History
Where Are the Great Female Novelists?
Is Charles Hamilton an oppressed, neglected cultural giant? After all, who reading this can name anything he wrote? His books are mostly long out of print and adaptations of his work forgotten. Yet Hamilton’s thousands of stories were once bestsellers, adapted for radio, television, comic books and stage plays.
The BFD Food Column: Smoked Paprika Grilled Chicken Breast
Smoked Paprika the Next Big Thing Paprika as we all know is made from ground up dried peppers. Peppers come in all shapes, names, colours, sizes, sweetness and levels of heat. Peppers as everyone should know are indigenous to South America and were introduced to Europe and then filtered on
How Bruce Pascoe Blackwashed His Past
The great Richard Feynman warned that “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool”. The problem, though, is that some people want to be fooled so very, very badly. So they’ll happily believe the most obvious nonsense, if it’
Open Letter: Don Brash to the Prime Minister
Don Brash bassettbrashandhide.com Don Brash was Reserve Bank Governor from 1988 to 2002, and National Party Leader from 2003 to 2006 Prime Minister, again and again, you and your Ministers refer to the “partnership” created by the Treaty of Waitangi. I wonder if you would be kind enough to
Helping the Underclass and Ourselves at the Same Time
Michael Bassett bassettbrashandhide.com Political historian Michael Bassett CNZM is the author of 15 books, was a regular columnist for the Fairfax newspapers and a former Minister in the 1984-1990 governments Two bits of socio-economic news this last week collided. The first was that as many as 20% of Maori
Antarctic Trips by Maori 1000 Years Ago Ridiculed
Hobson’s Pledge Trust “Research” published by the New Zealand Royal Society that claimed Maori travelled to the Antarctic at least 1000 years before Europeans was ridiculed this week as unadulterated nonsense by straight-talking knight Sir Bob Jones. See Disgraceful NZ Royal Society The so-called “research” by a conservation biologist
The BFD Comment of the Week
As part of our drive to keep our comment section the best in New Zealand we showcase each week an example of a top-notch comment that adds value to The BFD. Today’s comment was written by Rebecca. Thank you Rebecca for taking the time to craft such an interesting
The Man Who Wouldn’t Take It Any More
The hit movie Joker was not just great cinema, it was often eerily familiar to those of us of a certain age. The film draws heavily on the milieu of late 70s and early 80s New York, when the pre-Giuliani city was a wasteland of crime and dereliction. Martin Scorcese’
No Jury Really Would Convict Him
It’s an old cliche: “no jury would convict him/her”. In the case of of Gary Plauché, it seems likely that no jury in his state of Louisiana would have. Born Leon Gary Plauché in 1945, he led a fairly ordinary life: he served in the USAF, rising to
The BFD Food Column: A Truly Classic American Jewish Culinary Experience
Brisket, the Poor Man’s Butcher’s Cut. Winter down under is a good opportunity to sharpen your knives and try a long-cook culinary experience while making big savings in the process. Brisket is a singularly unsavoury name for any cut of meat that derives its naming rights from Scandinavian
‘Should Be Withdrawn from Classrooms’
Hoaxes are very easy to pull off, but very tiresome to debunk. Consider the Orson Welles radio broadcast of War of the Worlds: newspapers ran wild with claims that it sparked mass panic. That is absolutely untrue, yet the hoax is still widely believed. Crop circles immediately grabbed the tiny
Weather Eye with John Maunder
John Maunder Some of the answers to the complexities of the climate system are given in my recently published book Fifteen shades of climate… the fall of the weather dice and the butterfly effect. The following are extracts are from pages 197-201. The Greenlandic Vikings’ Apogee The Greenlandic Vikings’ apogee
Unadulterated Nonsense
Sir Bob Jones nopunchespulled.com A private Super Fund purveyor, Sam Stubbs, gained ill-deserved headlines when he described the decision by Rob Muldoon to scrub Labour’s 1974 Super Scheme as, “The Worst Decision by a New Zealand politician ever”. Plainly Stubbs knows bugger all about New Zealand history, or
The Disgraceful New Zealand Royal Society
Sir Bob Jones nopunchespulled.com The New Zealand Royal Society continues to disgrace its British parent body’s prescribed rationale of absolute respect for factual scientific evidence, every time it touches on Maori issues Its latest unadulterated nonsense, published over the heading “New Research Shows Maori Travelled to the Antarctic