Smells Good
Scientists at Wellington’s Industrial Research have been getting a bit sniffing about their new “electronic nose”, designed to help detect chemical spills and fires.
Blog Archives
U Sux
Hi-tech bullying via txt msg has lead to the banning of cell-phones in two New Zealand schools.
Force to Be Reckoned With
The Jedi email, begun in honour of the New Zealand census, manifests itself as “other” in the UK and costs $500 a pop in Australia.
Katherine Mansfield
Student Resource: study ideas, questions and activities (pdf) ‘I believe the greatest failing of all is to be frightened.’ Katherine Mansfield, letter to John Middleton Murry, 18 October 1920 Katherine Mansfield revolutionised…
#38 Pride In Our People
Edge Message #38 from Brian Sweeney, producer NZEDGE.COM TO NEW ZEALAND EDGE GLOBAL COMMUNITY IN NEWZEDGE TODAY Hot global goss about Sylvia Cartwright, Russell Crowe, Neil Finn, Lucy Lawless, Harry Mahon, soprano Rebecca Ryan, Palliser Estate, King…
Womanly Example
Japanese society should look to New Zealand for kick-ass high-profile female role-models suggests PM Helen Clark.
Into Left-field
Labour hits 50%, Helen Clark does a pb of 36%. “The government is the only game in town,” says Clark.
Bare tour
New Zealand playwright Toa Fraser’s Bare tours Sourthern England. Madeleine Sami reprises her award winning role.
Hello Kitty
Kiwi comic Cal Wilson brings home the laughs: “God’s Little Poppet verges on brilliance, as does Krystalle the exotic dancer. Krystalle is close to a work of art; a lap dancer who forces her…
Kan 007
Secret Asian Raybon Kan infiltrates the Melbourne comedy scene with a “sharp, contemporary and observant” show.
Edgey writing gets richer
Las Vegas casino-king and edge-devotee Glenn Schaeffer has established what will be New Zealand’s richest literary prize, a biennial award of $60,000 to a new writer of literary merit. Schaeffer wants to bring writing from…
Packing Their Bags
Britain’s agricultural troubles leaves farmers looking to New Zealand and Australia for a fresh start.
Milk for the Heart
It’s a rogue protein in diary products, not fat, that clogs the arteries and causes heart disease according to New Zealand scientist Dr Corrie McLachlan.
Golden Drop Standard
New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the USA are on the way to mutual acceptance of differing wine standards, making market access easier for everyone.
Disappearing Visitors
“There are reputed to be certain towns in New Zealand and Australia where if you shout out a name in the street, someone will instinctively turn round, then nervously jerk their head away. They’ve briefly been drawn…
Public Interest
Once watched as the world’s greatest free-market experiment, New Zealand is leading the way in getting democracy out from under the corporate thumb says prominent intellectual Noreena Hertz.
Thief With an Eye for Quality
Canterbury man Stuart McPherson doesn’t just steal video players – he rings their owners to complain if they’re not top-of-the-line.
Working for Justice
Dr Dorothy Millar began to question western values after contact with Maori culture, leading to a life spent working for justice and prosperity for all.
And to Finn-ish With
“The most prolific writer of quality songs around at the moment” says Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien. How about Finn as New Zealand’s Paul McCartney? Or Eddie Vedder singing backing at “a small club…
Just the ticket
mticket – (London-based kiwi entrepreneurs Tony Coyle, Nick Howard and Jason Cooper) is a revolutionary service taking advantage of the popularity of text messaging to help punters beat the rope into the club…
Dream Catcher
New Zealand-born psychotherapist Helen McLean turns dreams into reality writing multiple books and creating work-place training based on what your brain does at night.
Doubtful Honour
Big Norm Hewitt’s in-yer-face rendition of the All Black haka and English hooker Richard ‘Cocky’ Cockerill’s gracious eyeball-to-eyeball acceptance makes the Guardian’s list of the “top-ten sporting feuds”.
Strange Happenings in Rugby
“Somewhere in the depths of the very European Six Nations Championship, two New Zealanders have been having some pretty bizarre experiences.”
Wine Rewritten
Leading Sancerre vintner Henri Bourgeois decamps to Marlborough to be part of the “the one new world country that has taken a classic French grape variety and rewritten the wine script”.
Queen of Tramps
Tramp through virgin forest then peruse the wine list in the spa before a gourmet dinner on the Queen Charlotte Walkway.
Billion dollar Bevan
Bridget Jones producer Kiwi Tim Bevan nudges the billion dollar mark with Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and now Bridget Jones, due to be Britain’s biggest hit this year.
Creamy romance
“In New Zealand we mostly make quite brutal social-realist films. I think American audience are stunned to see something that romanticizes New Zealand…I want to make films that no one else is making.” Harry…
Upside-down Edge
A photograph of the New Zealand sky projected onto a mirror on the floor of the Glasgow School of Art “allows people to look down to see the sky, as if the earth were…
Head for Debate
Commonwealth Sec-Gen and former New Zealand 2IC Don McKinnon indicates the next Leader of the Commonwealth might be up for debate after the Queen moves on.
It Won’t Hurt a Bit
New Zealand Cancer Society prostate awareness star, John Hopoate, takes legal action.
Memoirs from the Edge
NZ-edged novelist Fay Weldon sits down to write her memoirs – “All they do is make you self-centered,” she says.
Inside the Frame
Michael King’s biography of Janet Frame, “laureate of the musing inner-self,” is “elegantly written, densely researched and remorselessly long” – but does it over-expose its subject?
Vege Contraceptive
Scientists at Canterbury’s Lincoln University are trialling GE carrots as possum birth control.
Climate Change Challenge
“The climate models are only useful if the science is correct, and so far they have simply not been validated. They predict far more temperature increase in the lower atmosphere than satellites are measuring,” says Auckland University…
Runner’s Trots
An urgent need for the toilet is the most common reason long-distance runners pull out mid-race, according to a New Zealand Medical Journal study.
Big Money Beware
The Government seeks to implement a “code of conduct” for foreign investors, leading to “higher standards of investment”.
Serve Up Sam
Sam Neill, currently showing in The Dish, is major star material: “Like Harrison Ford, he’s an Everyman with gravitas. Like Tom Hanks, he engages our sympathy innately. He’s masculine without being macho, handsome without…
Along came Lee
Along Came a Spider, edge-director Lee Tamahori’s Kiss the Girls follow-up “skillfully builds the action” and “gives sequels a good name”.
#37 FutureNZ
Edge Message #37 from Brian Sweeney, producer NZEDGE.COM TO NZEDGE AUCKLAND COMMUNITY FYI, I am making a presentation this Wed 11 April on The New Zealand Edge as part of the FutureNZ seminar series http://www.futurenz.com/ 5.45pm…
Baby Steps
“The best place I ever visited was probably Australia and New Zealand in 1983 with Prince Charles and Princess Diana when they took William. In Auckland where the tour ended the pictures of Diana and Charles…
Knox them out
The Vintner’s Luck takes the Tasmanian Pacific Region Prize, Australasia’s richest literary prize. “There’s all this stuff in Vintner about anxiety and authenticity that’s very New Zealand,” says author Elizabeth Knox, noting that, like…
Fast and Blur
New Zealand Olympic playmaker Mark Dickel, shooting it up for Australian NBL team the Victoria Titans moves at two speeds – “fast and blur”.
Tiger’s Edge
“Stevie has been in my ear about it and he has definitely told me about his auto racing … I would maybe like to possibly catch one of his races,” says Tiger Woods, commenting on a…
Never a Softie
Colin Meads played 55 games for New Zealand, with “not a soft match in his entire 14 years at the pit face. No wonder the legend lives on”.
Try the venison, deer
New Zealand venison is among the top choices at Atlanta’s Buckhead Brewery and Grille. Also, New Zealand venison fills the red meat gap in Europe.
Future Drink
“Fast-forward to the year 21. You shop eBay, toy with the PlayStation 2, drink wines from New Zealand and Texas and watch NYPD Blue on a flat-screen TV.”
Flamin’ Right?
Fire poi are “trendy, hypnotizing and arty”, if a little confused: “The toys draw their name from the Maori people of New Zealand. Barred from speaking around men, Maori women invented poi dancing as a way…
