighter, beachier texture and ocean-fresh
scents – all year round.
www.johnfrieda.com
Rogue Love by Rihanna captures that
moment when love first hits you
with a wild rush that goes through
your whole body. Delicious fruits
tempt your senses with notes of
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HERS beauty
Don’t let the psychology
of colour psyche you out
Words by Debra D. Bass
E
very year Pantone crowns a colour of the
year, the inevitable deluge of press releases
about suitably hued products is unleashed.
You’d think that factories were hushed and poised
at a standstill waiting for the official decree so that
they could douse vast amounts of shoes, handbags,
denim, lingerie, watches, jewellery and home furnishings with the annual tincture.
The colour is Marsala, in case you haven’t heard.
Not the Indian cooking variety but a richer, cabernet version.
Pantone doesn’t just chart colour, it aims to “study
how colour influences human thought processes,
emotions and physical reactions.”
And the colour authority makes the argument that
Radiant Orchid, 2014’s colour of the year, encouraged creativity and innovation, whereas, “Marsala
enriches our mind, body and soul, exuding confidence and stability,” according to a statement by
Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone
Colour Institute.
That seems like a lot to ask of a new skirt, but
we are all aware that there is a science to colour,
or rather a science devoted to our perception of
colour. However, the influence of colour is heavily
influenced by culture.
Why is pink girly? A century ago, it was acceptable for both male and female infants, children
and adults. It was neutral, not just in a “real men
can wear pink” sort of way, but legitimately gender
neutral. Not today.
Colour affects all of us differently,
and it can depend on our history,
our eyesight, our heritage or
simply our vantage point
There’s a reason you feel comfort in blue if you’re
from a Western culture, but if you’re from an Eastern
society, you’d find more solace in yellows and reds.
Colour affects all of us differently, and it can
depend on our history, our eyesight, our heritage
or simply our vantage point. It is only our perception of the reflection of light after all. That’s why
some people find bright colours too stimulating
and others prefer them.
A room of boisterous elementary-school children might be perfectly at home in a bright room
of primary colours, but a roomful of office workers
would probably demand softer bulbs and a subdued
wall colour, but those people don’t work at Google.
Colour affects mood in nebulous ways. Is the
girl walking toward you in the bright yellow dress
happier or does she just appear so? Does seeing
her make you happier and maybe you’re projecting
that onto her? Would she have selected that dress
from her closet today if she was in foul mood? And
would someone who isn’t happy by nature buy a
bright yellow dress?
The answers are debatable and not so important
as the questions. Colour is what you make it, but
that doesn’t mean that it is a small matter.
A few people called Mark Zuckerberg a little bit
sexist when he said that he paid minimal attention
to his clothing because such frivolous decisions only
distracted from his plans for world domination ...
um ... I mean from how to best serve the community. Meanwhile, Marissa Mayer, the chief executive
officer of Yahoo!, is famously a clothes aficionado.
Although there are reports that her job is not as
secure as her fashion prowess.
Zuckerberg explained his lacklustre clothing choice
at a Q&A session at his Facebook headquarters in
Silicon Valley. He said he selected the personal uniform of a grey T-shirt and denim to conserve mental
energy. And apparently, it’s really working for him.
He also said little decisions like what to eat for breakfast or lunch can all chip away at efficiency.
But some would argue, and I’m going to raise
my hand here, that forcing them into a drab rote
uniform day in and day out would be the epitome
of soul-crushing, energy-deflating monotony.
When I asked Dacy Gillespie, a local wardrobe
consultant who writes the Mindful Closet blog,
to corroborate that Zuckerberg is wrong, she said
instead that he has a point. Many of her clients,
who hate the daily anxiety of finding something to
wear, breathe a sigh of relief when she gives them
permission to adopt a self-selected uniform.
You don’t say.
“I advise people to not be too adventurous with
their clothing,” Gillespie said. “I really think it’s a
way to reduce the stress of getting dressed when you
stick to certain colours. There’s no reason to force
yourself into something that isn’t you.”
So my tangerine skirt and yellow sweater ensemble
might not be for you.
Wardrobe stylist and consultant Latoya Elnora
said people get themselves into trouble trying to
emulate others instead of figuring out what style
elevates their personal appearance best.
“Even if you are in a lower-level position, that
doesn’t mean the naked eye knows that,” she said
noting that people look at you as a package to get
their first impression. Most won’t notice the brand
name of your dress or suit or even the colour if it’s
not off-putting, but they’ll get a feeling about you.
Some feelings are magnified by colour and some
feelings are magnified by your persona.
Ultimately, the colour you feel most comfortable,
confident or happy in is going to be the best colour
for you. So if you prefer the Fuchsia Rose of 2001,
the Chili Pepper of 2007, the Emerald of 2012 or
any shade in between over this year’s Marsala, no
colour institute can dictate that.
HERS cuisine
Of molecules and Marx
James Morrow looks at the new arms race in the kitchen
L
ike genetic engineering and climate change,
“molecular gastronomy” is little more than
a post-modern scientific gloss on a phenomenon that has been occurring for ages. Just have
temperatures have swung north and south since
long before the Industrial Revolution, man has
been tinkering with the genes of the plants and
animals he consumes.
That summer corn you enjoy slathered in salt and
butter? It was developed thousands of years ago by
North American Indians, the product of work and
experimentation to modify the genes and domesticate
a crop that in its previous form was inedible.
Likewise the estimated 24 billion chickens pecking and scratching their way around their little
patches of the planet at any given moment are only
the efficient (if noisy) little producers of eggs and
meat they are because of ancient husbandry – or
as the headline-writers would have it, “genetic
modification”.
Molecular gastronomy must be looked at in much
the same historical context. While the term was
only popularised by a pair of European scientists
in the 1980s, and went on to become a household
term with foodies everywhere when tales began to
emerge of a little restaurant called El Bulli in a hardto-reach corner of Spain whose chef Ferran Adria
was the whispered high priest of this dark alchemy,
the use of scientific terminology to describe kitchen
processes dates back at least to 17th century France.
And indeed there is no reason why scientific
principles should not be taken into account in the
kitchen. For in many ways, the kitchen is just one
big chemistry lab: Heats, acids, pressures are applied,
liquids are transformed into solids and vice versa,
microscopic particles managed, all in the service
of a result.
This has been going on since the beginning of
time.
One need not resort to post-modern methods to
perform clever chemical tricks. Some of the items on
the current menu at London’s Fat Duck restaurant,
another temple of molecular gastronomy, include
“Hot and Iced Tea”, “Nitro-Scrambled Bacon and
Egg Ice Cream”, and “Radish Ravioli of Oysters”.
Now the Fat Duck is thought to be one of the
best restaurants in the world, and its chef Heston
Blumenthal, is one of the cleverest chefs alive today
– complete with an OBE to prove it.
For the home chef, however, such cooking is really
taking place in another level of the troposphere. I
prefer a more down to earth approach. Menu items
should not sound like Kevin Rudd soundbites, full
of clever terminology and non sequiturs, signifying nothing.
Rather, keep things simple. One of my favourite
phenomena is the practice of cooking without heat,
something that is particularly pleasant in summer.
Instead of fire, acid or some other agent performs
the molecular transformations that take place in
cooking.
Centuries ago – history does not relate when the
practice began – locals of northern Peru stared
cooking fish with the juice of citrus fruits, particularly limes, lemons and oranges. This quick cooking
method sees the proteins of the fish “denatured”,
which is exactly what happens when any flesh is
cooked. The resulting dish is known as “ceviche”
or “cebiche”, and can be replicated with just about
any fish as well as scallops, octopus or squid, though
most commonly it is prepared with thin strips of
white-fleshed fish.
Meanwhile, on literally the other side of the
world, Scandinavians have cooked their own fish
by burying it in salt. Here the salt performs the
same function as the citrus, denaturing the proteins
and essentially cooking it – though what results is
a drier preparation known as gravalax.
What’s the point of all this? Simply that the whole
notion of molecular gastronomy is creating something of an artificial divide. Over the past two decades
home chefs have become increasingly sophisticated in
terms of skills, knowledge and equipment, blurring
the line between amateur and professional. Molecular
gastronomy is a natural reaction to this phenomenon,
creating a creeping credentialism that once again
affirms the position of elite chefs while forcing the rest
of us into an arms race of equipment and knowledge.
Despite this seemingly Marxist analysis, it need
not be that way. Every time you cook, you are knowingly or not, employing principles of science, physics and chemistry. Try some gravlax or ceviche at
your next dinner party and secure your place in the
culinary nomenklatura.
And indeed there is no
reason why scientific
principles should not be
taken into account in
the kitchen. For in many
ways, the kitchen is just
one big chemistry lab
Salad Of Gravalax
With Oysters In Tempura Batter
(Adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s Passion for Seafood)
You’ll need:
For the oysters:
1 side fresh salmon
(whole filet), about 1 kg
75 g rock salt
25 g caster sugar
2 tbsp coarsely ground black
pepper
75g fresh dill
3 tbsp olive oil and sherry
vinaigrette mixed with 1 tsp
honey and 1 tsp coarse-grained
mustard
300g mixed salad leaves
18 rock oysters
80 g self-raising flour
+ 3 tsbp for dusting
1 egg yolk
2 egg whites
Olive, groundnut or sunflower
oil for frying
Sea salt
Method:
1. Skin the salmon and lay in a long, narrow dish (you may need
to cut in half to do this.
2. Mix together the rock salt, sugar and pepper. Finely chip the
dill stalks and about 1/3 of the leaves and mix with the seasoning, reserving the rest of the dill. Press half the mix firmly on the
fish, turn over and repeat. Wrap tightly in cling film, place into the
dish and weigh down with a plate – taking care not to crush the
fish. Chill in the fridge for 24 hours.
3. Drain off the liquid from the dish. Rinse off the seasoned coating
with cold water and pat dry. Sprinkle the reserved dill on the salmon
and re-wrap, then chill for at least three more hours.
4. Using a long sharp knife cut wafer-thin slices from the fish,
starting at the tail end. Lay slices on a clean tray.
5. To prepare the oysters, sift the flour into a small bowl. Gradually
beat in the egg yolk and 150ml cold water until you have a smooth
batter. Whish the egg whites in a clean mixing bowl until firm, white
and glossy. Using a large metal spoon, fold the whites into the batter, making sure they are evenly incorporated.
6. Mix the 3 tablespoons of flour with ½ teaspoon of salt. Toss the
oysters into the coating mixture one by one, shaking off any excess.
7. Mix the vinaigrette and toss with the salad leaves. Make mounds
of the dressed salad in the centre of each of six serving plates.
Surround the salad with slices of gravalax.
8. Just before serving, pour 2cm of oil into a deep, heavy pan and
heat until a cube of bread browns in about 30 seconds. Dip each
oyster into the foamy part of the batter, then gently lay into the
oil. Fry for about one minute, turning, until the coating turns just
golden brown. As the oysters are finished, drain, then arrange on
top of the salad and serve straight away.
Serves 6.
HERS travel
A walk around
Lake Como
Words by Doug Oster
S
ilvia Givera is standing on the picturesque
bank of Lake Como. She winds up, underhand, to throw a tennis ball to her dog Diego.
The dog stands transfixed until the ball sails far
out into the lake, and then he happily swims after
it. He brings it back but is reluctant to return it to
Givera. Eventually she gets the ball and the two
walk back to Bar il Golfo in town. She helps run
this place, which serves traditional Italian fare.
The view of the lake is stunning from the restaurant, and it’s hard to fathom spending every day
surrounded by such beauty.
I had just stepped off a water taxi after visiting
the amazing topiary gardens of Villa Balbianello
and walked past Bar il Golfo on my way to meet
my family, in Italy on a parallel trip. While I took 32
people through the gardens of Venice, Lake Como
and Lake Maggiore, my family used Como as its
base to explore Switzerland, the towns around the
lake and, most important, connect with relatives
near the Austrian border.
When we met in Lenno, my family had already
walked more than two miles from the Grand Hotel
Tremezzo on the Greenway del lago di Como (Lake
Como Greenway). It’s a 10-kilometer trail, a little
more than six miles, that winds through neighborhoods and small towns from Cadenabbia south to
Colonno in this part of northern Italy.
Of all the remarkable things I saw on my 10-day
trip in September, this was one of my most treasured
memories. People always say to get off the beaten
path while visiting Italy, and it paid off for us in
every way.
The greenway is well marked with metal emblems
embedded into the trail and bright blue and yellow
signs above. We had a few missteps and wrong turns
but always found our way on the trail.
We started our walk by a couple of small restaurants and behind industrial businesses. Our first
surprise was a rocky slope filled with pink begonias
cascading down a rock wall. The second was the sight
of a beautiful maid working inside a home. Once
we tore our son away, we were back on our hike.
Before long, we stumbled onto a little lakeside boat
launch several yards off the trail. The lake was calm,
and we stood there for a few minutes to soak in another
sweet view of the water and surrounding hills.
We continued through narrow cobblestone pathways flanked by stone walls punctuated by open
shutters and window boxes filled with geraniums,
ferns and other plants.
As we rounded a corner in Ossuccio we were
struck by an odd looking home, filled with art and
a sign saying “free entrance.” I wasn’t sure about
going in, but my son led the way.
As we opened the door, Felippo Salice sat watching television. He rose and greeted us with a great
smile. His home was filled with a cornucopia of odd
treasures for sale. He didn’t speak English, but my
wife, Cindy, is pretty good with Italian, and they
were able to communicate. The walls were filled with
photos of him as a young man, with other family
members and even walking in a church processional.
After we talked for a while, Salice opened another
door, which led to even more interesting items. My
wife bought an old crucifix from 1950, and I purchased a crazy-looking little bronze face, which
might have been at the front of someone’s home. As
we bid Salice goodbye; we felt we had experienced
something interesting and special.
We crossed a street and eventually came upon the
faded frescos of San Giacomo, a church that dates
to at least the 11th century. As we looked around
the outside we were treated to another spectacular
view of the lake. Standing on a narrow, overhanging walkway we could see big fish swimming at the
bottom through the crystal clear water.
The trail ascended and as we climbed we passed an
abandoned estate, where we briefly had an “Under
the Tuscan Sun” moment. We thought better,
though, of following in the Frances Mayes character’s footsteps and renovating an old villa. We took
a breather at a small, cool waterfall that meandered.
There were warm greenish purple figs hanging from
trees for tasty snacks.
As we reached the summit and began to descend,
we were greeted with a hard-to-beat view of the bell
tower of Chiesa di Sant’Andrea in Sala Comacina.
I always recall George Clooney’s comments about
Lake Como and why he chose to live here. One day he
watched as workmen headed for home singing, each
with a lunch pail and bottle of wine in hand. As we
approached two men pouring concrete one whistled
a tune as he worked on a modest trailside home.
At the bottom, we were desperate for a bathroom break. Two Australians and their Italian
friend pointed us toward the ferry home and also
a bathroom.
We had to hike back to Sala Comacina for both,
which was about a 20-minute walk. “It’s not safe,” I
yelled to the family as I looked at the narrow berm
and tiny, speeding Italian cars flying by. “This is
how they do it,” my wife screamed and off we went,
stopping to peer around curves, running to the next
safe spot. We found what we needed at Enoteca
Wine Bar.
Alessandra Carminati was preparing the bar for
patrons and was happy to allow us in for a bathroom break and point my wife in the direction of
the ferry stop.
The printed ferry schedule at the dock confounded
us. Two women sitting nearby tried to help. They
didn’t speak English, but my wife was able to ascertain that there was no ferry going north to Tremezzo
where they were staying and only one more going
south to my hotel in Moltrasio.
They learned of a bus headed north, and we parted
ways. Since I had 1 ½ hours to kill before my ferry,
I headed back to the Enoteca bar, where Carminati
poured me a large beer and made me a nice plate
of meat and cheese.
As we talked, she told me of her love of Italy. How
she lived out of the country for a time but longed to
return home. She wondered what I thought of Italy,
and when I told her of my unending love for the
country she flashed a sweet smile and opened up,
telling me where all the food on my plate came from.
“The cow cheese is from up there,” she gestured
toward a steep hill. Each bite was better than the last,
and as she poured me another beer, one of her friends
stuck in traffic yelled and waved to her through the
open front door. “Alessandra,” he screamed, which
made her smile again. Her grandmother came in
to sit for a bit and then her grandfather, who runs
the nearby Grand Hotel Victoria. Another friend
came in for a small beer and some cheese.
The two of us talked for 45 minutes – about tourists, food and her long journey on a bike to and
from work each day. Despite our brief time together,
we connected in the way that’s hard to explain. In
another life, we’d be friends. It’s one of the beautiful
things about traveling, stumbling upon a person
and place like this.
“Will I see you again, maybe next year?” she
asked. I didn’t have the heart to tell her we’d probably never meet again.
As the ferry slowly crossed the lake, I thought of
Carminati and how her kindness had saved us that
day. I couldn’t get her sweet smile out of my head.
It embodied what Italy is all about.
HERS music
Lana Del Rey on
‘Big Eyes’ success
Words by Lorraine Ali
S
pooky midcentury paintings of big-eyed
children and the equally twisted tale of the
artist behind them are at the centre of Tim
Burton’s new film, Big Eyes. The true yet surreal
story of painter Margaret Keane also resonates
throughout the film’s evocative title track by
singer Lana Del Rey. The haunting song, “Big
Eyes,” now nominated for a Golden Globe, is a
natural fit for Del Rey, a chart-topping pop artist
who is often noted for her cinematic style.
Case in point: Her last album, “Ultraviolence,”
is named after A Clockwork Orange reference and
her contributions to other soundtracks, such
as Maleficent and The Great Gatsby, feel more
like extensions of Del Rey’s own work than side
projects. The 29-year-old (real name Elizabeth
Woolridge Grant) spoke about working with
Burton, her love of the surreal and what it’s like
to think in pictures.
In film as with your own records, your aesthetic is
so beautifully melancholy. Is making music a sad
endeavour for you?
(Laughs.) No, I really enjoy it. Making a record –
it’s where all the fun is. When I’m done, it’s like,
oh, God. I kind of go into mourning.
Wow. I would have never expected you to use the
adjective “fun” when describing the process.
Sad is happy to me. I love it. When I write something bittersweet, I smile. That’s why I like Tim
Burton. His world has that kind of foundation too.
So you’re a Burton fan?
I am a huge fan. I love Edward Scissorhands. But
it was Harvey Weinstein who wanted me to work
on this. He asked six month ago if I would do a
title track, then during editing he wanted one more
song for the end. That ended up being “I Can Fly.”
is in my imagination, so having a movie like this
makes it easy to go there. I can imagine another
layer, what happened to Margaret (Keane, the artist
Your sound is so noirish and visual. Is the process played by Amy Adams), how excited she was in the
similar when making your own music as opposed to beginning, how she thought she found a father for
a film track?
her daughter. And it turned out to be a nightmare.
Definitely. I can see it and I can hear it. I’m work- It’s a great story to build a song around.
ing on a new record now, and I have this one song,
“Music to Watch Boys To.” The title lends itself to a Right. A compelling film score should not just be
visual of shadows of men passing by, this girl’s eyes, echoing what you see in a film; it should, in fact, add
her face. I can definitely see things.
another layer.
This film has great imagery thanks to those sau- For me, the melody should also tell its own story.
cer-eyed paintings, but it’s also this harrowing story Whether it’s minor or major, whether you choose to
of a woman deceived by her husband. He essentially use a violin or a flute. In The Godfather, so many of
claims he’s the painter of the portraits, and for years those little cues were just a horn or a violin. Think
the world believes him.
about the mood of the film ... there was a reason
When writing music, my favourite place to travel why the music was so solitary.
Now your title track has a Globe nomination, competing with contemporaries like John Legend and Lorde.
I grew up watch the Oscars and Golden Globes, but I
don’t really remember the best song category having
a lot of contemporary artists in it. But maybe it’s
just me because I’m more about scores.
What are some favourites?
Thomas Newman’s score for American Beauty. I
remember the first time I saw the film, the score is
the first thing you hear. I loved it. Or the cues that
Nino Rota did for The Godfather or Giorgio Moroder
for Cat People. I loved writing for movies because I
love anything that makes you dream. I still watch
movies to dream.
Daniel Heath produced and co-wrote “Big Eyes” with
you. He’s been a longtime collaborator.
Yes! (Laughs.) Dan was my first boyfriend’s best
friend. Back then he was doing cues for reality television – the shows were terrible, but his work was
beautiful. I said, “You’ve got to work with me on
real records. The songwriting is simple: intro, verse
one, a chorus, which repeats three times. The bridge
is separate from everything else.” That was all he
needed to hear to start sending me amazing compositions. He did the title track for “Ultraviolence”
for me. He adds a lot of cinema to my sound.
I grew up watch the Oscars and Golden
Globes, but I don’t really remember
the best song category having a lot of
contemporary artists in it. But maybe it’s
just me because I’m more about scores
HERS readit
Fatal attack by guinea pigs
Words by Michael Morrissey
THE FREE RANGE COOK: THROUGH THE SEASONS
By Annabel Langbein
Annabel Media Publishing, $60.00
Annabel Langbein? Yes, the name is familiar to me
for two reasons: firstly, while I personally hate cooking, I am very interested in relating to the result(s)
and my wife tells me my burgeoning tummy is proof
that I am telling the whole truth and nothing but
the truth; secondly, Annabel is a former student of
mine from the Waiheke Summer Writing School
of the 1980s. Obviously, since she is now my most
successful student by a galactic mile, I am entitled
to claim most, if not all, the credit. Without the
Waiheke Summer Writing School – founded and
run by myself – and now securely lodged in her
inner psychic curriculum vitae, Annabel would still
be cooking over an open fire, trapping possums in
the Ureweras, trawling for eels and jumping out of
helicopters to recover live deer. I assume she does
this with a parachute but I could well be wrong – it
depends how close the helicopter is to the ground.
Well, I am kidding, but not entirely. Annabel
Langbein is the Nigella Lawson (blonde version)
of New Zealand and is, one has to say, devastatingly successful. What Peter Jackson is to NZ film,
Annabel is to New Zealand cuisine: world famous.
Brace yourself for a dazzle of brutal statistics: she has
written and published 21 cook
books; in 2013, she won three
of the six main honours of the
New Zealand Guild of Food –
Best Book, Best TV Series and
Best Website; (one could add
best smile and speaking voice).
Her books have been translated
into multiple languages and sold
two million copies; named by the
NZ Beekeepers Association as
the official ambassador for New
Zealand bees (and I don’t mean
buzzy bees but the real winged
ones); her programme, the Free
Range Cook, was launched on TV One and now goes
to 90 countries – that’s nearly half the countries in
the world! And her recipes concentrate on healthy,
seasonal, home-grown organic food (with a few
luscious sugary exceptions); she and husband Ted
Hewetson – he proposed three times before she said
yes! – own a nine-hectare property on the shores
of Lake Wanaka; Annabel and her husband have
transformed the boggy wilderness into a gardener’s
paradise. And to cap it all, Annabel remains the
nicest person in the universe (let’s not get carried
away – the solar system).
Annabel began her cuisine career making croissants in the tiny Brazilian town of Buzios which was
part of a two year stint in South America without
a possum in sight. I’ll confess I am curious as to
her views on roast guinea pig (the South American
equivalent of a small but very cute chicken). However,
I have the feeling that a dish of roast guinea pig would
incurably wreck her ratings. We prefer our guinea
pigs as cute pets, not as table fodder. Ask yourself
when did you last read of a fatal attack by a guinea
pig on crack?
But it’s not all tea and crumpets (not that Annabel
would ever offer a recipe for something as unhealthy
as a crumpet… though she has compromised with
banana cake (more on that later). Though she is
an ace (of hearts) in the kitchen, Annabel can play
trumps in real life. A fall off a horse resulted in a
four month stay in hospital, with a badly crushed
spine and seven broken ribs. She was given a five
per cent chance of walking again. She took the five
per cent bet and is now back walking.
Time for comment on the recipes? The idea of me
cooking one is on a par with expecting a giant kauri
snail with rheumatoid arthritis to win an Olympian
marathon. However, I was lucky enough to have
my sister-in-law and her cousin staying at the time
I received Annabel’s book – that means that out
of the four people in the house, three were glued
to the screen every time Annabel’s Saturday night
programme screened. And don’t forget they – my
wife, sister-in-law and cousin – were all kitchen
capable. So we tried out some of the dishes.
We started with Israeli couscous with currants
and mint and I was amazed at the size and the
deliciousness of what looked like soft albino ball
bearings. Apparently the recipe works well with
regular couscous, farro or barley. I forgot to mention
I don’t actually know what couscous is (though I am
reasonably sure it has nothing to do with kiss-kiss).
As for farro, all I can bring to mind is Farro Faucett
Majors. Then we tried one-pot lumberjack cake.
Now I’m not sure what lumberjacks have to do with
this splendid concoction though Annabel has more
than a touch of the lumberjack (she can jump out of
helicopters carrying spiced orange cream caramels)
but I enjoyed the cake (being as sweet-toothed as a
baby, I like most cakes).
Be patient dear reader, the best is yet to come. Here
it is: The Ultimate Banana Cake with Passionfruit
Honey Frosting. Oh dear. My taste buds start to
saliva like a child in a lolly shop. The picture was so
enticing I felt like clipping it out and hanging it up
on the kitchen wall. Regrettably, neither my wife,
sister-in-law or cousin are the cake-eating type. The
quasi food-porn description goes thus: To make Passionfruit Honey Frosting beat (or is it spank? Can’t
be – it’s against the law!) together butter, honey,
vanilla, passionfruit or lemon and icing sugar until
light and fluffy (2-3) minutes. Spread evenly over the
cooled cake. (Sounds cool!) Store iced or uniced (why
would it be UN-iced?) cake in a sealed container in
a cool place for 2-3 days. Or freeze.
Annabel, I don’t think your magic formula is
going to work for me. Once the cake comes out of the
fridge, sorry oven, I won’t be able to wait for several
days. I’ll probably have to go on a short holiday to
kill off my greedy appetite for all things sweet but
I when I return to consume a slice of your ultimate
banana cake, I am sure the wait will be more than
worth it. When I said I can’t cook, I was fibbing. I
am reasonably adroit at hard boiling an egg – though
that humble dish is (alas) not present in Annabel’s
handsome lavishly illustrated tome which I am sure
will sell like one-pot lumberjack cakes.
WOMEN IN CLOTHES
By Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits,
Leanne Shapton & 639 others
Particular Books, $50.00
Had enough of women’s magazines with their absurdly
gorgeous models, revealing necklines and lusciously
long legs? Isn’t it insufferable when they’re famous as
well? This book should cure all that. It has clothes and
models though not a single even half way suggestive
or naughty picture. (Correction: there are 30 pairs of
black cotton underwear in sterile little boxes on p446
though they wouldn’t tempt anyone.)
To rub the point in, as it were, it has a pictorial
page of safety pins, some so
small that an initial glance
suggests most of the boxes in
the diagram are safety pinless. Surely, this is fetishising
the small. Should one need a
magnifying glance to examine an illustration? No – but
you will one, because every
page is shrunken to Lilliputian size. A nearly blank page
must rate rather low on the
scale of visual stimulation.
Page 2 has sixteen pictures
of over-the knee-socks. How
charming! If this turns you
on, you are a lost cause.
In others words, this is a pretentious and portentous book
designed to appeal to aggressive female intellectuals
(and a few male ones as well) who like to disdain the
images of glamour that we aspire to despise but are
secretly tempted by. I repeat – you will look in vain for
temptation here. This book is as dry as mummy dust,
though the pictures do have a miniaturised charm
like the more soulful and more skilful photographic
versions in Granta magazine. This is a serious book
about serious matters like women executives not
wearing too loud a print when interviewing billionaires – rather obvious, I would have thought. Then
there’s the name “Jeans” scrawled out 29 times in
three columns with one of them crossed out! Wow!
Maybe she wasn’t wearing her jeans.
Nearly all the pictures have that dried out, desiccated intellectually sterile look of installation art.
Shallowness paraded as profundity. Page 218 hits
the low point of taste. Composed by editor Leanne
Shapton, it is subtitled, “Various Women’s Stains”. I
know what you’re thinking. The captions cover such
profundities as “tomato soup on shirt” “mascara on
pillowcase’ and the crowning glory must be, “ blood
on underpants”. Every stain is the same colour – a
rather unpleasant excremental brown. I think we
should leave it there.
This book is as dry as mummy
dust, though the pictures do
have a miniaturised charm
like the more soulful and more
skilful photographic versions
in Granta magazine
HERS seeit
What happened
to Bruce?
Words by Roger Moore
B
ruce Willis has aged into a fit, bald menace,
a character actor best-suited to chewy supporting parts in ensemble action pictures.
“Has been?” Maybe. He should be looking at cable
TV scripts.
Thomas Jane, on the other hand, is a never-was,
or never-quite was. The Punisher was something of a
high water mark for the grizzled Jane, an actor forevertopped by a long, greasy mop of hair, a player doomed
to play an endless procession of unshaven cops.
But he is every bit as good as Willis when it comes
to delivering a one-liner with panache. Check out
Roy, his cop trying to track down an escaped “artificial,” a flesh-and-blood clone/robot used as fodder
for sex and violence fantasies at the pricey new resort
“Vice,” which Julian Michaels
(Willis) runs.
VICE
“You wanna make it to bed
Cast: Thomas Jane, Bruce Willis,
tonight, do what I ask,” Jane,
Ambyr Childers, Jonathan Schaech
as Roy, growls.
Directed by: Brian A. Miller
“I know, I know, you’re in
Running time: 96 mins
love with a robot,” he snarls
Rating: TBA
at another guy with feelings
G
for an automaton.
And as that robot, a perky
blonde bartender, Kelly (Ambyr Childers, nothing
special), who often is raped, beaten and killed on
“your last night here” as part of clients’ sick fantasies,
finds the guy who designed her, Roy, has a zinger
all loaded up and ready to go.
“It’s not every day one gets to meet his maker!”
Vice is a low-budget thriller that borrows heavily
from Blade Runner and Westworld, and serves as an
answer to the question “How much sci-fi can you
get when you shoot your $10 million film in Mobile,
Ala.?” The answer is, “Quite a lot” – with modernist
buildings, strikingcontrol room sets and the city’s
docks serving as a backdrop.
But Vice is a silly B-movie, one with a villainous
businessman (Willis) whose henchman (Jonathan
Schaech) quotes Maya Angelou to his quarry (Kelly)
after she starts having flashbacks to all the times
she’s been raped or killed and flees the world of
Vice. Henchman figures “I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings” is apt, considering the artificial blonde’s
lifespan and life circumstances. And maybe she’ll be
touched and surrender to this guy who “gets” her.
Vice is “a place where there are no laws, no rules
and no consequences,” Julian says in its TV ads.
But that unfettered giving in to one’s basest desires
tends to spill over into the real city, which is sort this
script’s commentary on video game, TV show and
movie violence. Only it isn’t. It is, however, why Roy
hates the place. His boss refuses to let him go into
Vice to chase criminals. So naturally, that’s what
Roy does, guns and one-liners blazing.
It’s all rather malnourished, but not nearly as sad
as one might expect. Jane turns up in films at this
level all the time, and always gives fair value. Willis
is just now getting used to the Vice budget era in
his work. And if he doesn’t give us more than he
figures he was paid for, at least he’s adept at hiding
any embarrassment at the low rent district his career
has parked in.
H
ere it is, Mother Russia, in all its bloated,
drunken, allegorical glory. Leviathan is a
modern parable of an ancient state and
caricatures and stereotypes as old as vodka itself.
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s film is, like the corrupt
politician and hapless proles depicted here, a Soviet
era throwback, a tale of people resigned to entropy,
resigned to a naive belief in the authority of law and
the state until they’re confronted with exactly who
those laws and who that state are designed to serve.
Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov) is a drunken blowhard living a modestly successful life in a town along
the northern coast. He’s quick to anger, quicker with
a dope slap to his rude teenage son. Lilya (Elena
Lyadova), his second wife, endures the kid who hasn’t
quite accepted her and keeps her mechanic and allaround handyman husband’s vodka glass full.
We meet Kolya picking up an old army buddy
at the train station. Dmitri (Elena Lyadova) is now
a lawyer in Moscow, a man with faith in the rule
of law but savvy enough to know how things really
work. Kolya, it turns out, needs a lawyer. The mayor
(Roman Madyanov) has decided the city – or somebody – needs Kolya’s hilltop-with-ocean-view house.
He may face re-election every few years, but the pugnacious Vadim is just an old school “apparatchik”
– a functionary kept in place
by the top-down oligarchy
that replaced the communist
party. Vadim is used to getting his way, so it’s no shock
that the ruling, rendered in
court and delivered in a highspeed drone by a “judge,”goes
against Kolya.
But Dmitri has an ace up
his sleeve, “dirt” on the mayor
that could finish him.
Zvyagintsev frames his story
with seascapes, images that capture the decaying fishing boats
and exposed whale bones of a
world where so little changes
that all the average Ivan can do
is shrug, sit and drink himself
into a stupor – nightly.
A “shooting” picnic with
some Russian redneck friends
adds to the portrait of life
here, and to the tension.
Zvyagintsev patiently builds
a sense of dread, the fear of
what all this thwarted hope,
alcohol and firepower can lead
to. Volatile people with high
velocity ammunition are a
deadly combination.
Will the violence come
when a drunken Vadim slurs insults at an equally
drunk Kolya? Will there be some other accident or
an incident to tip these teetering tightrope walkers
into the abyss?
Vdovichenkov’s Dmitri is droll and bored, but
still dogged enough about the system that he’s willing to jump through the hoops he figures will render
justice. He’s like a Dostoevsky hero, the last one to
get a clue. The nervous, edgy Serebryakov keeps us
on tenterhooks, never knowing what he might do
next, how he could lash out.
But Lyadova creates a sad, lonely soul straight out
of Chekhov, a beautiful woman in an ugly place, gutting fish for a living, trapped by circumstance, loyalty
and love in a marriage that is its own dead end.
The politics are rarely overt. “Pussy Riot” stories
pop up on TV, and the Orthodox Church’s role in the
hierarchy (cozying up to power, serving as a calming
“opiate” to the masses) is mocked. Zvyagintsev is a bit
too willing, in this overlong film, to let the landscape,
the remote setting and the insular world of crumbling apartment blocks, sagging houses, collapsing
churches grey skies shape the film’s message. The little
people, with their little problems that become huge
as they’re ground up in the maw of the beast? They
drink because they know – “What else can I do?”
LEVIATHAN
Cast: Aleksey Serebryakov,
Elena Lyadova, Vladimir
Vdovichenkov
Directed by: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Running time: 140 mins
Rating: R for language and some
sexuality/graphic nudity
GGG
HERS family
4 rules for teaching obedience
Words by John Rosemond
W
ho are the happier campers in a workplace setting: the employees who (a)
obey the rules, follow the procedures
and voice any complaints respectfully, such that
the entire workplace is not disrupted, or (b) disobey the rules at every possible opportunity,
deliberately fail to follow procedures and disrupt
the workplace with frequent and often subversive
complaints?
You answered (a) of course. And so it is with children. The happiest kids, so finds the best research
(if interested, Google Diana Baumrind and Robert
Larzelere), are those who obey parents and teachers, do what they are expected to do without lots of
management and voice complaints and disagreements respectfully.
Therefore, because happiness is a child’s right
(because, for one, a child cannot learn the benefits
of pursuing it unless he has first experienced it),
teaching obedience and respect is a fundamental
parental responsibility – the third, in fact, which
comes after securing a child’s physical well-being
and demonstrating unconditional love.
The question then becomes: How does a parent go
about teaching obedience and respect? The answer
is in four parts.
1
The parent acts like she knows what she is
doing and knows that what she is doing is correct. This means, for example, that the parent does
not need to consult with a 5-year-old to determine
what foods are going to be on the child’s dinner
plate. The parent is, in a word, decisive. She knows
it is more important, generally, to be decisive than
to always make the most perfectly correct decision
(if there is even such a thing).
2
The parent acts like she knows why she is doing
what she is doing. She is guided by overarching
principles, not whim or emotion. Therefore, she is
consistent from decision to decision. The parent is,
in a word, purposeful. Her purpose is to assist the
child toward standing on his own two feet, to raise
a compassionate and responsible citizen.
3
The parent acts like she knows what she expects
of the child, what she wants the child to do at
any given point in time. In giving instructions,
for example, she does not bend forward, grab her
knees, and speak to the child in a beseeching tone
of voice. She does not offer reward for obedience
or threaten punishment for disobedience. She simply tells, using as few words as possible, and never,
ever punctuates an instruction with a question
mark. She communicates to the child that he will
do what she tells him to do not because of reward
or threat but simply because she tells. The parent,
in five words, comes straight to the point.
4
The parent acts like she knows the child is
going to obey. After giving an instruction,
she leaves the area (if at all possible). She does not
stand there, waiting for obedience, because that is
the equivalent of saying, “I don’t think you’re going
to do what I just told you to do.” And that is definitely going to provoke push-back. The parent, in
three words, communicates positive expectations.
Those four attributes define the effective delivery of
authority regardless of setting. They define effective
leadership, and effective parenting is a relatively
simple matter of providing a child with equal measures of love and leadership. How simple is that?

Going Wild - InvestigateDaily

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