Holiday Road Toll
Every long weekend we hear how many people died, as though it means something, but there’s never any analysis beyond whether it’s more or less than last year’s number. It …
Entries
2011 in Books
I’ve been conscientiously using Goodreads to review every book I read. I’ve used the Goodreads API, some Perl, and some Javascript to boil down my year’s reading. Without further …
National Standards, Charter Schools, and a Pint on the Future
tl;dr: Charter schools aren’t a panacea, they don’t appear to be compatible with the emphasis on National Standards, and this seems like the top of a slippery slope which will result in us …
Libraries: Where It All Went Wrong
It was my pleasure to address the National and State Librarians of Australasia on the eve of their strategic planning meeting in Auckland at the start of November this year. I have been involved in …
Innovation is a Moral Good
Pondering the New Zealand fishing industry, I had an insight today. Forgive me if it’s old news to you. You have three options to make more money: Lower costs. Sell more of the same stuff. Make …
Questioning University
There’s a trend now to question the value of a university education. It used to be that simply possessing a university degree gained you access to a Better Class of Job. That is no longer the …
Week 2
A busy week but with little progress on MacLean and Higgins. I did, however, manage the Mix and Mash judging and a trip to Wellington for the Library Information Advisory Commission (LIAC), and …
Two Upcoming Auckland Gigs
Our band has two gigs coming up in Auckland and we’d love to see you there! We play The Thirsty Dog on K Rd on Sunday, and the set is shaping up to be a good ‘un: the songs we were playing …
Week 1
I love BERG London’s weeknotes and have resolved to follow suit myself. I’ll do it for the rest of this year and see how it goes. So, onto it! Monday was when I wrote the talk I gave on …
100% Pure Chickenshit
New Zealand has, for a long time, marketed itself as 100% Pure. In the last year, this slogan has taken a beating. The climax seems to have been when BBC Hardtalk interviewer Stephen Sackur gave Prime …