The Short and Long of It

On May 10th, New Zealand First MP Tanya Unkovich lodged a proposal for the Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill (https://bills.parliament.nz/v/1/667c1a87-e8f8-4ea7-8ab9-08dc70a23431). This is similar to recent laws put forward both in the UK and across the US, in that it would require separate single sex male only, female only, and unisex toilets in new buildings.

Forgive me this short item, as it's been a pretty busy weekend. I had good intentions, but today my wife and I decided that we needed some more shelving space in our garage. I'd mentioned putting in another shelf below one that I had already installed some time ago, but she managed to convince me that it would be better to extend the Elfa wire rack system that we already have in our garage. What was intended to be a half hour job turned into a couple of visits to Mitre 10, and several hours of moving stuff around and installing everything. Still, we're very pleased with the result and we now have considerably more space to store various garage essentials.

On Saturday (the 25th of May), our chair Bronwyn, long-time skeptic Tim Atkin and myself visited Practical Philosophy and Meditation, a group running out of a very nice building at the bottom of Aro Street in Aro Valley, Wellington. We were going there because, despite outwardly looking like an educational institution (until very recently the Wellington branch had been called the School of Practical Philosophy), a little investigation shows that the group runs “schools” around the world in a curiously cult-like fashion, offering cheap philosophy courses as the hook to attract adherents who can then be convinced to pour their money, time and devotion into the group.

In Wellington, the School of Practical Philosophy (SPP) is likely best known to most denizens by sight rather than by name or reputation. Situated midway up a steep hill in the neighbourhood of Te Aro, the SPP premises is quite impressive from the sidewalk; The facade is stately, and the ground floor chattels are well-maintained and tidy. However, there is a pervasive feeling of… well, not exactly a heyday long past, but maybe a heyday that was never fully realised.

At the beginning of April I received a friend request from none other than Jason Momoa, star of the Aquaman movies, the Conan the Barbarian remake, and Jacques Villeneuve's recent version of Dune. Of course, this wasn't the real Jason Momoa - just another Facebook scam, something that's becoming more prevalent as Meta appears to have given up on even their half-hearted attempts to combat fraud on their platform.