07: Beliefs by Salient

The student magazine of Victoria University, Wellington

volume

issue

april

11 2011

salient.org.nz

Salient Vol. 74

contents The Regular Bits Editorial 3

er! n Twitt We’re o agazine! tm @salien

Ngai Tauira

Faces to Deface

News 8 LOL News

Week that Wasn’t

Overheard @ Vic

Notices 44 Letters 44 Puzzles 46 Comics 47 The Features I Think Therefore I Am Or Do I?

Faith in Politics

Veganism 18 The Dilemma of Disbelief

When Cults Collide

The Churches of Wellington

The House that Radical Socialists Built

Activism Marches On

There is More than One Kind of Christian

Game Over Man!

Blood, Sweat & Videotape

The Columns VUWSA President

VUWSA Exec

Politics with Paul

Local Politics: Kate Follows Celia

Student Health Services

Animal of the Week

Ask Constance

I Am Offended Because…

Peas and Queues

Beer Will Be Beer

Lovin’ From The Oven

The Arts Theatre 36 Music 37 Books 38 Games 39 Film 41 Visual Arts

Like Salient on Facebook! 1485 people can’t be wrong!

Issue 7 Beliefs

THE TEAM

Editors: Uther Dean and Elle Hunt editor@salient.org.nz

EXCLU CONTE SIVE ONLINE NT THIS WEEK! Salient .org.nz is choc with de ka knowle licious wordy d you sh ge bombs and o shit ou uld check the t of the m Sport! Scienc ! Film! e! Othe r things!

News Editor: Hannah Warren news@salient.org.nz Chief Reporter: Natalie Powlesland natalie@salient.org.nz Feature Writer: Selina Powell selina@salient.org.nz Feature Writer: Zoe Reid zoe@salient.org.nz Chief Sub-Editor: Carlo Salizzo carlo@salient.org.nz

l e ditor ia

Designer: Dan Hutchinson designer@salient.org.nz

Online Editor: James Hurndell james@salient.org.nz Arts Editors: Louise Burston and Blair Everson arts@salient.org.nz

Contributors

Hayley Adams, Anon., Auntie Sharon, Kurt Barber, Shilpa Bhim, Stella Blake-Kelly, Seamus Brady, Jennifer Brasch, David Burr, Isobel Cairns, Tayla Cameron, Laurel Carmichael, Nicole Cheah, Jessica Christini, Lisa Ann Clifford, Ben Coley, Paul ComrieThomson, Constance Cravings, Dave the Beer Guy, Uthan Deer, Frean Deya, Martin Doyle, Lara East, Janella Espinas, Ally Garrett, Stephen Gillam, Astrid Gjerde, Vicky Gould, Jason Govenlock, Haimona Gray, Ryan Hammond, Lena Hesselgrave, Elnt Hule, Russ Kale, Robert Kelly, Robyn Kenealy, Sarita Lewis, Michael Love, Renee Lyons, Sean Manning, Hamish McConnochie, Callum McDougal, Gabrielle Mentjox, Jessica Moore, Haley Mortimer, Jennifer Newth, Sam Northcott, Angharad O’Flynn, Kate Pike, Adam Poulopoulos, Jess Rapana, Stella Reid, Conrad Reyners, Geraint Scott, Romany TaskerPoland, Tessa and Anna, Edward Warren, Doc Watson, Mariana Whareaitu, Daniel Wilson, Angus Winter, and Kate Woodfield.

Contributors of the week: Stella Reid, Kate Pike, and Geraint Scott. Your stuff was worth the wait.

ABOUT US

Salient is produced by independent student journalists, employed by, but editorially independent from, the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA). Salient is a member of, syndicated and supported by the Aotearoa Student Press Association (ASPA). It is printed by APN Print of Tauranga. Opinions expressed are not necessarily representative of those of ASPA, VUWSA, APN or any colour of Fruit Burst that isn’t yellow, but we of Salient are proud of our beliefs and take full responsibility for them.

CONTACT

VUWSA Student Media Centre Level 3, Student Union Building Victoria University PO Box 600, Wellington Phone: 04 463 6766 Email: editor@salient.org.nz

ADVERTISING

Contact: Howard Pauling Phone: 04 463 6982 Email: sales@vuwsa.org.nz

OTHER

Subscriptions: Too lazy to walk to uni to pick up a copy of your favourite mag? We can post them out to you for a nominal fee. $40 for Vic student, $55 for everyone else. Please send an email containing your contact details with 'subscription' in the subject line to editor@salient.org.nz This issue is dedicated to the bellicose Conrad Reyners. Saving Salient’s tushie since, like, forever.

salient.org.nz

tter. a m f o k . A quir esh.” y s a Beliefs e ’s fr fe life? Li eeping meat ’s t a h k “W way of ’s just e r u t re than s. Na are mo

liefs ncept nds. Be controlling co it depe f — o ll s e ! ?W luster e believe EN DAY n just c to mak mean to are more tha AVING AN OP ief goal was it — s e e in o H agaz ur ch What d s of ideas. We ! WE’RE lient, o unding this m is Open a IT S H n g S io t in Y th collec —HOL the job of edit nts who are f hosting et eve tha o, we’re , and we can g stude ed for S e . h We beli h t c t n it — p te s e n e ar y d o e u w c a D g n d “ m e u n Wh ts like zine is n a pen. Yo its direction a e g o a m e r m m o o m the ell, c ty of it much ve more say in w and where ause, w ove the quali ho ha m. Bec r e ill. p is ld e s u w ic im o n it s h ly r a s u ab ec uc tructiv not help cussion prob l 3, Student that yo is Day so back and cons g, cheers” do e d v dly , Le ed , a frien Media Centre ril, between suckin your fe t se stop he other hand n a Ap k e le 2 d 1 P u , t y t a S you thin Salien Tuesd t. On t wers ( n n to e o t ) m d what n t e e n s g t a li e n n , a v u e g S o in d in L u r in t k r s s r you e visit u ind the Hunte ou think is wo out the other a cup of So, com beh eck ave at y h h — h C g n . w e in s M v d u e S V uil ell ht Union B 4pm. Say hi. T your views on land. We mig ou. y e ea d r r Z n a o a f h w S e y m . d a N 11 cross proved nt) rea a le d im a e e c iv b u u could g prod m’s eq es bein (or a Pa magazin me Tim-Tams so tea and ? d sugar Milk an lle E Uther &

ut elle &

her

ce ay i f f O en d op

rs ee nt de S ma he s t i t e n ee zin so ga em er a P m o ar in em ye *C th es w he nc o t a th of iev ou st Gr re nd r i e u F o th ** rY or Ai sf * a e ** id ur o y re ha e ali

! e m o s e Aw some! Aweble Dou some! Awe esday *

***

Tu ril 12 Ap– 4pm 11am

Columns

Salient Vol. 74

PREZ COL hachi

president@vuwsa.org.nz vuwsa.org.nz facebook.com/vuwsa

Seamus Brady

Brrr, its cold in here, there must be some winter in the atmosphere; baby it’s cold outside; other winter clichés etc (shiver, shiver). Poor jokes aside, the colder months pose some new challenges for students at Victoria. As the temperatures drop, simple things like getting up in the morning, or leaving the shower, seem like impossible quests. And just as the weather starts getting up all up in our grills, it’s also the time of year that the University chooses to ramp up the intensity of your academic experience. Essays are suddenly looming, tests need to be studied for and projects need to be completed. It’s all a little depressing. But, as always, VUWSA is here to help. For nearly a month your students’ association and the brilliant nurses at Student Health have been running free flu shot clinics at all of the University’s campuses and we’ve even travelled to every hall of residence. I think these clinics go to the heart of what VUWSA is here to do. It’s a great example of students helping students to ensure that our community remains on top of things. Running these free clinics are one of my favourite things that VUWSA does (and that’s not just because I like a good prick). This year has seen a huge uptake on the numbers of students accessing the clinics and is evidence of students coming together to deal with a common problem. By the end of last week we had immunised over 2300 students against influenza. Things can be pretty serious if you do get the flu. Most Halls of Residence have strict isolation rules, and past years have seen students hospitalised. Everywhere you look, everywhere you turn, illness is watching, waiting to catch you. Influenza and other viral afflictions disproportionately affect those in the student age brackets (especially those in Halls). So keep an eye out for your friends and flatmates and don’t hesitate to seek help if you’re feeling grim. And it’s not just the flu that we need to be on the look out for. Winter often brings other unwanted surprises. Power bills can skyrocket when heaters and dryers are used and abused. Some students may find that their modest income struggles to fend off winter’s cruel bites. Again, VUWSA is here to make the darker months a little more bearable. Our foodbank is available when you’re short of money. If you have a rogue flatmate who thinks they will

never be discovered drying their towel with a fan heater alone in their room, VUWSA can help with that too. Our Student Advocate can help you sort any issues you might have with your powersucking flatmates. And if your environment-hating flattie burnt through the flat funds, we can help you apply to the University’s Hardship Fund to see things right.

University Games

Good luck to Team Victoria in their quest to win back the University Shield during the Super City University Games. You’ll do us all proud! Stay safe and have an awesome break. And if you’ve got the sniffles, take a day off and get well soon!

Find egg tokens around the Kelburn and Pipitea campuses and bring them to VUWSA to exchange them for an easter egg!

Issue 7 Beliefs

Vice Prez (Admin) Daniel Wilson What is belief? When I was growing up, I was a Catholic–baptised and confirmed. This led me to believe that there was a God who was one part of a trinity, holy and all powerful. When I was young, belief for me was as good as fact. Then I entered high school and I began to challenge my beliefs; first as a means of rebelling against my parents and my Catholic school, but second, and more importantly, in a genuine attempt to understand my world. By this point, belief and faith, at least in a religious sense, had a new meaning to me: the denial of observation, evidence and argument so that faith and belief could be preserved. I am an atheist. That seems a little obvious after the whole “denial of evidence” point, but for me it is an important pronouncement. It is not something I decided to become, rather something I realised I always was. I am part of a rapidly growing group of New Zealanders who have no faith or religion—when we have our next census I look forward to seeing at what percentage of New Zealanders put down their preference on the form. Religion, though, is not the only place where I have ‘beliefs’. I’m also a libertarian, I support the Black Caps (which as many of you know takes a lot of faith) and I believe whisky is the drink of kings. Some of these beliefs (like supporting the Black Caps), like my old belief in Religion, are not based in what I would call reason. Other beliefs, like my political stance, are based in what I think is very solid reason, but many others—particularly my friends at VUWSA—think is less reasonable than saying Jon Stewart isn’t funny. Such is the nature of beliefs—they are, by their very nature, very hard to prove beyond any doubt and are particular to each person. At university, you are in an incredible position to try out new beliefs and ways of thinking. If you subscribe to socially conservative ideas, read some Hitchens. If you’re right wing, read some Trotsky or even Orwell—much maligned by the left but firmly planted in social democrat soil. Conversely, if you’re left wing, read some Rand: if nothing else read it for the trains. The point is this: now is not the time in your life to become too dogmatic in whatever beliefs you hold. Take this time to go out and challenge yourself—you never know what you may learn. Stay safe, Daniel Wilson avp@vuwsa.org.nz

Environmental Officer Haley Mortimer There are those of us in society who want to improve the world around us, and do so through buying Keep Cups and using those spiral ‘energy efficient’ light bulbs. Then there are those of us whose desire to help the environment results in getting bored with constant media images of the ‘coming apocalypse’, meaning good intentions are thrown aside. Unfortunately, humanity is constantly grouped into the latter, being told our attempts are “half-arsed” and make no difference. So what to believe? No-one but you can answer this question, but over the coming weeks I have the opportunity to ask you on a one-to-one basis, especially if you are involved in one of the green clubs we have here on campus. Being at university is all about exploring who we are, what we believe, and what we have the potential to become. Clubs are an excellent way of sharing and debating beliefs. Gecko is a great starting point—they meet weekly on a Thursday from 11am - 12pm in SU217.

As for me—belief is just the first step. Without action, there is no change. So begin 2011 with tackling the environmental issues that are relevant to you! Through increased communication with campus environmental groups, I’m looking at what the University and VUWSA can do to aid our current environment on campus, ensuring a sustainable future by addressing recycling. Recycling as an issue continues to plague Victoria University, with increasing waste figures over the last three years. Focus will centre on tackling this issue, with incentives and ways to promote its reduction. 2011 is set to be a happening year. With upcoming environmental events, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for Environment Week next trimester. Coming elections also promise for environment issues to be in hot debate, so get involved, state what you believe, and make your voice heard. Haley Mortimer environment.officer@vuwsa.org.nz

salient.org.nz

Salient Vol. 74

Column

Ngāi Tauira

Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction? Mariana Whareaitu

Remember that one? It was the TV programme where you were given five different stories and the challenge was to identify which stories were based on fact and which were fiction, made up to fill in space. Typically the stories defied ‘logic’ and had supernatural elements in them; a cheap thrill if you were into horror stories. The point of that programme (if there was a point to it) was that strange things do occur in real life. We are a world of many different cultures, customs and beliefs and what may be strange to us could just be a normal occurrence to others. Do you believe that? Let’s try this local story on for size: Janet Moses. 22-yearsold, mother-of-two, lived in Wainuiomata, and died during an exorcism ceremony performed by members of her family. Fact or fiction? I’m sure most of you have heard of this tragic incident that occurred in 2007. It practically happened in our own backyard. So this is fact. It happened. But how many people actually believe in the reasons and circumstances behind it? It’s easy to believe a person died from drowning, but it’s not so easy to believe that this person died by the hands of family members who believed she was cursed and possessed by evil spirits. The reasons behind the perceived occurrence are hard to believe. Could the outcome be avoided? Yes, I think it could have been. But was there really a curse? Was she really possessed by evil spirits? Or was this situation all based on fiction? Well. Do you believe in makutu? Do you know what it means and what it is? It’s typically roughly translated into ‘curse’, but relying on a definition of a Western concept for a Māori concept is never a good idea, so that can only be used as a guideline. But whether or not you believe in it, there are those of us who do. Though Māori have lost a lot of knowledge, particularly knowledge that relates to makutu, there are different degrees

nau ira Whā u a T i ā Ng ! LUNCH il R O F A PIZZ riday 15 Apr ,F 12-1pm ce, Student NT Offi Building Union

and levels of knowledge and understanding that each iwi or hapu (or in this case, whānau) have managed to retain. (Colonisation played a big part in this, but I’ll leave that little can of worms for another time.) I’ve been taught to be wary and respectful of all things considered to be ‘supernatural’, and that those who have passed on are still active agents in our lives. I’ve been told about the spiritual qualities of water—its ability to lift negative forces from a person, object or space. I believe there are those among our people who have the knowledge and understanding of dealing with the ‘supernatural’, and those who only know as much as I do; the absolute basics. So did Janet Moses’ family know what they were doing? I don’t know, but they paid the ultimate price for it. Was it all just fiction they were basing their People might actions around? No, I don’t believe it was. Of course, the think that our facts and full details of what Maori beliefs are actually happened, what archaic, ancient was going on and whether it and irrelevant for was a makutu are not known. modern times, but However, makutu is not to be taken lightly, and if her for us, they’re still family believed Janet to be just as relevant suffering from it, then it nowadays as they looks as though they took it very seriously. were hundreds of There are always reasons, years ago meanings and history behind why we believe what we believe in. And if the question of validity comes up for some people, then I would challenge them to look at their own beliefs before anyone else’s and ask—are they based on fact or fiction? People might think that our Maori beliefs are archaic, ancient and irrelevant for modern times, but for us, they’re still just as relevant nowadays as they were hundreds of years ago. You can’t tell me that symbolically eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a person/God is any different? Some might think ‘where’s the logic in that?’ But for Christians, it’s no different. It’s relevant to them, just as our beliefs are relevant to us. So go beyond belief. Every culture and belief has its own logic, but as with anything, people can stuff up. And what happened with Janet Moses was a serious stuff-up. However, it’s the belief that’s beyond comprehension for some and that’s what people are trying to grapple with. But that’s why it’s called belief. It can be fact and fiction. You believe it, or don’t.

Issue 7 Beliefs

Faces to Deface

The Black and White Edition from your pals Uthan Deer, Elnt Hule and Frean Deya

salient.org.nz

The News

Salient Vol. 74

the news

RIP NZPA Hannah Warren

On Wednesday last week, national news agency New Zealand Press Association announced that they would be shutting down operations after 132 years. NZPA Chairman Michael Muir attributed the decision to the withdrawal of Fairfax, a major shareholder, from the organisation. He said the association’s 40 journalists and staff members had been advised, and would be consulted before any final decisions were made. “Whatever the outcome there will be new opportunities and in some cases more competition.” Fairfax Media, whose operations include publications such as The Dominion Post, justified their decision by saying “we’d been looking at the value of the service to us for a long time. “As we have invested more in our own resources and our bureaus in particular... the amount of duplication between our Fairfax content driven by our journalists and what NZPA provides has grown.” NZPA has shown considerable support to student media in the past, and has given many budding journalists their first opportunity in the field. Former NZPA employee and Salient 2007 News Editor Laura McQuillan was disappointed to hear about the closure. “Like a lot of other journalists, I think this is extremely sad. I worked there for about five years in various roles, learnt a lot and got a great understanding of what NZPA contributes to the news in New Zealand. “They have a great team and do a fantastic job, and it’s very sad.” Many have expressed concern at the duopoly of Fairfax and APN News & Media in New Zealand’s news industry. “In future, the news that people see will be from a few large organisations, all of which have some reliance on paid advertising,” journalist Kent Atkinson told The Dominion Post. Muir said NZPA would continue operating as usual until the official closure, which is rumoured to be in December. Salient is planning to publish a full-length feature on the closure and its impact later in Trimester One.

LMFAO said it best: Shots! Shots! Shots! Jennifer Brasch

Just as winter rears its frosty head, Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA) has wrapped up its annual Influenza Shot Clinics. The clinics were set up at all Victoria University campuses on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday last week. VUWSA, in association with Student Health Services, encouraged students to get the ’flu shot to avoid influenza and sickness during winter.

VUWSA budgeted $20,000 for the ’flu shots this year—twice the budget of last year—and Salient understands that this was about equal to the demand. The 2011 vaccination protects students from the Pandemic H1N1 Influenza 09 (swine ’flu), which is expected to be the predominant virus in New Zealand this year. Salient spoke to students after they received their free shots. “We don’t want a repeat of the awful pandemic from 2009, where they had to isolate students in the Halls of Residence,” says a student who decided to have his first ’flu shot on campus. This year, VUWSA organised ’flu shots at each of the Halls of Residence as a way to prevent this. Student Health Medical Director Garry Brown is very happy with the response to the ’flu shots. “The uptake by students has been very enthusiastic, and I really commend the planning, advertising and practical assistance VUWSA have contributed.”

Issue 7 Beliefs

VUWSA cops a feel of the student body Stella Blake-Kelly

Results from the recent VUWSA survey have been released, enabling the exec to identify strengths and weaknesses in their approach. It now believes itself to be in a better position for the likely introduction of Voluntary Student Membership (VSM) next year. According to VUWSA President Seamus Brady, results from the VUWSA survey have given them a mandate and reasons to make changes. It “brought to light that quite a lot of people actually do use our services”, and has pointed out what needs to be bumped up or addressed. Despite results showing some services receive low use, as reported in last week’s Salient, there are no plans to cut existing services. VUWSA has now placed a key focus on the need to be more proactive in communication and raising awareness. Seamus believes that this will help in “building the reputation that there’s more to us than a free sausage.”

with classes. By having more reps and improving training, they hope to create a better classroom community. 83 per cent of classes have a rep this trimester, with Association Manager Mark Maguire noting it is a standout in the country. Negotiations began last year with Victoria about VUWSA’s structure and funding should VSM be implemented. Funding is likely to come from a mixture of commercial interests, the VUWSA Trust and, at some level, from Victoria. Seamus believes that the improved relationship with Victoria has placed VUWSA in a better position than other students’ associations, as he does not think that VUWSA will be reliant on membership subscriptions to continue functioning. “A lot of it is helped already by the partnership we have over the student services levy. That’s got equal representation and has oversight of the levy and how it’s spent and where it’s spent… It has given us a framework to discuss post-VSM funding arrangements.” Though VUWSA has not looked into the specifics of how membership will be structured, he thinks that students will decide whether or not to join based on more than just the services on offer.

They hope to increase their presence at satellite campuses by “making satellite offices more visible and useable.”

“When you enrol at Victoria, you enter a community that is represented by an organisation, and I think that students will want to be a part of that.”

This year, VUWSA has changed the focus of the class rep system, which they see as their main face-to-face communication

Students will have the opportunity to have their say on the changes in August at the AGM.

salient.org.nz

Lest we forget Astrid Gjerde

VUWSA is to lay a wreath at the ANZAC Day ceremony to be held at the Cenotaph on Lambton Quay. This year’s Citizens’ Service of Commemoration and Wreath Laying is to be held by the Wellington City Council, in conjunction with Wellington Returned and Services’ Association and the Wellington Cathedral of St Paul. VUWSA President Seamus Brady says he will be proud to honour those who served New Zealand in both world wars. “Thousands of students had their studies and lives interrupted by its horrors,” he says. “At least 435 of our students were killed in action. A third of the Rugby Club’s enlisted members never came home. “Our student magazine printed obituaries of students killed and candid accounts of what life was like in both in the trenches and during period of leave.” VUWSA’s stance on ANZAC Day has been a controversial issue in the past. In 2009, VUWSA President Jasmine Freemantle rejected the Council’s invite to lay a wreath. Freemantle justified the decision by saying that VUWSA had had no official go-ahead from students to observe ANZAC Day, and didn’t want to “arbitrarily” support an event for which there was no VUWSA policy. Members of the VUWSA executive also feared the gesture would appear to condone war, which was met with much backlash from Vic students. The wreath-laying ceremony will begin at 10:20am, and will be moved inside the Cathedral of St Paul in case of poor weather.

Salient Vol. 74

Bustin’ Out New Displays Natalie Powlesland Wellington’s public transport system is catching up with the rest of the world with the introduction of Real Time Information.

Stop! Survey time! Natalie Powlesland Victoria University is offering students the chance to share their praise and pet-peeves about life in their latest survey. The Student Experience Improvement survey covers the complete life cycle of students, from their first enquiry to the completion of their study.

Real Time Information tells you when your bus or train will arrive, as opposed to when it’s scheduled to arrive, by using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) vehicle tracking.

It asks students to give feedback on the many services offered by Victoria University, including enrolment, admission information, campus food, disability services and learning support services.

Passengers can check the position of their bus or train on digital screens which will gradually be installed at main bus and train stops. It will also be available on the Metlink website.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Professor Penny Boumelha says the survey is designed to improve the complete student experience.

The digital screens are currently running at the Wellington Station interchange. The next nine months will see about 200 screens installed at key bus stops, and 45 out of 50 train stations will have them on the platform.

“Improving the Student Experience is one of our key strategic goals, and if we are to achieve our planning objective, it is necessary to understand students’ perceptions of the value of services, whether they make use of them or not.

Greater Wellington Regional Council Chair Fran Wilde believes the Real Time system will have great benefits for passengers.

“The information will help us identify what we do well that is valued by students and what we could improve. We will be able to use this knowledge to develop a co-ordinated approach to continuous improvement.”

“It means that on a wet Wellington winter day we can check online when our bus will arrive and hole up in our offices then dash out to the bus stop just in time.” She hopes it will help the public transport system run more smoothly and allow it to be improved. “This technology will vastly improve people’s perceptions of bus and train reliability and will help us and the operators identify and hopefully fix problem areas more speedily.” Frequent users of public transport are welcoming the change. “I am so glad they are doing it,” says a student. “Christchurch has had it for ages.” “It’s fantastic they are doing this but it still doesn’t change the fact that the buses are always late,” says another.

Imagine: Recognition from Microsoft

It’s easy if you try Janella Espinas

Duking it out in Auckland this Tuesday are 20 teams from across New Zealand, pitting their ideas and leet software skills against each other for the New Zealand finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2011 software competition.

One student who completed the survey is happy the University is listening to student opinion. “Students’ opinions are important, we pay a lot of money to be at university so deserve to be heard.” Other students commented that the survey was too long and repetitive. “It took forever to do, and it was badly designed. I sort of lost track of what I was saying. I’m happy to do it if it will help improve student life here, but maybe they could make them shorter and more user friendly.” The survey has been emailed to all students and can be completed online.

Revenge of the Syph Adam Poulopoulos An alarming trend has shown that rates of syphilis at Victoria University have risen drastically in recent months. Salient was told that one doctor alone at the Student Health Centre had diagnosed five cases this year.

One of the teams is Victoria’s own BookSpark, made up of engineering students Koshy John, Chisato Fujii, Jonathan Hart and Janella Espinas.

This sexually-transmitted disease mostly exists in the developing world, and it is rare in New Zealand. However, rates have been on the rise.

BookSpark plans to make it easy to sell used books, with a portion of the sale going to support literacy and primary education in third-world countries. The purpose of the project is to encourage education and increase access to books around the world. Last year a team from New Zealand won third place in the world finals in Poland.

Medical Director of the Student Health Service Garry Brown states “universal adoption of recommended safe sex practices is the best step people can take to protect themselves”.

To show support for BookSpark, ‘Like’ their facebook page at facebook.com/BookSpark

The chances of contracting syphilis can be slightly reduced by using a condom to separate the infected and protected areas, but the main method is to be in a monogamous relationship with someone who has already been tested. Syphilis can be treated with injected or intravenous penicillin. If left untreated, it can be fatal.

Issue 7 Beliefs

Wellington to get less groovy Natalie Powlesland After over ten years of providing a music Mecca for Wellingtonians, Real Groovy is set to close its doors for good.

Edward Warren

The music store has operated on Cuba Street since 1999, but will close on May 31.

Myanmar/Burma—Panty Nation

Owner Mark Thomas cites a number of reasons for the closure, including the economic recession, big chain retailers selling at cut prices, file sharing, and competition from online retailers and auctions sites. Students are disappointed that Real Groovy will be closing. “It had so much more variety than the other stores, which all have the same old stuff,” says one Victoria student. Thomas hopes a small version of the store may be able to open in the future. He hopes this will allow him to re-employ some the 12 staff who have lost their jobs. For bargain hunters, Real Groovy will be holding a sale until the store closes.

AU Up in Arms Jess Rapana On Monday 4 April, the Green Party’s Tertiary Education spokesperson David Clendon rallied alongside students and staff outside the Auckland University Senate meeting. The Tertiary Education Union is in the process of negotiating a collective agreement with Auckland University. Students and staff are concerned that the University is prioritising cost-cutting over protecting their interests. The University is in favour of arbitrarily removing important terms and conditions relating to research and study leave, disciplinary procedures, and academic grades from the agreement, and would place them into university policy documents instead. “It is disappointing that Auckland University is trying to cut costs by compromising the ability of academics to do their jobs,” said Clendon. “Research and study leave are vital for academics to retain currency in their discipline and to maintain their motivation to deliver high quality courses and programmes.” Clendon said it was vital that the voices of staff and students were heard. “Staff at Auckland University have offered constructive options aimed at assuring the best outcome for students and the institution. It is time the University started listening.” A motion to discuss the issue of study leave was removed from the agenda of the Senate meeting.

salient.org.nz

A feminist protest against the military junta in Myanmar encourages women worldwide to fling, post or deliver their unmentionables to any Burmese embassy around the world, and to throw them at government officials and government land within the country. According to superstition this tactic is aimed at weakening their oppressors. In reaction to this, General Than Shwe, leader of the regime, made a rare public appearance wearing an identifiably woman’s sarong in reaction to these protests.

Like An Episode of The Simpsons

Principal Angela Jennings of Rock Chapel Elementary School in Georgia, USA has resigned after an investigation revealing that she had unenrolled 13 students without consulting anyone about it. She unenrolled the students to stop them from being able to take an annual statewide test for fear that their marks would drag down the school’s performance. Yes, Elementary School is the same as Primary School.

The Internet Just Keeps Getting Worse

This may be old news to some, but for those of you who have yet to learn about the solution to your social issues, look up Cloud Girlfriend. This is a social networking tool where you get to define your perfect woman. They then develop an online personality and link it to your facebook account, where they post regular comments from your ‘new girlfriend’. My perfect woman wouldn’t be imaginary. Also, the website is experiencing so much traffic at the moment that you have to register to be on a waiting list.

Julia Roberts Has Never Been So Overwhelming

56-year-old Chilean, Miljenko Bukovic, has spent the past ten years acquiring 82 Julia Roberts tattoos on his upper body. All of them were inspired by the movie Erin Brokovich.

Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em

Arkeen Thomas, 19, broke into a house in Florida last week in which the residents were home. The male resident punched Thomas in the mouth and Thomas ran away. His mother showed up to pick up Thomas’ gold teeth minutes later.

Salient Vol. 74

c Bla Bla Bla

the week that wasn’t

Law Students Take Hypothetical Situation To Court Politics Students Lend a Hand Edward Warren Following a negotiation competition sponsored by Charney Bundick, Victoria law students Ernest Green and Abel Tesfaye are taking their opposition team, Noah Lennox and David Portner, to court after negotiations failed to provide a satisfactory result, according to Green and Tesfaye. The competition was designed as an opportunity for future lawyers to practice the skills required for alternative forms of dispute resolution such as negotiation and mediation. This primary round of the competition saw the two teams attempting to establish a settlement between fictional clients Sally Salad, a vegetarian, and Mr Luigi, the owner-operator of Mr Luigi’s Pizza Planet. In this entirely fabricated series of events, Salad found a piece of ham on her vegetarian pizza and is seeking a claim of negligently feeding meat to a vego. Green and Tesfaye were dropped after losing the first round of the competition to Lennox and Portner, but remain determined to see a satisfactory result for their imaginary client, Salad. “This is no longer about losing the competition, that’s the last thing on our minds right now, although the $30 VicBooks voucher would have been a really useful resource in helping get our independent firm off the ground. “We’re just very passionate about our cause. We’re fighting for justice and we want to see our fictitious client receive the make-believe compensation she deserves for suffering such a gross offence to her vegetarian senses” said Tesfaye. In related news, members of the class POLS 332—NZ Politics in a Changing Social Context, were charged with a group assignment, to come up with a viable social movement and to identify the resistance and areas of support that would come with it. A group led by Tao Lin has taken the assignment one step further and have officially founded the not-for-profit organisation, Handjobs For the Homeless. Handjobs has set up the first ‘tug-station’ in central Wellington and aims to ‘improve the day-to-day lives of those member of society who need it most, with the tools we have at hand.’

Email snippets of life at Vic to overheard@salient.org.nz, or find Overheard @ Vic on Facebook

ENGL 209 Tutor: “I think you’re allowed to be cliché when you’re Austen. Because you’re already Austen.”

Anon.

Overheard between lecturers in Murphy Lecturer 1: “Don’t you have an office?” Lecturer 2: “I actually have a lecture on now. I’m doing a screening and writing the lecture while it’s on. [To the two students nearby] You didn’t hear that. Students aren’t supposed to know things like that.”

Lara East

LAWS 340 Lecturer: “Yes, yes, yes, that’s the way it is. Life is tough... and then we die.”

Nicole Cheah

Email sent around MDIA 101 tutors: “I didn’t realise how much of a sex symbol Nigella was to 19-year-old men.”

Hamish McConnochie

Overheard in MDDN 241 Student: “I can out-meme most people.” Tutor: “Challenge accepted.”

Jessica Christini

CLAS 207 Lecturer: “You know you’ve got a problem when an octopus is coming out of your toilet.”

Kate Woodfield

Overheard in the Easterfield foyer: “The imagination is a dangerous place...”

Vicky Gould

Sign on the door for the keyboard lab at the School of Music: “Dear Smart-ass! For smell purposes, DO NOT eat fish in the keyboard lab.”

Jennifer Newth

Overheard in the von Zedlitz building: “I find commerce to be kinda buzzy. Like being on drugs.”

Stephen Gillam

Overheard at VUWSA class rep training Trainer: “What would you suggest if one of the students asked you if she could bring her seven-year-old child with her to class?” Trainee Class Rep: “Get a locker.”

Lisa Ann Clifford

Student: “I haven’t decided if I want crabs or not.”

Tayla Cameron

ESCI 202 student on field training: “I’m in the wilderness with my mochachino!”

Jasmine Nichols

Column

Issue 7 Beliefs

A BLUER SHADE OF GREEN? Paul Comrie-Thomson, that is.

Well, perhaps not a bluer shade of green, but at least a less fatalistic approach to politics. The Green Party released a draft remit last week leaving open the possibility of a confidence and supply agreement with National following the next election. This marks a change from 2008 when the Greens clearly ruled out the prospect of confidence and supply with National. Following that election, the parties entered into a memorandum of understanding, which has seen the Greens work together with National in a few areas including the ‘Warm Up New Zealand’ home insulation scheme, the national cycleway and a pilot programme aimed at introducing better mechanisms for pest control in native forests. As co-leader Russel Norman has clarified, “based on current National party policy positions it is extremely unlikely that we could support a National-led government on confidence and supply”. But importantly, they haven’t ruled it out this time. So, why not? Let’s face it. Even if Rodney Hide fails to win Epsom, and the ACT Party fall short of the five per cent threshold, National are highly unlikely to have to turn to the left for support. To be sure, with the current state of the far right, reformed ACT voters will have undoubtedly turned their support to National, strengthening the Party’s grip on power, which will only increase the potential of the first majority one-party government in New Zealand since the introduction of MMP. 2011 holds important opportunities for the Greens. The Party have an incredibly solid support base on the left, and while the possibility of a ‘New Left’ party somewhat endangers that, the fact Goff has ruled out working with Harawira means that the threat is incredibly restricted. As such, the Greens are in a relatively safe position now, and they can really work the centre, poaching votes from both Labour and National. salient.org.nz

The voters in question are those John Hartevelt describes as “relatively well-off, well-educated, politically savvy voters in the big urban centres.” While it might seem more realistic to expect that the Greens will to make their biggest gains at the expense of Labour, there are likely to be significant swaths of the urban middle-class who, having voted for National in 2008, now find the Party’s policies surrounding state-owned assets, or the proposals in the recently leaked energy strategy, reprehensible. Assuming Goff and Labour continue to be viewed as a relatively pathetic alternative, it is quite conceivable these voters could turn to the Green Party in a bid to send a clear message to National. This is where the leaving the door ajar to the slightest of possibilities of a confidence and supply agreement is a politically very wise move, especially with the option of abstention on confidence and supply allowing National to govern, and forcing certain Green issues onto the agenda. With regard to the Greens’ draft Party list also released last week, NZ Herald columnist Matt McCarten raises some alarming points those on the left should be taking note of. Specifically, that there are two huge gaps in representation at the top of the list: one geographical and one ideological. Firstly, the only Aucklander in the top ten candidates is David Clendon ranked at ninth, and as McCarten points out, “on current polling, the Greens would get eight MPs. Based on its draft list rankings four would come from the South Island; three from Wellington; and one from the Coromandel. This is electoral suicide. If the Green Party shows disregard for Auckland voters, they in turn will desert the Greens and, frankly, there is a real risk none of their candidates will be reelected.” This completely undermines any bid for the urban middle-class and needs to be rectified in the Party’s final list. McCarten’s second point ties in with the “anti-worker” 90-day trial period introduced at the beginning of this month. Interestingly, not one of the top ten candidates on the Green Party list has a background in “worker or trade union issues”. This move, at least superficially, appears to indicate the Party are distancing themselves from a definable socialist agenda. Perhaps therefore, the Greens are painting themselves with at least a slight tinge of blue looking ahead?

Salient Vol. 74

INGTO ELL

· W

Column

IVE

YO U FE

MIN

O ISTS’ C

WELLINGTON YOUNG FEMINISTS’ COLLECTIVE

Climate Change as a Religion

Nº 1 LAUNCH PARTY 15TH APRIL GOOD LUCK, 8PM $5 DRINK SPECIALS FREE SAKE WITH KOHA EVERYONE WELCOME FEAT. DIANA ROZZ, LADY DJ TIME + MORE

Kate Pike

New Zealand is a secular state, meaning that state and religion are entirely separate. In correlation, today traditional religion plays a less important role in society. People still want to believe in something, so they are turning to alternative things to worship, like Facebook, consumerism and Star Wars. There is substantial evidence to suggest that climate change is also a new alternative religion. The religion of climate change is becoming increasingly intertwined with Wellington City Council policies and processes. While this could be considered a move away from secularism, I believe it is nevertheless a vital move, as action is urgently needed to adapt and mitigate around climate change. The religion of climate change is simply centered around the belief, moored in science, that the Earth is warming at a rate unseen in the measurable past, due to humans. Climate change further meets the criteria of being a religion by creating powerful meaning and action around that meaning; relating humans to beliefs and values; directing lifestyle, morals and ethics; and by creating behaviours and organisations. WCC is doing more and more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate unavoidable consequences. This has

been magnified with the election of Celia as mayor. The Climate Change Action Plan adopted last year is a prime example of this. This Plan identifies seven areas where we can take action: adaptation, buildings and energy, land transport, waste, council operations, forestry and aviation. Celia is very dedicated to more reliable and efficient public transport—light rail, more bus lanes, safer cycling conditions. This is in response to climate change (35 per cent of Wellington City’s greenhouse gases come from land transport) and peak oil. While these propositions have not thus far been met with total support from her councillors, nor all rate-payers, Celia remains positive and is working hard towards these plans regardless. A significant amount (42 per cent) of Wellington’s greenhouse gas emissions are from the energy used in buildings. WCC are taking several measures to reduce this. They currently offer grants for solar hot water heaters, assist the state government with grants that retrofit older homes with insulation and heating, encourage the development of renewable energy such as the Makara wind farm, and provide local guidance to businesses wanting to reduce their carbon emissions and waste. Wellington City’s third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions is from the aviation sector—making up a surprising 18 percent. Some bits are pushed to the side when it’s decided. WCC’s interpretation of climate change chooses to overlook aviation because dealing with it would be bad for the short term economy. The Council really are embracing the small things too. Rumour has it streetlights throughout Newtown (and doubtlessly other areas) have been out for over a year. Every little bit helps.

Feature

Issue 7 Beliefs

I Think, Therefore I Am

Or Do I? Shilpa Bhim

Our personal beliefs play a large part in shaping our decisions and guiding us through life. But how many of our personal beliefs are really our own? Salient chatted with Dr Marc Wilson about the factors which influence our political and religious beliefs. Do parents play a crucial role in determining the political/ religious beliefs of their children? Your parents don’t necessarily try to convince you that you should vote, for example, Labour. But they do make subtle, indirect influences, such as when your father puts down the paper, has his head in his hands and says “I blame the National party.” Likewise, if you grow up in a household which has a picture of Rob Muldoon on the back of the toilet door and darts next to the toilet roll, then you’re probably going to grow up thinking that Rob Muldoon is the spawn of Satan. In terms of religion, many people who have religious parents have been brought up in a particular religious framework. In that regard, our parents are more likely to influence us religiously than they are politically, although the two are probably interconnected. What effect does education, especially tertiary education, have on our beliefs? It depends on what you’re studying. For example if you study law and you’re interested in prosecutorial law then you’re probably going to end up more politically conservative at the other end. One of the things that people look forward to when they go to university is having a chance to find out stuff from people who come from very different backgrounds to themselves. Some of my early research looked at social network effects. That is, the effect of the beliefs of the people around us. Research has long shown that we tend to like people who think like us and are usually repulsed from people who are very different to us. We tend to surround ourselves with people who like the same things as us anyway and those people then serve to insulate us from other opinions. If we surround ourselves with like minded people, are we ever likely to question our beliefs? You need to think about these things in order to change, you could be a person whose motivation to religion is driven by what’s called ‘quest’—wanting to find the answers to the big salient.org.nz

questions. The opposite of quest is dogmatism. People who are dogmatic are less likely to change. The other possibility is being exposed to an alternative message. That’s why things like university and the transition to university are really important. It’s no surprise that the vast amount of recruitments by cult-like groups occur in a context that’s exactly like that of university, where people are experiencing a change. What about political/religious advertising? Does it influence us to the extent that it can tell us what to think or believe? With politics, advertising, reading a newspaper or watching the news doesn’t so much tell you what to believe as tell you what to think about. So it’s really important for agenda setting. The incumbent political party has a huge amount of power, dictating what the messages that go out to the electorate are about. What you actually see and whether you believe them and go along with them is another matter. In terms of religion, we are a relatively secular society. Maybe a third of New Zealanders would consider themselves to be church-goers. That includes people who go only on special occasions. So we don’t see quite as much advertising with religion as it were. There is some literature out there which suggests that aversion to change is an inherent part of human nature. Is this really the case? That depends on the individual. Some people are change averse and therefore pro status quo, they feel very uncomfortable when the status quo is threatened, whereas some people are much happier with change—you’ve got the quest versus dogmatic. That’s one of the underlying dimensions that define who you vote for and whether you are religious and the type of religious orientation that you adopt.

Our parents are more likely to influence us religiously than they are politically

sn a B i r

Salient Vol. 74

Faith in Politics: Political Philosophy as Belief Haimona Gray

What really convinced me to get involved was when I realised that I could work out what ACT’s policy on an issue would be from the philosophical principles, rather than having to look them up or check what the politicians felt like on the day. Sam Bonner (Libertarian-Seasteader): I got interested in politics through studying History at High School. I read biographies of former political leaders, and became more interested in the political philosophy behind this. The concept that ideas could shape the way the country was run was something that deeply interested me, especially as it seemed to be something most people held little interest in.

The difference between the belief in a higher power, and squabbling over member proportionality is stark. Beliefs are the opinions that govern your life, and, if you’re gaining these from on high, politics might not be nearly as important to you as it is to others—but philosophical belief and a belief in a just way to govern society may not be so different.

I read few important political/philosophical books while I was at school like Free To Choose, Atlas Shrugged, 1984, and Brave New World which obviously shaped the way I viewed the individual and the state. I also read a number of ACT party books, most specifically Richard Prebble’s I’ve Been Thinking and part of Sir Roger’s Unfinished Business and through this joined ACT and became actively involved in the party when I came university. I guess my instincts had always been towards scepticism of the state and a dislike of intrusive government which made me sympathetic to the ideas within the books I read.

While politics often involves theological and philosophical thought, it is rarely thought of as affecting people’s relationships and interactions with each other in quite the same way. But, as a series of beliefs, is it not as important in defining how you think about the world, and what sort of governing system you would wish for? How do politics affect people’s interactions, and how do we come about these political beliefs? Salient found four ‘political types’ and asked them how it is that they are how they are.

From there it was on to actual policy and how the ends can ever justify the means—idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.

How did you come to your political beliefs or party? Lewis Van Den Berg-Shaw (Socialist): Losing my job. I felt this was due to my union involvement. Short of some Chomsky and the documentary Free To Choose, I’d never really examined my beliefs in detail. That’s not to say I just read The Communist Manifesto in a haze of cannabis smoke set to Rage Against the Machine. My grounding was likely provided by my parents who shared general leftist leanings. My mum’s a long-standing unionist, and has been a workplace delegate before. I’d also been involved with several environmental groups, so my transformation to a full-fledged pinko was assured. Peter McCaffrey (Libertarian): I was in my seventh form in 2005 and was just old enough to vote in my first election. I read all the parties’ websites and ACT’s policies seemed to make the most sense. At the election I voted for ACT, but I didn’t do anything else political until I got to university the following year and joined ACT on Campus during Clubs day.

Haimona Gray (Anarcho-Pragmatist): I grew up in a very political environment, which forced to me to question the philosophy underpinning of political groups and their intentions, but I never really thought much of it until I became interested in the idea of the social contract and what binds us together as a society.

Have you ever had moments of doubt during your political maturation? SB: My ideas have definitely developed, I have questioned my existing beliefs, but that has tended to lead more of a radicalising of my ideas rather than a move to a different set of beliefs. Being able to think critically is something I consider to be very important and something I try to work on, I dislike the way partisan politics tends to suppress this which probably leads to a lot of the political outcomes we see in modern politics and the decisions voters make. I have come to view politics, the state and democracy as it exists now with a degree of cynicism which I certainly didn’t have when I first became active within politics so to that extent my ideas have changed significantly and my confidence in being able to achieve significant change within the system as it exists now has decreased significantly. PM: As I got more involved in politics, watching how politicians and journalists work only reinforced to me just how broken the system is. The first time I saw the media cover an event that I had inside knowledge of, I was shocked by how different the media reports were to what actually happened. This was a real eye-opener and a great reminder to always investigate things for myself.

Once I turned this skepticism to government programme and looked at whether they worked—their outcomes rather than their intentions—I saw just how ineffective they are and started looking for alternatives. We should always judge policies and ideas by what they actually do, not what politicians say they will do. LvdB-S: When I do, I read more. There’s a wealth of material on basically every subject fathomable online. I find very it valuable to try to apply opposing modes of political thinking to a question or problem to better understand the rationale behind them. “Political maturation” should be a constant, ongoing intellectual struggle. HG: The great part of political philosophy is that it is, by its nature, theoretical. So evolving and adapting your ideas doesn’t cost you anything. Voting (or not, as there is a good case to be made for not voting) can be useful, because when you have to ‘put up or shut up’ and verify your beliefs, this changes how you think about politics. How do you think your political beliefs affect your social interactions? PM: I think it has made me a more tolerant of other people beliefs, choices and lifestyles. Libertarians believe that people should be free to make their own decisions and do whatever they want, as long as they aren’t harming someone else. I might not always agree with the choices that other people make but that’s not the same as thinking that the government should step in and force them to do something else. SB: I don’t tend to enjoy politicising the relationships I have, especially with friends who don’t have a huge interest in politics or who I know hold opposing ideas. Certainly I’m interested in discussing political ideas and philosophy, I’m less interested in getting into partisan arguments over policy or parties and according this much lower priority in the greater scheme of things. LvdB-S: Most of the people I associate with are left-leaning. My ideology isn’t generally different enough to affect my friendships in any meaningful way. I enjoy sparking political conversation, but only if I know I wouldn’t be soap-boxing. HG: Drastically. The truth is that many people you’ll meet in a university setting aren’t going to share your politics no matter what, that’s the beauty of university, but some people will not accept others who aren’t into their flavour of Kool Aid. I have no problem discussing my beliefs, just so long as it is on policy and actual beliefs, not fighting others’ preconceptions. How do your political beliefs fit in with your other (philosophical or theological) beliefs? PM: I think it’s an unfortunate misconception that collectivists are seen as caring and kind while libertarians are seen as greedy and selfish. In reality those who support a big and powerful government tend to do so because they agree with a Hobbesian interpretation of human nature where life is a “war of every man against every man—

salient.org.nz

Feature

Issue 7 Beliefs

I’m basically optimistic about humanity in general and it’s ability to look after itself but very sceptical about state directed collectivism or compulsion solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. They think the government must tell people what to do and how to live their lives because without that direction the wrong decision would make. Should you be allowed to choose to smoke, take drugs, eat unhealthy food, etc, or should the government decide for you? By contrast, myself and libertarians would follow more of a Lockean view that “no-one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions”—that people have reason and are generally good-natured. We trust people to live their own lives, to make their own decisions, and even to sometimes get it wrong and learn from mistakes. LvdB-S: I’m an atheist, so was Marx. Marxism is a system of social philosophy in itself. SB: The fundamental concepts for me which I try to use to govern my life (and my beliefs) are the principles of self ownership and the non-intervention of force. These principles seem to me fundamental to freedom and peaceful interaction. I guess I’m basically optimistic about humanity in general and its ability to look after itself but very sceptical about state directed collectivism or compulsion. Consent seems essential to me and while I don’t object to the concept of a modest state, I have major issues with the compulsion and lack of choice that comes with it. To that end, seasteading appeals to me as offering competitive experimental forms of government and ideas as well as the ability for each citizen to actually give consent to be governed by those laws. Seasteading seems to be the only real solution to the issue of compulsion by the state and also offers me the most hope for a future where libertarian ideas and society could be experimented with. HG: I don’t know if we ever do reconcile these questions of ethics with the practical functions of government, but I guess we should at least try. Seasteading appeals to me a lot, as coercion is a frightening concept, as does a world where those in need can’t get a reprieve from hard times, trying to fix the world we have have now before it becomes a necessity to sail off to our own worlds. The truth is most forms of rule hamstring one group for the sake of another—even anarchy would punish the physically weak who could not defend themselves from a lawless state. This leaves politics as a balancing act. Is there a right answer? Probably not, but just so long as I get my medicare, my guns, and my pornography, we’ll all be fine.

Salient Vol. 74

Feature

Veganism, love the mushroom how I learned to stop worrying &

Stella Reid

When I made the switch from casual vegetarian into strict vegan (which was prompted by the finishing of a fantastic book, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals), I was born again.

For you see, it was just so darned easy to be a vegetarian. I could load my plate at adult dinner parties, skip arrogantly past the meat section, and receive witty compliments about my So Good For The Environment Morally Honest Truly Sensitive lifestyle. Becoming vegan, and sticking to it, proved a lot more difficult. It was more then a habit. More then a lifestyle. It was, and still is, a religion. I have to plan meals(!). I have to talk to wait staff about my “dietary needs”. And, mostly, I have to do my research. It is like joining a cult. Or, perhaps because of its emphasis on not harming people and creating harmony and lack of group suicide, an ‘anti-cult’. I don’t want to announce my lack of eating animals to get a pat on the back. I don’t want (ever) to corner people into feeling guilty about what we eat. I want to write to you a succinct(–ish) reason for not eating and harming animals. I have received every kind of response upon telling people I am a vegan—guilt, denial, aggression, disdain. I have also received compliments, encouragement and inspiration. On occasion, somebody will respond by pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle—an accusation of my own non-vegan endeavours (e.g. make-up products tested on animals, wearing fake fur). This is quickly followed by an assertion of the meat-eaters’ own, which often goes a little like “I’m easy, I’ll eat anything!” or “I’ll support you by eating twice as much meat!” If I received a dollar every time this happened... well, let’s just say the SPCA would be millionaires. These didactic ways of talking about eating animals—opposing sides of the spectrum— are extremes, and not logical realities. Everybody embraces veganism in different ways: I am now proud to say I wear only make-up products that have not been tested on animals, but I still wear fake fur. In Foer’s own words: “We need a better way to talk about eating animals. We need a way that bring meat to the centre of public discussion in the same way it is often at the centre of our plates...[W]e all know in advance that our positions will clash with those of our neighbours. What do we do with that most inevitable reality? Drop the conversation, or find a way to reframe it?” I want to reframe your idea of veganism from the unhealthy, aggressive, inconsiderate or the just plain strange to something you might feel comfortable with. I believe the best way to do this is to frame the conversation around facts. These are just some of the same facts that made me vegan.

Issue 7 Beliefs

Free-range eggs vs. Stella Artois: making informed choices

Of course, there are countless people who want desperately to make the right choice with their food. Unfortunately, there is such a large demand for ‘animal-friendly’, ‘free-range’ and ‘environmentally-friendly’ that the terms are now marketable, and consequentially profitable. Many companies bend the rules in order to make their products appear a certain way to the consumer—a New Zealand company is now undergoing a legal trial over their use of the term ‘fresh range’ (misleading customers), and free-range as a term has been manipulated before. A company using ‘free-range’ are still entitled to keep their hens in a barn, which does not classify the same restrictions as a cage, but certainly doesn’t indicate free-roaming chickens. In America, the US Department of Agriculture has no standards, and allows egg producers to freely label any egg as a free-range egg. Then there are the products that use eggs and animals without feeling any need to tell you. This includes, but is not limited to, alcohol. Beer in particular often uses a refining method in its yeast with isinglass, or in other plainer words, the bladder of a fish. When they feel like making a beer that’s accessible for vegetarians, they use eggs in this refining process. Are these eggs free-range? The question is rhetorical—do you think they care about something as insignificant as animal welfare?1 What is important here is that we know what we are putting on our breakfast tables and in our babies mouths: being vegan means knowing not only what is in your dinner, but also knowing it hasn’t harmed anyone or anything along the way. 1 For more information on vegetarian/vegan beer or wine—visit veggiewines.co.uk. Stella Artois, my namesake beverage, passes the test!

Harm unto them, harm unto all

Animal agriculture makes a 40 per cent greater contribution to global warming than all transportation in the world combined; it is the number one cause of climate change. Perhaps one of the most shocking statistics that I have encountered is the fact that it takes 4000 glasses of water to make 1 glass of milk. Considering agriculture’s weight upon the destruction of our environment, anyone seriously considering conservation would not buy an electric car Perhaps one of but rather cease eating meat. the most shocking Animal agriculture should be at the forefront of our own statistics that I have encountered country’s environmentalism debate: instead, we busy is the fact that it ourselves with fruitless research takes 4000 glasses into sustainable fuel practices of water to make 1 and bigger taxes on our travel (the government: a whole other glass of milk

argument). Why isn’t it at the forefront? Because introducing the notion of not eating animals is taking a real risk—it’s making a serious critique of what we eat.

This is not a meal: food is more than food

Foer again puts it perfectly when he says “Food is not food. It is terror, dignity, gratitude, vengeance, joyfulness, humiliation, religion history and of course love.” Not all vegans are aggravators—I have my own personal rule of not talking about eating animals when somebody is eating them. (I’m sorry, Joe, about that one time you were eating chicken sushi. Please forgive me. N.B. Joe is now a vegetarian). Food is never just food. When Kiefer Sutherland ate those noodles that became maggots in The Lost Boys, I was scared of noodle dishes for months. The first year I didn’t eat Mum’s Christmas leg of ham, I had to hold back tears. One can very easily know that hurting animals is wrong and then not know when it comes to eating. This is because food is tradition, food is comfort, and food is family. This is why it is so hard to ignite a conversation about not eating animals—and why it is so hard for us to change. In answer to my own postulated question ‘Why become vegan?’ Well, why not? In a nation as privileged as New Zealand, in a time where food has moved steadily from a place of survival into a place of luxury: in a place where we can sit, talk and critique the lens through which we view the world, why not question what we do. It is through this questioning that I discovered something mattered to me—something bigger then myself—I became a voice for animals and remained a lover of animals. It certainly improved my life. I leave you with the words that helped me make that change. This is Safran in conversation with his Grandmother about WWII in Germany: “I became sicker and sicker from not eating, and I’m not just talking about being skin and bones. I had sores all over my body... I ate things I wouldn’t tell you about... The worst it got was near the end. A lot of people died right at the end, and I didn’t know if I could make it another day. A farmer, a Russian, God bless him, he saw my condition, and he went into his house and came out with a piece of meat for me.” “He saved your life” “I didn’t eat it.” “You didn’t eat it?” “It was pork. I wouldn’t eat pork.” “Why?” “What do you mean, why?” “What, because it wasn’t kosher?” “Of course.” “But not even to save your life?” “If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.”

salient.org.nz

Salient Vol. 74

The Dilemma of Disbelief:

Feature

Learning to forget about atheism and getting on with life Conrad Reyners

At high school, I had an archenemy—a proper schoolyard nemesis. Man, did we not get on. We locked horns on every single possible issue conceivable; our minds just didn’t want to work together. Although our intense dislike for each other was palpable and ever-present, we were alike on quite a few levels: we were both argumentative, geeky and precocious. If we’d bothered to ask, we’d have probably found that we shared a great deal of things in common. But we never did, because differing views on one deep-seated philosophical issue kept us at each other’s throats for five long years. You see, my nemesis was a fundamentalist Christian. And not one of those contemporary nice ones—this guy was an acolyte of the fire and brimstone variety, no easy feat for a student at a Catholic boys’ school, but he sure could pull it off. When it came to religion he refused to give any ground, not even to the few mild-mannered priests who taught us. With him being perpetually irate at doctrinal disputes, me hiding deep in my homosexual chrysalis, and neither of us being Catholics, I’m still not quite sure who was having the worse time. Our shared disquiet stemmed from opposite ends of the theistic spectrum. I’ve never been religious, not even at an early age, as no-one in my family really is: with a scientist for a father, religion was a subject that just didn’t feature. To be fair, though, neither did Newtonian maths (although I was forced by the threat of disinheritance into taking seventh form calculus). My upbringing was as secular as a civil union. God’s existence, or lack of, was outside the ambit of my childish brain. Such a question simply did not need to be asked. High school changed all that. After spending five years fighting off what I thought was the personification of all that was illogical, I had developed a fundamentalism of my own. To counter my arch-enemy in all things religious, I had grabbed what I thought was the sword and shield of reason, and had safely positioned myself on the battlements of atheism’s angrier sibling: anti-theism. My conviction that religious belief was not only incorrect but actively harmful was only entrenched by my early University years—those heady times in first- and second- year where the wine is flowing, you’re always right and everyone else is wrong. I read the classics voraciously. I churned through Dawkins like he was going out of fashion. I consumed Hitchens and his ferociously eloquent defenestrations. For light relief I skimmed

through Russell, Epicurus and Nietzsche. I was convinced all of them were right, and that without fail they provided surgical arguments for my one-man war on religion. I would literally throw books at the ill-informed, demanding that they too enjoy the rational delights of a life well-reasoned. But you do a lot of growing up between 18 and 23. As time evolved, my views did too. Over time, I realised that in exercising my own fundamentalism, I was exhibiting the doctrinal arrogance that I so vocally denigrated. Additionally, I had developed a greater appreciation and respect for pluralism and rights, for everyone—not just the ‘enlightened’. So, as the years went on, I relaxed my views. I’m still an atheist—the philosophical arguments for the paucity of God’s existence I still find personally overwhelming (this short piece is not the place to expand on the philosophy of disbelief, but if you’re interested, just Google “the problem of evil”), but I no longer consider myself a crusader for the voice of reason. I am what the British director Jonathan Miller has called a “reluctant atheist”. My reluctance is attributed not to a subscription of non-belief, but a reluctance to call my non-belief “atheism”. The reason for this is by using the term atheist or anti-theist or heathen, non-believer, heretic or whatever, there is an implicit surrender of the exercise of belief to form and presentation. And that is inherently problematic. Polarised politics clearly tells us that fundamentalist derision of your polar opposite does nothing to advance rational debate—if it did, I would be able to state that the Tea Party has contributed to democracy while keeping a straight face. It is this problem that creates an aversion to the rabidity of atheists like Dawkins. And it is this problem that drowns out the reasonable theological and philosophical inquires of the questioning centre. Atheists do not need to identify as atheists to be powerful proponents of rational world views. Is it not simpler, and more elegant to hold a laconic indifference? Perhaps an analogy can be drawn with racism: one is not a non-racist, they are simply... not racist. In fact, the position of indifference may pose a more troubling conundrum for the fundamentalist theist. Atheists (or non-believers) may have more traction by simply denying the premise of the question in its entirety. A debate about the existence of God presupposes that there is an entity like God capable of existing. Subsequently, the questions being asked are bound up within a dialogical paradigm whereby the parties to the debate are asking, as Marx famously said, “only such questions as can be answered”. Indifference avoids this. But being indifferent instead of opposed is important for two more reasons. The first is that atheism is no longer required as a force for philosophical good in the way it once was. What I mean by this is that there was a time—a time when religious institutions wielded a considered amount of control and force—that radical forms of atheism played an important role in changing societies for the better. Now, I do recognise that religious institutionalism still exists, and can be the site

Issue 7 Beliefs

for legitimate criticism. The Pope’s refusal to advocate for condom use in Africa and American churches’ active support of Uganda’s violent oppression of homosexuals are both examples of the abhorrence of institutionalism run amok. But these issues can now be combated using a far wider range of political and social forces, some of which (like human rights) have far superseded what simple atheism could have achieved. This is not to suggest that atheism is no longer relevant—but it is now just one mechanism by which hearts and minds can be mended. The second reason goes to the core of the theological question that belief addresses. Even atheists and anti-theists must, as the Cambridge theologian Denys Turner argues, address the question Over time, I realised “why is there anything at that in exercising my all?”. Atheists must work own fundamentalism, very hard to deal with the constant re-emergence I was exhibiting the of this question, while doctrinal arrogance indifference has more room to accept the unknown that I so vocally more elegantly. Now, again, denigrated this is not to suggest that the answer to this question supposes a deity one way or the other. For the record, I think the theist response necessarily results in an infinite regression of deities and therefore is wholly unconvincing, but that’s beside the point. My argument is instead that by advocating a fundamentalist atheism, proponents like Dawkins or Hitchens place themselves into a self imposed, and unnecessarily constrained philosophical box. Indifference neatly side-steps this, not out of philosophical cowardice, but out of honesty. It also gracefully pirouettes around the overbearing limits placed one places on their imagination if they are convinced that everything hangs on the question of whether God exists, or does not. The flow on benefits of my slightly more relaxed approach to non-belief are numerous. For one, it’s a more consistent way of recognising religious pluralism. If people want to believe in the

supreme power of concepts and constructs then, as long as they do no harm, we as a society should be accommodating of their wishes. It’s hard to conclusively draw a difference between a strong conviction that there is a man in the sky, and a deep seated confidence that humans are innately altruistic. The point is that until all the available evidence is in (assuming that’s even possible) they are judgement calls. And part of being human is being wrong. Another is that by subscribing to a position of indifference, individuals who are secure in their own non-belief inherently de-escalate the culture war that harmfully surrounds the issue. This is important firstly because violent clashes of belief have often led to physical and emotional harm, and reducing this is a laudable goal. But secondly, because it gives added strength and power to non-belief protestations against aggressive fundamentalism. By demonstrating that aggressive fundamentalism is an infringement of the norm, rather than an opposition to one, indifferent non-believers instantly come from a more defendable position when they choose to speak out. Simply put, it is far easier for a quiet person to point out that another is shouting, than it is for two people to shout each other silent. For an issue with as much emotional baggage as the one above, I’d be aghast if you felt like I was telling you what to do. Belief is a personal thing, but the personal is the political. I personally think non-belief is the most ‘correct’ answer to this theological question. But part of non-believing is continually questioning the manner of one’s own position. For me, this very idea encapsulates the fundamental beauty of rational thought. It took me a while to get here, but now I feel much more secure in my lack of religious belief and in the strange comfort that brings. It’s comforting because it’s cogent, defensible and beneficial. Because now, if my high school nemesis was to ask me if I believed in God, I would not attempt to scream him down. Instead I would tilt my head ever so slightly, softly smile and say with all sincerity: I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.

R E E R A C T GREA AY GREAT P NTROL TAKE CO Trainee Air Traffic Controllers

For great money and a great life text SALIENT to 515 or visit

www.airways.co.nz/atccareers

Not sure what you’re going to be once Uni’s all over? Don’t start out with some boring job… get straight into a career as an Air Traffic Controller! Training only takes around 12 months, and once you’re qualified you’ll be earning over seventy grand a year! You’ll get heaps of leave… and have a qualification that’s internationally recognized and a professional career in one of the world’s fastest growing industries!

to see if you’ve got what it takes.

AWVU2011

salient.org.nz

Salient Vol. 74

Zoe Reid

When Cults Collide –

Scientology v

Perhaps, one day, Salient will delve into the numerous accusations surrounding Scientology, and come under fire under founder L. Ron Hubbard’s Fair Game Policy. Under this, we could be identified as the church’s enemy and consequently be “deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist” or even “tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed”. Interestingly enough, a movement that shares characteristics with Scientology attracts far less media attention and far fewer followers since Scientology had its way in the early 1990s. Feature writer Zoe Reid investigates the sometimes controversial personal training and development company Landmark Education.

Training to be a Scientologist involves a large amount of time spent seated at a desk, studying the works of L. Ron Hubbard. This method is, according to the official Scientology website, “unique in the field of learning” and ensures that students are “not only assimilating data, but actually learning how to apply it”. Full acceptance of what one has been taught is necessary to rise through the ranks and in this manner, Scientology is more of a hierarchical religion than an organisation solely focused on improving the lives of those involved. In the 1960s, an American man named Werner Erhard entered Scientology and rose a short way through the ranks before leaving. He was especially interested in E-meters, devices that measure the skin’s conductivity and electrical resistance and supposedly reveal meaningful facts about an individual’s mental state and personality. Erhard studied many belief and self-help systems during this time until he set up his own in 1971, which taught participants to focus their minds on controlling their desires and urges to become more productive in their daily life. Erhard’s techniques can be seen as having two levels of intensity: The Forum, or Landmark, is a global group now separate from Erhard that utilises his techniques for training mostly corporates; and est Training, run by Erhard Seminars Training, which is almost nonexistant nowadays but was popular until the early ’90s. Est Training used more extreme teaching methods in which participants spent around 60 hours over four days in intense workshops (for example, you were not allowed to go to the bathroom, at the expense of wetting your pants). Erhard’s training concepts and jargon reflected Scientology in many ways, with training sessions initially involving use of the e-meter. Some might say that Erhard did more than use Scientology for inspiration, but rather blatantly exploited Scientology’s concepts. In the early years of his self-help system, Erhard expected his staff to take Scientology courses for research and understanding as opposed to religious gain. Techniques such as ‘bull-baiting’, where a single participant would angrily confront everyone else in the room at once (a technique he still uses in his motivational speaking) are a direct facsimile of training programmes in Scientology. While Erhard refused to accept the similarities between the two group’s techniques, he is quoted as saying “I have a lot of respect for L. Ron Hubbard and I consider him to be a genius and perhaps less acknowledged than he ought

Feature

Issue 7 Beliefs

s Landmark to be”. He has also expressed his deep appreciation for many types of Scientological testing. Perhaps, in all of his study of and work with Scientology, Erhard managed to completely ignore its treatment of detractors. Est Training was a popular movement, attracting nearly one million participants over ten years and becoming a multimillion-dollar enterprise with several offshoots and additional companies. Understandably, the Church of Scientology’s attitude was that at the very least a portion of this fame and money had come at their organisation’s expense. So, they did the only reasonable thing to do in such a situation: they set out to destroy Werner Erhard. Some sources put the amount of research into Erhard’s activities at five filing cabinets of information, one planted spy, and at least one private detective. Some ex-Scientologists allege that members enrolled in est Training seminars to act in ways which would disrupt or Some ex-Scientologists discredit the programme. Werner Erhard and allege that members all of his companies enrolled in est Training were officially listed as seminars to act in ways enemies of Scientology, which would disrupt or which, under their Fair discredit the programme Game policy, encouraged Scientologists to do all they could to ruin Erhard and his companies. As a part of this active smear campaign, Scientologists sent private investigators to discover and distribute any information that would harm Erhard. The CBS show 60 Minutes ran a segment on Erhard that interviewed anyone who would provide dirt on him, claiming he owed the IRS millions of dollars and physically and sexually abused his family. His daughters who made the claim later revealed that they were incentivised to do so for million-dollar book deals, while the IRS released a statement stating Erhard did not owe them a cent. Erhard sent a four-sentence statement to 60 Minutes before leaving the USA. He avoided the press while lawyers contacted CBS, who had the segment retracted. While Scientology still has Erhard and his companies on its Suppressive Persons and Groups list, it publicly denies any wrongdoing or harassment. The Fair Game policy was officially rescinded in 1968, as its meaning was supposedly misunderstood. The official line is that Scientologists were encouraged to treat the organisation’s enemies, or ‘Suppressive Persons’, as outside of the rules of Scientology, not outside of the law or ethics of the nation they live in, but this distinction was not clear enough to the public. There is evidence of extreme harassment of Suppressive Persons today, which causes many to believe that the Fair Game policy is still unofficially adhered to. Anecdotally, many defectors from Scientology, including some of the Private Investigators hired to work on Erhard, spoke of media contacts to send ‘dirt’ to,

salient.org.nz

daily meetings where strategy was discussed, and those five big filing cabinets, full of information on one man. Conversely, Erhard has had little to do with Scientology since he left, although his respect for Scientological treatments such as auditing and L. Ron Hubbard are well-known. Erhard is quoted as calling Hubbard the “greatest philosopher of the 20th century,” and acknowledges a great debt to Hubbard for his personal skill and business techniques. In relation to Scientology’s treatment of him, however, he is openly angry, publicly pointing the finger at Scientology for his fall from grace. Such a charismatic man and great leader, apparently, has few flaws that weren’t dreamt up by Scientology. The biography on his website, claiming to be one of only two accurate accounts of Erhard, makes an attempt to show a man with problems and flaws like the rest of us, but not a child-molesting, abusive monster. The balance, in this murky mess censored heavily by both Scientology and Erhard’s lawyers, is a hard one to judge. For instance, a carefully-written biography includes: John Mack, who served on the board of the est Foundation... wrestles with trying to balance the accusations against the fact that Erhard was a transformational force in his life. “He started me on a path of questioning a lot of damaging assumptions about myself and my culture. The commercial aspect of his work I’ve always found aggravating and disgusting, but I continue to use what I learned from him. How do I reconcile this with his destructive side? It’s a rage-filled side, obviously. I know people who’ve seen those rages.” (Dan Wakefield, Erhard’s Life After Est) Erhard’s rages are touched upon further on his website, where they are justified as the rages of a pressured CEO of a company, who stayed up late drinking and then getting through the day on coffee. The rages his staff, including Mack, refer to are more likely to include frequently documented incidences where Erhard made repulsively sexist remarks to the women around him, while in Outrageous Betrayal, Steven Pressman’s biography of Erhard, it was stated that “the task of one of his closest aides and confidants inside Franklin House was to be ready with an ice pack and some soothing words to treat a blackened eye and comfort another of Erhard’s victims. Werner Erhard’s seductive charm sometimes had a habit of giving way to the back of his hand”. Either as a result of Scientology’s focus to discredit him, or just an inevitable byproduct of success, millions have been spent over Erhard’s lifetime to save and maintain his image. When publishing Outrageous Betrayal, Pressman and publisher St Martin’s Press received over 20 letters from Erhard’s legal team trying to censor content before even reading the book. Erhard’s support team still trawl the internet looking for unfavourable mentions of him, and accusing authors of inaccurate or inadequately referenced information, regardless of the nature of the information itself. Today, over 15 years after Scientology and Erhard banged heads, both are still persecuting and playing the persecuted on a level more extreme than we could hope to understand.

Salient Vol. 74

Feature

An Outsider’s Guide to Some of the

Churches of Wellington A non-definintive, non-representative sample of the religious buffet in our fair city.

Zoe Reid

Wellington Methodist Parish, 75 Taranaki Street

The Wellington Methodist Parish gains the biggest Kumbayah from this author, as it conducts multilingual services—Fijian, English, Samoan, and Tongan—and has a lot to do with the Downtown Community Ministry, which helps the homeless and less fortunate members of society. Most of the original missionaries to this part of the world were Methodist—an offshoot of Anglicanism, which gained its name with its methodical interpretation of the bible—which shows through in the varied Pacific Islands represented by its congregation. If you walk past Friday evenings or Sunday daytime, you’ll see a team of cute kids running around in lavalavas.

ARISE Church, 44 Wigan Street, Te Aro

ARISE Church members are the ones we keep mistaking for cheerleaders. ARISE is a purely NZ phenomenon, with churches in Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch. It has an active presence anywhere young people are to be found, including on campus. The congregation is young, young, young, and you’d be forgiven for mistaking its Senior Pastors John and Gillian for first-years. There are heaps of services a month, mostly for members under the age of 26; free lunches are a favourite of uni students, while underage raves for high schoolers are also popular. While the free lunch was tempting, they’re so happy and carefree that you do feel bad for turning up in a “JESUS WAS A CUNT” T-shirt.

Vic Muslims, vicmuslims.blogspot.com

Vic Muslims is the club that represents, well, Muslims at Vic. Islam has as many denominations and followers as Christianity, so it’s hard to define such a varied religion when the local community is so small. Vic Muslims have a blog which is well worth a read, as it gives readings from the Qur’an, muses on world events, and keeps you up to date with activities. Aside from Islamic Awareness Week, they hold barbecues and Ramadhan activities. For your reference: “hijab,” pronounced he-zjab, refers to female modest Muslim dress, covering of all but the face and hands in public as per Sharia law. “Burqa/burka” covers all but the eyes; “khimār” is a headscarf and the term used in the Qur'an. Headscarves such as those commonly seen on campus are worn for such a variety of cultural, religious and social reasons that foot-in-mouth syndrome is common.

St Andrews on the Terrace, 30 The Terrace

St Andrews on the Terrace printed “God hates Shrimp” T-shirts for Out in the Square one year, and as such would achieve God-like status if that weren't sacrilege. St Andrews will love

you for who you are: they promise to ignore your “creed, race, class and sexual orientation”. While Presbyterian in origin, St Andrews split from the international body over issues such as women's roles and homosexuality: its Minister Margaret Mayman is female and gay. One of the more ‘traditional’ but vibrant churches that you could peep in on one lazy Sunday.

Judaism

Considering the relatively small size of the Jewish community in Wellington (it’s estimated at about 1,300 people), the Jews have two synagogues, a kindergarten, day school (Moriah), kosher food shop and modern community centre. There’s also a new liberal Rabbi in town—who began a few days ago, so we can’t tell you too much there. Jews are Jews from birth (or three- to five-year conversion), and most of this community have thus known one another about that long, so chiming in could be a bit uncomfortable. However, the schools are roughly 50/50 Jew/Gentile and it’s worth keeping an eye out for the Klezmer Rebs, a fantastic Jewish music group. Also, who wouldn’t want to gatecrash festivals where you have to drink until legless, and eat until sunrise?

C3 Church, Level 3, 84 Willis Street

C3 Church is about the most constructive church you will ever come across that isn’t a cult or based on a 12-step programme... that I know of. They have seminars aplenty, and support groups for any and all types of people trying to improve themselves. Jesus tags in, of course. The C3 is just an Australasian church for now.

Hare Krishna, the International Society of Krishna Consciousness

Krishna is the name of God, and the hope is that in singing it over and over again, one will achieve a higher state of consciousness. Hare Krishnas are the ones who tell you nice things about yourself in the hopes that you won’t see through their cunning ploy that their books are free for a “donation.” They also have cheap, delicious food, which is surprising because Krishnas will not consume a large number of things, including garlic, meat, fish, eggs, caffeine or any kind of drugs or alcohol. Sing and dance with them on the street one day for fun; remain celibate outside of marital procreation with them too. ‘Alternative’ lifestyles, such as homosexuality, are frowned upon a wee bit. Technically, as their leaders will tell you (regularly) they aren’t a cult. Yet. This author is fond of the Krishnas as they light up Wellington with a bit of visual diversity.

Feature

Issue 7 Beliefs

The House that

Radical Socialists Built Selina Powell

Salient talks with Nick Henry of the Radial Social Centre on 128 Abel Smith Street about an initiative as unique as the building it’s based in. How was the 128 collective established and what motivated its creation? I wasn’t involved at the time, but the impression I had was that a lot of people involved in starting up this house, as a community project and as a radical project, were motivated by finding creative community-based alternatives to the kind of model of development represented by the motorway—of large scale, fairly faceless cities. I think that opposition to the motorway project was a motivation for projects like 128 and the community gardens in Wellington. People noticed that this building was empty—it’s a beautiful old building, but it had been vandalised, and was just getting trashed because it was empty. And so those people negotiated to take on the task of restoring the building as a community project, and from that effort, a collective formed to run the house as a community centre. What projects are currently underway at 128? Within the house, we have various community projects including the Revolting Books Little Anarchist Library, which has a range of books with a focus on radical politics, and a focus on collecting books which may not be available elsewhere. We have a bike workshop, which is very popular—that’s where people can get help to repair or build a bicycle, and they can do that quite cheaply. We run the bike workshop, like the rest of the house, on a koha basis, which means that people donate whatever they can in terms of money, time or other things that they can offer. salient.org.nz

There are other resources which the house offers. We have an arts space, we have computers available, and we have community resources which are leant out to people holding public events. We have meeting space in the house for groups to use as well, including a room for women and transgender people to meet and hang out. What we really want to create as a collective is a space in which many projects are possible. Whenever an individual or a group comes along with an enthusiasm to organise an event or project which corresponds with our aims and principles we try and make the space for them to do that. Do you think the 128 collective is radical? The house is described as a Radical Social Centre because it’s run in accordance with principles that are radical in the society we live in. It is radical to make decisions by consensus in a way which involves everyone and it is radical to work against all forms of oppression—to work against the oppression of women, the oppression of queer sexuality, the oppression of Maori as tangata whenua. To work against these oppressions is a radical project so our values are radical in that way and we want to provide resources and spaces for radical communities to form and to grow. What do you think anarchism is? To me, the most important things about identifying as an anarchist are about what we do and how we do it. To me, anarchism is about anarchist practice and it’s about forming relationships with others without hierarchies in a way that works against all forms of oppression. I wouldn’t say that anarchism as a particular European political philosophy should be or is relevant everywhere, but I think that what we mean by anarchism has a lot in common with the ways that people do organise everywhere. Wherever people find, and fight to defend, ways of organising in a non-hierarchical way within their communities, where ever people fight to maintain their own free ways of organising themselves, working in solidarity against forms of oppression like sexism and racism and so on. Wherever that’s happening, there is an affinity with anarchism but that’s not to say that there is one ideology which defines all of it. I think it’s just that as people struggling for freedom we always have a lot in common.

If you are interested in finding out more about the Radical Social Centre, you can visit their website at 128radicalsocialcentre.weebly.com or call the Centre on 04 972 7260. The Centre is open on Monday and Tuesday from 12 to 7pm.

Feature

Salient Vol. 74

Activism Marches On Jessica Moore

Activism: knowing what you believe in, and doing something about it. This meant a lot to students of our parents’ generation, and they have the anti-Vietnam War movement, anti-nuclear legacy and the Springbok Tour protests to prove it. But what does activism mean to our generation? Salient looks at how we bring about change today. The early ’60s were a time of new possibilities: people were beginning to throw off the restraints of the ’40s and ’50s and breathe deep the air of change. Racism, war, discrimination, and nuclear warfare sparked the fire of student activism and fueled it for 30 years to come. Students the world over were united by the belief that they could truly make a difference in the world. The students of Aotearoa were no different. When America tried to tell us that nuclear weaponry was OK, students said no. The New Zealand Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) held its first protest, a student-led march from Featherston Street to Parliament, in Easter of 1961. Over the next 20 years, under the umbrella of the CND, students were part of protests held in Dunedin, Christchurch, Nelson, Wellington, Auckland and Cape Reinga. In 1984, hundreds of students lay down outside the US Consulate in Auckland in protest against the visit of the USS Queenfish nuclear submarine. By the time New Zealand was made a nuclear-free zone in 1987, our country had an anti-nuclear legacy that belonged not only to then-Prime Minister David Lange but to the students who had fought so hard for their beliefs. When America sent soldiers to Vietnam, students said no. In 1967, they marched up Molesworth Street to Parliament, carrying an empty black coffin and a wreath with the inscription “To the dead and dying on both sides of Vietnam. Why must their blood pay the price of our mistakes?” In 1971, a group of a Victoria University students marched to the US Embassy with a banner showing 28 stick figures, each one representing a New Zealander who had died in the Vietnam War. There, they held a 28-hour vigil, marking off one of these figures each hour.

When a country under the apartheid system tried to send a rugby team to our shores, students again said no. Around 350 protesters stormed the pitch in Hamilton before the 25 July game, forcing the cancellation of the match. This was the first major sporting event to have been televised back to South Africa, and what they saw was a group of people who had the courage to risk injury and arrest to show the world their beliefs. Over 150,000 people participated in the Springbok tour protests which, although they didn’t stop the tour, sent a powerful message across the globe and to the South African government. We had become—in our own minds, at least—the little nation that could. But is this attitude still present in our generation? In comparison to the tsunami of student protest in the 1960s, you could be forgiven for thinking that the student activism tide has ebbed in recent years, but there are still protestors that remind us of an earlier time in New Zealand’s history. In 2009, 50 Otago University students protested against the $30 million cut to education spending under the slogan “Where are your priorities Mr Key?” In Email, Facebo March last year, anti-whaling o Google , Twitte k, protesters set up outside text m r, John Key’s electorate office e in Auckland with a banner and on ssages, l depicting the PM harpooning in gene ine media ral are a whale. And throughout availab t le to us ools 2010, students on both side weren’t that of the VSM debate protested during around for their cause on Parliament t grounds and at universities activis he student m around the country. the ’70 period of s and ’8 So, student activism in the 0s form of protest continues, but certainly not on the same scale as has been seen in the past. What does this lack of interest say about us? Are we an apathetic generation that would rather sit on the couch eating Doritos than try and make a difference in the world? The fact is that the ways we can make this difference has changed. Email, Facebook, Google, Twitter, text messages, and online media in general are tools available to us that weren’t around during the student activism period of the ’70s and ’80s. We only have to look at what these technologies have done in the last year to understand the significance of this change. The uprising in Egypt was sparked on Facebook and Twitter; WikiLeaks is standing up for freedom of the press; and the instant transmission of footage of the Libyan conflict infiltrates our lives in a way that we can’t ignore. Faced with such clear evidence that technology is one of our best weapons in the fight for our beliefs, it’s easy to see why we’ve taken to the web to show the world that we still care.

Issue 7 Beliefs

Those who doubt that students today care at all have only to look to people like Amnesty @ Vic co-president Zac Sun. Overcome by what he calls “a surge of liberal guilt”, Zac felt that “being comparatively free and privileged”, he couldn’t just stand back and watch human rights abuse continue. “You can read about stuff and feel impotent and angry and then just move on, or you can choose to ignore it altogether and go buy your iPhone, but it doesn’t actually cost you that much to sit down and sign a petition, or write a letter to a foreign leader.” Each year, Amnesty @ Vic holds a gig to raise money and awareness for causes not usually discussed in the mainstream media. They run other events throughout the year, such as Freedom Week, which they use to “kick people in the arse and get them to agitate”. Like many others in organisations such as Amnesty International, Students For Palestine and Gecko, Zac has the same courage of convictions as his parents’ generation. However, he has realised that to avoid being all smoke and no fire, he must be smart about the way he goes about making a change in his world. t n So, is student activism a e d u So, is st a thing thing of the past that belongs m to another generation? No, activis ast that p e r it’s about knowing what h e t h f o to anot s you believe in and doing g n o l o, be N ? n something about it. Our o i t genera t knowing generation may not leave u the same tracks as those of it’s abo u believe o y t a the ’70s and ’80s student h w oing d activism bandwagon, but d t i n t a u in we are making tracks all ing abo h t e m so the same.

Looking Back on the

Golden Days Jessica Moore

Former Canterbury University student Alison Kagen is an activist of an earlier generation. She was involved in the Springbok Tour protests of 1981, and a very active supporter of the gay rights movement. Now in her mid-50s she continues to be committed and involved member of women’s and lesbian community groups, and works in the field of equal opportunity employment. Salient caught up with her to find out what it meant to be part of the golden era of student activism. salient.org.nz

Why did you first become involved in activism? I guess it was because I couldn’t recognise a problem without trying to be involved in changing or fixing something. I rather think for me that’s a product of my parents’ conservative and Christian beliefs—while I don’t have those, I think I have the sense of duty to help others. What activist movements were you involved in? When I’m thinking back to late ’70s and ’80s, they were women’s issues predominantly, but also lesbian, environmental, peace, anti-nuclear, anti-violence. Specifically, the Springbok Tour in 1981 and the homosexual law reform campaign in 1984. What actions did you take in these movements? What I remember about the homosexual law reform campaign was two main actions: marches and demonstrations, and submissions to the Select Committee. At that point, same-sex relationships between women were legal, but between men, they weren’t. There was a Human Rights Act making some forms of discrimination unlawful, but sexual orientation wasn’t included. I wasn’t involved in organising marches, but participated in a number and carried placards. This was only a few years after the Springbok tour, so it felt a bit déjà-vu-ish, I think, marching and chanting again. I had also been doing something similar for ‘Take Back The Night’, which from memory was Friday nights through the central city, protesting against violence against women. The more formal legal part of the campaign was in the early ’90s, when we were trying (and eventually succeeding) to get ‘sexual orientation’ included as a ground of unlawful discrimination. I did suggest to the Human Rights Commission that an action I might take would be to advertise employment for lesbians or gay men only, on the basis that it wasn’t unlawful to discriminate. They told me it was provocative and unhelpful, although I still think it would have been a good idea at the time. Why did you think that the action that you took was the best way to express your beliefs? People—me, and lots of others—had many discussions about what we could do, and what was the best way to do it. I guess I thought the actions I took were the best way to express my beliefs and to change society because I’d thought about what was wanted and needed, and had considered the alternatives. Looking back, do you still believe that the kind of activism engaged in during the ’70s and ’80s was the most effective way of achieving your goals at the time? I think over all the range of activism was good and appropriate for the times. We didn’t stop the Springbok tour, but we did reform legislation so that male homosexuality was not unlawful, and we do have extensions of anti-discrimination laws. Do you think similar methods to what were used in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s would work as well now? I don’t think it helps to focus on earlier actions and methods and to try to repeat them, though that is tempting. I don’t have an answer, but I think we have to think more about what we were trying to achieve and then think about what’s a good way to get there.

Salient Vol. 74

There is more than one kind of

christian

An interview with Rev Dr Margaret Mayman Geraint Scott

We all have our own beliefs, whether theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re super evangelical Christian or hardcore atheist. But how do our beliefs impact on other people? Should a religion be able to introduce national law, or should it be kept separate from state issues? What about when those lines blur, such as in the issue of gay marriage? Salient talks to Reverend Dr Margaret Mayman, the Minister of St Andrews on The Terrace, to find out what her Inclusive Presbyterian Church thinks about the issue. Although St Andrews on The Terrace officially became Inclusive in 1991, Margaret says that the church has always been very liberal and active. In 1951, they were involved in protesting with dock workers during the Waterfront Lockouts. Later, during the 1981 Springbok

Unfortunately, Destiny Church leader Bishop Brian Tamaki has such a huge media presence that he gets to define Christianity in New Zealand, and has a fairly extremist view that really isn’t fair to other churches

tour, the then-Minister went to Hamilton to protest on the field against the tour, and tried to stop raciallysegregated teams from leaving New Zealand to play in South Africa. St Andrews on The Terrace was also involved in keeping New Zealand nuclear-free, and used to have an official Peace Church sign before it was destroyed. There have been gay and lesbian people in their congregation for a long time now. Margaret says that the parish voted on the decision to become Inclusive because in Presbyterian churches, the Minister is not the only person involved in the leadership, and decisions are always made with the approval of the parish. There is a very specific process to become an Inclusive church, and Margaret says that it was important to ensure that the parish wanted to be recognised in this way. She comments that, unfortunately, Destiny Church leader Bishop Brian Tamaki has such a huge media presence that he gets to define Christianity in New Zealand, and has a fairly extremist view that really isn’t fair to other churches. Margaret has officiated 25 civil unions. During the campaign to legalise civil unions in New Zealand, she started an organisation called Christians For Civil Unions to show Parliament that there wasn’t just one Christian opinion on the issue. They worked with secular campaigners to help achieve civil unions here, and the church members never questioned it; in fact, they fully supported it. Margaret says that it did, however, get to a point where some people assumed that they were a fully gay church because they were so big on the issue. When asked the difference between religious and non-religious marriages, Margaret says that all marriages are considered civil marriages, but some are performed by Ministers. Civil unions can also be held by Ministers in church. In her opinion, the current laws around marriage are not helpful in achieving gay marriage, which is unreasonable for a secular country. Margaret says St Andrews would support gay marriage if it were legal; however, legalising civil unions were important in securing legal rights for gay people, and they had to either accept that, or continue to fight for full marriage and probably not get it. She notes that some states in the United States already have gay marriage, and considers it quite surprising that New Zealand is behind the United States on this issue. Margaret has found that some gay people prefer civil unions because they’re something different from the traditional institution of marriage, and there is far less pressure for a civil union to be a major event like a marriage often is. Margaret says that verses in Leviticus have caused the most unrest between gay people and Christianity. She explains that they were originally written to separate the Jews from the Palestinians, but they are not applicable now, in her view, since

salient.org.nz

Feature

Issue 7 Beliefs

they were written for a specific place and event that happened thousands of years ago. She also says that the Bible never discusses committed gay relationships or an understanding of homosexual orientation, and that Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament are meant to free us of the rigid, older laws that were restricting people’s quality of life. She points out that the issues raised in the Bible have been worked around before, such as the suggestion that slavery and the oppression of women are okay, as well as the assumption that the Earth is flat. Margaret believes that the Bible is not to be taken at face value, but to be interpreted to help better our lives, and that many of the stories are only myth, rather than true accounts. Margaret says that there are a few certified Inclusive churches in Auckland, and one in Christchurch, but that not all churches who are inclusive of the gay community have sought out official status. She notes that although Methodist churches are often quite inclusive, Methodist churches in New Zealand often have a mainly Pacific Islander parish that were traditionally anti-gay. Margaret says that Anglicans were divided on the topic of homosexuality, with some being very liberal and others being conservative and evangelical. The same went for Presbyterians who have decreed that gay She points out that people can’t be ordained, but those who already were the issues raised in ordained would not be the Bible have been stripped of their positions. worked around She says that in Roman before, such as the Catholicism, most gay people felt tolerated by the church suggestion that but felt they were not allowed slavery and the to be open about themselves oppression of women at all. She remarks that are OK, as well as younger evangelicals are far less concerned with the assumption that homosexuality than their Earth is flat parents’ generation. Margaret mentions that a recent nationwide poll in America found that 53 per cent of Americans had no problem with gay marriage, and actually preferred it to people being a single parent—which was unthinkable 15 years ago. She also says that most of the controversy that the media focuses on shows hardcore evangelicals, rather than moderate Christians, and that evangelicals actually want to control all sexuality, to the point of advocating celibacy bar procreation in marriage. Margaret believes that homosexuality is just a way for them to verbalise this more effectively. It’s really heartening to know that even in the Christian world, there are people who not only support but advocate for the rights of the gay community. It seems like there is a very good chance that equal rights for gay people in New Zealand will happen in our lifetime, with churches around the country helping lead the charge. As the work of St Andrews is testament to, religion and the gay community can most certainly work together with a little bit of open-mindedness.

Salient Vol. 74

Game Over, Man!

Has Doom & Gloom Come All Too Soon? Doc watson

So one day, the seas rise up and swallow the Earth. The end. It sounds like an idea from Michael Bay’s head, which is like throwing a brick into a tumble dryer, with much the same outcome. But just like that knockoff Transformers franchise Bay chundered, we revel in the theory all the same, and it all points one way: we hit the high score list on 21 December 2012. Cue groans from the audience. Yeah, the apocalypse thing’s been done—but where did we get this idea from? Is there some grain of reason behind the end-game shenanigans? Should we subscribe to the notions of these doomsayers? Or should we send them back to their room to have a good long think about what they’ve done?

Let’s start from the roots of all of this hysterical flailing.

The Mayan Calendar theory was one of the first to give the definitive date on the matter. Their calendar was based on the Long Count Calendar, which essentially shows time’s progression from point A to B, like a countdown clock. It was how the Mayans kept track of their birthdays and rubbish days and what have you. The Mayan Calendar began on 11 August 3114 BC, and will end on 23 December 2012, thus cataloguing 5125 years, and the common perception goes that when the Mayan calendar comes to an end, so will mankind. In reality, the ending of the calendar isn’t what the big hootenanny is all about. The Mayans saw time as being cylindrical: it would loop around in cycles, which are arranged in ‘b’aktuns’ of thirteen, equating to roughly 5125 years of our time. They believed that the end of the thirteenth b’aktun on 11 August 3114 BC was the beginning of the ‘fourth world’, where we now exist and are living in and having wild parties in, et cetera. It just so happens that the end of the thirteenth b’aktun for the fourth world is on 21 December 2012. That’s when, according to Mayan tradition, the fourth world ‘comes to an end’, which we have chosen to interpret as “HOLY SWEET MERCIFUL FUCK IT’S OVER MAAAAAN.” This goes directly against all the common depictions of the 2012 phenomenon, which are that the world will essentially call it a day when the countdown timer hits zero. In reality,

Feature

Issue 7 Beliefs

though, all it really was to the Mayans was cause for a great celebration—the equivalent of New Year’s, Hanukkah and your birthday rolled into a bauble of glitter and moonshine. It was like Y2K for them: they made it to 5125 years as a civilization, and damnit, they were going to party like it was 20 AD. There are heaps more theories, and I could fill up a whole magazine of them. The fact is most of them just aren’t holding any water. They all range from voodoo mumbo jumbo to planetary collisions. But the kicker is just that: there are no gold nuggets in this cavern of theories. It’s almost like a game of Lotto—you have no idea what’s going to happen until it happens. So why do we so readily believe that the end is near? What, aside from the facts and even the fiction, kickstarts a fear of such crackpot theories? It can be reasoned, with the recent natural disasters in Christchurch and Japan, and the political turbulence in the Middle East, that the stockstandard paranoia has simply escalated. In psychological terms, this is known as pareidolia. It is the same principle as seeing your alphabet soup spell out ‘DIE’ and presuming your own death is impending. The act of pareidolia is such that the culmination of completely arbitrary events leads to the jackrabbit assumption that we might as well call it a day and close shop. Without any hard evidence, we wave the white flag. And yes, an earthquake counts as an arbitrary event. Calm your tits. It could also just be our own mortality that’s causing us all to freak out. We’re just fleshy human beings, after all. We lose our keys; we can’t remember if we left the oven on; we put our limbs When it comes in places we shouldn’t. to Apocalypse Generally speaking, we putting the sharpest Now, we wipe aren’t machete to the intellectual the slate and thicket, and when it jump back to comes to ‘the end’, our ‘survival of the first and utmost priority is ourselves. It can take the fittest’ mode form of our family, our possessions, our own wellbeing, but there’s something egotistical about how when everything goes tits-up, we pat ourselves down first. When it comes to Apocalypse Now, we wipe the slate and jump back to ‘survival of the fittest’ mode. Every religion and ideology has their own ideas on the end times, but all of them seem to factor into our lifetime. Every generation seems to have one of those “the-end-isnigh” freak-outs where everyone jumps the gun; nowadays, it’s getting to the point where the boy who cried ‘wolf ’ has just recorded it on tape so he can loop it to the masses whenever he gets bored. The 2012 phenomenon is fraught with scepticism, and why shouldn’t it be? Aside from Y2K, swine flu, economic implosions, we seem to be hunky-dory. Not exactly in pristine condition, but whatever, we play the cards we’re dealt. Like it or lump it, it becomes a question of whether you believe in the evidence and opinions of people that know buckets more than you do. It’s also about whether you eat the myth sandwich the world has placed in front of you with extra helpings of faith relish. Needless to say, 2012 is the Rebecca Black of popular prophecy—getting way more attention than it deserves, and crushing our souls at that. The best we can do is close our eyes, block our ears and scream ‘Tiptoe Through The Tulips’ at the top of our lungs until the whole thing goes away. As for me, I’m keeping my fallout shelter. If any belief is certain, it’s Murphy’s Law.

salient.org.nz

Salient Vol. 74

Sprains, Strains

& Alcohol Tessa and Anna

Physiotherapy Students at the Victoria Clinic

Ever been running late for class and tripped over, or played sport on the weekend and taken a knock to your shoulder—only to give it a rub, ‘walk it off ’ and think “it’ll be fine after a day or two”? Then, with the classic Kiwi “she’ll be right” attitude you cruise into town for a couple of drinks and a dance, the pain of your ailment quickly forgotten. The next day you become aware that your injury is painful, swollen and a lot worse than you initially thought. It’s usually after an injury that there is bleeding from damaged tissue, which forms a bruise. There is also an influx of fluid from the blood stream (swelling), which brings nutrients and cells into the area to begin clearing away the damaged tissues and to fight any infection which may have entered through a break in the skin. Although this swelling is a necessary and important part of the healing process, the formation of new tissue to repair the damage cannot begin until the swelling has subsided and the bleeding has stopped. This process takes from three days to a week. Alcohol is known to increase the diameter of blood vessels, thus increasing blood flow, in a process called vasodilation. Increased blood flow can increase the amount of swelling and bleeding into the injured area, ultimately prolonging the duration of the healing process and recovery time.

Columns

Alcohol is an analgesic and can mask the pain and injury. Pain is an important indicator of injury severity—after an injury, pain serves the frustrating but useful purpose of stopping you from moving or putting weight on an area that can’t cope with the increased load. Drinking after an injury allows you to do things which would otherwise be limited by pain, and subsequently increases the amount of damage by overloading the injured area too soon. Tissue healing requires vitamins, minerals, fluids and rest. Alcohol decreases the efficiency of nutrient absorption for the gut and is a diuretic, which means that it increases the amount of urine you pass. Consumption If you do suffer of alcohol after injury therefore depletes an injury, the the body of essential best thing to vitamins and minerals do is RICE: and causes dehydration Rest, Ice, at a time when the body is most in need of Compression and Elevation good nutrition. Unfortunately, the effects of alcohol consumption do not subside when you sober up. The repercussions of alcohol consumption on the body can last up to five days after two consecutive nights of drinking. If you do suffer an injury, the best thing to do is RICE: Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation. Avoid painful movements and apply ice for periods of up to 15mins every hour. Ice is best applied by placing a wet towel over the injured area and placing an ice pack/packet of frozen peas on top. Compress the injury using a bandage and elevate the injured area to the same level as your heart. RICE decreases the amount of swelling in the area and facilitates blood clotting to minimise bruising. Massage, heat and alcohol should all be avoided as they will increase bleeding and swelling. Seeing a physiotherapist can also be a good idea.

Victoria Physiotherapy Clinic at Mauri Ora, Level One of the Student Union Building and at Student Services at Pipitea.

Issue 7 Beliefs

Like Anim a the Wee l of ko Faceboo n k!

Fact Animal are illos sh f d a m r A cent o 80 per A with N their D er Island t s the Ea The rest is . s e u stat age. pure r

salient.org.nz

The Gastric Brooding Frog David Burr

This week, we take on the role of a herpetologist. No need to fret—this has nothing to do with the study of genital infections, as its name might suggest. Rather, herpetology is the study of reptiles and amphibians; my personal favourite of which is the gastric brooding frog. This is a genus of frogs, consisting of only two species, both of which are native to Australia. Scientists were baffled when they examined the stomach contents of a female gastric brooding frog for the first time. Rather than an assortment of delicious critters in various states of digestion, as they’d expected, a large number of the frog’s own eggs were found. At first, this was thought to be cannibalistic behaviour until it was noted that the eggs were all still alive. Remarkably, the female gastric brooding frog ingests her own eggs after fertilisation, switches off her digestive functions, and allows her babies to grow

into juvenile frogs before ‘orally birthing’ them. Extensive medical research surrounds these animals, as it was thought that scientists could learn how to prevent stomach ulcers from them. Unfortunately, before any miracle cures could be found, these little guys’ numbers plummeted to extinction—leaving us with a stomach full of ulcers, and not a bellyfull of brooding babies in sight.

Salient Vol. 74

constance cravings

Got a sex question? Want to ask anonymously and see it in Salient? Go to askconstance.com for your hard-earned 15 minutes of faceless, pantsless fame. So my friend told me that girls have either ‘innie’ or ‘outy’ vaginas. Like bellybuttons. Is this true? If so what is the difference? Much love, hungrysexbox Totally! But it’s worth noting that technically ‘innie’ or ‘outie’ vagina isn’t correct. Because that would mean her innards were outside her body. Which wouldn’t be good. Firstly, let’s try and get labels right— not in an unsexy “I want to touch your outer labia/Oooh yeah that’s a nice vaginal opening” kinda way, but let’s at least just attempt to not call everything by the name of one part. It would be like deciding to categorise all human body parts from the waist down as “knees”. Woman (and some men, let’s not forget not everybody identifies with the genitals were born with) have a vulva—the entirety of the outer genital area. The outside “lips” are the labia majora, and once you open them you have the inside “lips” (smaller, not hairy) known as the labia minora. Big and little labia Okay. Now the inside labia is different for everyone. For some it’s hardly there

Position of the week: Scissor me timbers

at all; for others they’re big and wavy like flower petals. They come in all colours, shapes and sizes, and this includes sometimes being visible outside the labia majora. Here is your ‘outie’. What’s weird about ‘innies’ and ‘outies’ is that someone somewhere in history seems to have made a totally arbitrary decision that ‘innies’ were better. Which is blatantly weird, wrong, and I still can’t figure out what on earth kind of difference it makes. If anything, those with bigger inner labias apparently sometimes find their lips ‘latch on’ to incoming objects—like cocks—giving the owner of said cock a most pleasurable sensation. Amazing. Although I know that most people are supposed to know that ‘perfect’ little pussies in porn are often cosmetically sculpted and not reflective of the vast range of pussies everywhere, I think with the saturation level it’s easy to forget. No matter how conscious we are that not all women have bronzed, rock hard bodies with equally rock hard boobs, no pubic hair, pink buttholes and inner labias which are tightly packed into neatly symmetrical, dainty little pussies, most people who’ve used the internet for more than 3 seconds find it hard to shake that standard. Even if we are politically opposed to that standard (not people who fit it, just the expectation everyone should). Like how I know Young Richard Gere in Pretty Woman would probably make a terrible partner, but actually if Young Richard Gere in Pretty Woman wanted to put me up in an apartment and buy me a golden vibrator and a domesticated fox I would have to struggle to debate a life of messages which told me that I’d hit the jackpot. No body hair, bronze abs and ‘innie’ pussies are really sexy. As are muffs, soft bellies, and ‘outie’ pussies. These are not opposites or mutually exclusive moulds, but I just want to reiterate that there should be no ‘better’ look for genitals, or indeed bodies in general. Bodies are fun and pussies are real fun and who gives a flying rat’s ass what shape it comes in.

Cheesed Off: The Kapai Edition Ally Garrett I have always maintained that media institutions have an imperative role in ensuring that marginalised groups have a public voice. Thus, every three weeks, here I am once-more-unto-the-breaching for the tired, the poor, the huddling masses yearning to breathe free. Feta is a marginalised group, right? It must be. I can’t think of any other explanation for the critical under-representation of this cheese. Every time I buy a feta salad I’m sorely disappointed by what can only be described as false advertising. It really gets my goat(‘S CHEESE). Feta is to salads what non-white actors are to blockbuster films: you have to look hard to spot some and even then it’s usually just a token appearance. Thus, the Comparative Feta Salad Study continues and I’m on the QUESO, eating disappointing salads so you don’t have to. This week my journey took me to the BNZ Food Court which is possibly the MASCARPONE-ly place in Wellington that is more depressing than New World Metro. The BNZ Food Court is on Willis Street. I can’t tell if it’s the below-ground-level thing but it really feels like being in hell. Be-suited corporates sit at benches eating watery curries with plastic cutlery. That JB Hi-Fi smell lingers in the air. In a case much like that of the Tasmanian Tiger, one of Wellington’s last juice bars remains; dreaming of “The Noughties” when pulverised fruit was sold on every

Every time I buy a feta salad I’m sorely disappointed by what can only be described as false advertising corner. The food court is also home to Kapai, a salad bar which apparently sells the Best Salads in Wellington (according to Capital Times readers).

The Suspect: Kapai’s Roasted Kumara, Feta and Cashew Salad.

Cost: $7.80 for a regular salad. The Feta Weighs: By the time

I got this salad home to weigh it most of the feta had simply melted into the dressing. That is how small the crumbles are. Smaller than a pin head. Smaller than a bee’s knee. About the size of Paula Bennett’s heart. After scraping at each individual rocket leaf with a teaspoon (WITH A TEASPOON) I was able to weigh out around four grams. To give Kapai the benefit of the doubt I gave them a ring and asked them how much feta they would usually measure in. (And believe me, Kapai staff measure. With persnickety little scoops.) According to Kapai this salad should have contained a “heaped tablespoon” of feta crumbles. The Rest of the Salad Weighs: 265g.

Prosecution: There’s one thing

that’s FONDUEmentally wrong with this salad. Feta this small is EDAM waste of cheese.

Defence: I liked seeing the salad

being tossed (get your mind out of the gutter). I liked choosing which dressing I wanted. I liked the small but perfectly roasted lumps of kumara. I even liked that the coriander and the cashews added a tasty, if confused, fusion touch.

Verdict: The jury is out. This

might be a good salad... but it isn’t a GRATE salad. Fixing this would be a BRIEze. More feta and in bigger bits. Only then could I be tempted to return to HELLoumi.

salient.org.nz

Columns

Issue 7 Beliefs

Impressing with your

Manners AUNTIE SHARON

My impressionable readers, if you take nothing else from this column this year, heed this: good manners can be put to good use in your life. It may seem an old-fashioned concept, but good manners are important. Not only are they more likely to get you what you want, they also contribute to a kinder and more peaceful planet. Don’t you want world peace? It starts with good manners.

Scenario 1:

The surly lecturer You need an extension on that essay. Your lecturer is angry. He’s angry at you and at the thousands of students over the years who have failed to grasp not only the concepts he teaches, but basic life skills like punctuality and laundry. First thing first, if you’ve made an appointment to see him, be there on time. That doesn’t mean three minutes after, that means on the dot. Introduce yourself. Believe it or not he may not know your face from hundreds of others. Enquire about how his day is going—as bad as yours may seem, his may be worse. Let him grumble a bit and sympathise with the tireless and underpaid work of academics. Tell him how much you’re enjoying the class—but bear in mind there’s a line between showing appreciation and sucking up, and a lecturer knows the difference. Explain your situation honestly, don’t lie or exaggerate. If they give you what you want, say thank you. If they don’t, show understanding and thank them for their time anyway—it’ll make them feel guilty.

Scenario 2:

The StudyLink customer service representative Sure, they’ve spent 10 years on the unemployment benefit, and now that they’re employed, they’re getting revenge on the system by stopping you from getting what you need and calling it self-empowerment. Given that they’re what stands between you and your next meal, it might be easy to get mad, and scared, and burst into frustrated tears, hoping it will get what you need. It won’t, but good manners might. As a wise man once said: “Good manners sometimes means simply putting up with other people’s bad manners”. Stay calm. Be reasonable, and understand the position they’re in. Express empathy for the tough job they have to do every day, and always say thank you, no matter how much of an arsehole they’ve been.

Let’s review:

• Be punctual—it’s really just good planning • Introduce yourself properly • Enquire about others’ wellbeing • When appropriate, show concern or camaraderie • Show understanding and empathy • Be honest and genuine Ta-dah, world peace!

Got burning questions? Write to auntiesharon@salient.org.nz

Salient Vol. 74

The Arts

Theatre

The Suspension of Disbelief

The Spy Who Wouldn’t Die Again

“You know that place between sleep and awake?” whispered Tinkerbell, “ The place where you can still remember dreaming?” That place where it is just deliciously possible to imagine that, if you peer through the coats in your damp Aro Valley wardrobe, there might be another world out there. A tantalising and wonderful world where, if only temporarily, you can suspend all disbelief and banish the constraints of reality. We all know that place. Perhaps it is one that we haven’t visited in years—a relic of a distant childhood before overdrafts and law degrees turned us all into cold-hearted skeptics. But that magic place is all around us, if only we choose to look. No, not on Google maps, but in good books, art, music, film and theatre. The arts, like dreams, are intermediaries between real and imagined worlds. Theatre in this sense is not constrained to the stage, nor are we ever passive audiences vis-à-vis a play. I believe good plays and good novels are like colouring books that everyone shades differently. Each We can suspend individual picture is a disbelief, but reflection of the viewer’s never fully age, experiences, mood, escape from our and desires. We can own subjectivity suspend disbelief, but never fully escape from our own subjectivity. In my mind, theatre is not mere entertainment, but a dynamic process in which our responses reflect and shape our own perceptions. The most successful theatre may transport us to another world, but does so most effectively by evoking explicitly personal memories and emotions. Perhaps, if you are to believe the most famous bard of all, “All the world’s a stage”. Thus, although an ability to suspend disbelief may be the most essential element of storytelling, maybe we are all actors in theatre. Therefore, next time, before you dismiss theatre as mere fantasy, remember to allow yourself to imagine. If possible, avoid being too grown up too quickly. After all, to paraphrase Peter Pan, “Every time you say ‘I don’t believe in fairies,’ there’s a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead.”

If someone had asked me a week ago what Octopussy was about, my guess would have been an adult flick following the ups and downs of a woman with a great many orifices. However, after a few entertaining nights spent educating my uncultured, unworthy self about the finer points of the James Bond series, I was glad to learn I was far off the mark. More importantly, when I saw The Spy Who Wouldn’t Die Again at Downstage on Friday night, I was able to have a good chortle at this kiwi take on the action-packed classic. The Spy, set in New Zealand in 1985, pokes fun at the controversial energy politics of the era and combines it with an exciting Bond-style mission down-under. Director Tim Spite and his company SEEyD deserve a whole sack of kudos for pulling off this ambitious project. To bring to the stage a show that parodies one of the most well-known, big-budget spy action series in film history is truly remarkable. The use of silhouette enabled the cast to cleverly perform iconic Bond moments such as helicopter scenes and gun fights on the top of moving trains. The four talented actors took on an impressive range of characters, from bumbling spies, bloke-ish cops and evil villains, to flamboyant tour-guides, elderly Maori folk and sexy French women. The various levels of the stage were used to the cast’s advantage. Some very funny scenes involving a trapdoor were highlights of the evening. Furthermore, the speedo-clad man that emerged from said trapdoor caused many to snicker. The script played well to its audience, with references to the social and political goings on of the ’80s, but the David Lange quotes were a tad predictable and lacking in wit. This is my only complaint in an otherwise fine piece of physical comedy.

Laurel Carmichael

Gabrielle Mentjox

y Who The Sp ie Again n’t D Would tage Theatre ns at Dow yD By SEE pril h—23 A ay, 31 Marc day-Wednesd ) s y e a u d ur mT (6.30p hursday – Sat s 8pm T tudent ts for s e k ic t $25

Issue 7 Beliefs

Music

spotlight on

No Aloha— No Aloha Ben Coley

Wellington via Christchurch band No Aloha (originally The Insurgents) have been playing music together on and off for a few years. Reuniting last year after members returned from overseas they have reformed with a new name and a new passion. On this self-titled four track E.P. they bring together a multitude of sounds and varying influences. The driving rhythm section and noisy guitars blend to create a sound in the vein of Sonic Youth, Pixies and early Flying Nun artists. What sets them apart though is their underlying pop sensibilities. The melodies and harmonies twist and turn to give these songs a softer side, in doing so they have created four rather catchy tunes that sound real, honest and passionate that will get stuck in your head for days. These naturally talented guys have a lot going for them and hopefully will be playing a bunch of shows around the city in the near future that will be worth checking out. You can download the No Aloha E.P. from their bandcamp page.

Online this week... The Kills, Blood Pressures Jessica Moore Blues-rock riffs, reggae beats, post-punk tendencies and sultry vocals; the reuniting of Jamie Hince and Allison Mosshart was well worth the three year wait. Being so far removed from each other I had my doubts that they would jump the creative divide and produce an album that could live up to their previous collaborative efforts...

The Foo Fighters, Wasting Light Laurel Carmichael Out of Dave Grohl’s San Fernando Valley garage comes a refreshing step back to the band at their greatest and truest, and one of their best records yet. Wasting Light seems a grown-up product of fifteen years of Foo Fighters history...

LAKE, Let’s Build a House Isobel Cairns They professionally master the multi-instrumental sound of which I’m so fond, blending horns with adept songwriting, vocal melodies and harmonies reminiscent of Fleet Foxes. It makes me wish that I had much better speakers...

Real Groovy Closes Angharad O’Flynn The news that Real Groovy was closing on April 1st was initially thought by many to be a not-so-funny April Fools joke but, alas, it was not. salient.org.nz

This week in music Gigs to check out over the holidays: • Marianne Dissard, music and film (!), Mighty Mighty, Wednesday 13 April • Cirque Medusa, Bar Medusa, Saturday 16 April • Eat Skull with Pumice and Full Fucking Moon, Mighty Mighty, Wednesday 20 April • The Body Lyre album release with Seth Frightening and Teen Hygiene, Wednesday 27 April • David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights, San Fran, Thursday 28 April • It’s not really music, but the Carousel Burlesque Cabaret is on at Estadio at 17-19 Blair Street on Friday 29 April

Music news: • Real Groovy Wellington is closing its doors! Real Groovy manager Mark Thomas has confirmed that the iconic store will be closing permanently... Read the full story online and in the News section. • Don McGlashan is recovering from a bicycle accident! He’s broken all sorts of things after someone opened a car door into his path. Good to hear that he’s a member of Team Bicycle, though, and let it stand as a reminder to watch out for cyclists, because you could be harming a precious NZ icon. • Disasteradio has released an EP of ringtones, as a follow up to his YouTube hit ‘Gravy Rainbow’, which has clocked 190,000 views. • New Wellington band The Eversons will release a six song EP free online on the 11th of April. Their sound is guitar heavy and evokes rock n’roll greats like Pavement and the Modern Lovers. Arts co-editor Blair Everson may or may not be a member of the band, and this may or may not be a shameless plug.

Salient Vol. 74

The Arts

Books

Faith in White Lies Sean Manning

How confident are you on general knowledge? Do you know how many legs a centipede or a millipede really has? Perhaps the reason we believe—or at least don’t question white lies—is because we have always had them. From Santa Claus to the Easter Bunny, our childhoods were practice for believing what we are told. We do this because it is just easier to believe instead of questioning it. Perhaps the best example of this is the flat Earth myth. It is a general consensus that those in the Middle or Dark Ages thought that the world was flat and that we were capable of falling off it. However, the fact of it is that until around 1880, no-one would have told you the world was flat. In fact, in the 2000 years leading up to 1880, the world was considered round. The only argument about it was the size. So should we have to doublecheck the information we are given? In the society we live in we absorb so much—do we really have to check every little bit. Obviously not. The majority of information is fairly accurate. However, it may interest you to find out what bits of our general knowledge are completely off the mark...

Things you may not know: • ‘I before E except after C’ has more words as exceptions then those that obey the rule. • Newton never got his idea for gravity from anything hitting his head. • The Great Wall of China cannot be seen from the Moon or from space by the naked eye • Centipedes and millipedes have neither one hundred nor one thousand legs; the common centipede has between 20 to 300 legs, while the millipede has between 40 to 400, although the rare species Illacme plenipes has up to 750. For more fantastic reading on white lies, try Jeffrey B Russell’s book The Myth of the Flat Earth

[TITLE CENSORED] Kurt Barber

Censorship is one of the most controversial issues of the literary world. An ongoing conflict rages between writers and governments, religious organisations, and various media watchdogs who attempt to ban books for their “immoral content”. Books have been challenged almost since their invention. It is known that Plato suggested expurgating Homer’s Odyssey for ‘immature’ readers as early as 387 BC, while the earliest known formal list of banned books, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum was released in 1559 AD by the Catholic Church. It was a result of both various governments and the Church trying to restrict printers to circulating governmental pamphlets and Bibles, as opposed to anything which would encourage revolutionary thinking. Why does society feel the need to censor any books that provoke individual thought? While it is easy to dismiss the repression of creativity as being a thing of the past, books are still being challenged and banned from libraries today. George Orwell’s Nineteen EightyFour was—somewhat ironically, given its subject matter—the most commonly banned book in the 20th century. Many of the usual complaints were used against it: it was While it is easy perceived to contain sexual themes and anti-Semitism, and to be overly political. to dismiss the Books are often challenged for repression of laughably misguided reasons. Laura creativity as Mallory, a resident of Louisana, Georgia, being a thing of managed to find “evil themes” within the past, books the Harry Potter series and spent the next two years of her life from 2005 until are still being 2007 trying to get the books banned, challenged and apparently convinced that Rowling’s novels encourage youngsters to practice banned from libraries today witchcraft, murder and blood sacrifices. Naturally, Mallory believed it would be hypocritical to actually read all the Harry Potter novels herself. Likewise, Nineteen Eighty-Four has been challenged throughout its long publication history for allegedly containing both pro-communist and anti-Soviet themes, which would seem an improbable combination even without the knowledge that Orwell was a staunch anti-Stalinist and member of the Independent Labour Party. Why does society do this to itself? Throughout history people have constantly regressed into censorship, treating any new way of thinking, anything that disrupts the status quo as being inherently bad for society. The truth is that books are most often censored for the simple reason that they encourage readers to think for themselves, and we live in a society which, for whatever reason, believes this to be a shortcoming in its populace.

Issue 7 Beliefs

Games

Anomalous Materials:

Competitive Online Gaming Angus Winter

So far in Anomalous Materials, Donnie and I have mostly shared our thoughts relating to story-based, singleplayer experiences with games. I have always considered myself the kind of gamer who treasures when a piece of electronic entertainment is compelling enough in its narrative and world-building to totally consume me. However, I’ve actually found that throughout the past two years, the majority of my time spent gaming has shifted focus. I am finding myself increasingly devoted to a different kind of electronic entertainment: competitive multiplayer games. Competitive videogames are all generally based on the same principle: you and the other player/s face off against each other on completely balanced grounds. This is essentially important in defining the experience because what follows is a level playing field for you to showcase your ability at the game. What I believe is common among all enjoyable multiplayer games then, is an eloquently designed set of circumstances for you to master—complete with a learning curve that is neither too steep nor too surmountable. Additional features like unlockables and personalisation are utilised to give you reason to return. If it’s all pulled off with developmental elegance, it can result in a terrifyingly addictive game. A perfect illustration of this comes in the ever-popular Call of Duty formula: You and other players are placed on a war-torn level divided into two teams. Your loadout of weapons and abilities is selected pre-game, and serves to dictate the way you wish to play. I might prefer hit-andrun tactics, and so choose a light, burst-fire submachine gun and the ability to run faster than usual. Everyone playing has the same pool of equipment to choose from, and it’s balanced in a rock-paper-scissors fashion, where certain weapons effectively counter others. Once the game starts, you follow an objective—say, capture and hold a control point or simply reach a certain amount of kills. Performing with particular finesse rewards you with experience points, which are accrued to unlock additional weapons and skills—additional reasons to keep playing. The formula is simple, straightforward and consuming. My steam account lists my total playtime for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at 263.5 hours.

salient.org.nz

The greatest thing about this kind of game is that any fun to be had online is exponentially multiplied by playing with your friends. The advent of social gaming has really had a huge impact on the way people play games. It’s quite something to behold, and needn’t be as negatively connotative as it always seems to be perceived—for a lot of people it immediately brings to mind a darkened room full of greasy fast food and otherwise-lonely adult males honking and snorting. But it is fun. In fact, it’s downright hilarious to run around with your friends in a virtual environment attempting to perform the most ridiculous feats possible. That, and competing with a similar group of friends doing exactly the same thing somewhere else in the world. Playing not only alongside, but against real people makes the experience what it is. It’s so much more exhilarating to outsmart a rational, decision-making It’s downright human being than to hilarious to run best AI-operated goons around with who throw themselves your friends in front of your line of in a virtual fire seemingly without consideration. environment It’s not as though this attempting to form of entertainment perform the is a niche market. In most ridiculous its opening weekend of sale, the latest in feats possible the aforementioned Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops sold 5.6 million copies in its first 24 hours of sale—earning $360 million US. These figures are interesting in comparison with the weekend film launch of Harry Potter 7A, released on the same date, which earned only $154 million US over three days. Evidently, the medium has matured in terms of both artistry and business viability. It’s also not simply limited to shooting people. Multiple genres of competitive games enjoy success online, ranging from tactical strategy games to sports simulations; the FIFA soccer games in particular are massively popular. Whatever the kind of game, I believe that if well made, competitive multiplayer is so compelling as to ignite the thrill-seeking nature present within any living, breathing human being.

Salient Vol. 74

Film

Blood, Sweat &

Videotape

ilms F g n i k Ma

kend e e W e gl in a Sin

Lena Hesselgrave

Fancy yourself as a budding director, actor or producer? Enjoy storytelling or have an eye for the cinematic? Why not get involved in New Zealand’s largest film competition? Lucky for you, you live in a city with striking scenery, many creative individuals and a thriving film industry. Surely that’s reason enough to throw yourself into the challenge of the V48 Hour Film Festival and shoot, cut and survive your way through a weekend of film-making frenzy.

What is it?

The V48 hour film festival is an annual short film competition open to anyone with an interest in film. It started in 2003 with 44 teams competing in Auckland and has since grown to over 650 teams participating in last year’s competition in cities throughout New Zealand. This year the competition is being held over the weekend of May 20 to 22.

How It Works

The fun begins on Friday the 20th at 7pm, when teams gather to receive the random elements of the competition. This includes a film genre specific to each team, which could be anything, with Road Movie to Thriller, Romance to Horror, Political to Religious being listed among previous years’ offerings. Other elements could include a character, a line of dialogue and a prop, which must appear somewhere in all teams’ short films. From there, teams have exactly 48 hours to write, shoot and edit a short film, to be completed by 7pm on Sunday the 22nd. Completed films are then screened in heats to audiences throughout the competing cities. A panel of judges select City Finalists, which then to go through to the Grand Final, in which teams can pick up “fabulous prizes and glory”.

So… How do I get involved?

Team registrations are available via the V48 hour website v48hours.co.nz /2011/ and will remain so until May 1 at a cost of $195 per team. Or if you still want to be involved, but can’t rope in

any of your friends, try signing up to the forums on the website to join an already registered team. If it’s your first time, there’s a bunch of helpful Video Tips and plenty of information about all aspects of making the most of the competition. To get some more inspiration check out some of the previous year’s finalists on the V48 website including last year’s Grand Final winner Only Son.

Salient caught up with local filmmaker Glenn Miers, who directed last year’s V48 Wellington regional winning film Balls & Chain. Making a film in just 48 hours seems like quite a stressful undertaking. How do you cope with this? To begin with it certainly was, when you’ve never done this type of thing before, you do worry if you’re going to be able to pull it off or not. There is a certain amount of pressure, especially since you always want to aim as high as you possibly can. We’ve minimised stress by making sure that our equipment is all working correctly and ensuring that you can output to tape, which is one of the biggest issues people seem to face. Try to be tolerant. If you’ve never done it before it can be stressful. Keep a cool head—lots of back-slapping and hugs go a long way. Also appreciate that everyone is putting in their time for free. It’s supposed to be a fun weekend and it’s not the end of the world if you turn in something that’s not quite what you thought it would be. How and why did you initially get involved in V48? I’d always had an interest in filmmaking. It’s basically storytelling really and it’s a great way to express ideas. I’m involved with a team called Dog Films and this year it will be year five for us. As an experienced V48 entrant do you have any helpful tips to pass on to those considering entering this year? We certainly learnt a lot in our first year when we did it a film called Three Little Pegs. We had a crew of 32 and it was just insane trying to feed and coordinate that amount of people over a weekend and was just too much of a mission. We learnt

The Arts

Issue 7 Beliefs

A scene from Balls & Chain

More Film! Online!

ear we Every y etch out k try to s ards of what o b story t angles o our sh g to be, so n are goi t shooting l o we’re n ssary materia unnece

A Streetcar Named Desire: An Embassy Retrospective Alyse Leitao “The most memorable thing about this film is the obvious contrast between Leigh and Brando’s acting styles, a fight between the Classic Hollywood dramatics of Leigh and the gritty method acting of Brando...”

from that early on that trying to be too big, and trying to make it like it was a feature, is not a very good idea. So, keep it simple, it’s not a feature film. You don’t have time to make a feature and you really don’t want to end up with too much material which you then have to try and squeeze into seven minutes. So what makes a great short film and how do you go about it? Story is king with this sort of stuff and a great story can be shot on a cell phone. Ultimately, if the story is compelling and the characters are compelling, then people will want to watch it. You can apply a certain amount of professionalism, by using steadicams, by considering the shots and not trying to break cinematic rules. Every year we try to sketch out storyboards of what our shot angles are going to be, so we’re not shooting unnecessary material. Even if they’re only stick figures, they give us a really good idea of where everything is going to be placed and what we’re going to need for each shot to make it happen. Any important bits of information that first timers should watch out for? You need to get permission for many of the places that you film, either from the owner of the property or the City Council. If you’re filming in a public location, with say fake weapons, make sure you contact the central police station to advise them. In general it just pays to be sure, because there would be nothing worse then handing in an absolute gem of a film and then getting disqualified because you didn’t have permission. So just make sure you dot your is and cross your ts with that sort of thing. salient.org.nz

What’s it like being involved in filmmaking in Wellington? It’s a great community. Wellington has a really good feel to it and there’s a lot of support because there’s a lot of people involved in it, even if it’s just as a side interest. Wellington is really perceived as a filmmaking centre with Wingnut, Park Road Post and WETA here. Do you see any exciting developments in the genre of film? The technology has very much democratised the whole process. You can go out and pick up a camera and shoot HD video that has a very filmic look to it. That means it’s certainly more available to a lot more people than it was two or three years ago, which can only be a good thing. It’s a lot easier to get material out through the web, but with the proliferation of such sites it can be a lot harder to get noticed, but that falls back into the category of coming up with something that is unique, looks good and has had the time taken to get it right.

EXCITED? YOU SHOULD BE! Email us at editor@salient.org.nz and tell us in under a hundred words about the worst 48 hours of your life. The best entry will win not only a DVD of some of the best of last year’s entrants but also get FREE ENTRY INTO THIS YEAR’S COMPETITION. Cool, eh? Entries close Friday 15 April.

Le Cinema De Roxy: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Miramar Adam Goodall “The Roxy Cinema, the latest addition to the tiny tiny Miramar boardwalk, is set to stand as the glistening centrepiece for the suburb...”

Salient Says Watch This: Religulous Genevieve Fowler “God bless you, Bill Maher, God bless you— despite the fact, of course, that the big guy’s probably not too keen on the idea. You’re generally kind of a dick to him. And considering that you don’t think he exists, well, the whole thing’s a little problematic...”

The World Cinema Showcase

Adam Goodall on Gallants: “It’s not a stretch to call Gallants a 90-minute love letter to 1970s Hong Kong martial arts films...” Johnny Crawford on Tucker & Dale vs. Evil: “Tucker & Dale had the potential to be the next Evil Dead 2, but it is neither funny enough nor creative enough to transcend its premise...” Ryan Johnson on Lemmy: “Shot over three years, Lemmy details the life of this old but far from washed-up rock god...” Check out worldcinemashowcase.co.nz for more information

More reviews!

Johnny Crawford on Limitless: “Limitless is enjoyable at times, but is largely a frustrating watch...” Jessica Moore on My Wedding and Other Secrets: “The film pretty much follows a standard romantic comedy setup but adds its own New Zealand twist.” Johnny Crawford on Paul: “It is a film so vanilla, so beige, so infuriatingly middle-of-the-road that part of me almost wishes he’d directed a pure flop...”

Salient Vol. 74

The Arts

r Visual A

The UnSited Robert Kelly

An underlying idea behind an exhibition is usually a theme or common thread that unites a series of works and provides a point of reference to view them from. Within New Zealand and Wellington this often takes the form of investigating how New Zealand artists identify and critique a New Zealand identity, culture or sense of place. A prominent example of this currently is Back, Beyond, and Here at the Museum of City and Sea. This idea of a sense of place uniting artists is not new and has in my view become somewhat tired. I was therefore seriously looking forward to The Un-Sited at the Wellington City Gallery as it promised a re-assessment of this relationship between artist and place. The exhibit is one of the council’s own art collection but is perversely proud of not conforming to the general function of civic collections as a civic pride inspirer of suburban and scenic landscapes. From the title down this exhibit is trying hard to be fresh and in doing so it sacrifices much of its potential. There are some lovely works in this space, but quite patently there are not enough of them and the exhibit suffers from having a huge amount of space around what are essentially quite small works. The introduction to the works tells us they provide a sense of the “here and now” of the Wellington artists who have contributed to the collection. There are some fascinating uses of new mixes of media, such as the constructed photography technique used by Kate J. Woods, and these works do present a fascinating period of contemporary experimentation in NZ art. But all this does not make them an abstract view on the nature of Wellington or Aotearoa and I felt this was a misleading way to present these pieces. Galleries have a tendency to overanalyze the way that art is presented and in this case it certainly seems like a classic example of more is less. Having said this, it is always good to see local artists shown in a prominent space and these works are genuinely worth seeing in their own right.

Infinity Bag

at Deluxe Café Michael Love

The work in Zachary Jordan Penney’s Infinity Bag exhibition is presented on A4 paper. It is reminiscent of the kind you would see used for memos in an office in the nineties—specifically, it conjures up images of the Initech office from Mike Judge’s Office Space. They could easily have been created by a crazed office worker idly doodling on the back of his memos instead of filling out his TPS reports. There is also something distinctly nineties about the images themselves. They’re reminiscent of early episodes of The Simpsons and carry with them the spirit of cartoons such as Ren and Stimpy. The easiest word for me to attach to the work in the exhibition is ‘gross’. Shit and exposed muscle are a prevalent theme. There are two images that continuously draw my attention, one being of a woman with some sort of a cubist face and exposed muscle on her arms and torso with her legs spread and a link of sausages being excreted from her vagina, and another that is of a dog-like creature wearing a Jimbo Jones-esque beanie with its heart hovering outside its chest. Other images carry these themes but are somewhat more abstract. They are highly detailed and communicate the idea of a world that is coated in a layer of sleazy, sleazy dirt. From these images I was given a profound sense of a world that is mostly barren save for its occupants, and when there is landscape, it is a vast outdoor space, with perhaps one tree on the horizon. The use of A4 paper means that we are only given bitesize views of this grimy, sleazy world. It leaves me wanting to see more of it but maybe that is the point: Penney leaves it up to my imagination and I feel like I am just barely able to glimpse around the corner. The work is fascinating and I hope further exhibitions showcase more of this world—I would love to see what Penney sees around the corner.

Marchfest Dave The Beer Guy

will be

Beer festivals are a great way to try beers from dozens of breweries in the space of a few hours and still be standing at the end. Usually, it takes breweries from all over the country to get enough beers to constitute a festival, but in Nelson, you just need to look locally.

Nelson is home to at least 13 breweries—and I might even be forgetting one or two. This anomalous number may have something to do with Nelson being the only region where hops are grown in New Zealand. Every year, a beer festival named Marchfest is held to celebrate the harvest of these hops, and this year 12 breweries participated. Marchfest organisers task each participating brewery to create a unique beer for the festival, along a certain theme. This year’s theme was ‘revolution’, and each brewery created their beer with that theme in mind. There were too many beers on offer for me to mention, but there were a few standouts. Sprig & Fern’s Marchfest offering is the same every year, and always manages to capture the essence of fresh hops. Sprig & Fern Harvest Pilsner (5%)—named Red Star for Marchfest—is a green-hopped lager. Green hopping is when hops are picked from the vine the day of the brew and tossed straight in the beer. This means every last drop of flavoursome hop oil is extracted into the beer. This year’s Harvest Pilsner shows off the big, fruity, floral aromas of Riwaka and Nelson Sauvin hops. It’s so fruity many comparisons have been made to a Marlborough sauvignon blanc. Stoke Brewery brought along Smok’n Guns (5.5%), a smoked lager. With my previous experience with Stoke beers I didn’t know what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised. The smoked-bacon aromas and flavours of beech smoked malt shone through, with a pleasantly rich body. Hopefully Stoke can one day translate this beer to a full sized batch for everyone to enjoy. The beer which created the most fuss was 8 Wired Brewing’s Uber Pils (7%). Only 100 litres were made for the festival, and it was only available once an hour for 5-10 minutes. Every hour, at the top of each hour, dedicated fans queued up for a chance to try this truly revolutionary beer. Uber Pils has taken the flavour of a classic New Zealand pilsner (a la Emersons Pilsner) and amped up every aspect. Big passionfruit aromas wafted from the glass, which then showed up in the flavour. A rich and rewarding drink, it is worthy of a large scale brew so all can enjoy its unique experience. Keep an eye out for other brewery’s offerings popping up in Wellington in the coming weeks. Leftover Marchfest beers from Renaissance, Moa, Sprig & Fern and possibly more are on their way as we speak… If you have any questions about this week’s beers or any comments, please contact me at davethebeerguy@gmail.com or tweet at me @davethebeerguy salient.org.nz

Columns

Issue 7 Beliefs

Hot Cross Fun Hayley Adams

Between the public holidays, copious amounts of chocolate and tasty hot cross buns, Easter is a pretty good time. I have however noticed that New World supermarkets aren’t keen to let you tap into that festive fun without a touch of daylight robbery.

Hayley’s Hot no-cross Buns ¾ cup of warm water 1 tsp sugar 1 tbsp yeast or 2 tbsp surebake yeast mix Dry ingredients

3 cups flour 1 tbsp milk powder ¼ cup sugar ¾ cup raisins and ¼ cup dried cranberries (dried apricots, sultanas or cake fruit mix will all work) 2 tsp cinnamon Pinch of salt Wet ingredients

1 egg + 1 egg white (beaten together) Glaze 1 egg yolk 2 tbsp water Put the warm water, teaspoon of sugar and yeast into a bowl, mix and leave to go frothy for approximately 5-10 minutes. Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl, add egg mix and yeast mix to the dry ingredients and mix with a knife until combined. If it is too dry add a little more water, or too wet add flour. Form the dough into a ball and place back in the bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave somewhere warm to double in size (about 20-40 mins). Punch the air out of the dough and divide evenly into 12 portions, roll each portion into a ball and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper. It’s okay if the balls of dough touch (it will make them look like the ones you buy at the supermarket). Cover them again with the tea towel and let them rise somewhere warm for about 40 minutes. Mix the egg yolk and water together and brush the tops of the buns with it (if you don’t have a brush just use your finger tips) . Bake in a 190 degree oven for about 10 minutes, until golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool, butter and enjoy. You can put a cross on top of yours if you please. I don’t because it doesn’t add to the taste and I am not really one for religious tradition, just sweet eats. Before you bake them simply mark the cross on the top of each bun with a butterknife, mix together about ¼ cup flour and 2 tbsp of water to make a white paste and drizzle along the cross indent which you have made.

Salient Vol. 74

Notices

Everyone - no matter what your current public speaking ability – is welcome. Come along and see what Toastmasters is all about.

Applications closing in April and May: 15/4 – Citi: Australia (Operations & Technology); Reserve Bank of NZ; ITRI Internships in Taiwan

Visit us online at vicuni.freetoasthost. info

17/4 – The Treasury 18/4 – Inland Revenue

Salient provides a free notice service for all Victoria University of Wellington students, VUWSAaffiliated clubs and not-for-profit organisations. Notices should be received by 5pm Tuesday the week before publication. Notices should be fewer than 100 words. Forprofit organisations will be charged $10 per notice. Send notices to editor@salient.org.nz, with ‘Notice’ in the subject line.

Pro-choice poster making workshop Come along TOMORROW and create materials for an abortion rights campaign. 2pm Thursday 7 April at SU218. Open to all interested in the cause.

Greens @ Vic This year is election year! If you’re interested in finding out more about New Zealand’s most forward thinking and hard working party then come along to Greens@Vic at 1pm on Tuesdays in RM219 SUB or just email me at geraintmusic@gmail.com to be put on our mailing list for a weekly update.

COMPUTER and LAPTOP REPAIR and SERVICE Need Computer Help? I can Fix / Repair / Service / Network / Backup / Install or Upgrade your Laptop or PC. I can help with Wireless / Broadband / Training and anything computer related. I’m located at top of the Cable Car near the Met Office building or I can pickup and drop off work at Vic and am very affordable at $70/hour. Check me out at www.compguy.co.nz or email me on info@compguy.co.nz or call /txt Franz on 499 0098 / 021 067 3750.

International student? Wanna write a monthly blog? For Hotcourses publishing. Email jessica.brewster@hotcourses.com.au for more info.

Centre your busy week with prayer and a mid-week communion. A quiet service based on Anglican Prayer Book is held every Wednesday, in the Chapel at 8 Kelburn Pde 12:10 to 12:45. All are welcome

CAREERS AND JOBS Recruitment for 2011/12 Internships and 2012 Graduate Jobs has started! And closing SOON! Full details on CareerHub: careerhub. victoria.ac.nz

29/4 – ANZ Internships in Asia; TaxTeam

Free Admission to World Film Showcase!

30/4 – Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Trust

Screening held at the Language Learning Centre, on the big screen in VZ003. Be early as seats are limited. Foreign films screened with English subtitles.

13/5 – Telecom (Leadership Development Programme) 16/5 – Curtis McLean 26/5 – ANZ

Date: Wednesday 13 April Time: 5pm Still Walking (Japan 2008) A touching and gentle drama about a family whose grown-up children journey to visit their elderly parents. As the family reconnect, the individuals realise that although the roomy familial home is as comforting and unchanging as the mother’s homemade feast, everyone in the family has subtly changed, and that they are as bound by love as they are torn apart by resentments and secrets. Run time: 114min Venue: VZ003

31/5 – PKF Martin Jarvie; Halliburton - Australasia Employer Presentations – check details/book on CareerHub: 12/4 – Google, Alan MacDiarmid, AM102, 5.15pm 12/5 – Curtis McLean, 4.30pm Careers Expos – check details CareerHub: 19/5 – Campus Careers Expo, 11am – 2pm 20/5 – ICT Careers Expo, 12pm – 2pm Vic Careers: 463-5393, careers-service@ vuw.ac.nz, 14 Kelburn Parade

Date: Thursday 14 April Time: 5pm Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos (USA/ Brazil 2006) The rise and fall of the N.Y. Cosmos. The soccer team that brought Pele to America; against the backdrop of N.Y. City in the 70’s. Run time: 90 min Venue: VZ003

Film Society Do you want to watch a chance to watch a vast range of weekly movies with fellow students? Do you want to eat homemade popcorn while doing so? Do you want to pay dirt cheap prices for it? If the answer to these questions is ‘yes’ then come along to Film Society.

Victoria Comedy Club We will be screening Ed Byrne’s Pedantic and Whimsical DVD at the Memorial Hall Foyer Monday the 11th 4pm onwards no charge. Come along and laugh your worries away.

Thursday Nights 6:30pm Memorial Theatre Foyer in the Student Union Building This week, pay only $15 for a year’s worth of films or $2 for a single non-membership screening and watch Edgar G. Ulmer’s classic Film Noir Detour.

It’s Pink Shirt Day! On April 14 come join us outside the library or around campus in smashing homophobia and fighting for Queer rights!

Film Society: The perfect way to spend a Thursday night.

Wear pink! Sing a letter! Show your support for equality! If you’d like to volunteer or get involved email g.m.c.fowler@gmail.com. See you there!

Vic OE – Vic Student Exchange Programme Why not study overseas as part of your degree?! Earn Vic credit, get Studylink & grants, explore the world!

before April 30 and go into the draw to win an INTREPID TRAVEL $2000 voucher!* Purchase at VUWSA or online at vuwsa.org.nz

To the kind gem who handed in my gem; my black onyx ring, which I lost in the library on Tuesday 29 March. Like most jewelry it has sentimental value rather than monetary value. May your good karma come back to you three fold. Happy camper.

Theatre students only need an Empty Space to kick your ass with some Deadly Theatre Dearest Salient In re: to the nameless letter hailing the majority of Theatre students as ‘self-important, trenchcoat wearing fuckheads,’ I would like to point out that I am not self-important, nor are many of my theatre-going pals. I also do not own a trench coat. I can understand your venting at a certain ‘Poopy Writer,’ as public Number Twos are both offensive and a little disturbing, but his arrogant cubiclewall quips do not necessarily place him in equal stead with the entire Theatre studying populace. I’m a nice girl. I smile at strangers, and have been known to help little old ladies with their groceries. I have also never read any plays on sorcery.

A Legal Stink Dear Salient

Email: exchangestudents@vuw.ac.nz Website: victoria.ac.nz /exchange Visit us: Level 2, Easterfield Building

PLUS one Victoria University student will win ALL this Mean As stuff!*

Drop-in hours: Mon & Tues 9-12, Wed-Fri 10-12

Toastmasters!!! Wednesdays, 12-1pm, Room 218, Student Union Building Because communication isn’t optional, Toastmasters is a club dedicated to helping people practice public speaking in a fun and supportive environment.

Relying on the kindness of strangers

Thanking you, THEAGirl

Grab your $20

Weekly seminars on Wednesdays, Level 2, Easterfield Building, 12.55pm - 1.05pm

Letters

6 Month membership and DVD Pack

$100 Jean Voucher

$30 Gift Card

Dress Watch

Loyalty card loaded with points

FREE New Releases

Why is the Law School Common Room so smelly? When I walk in there is a strong and unpleasant pong! This has been noticeable for a long time (yes last year as well and the year before that too)! Stinky!

Free large pizza

2 for 1 Vouchers

*Terms and conditions apply, refer to the website for details. www.studentcard.co.nz

Chromosomes Don’t Work That Way Hola Salienta,

www.vuwsa.org.nz

Oh Starscream, or from here on out Kermit as I will call you. Why is this you may ask? Well it’s purely because you are obviously a fuken muppet.

Issue 7 Beliefs

To a couple of your points: It all depends on what series or even movie you watched as to the hardcoreness of bumblebee. There are more possible versions of the show then interpretations of the treaty. And that is a lot. However you raise the point of Starscream killing Megatron, I believe he still isn’t leader of the decepticons so obviously his methods of advancement isn’t working. Perhaps he could try a nice gift basket to butter up the boss? I think that would be more his style. Also I see where you got that idea of losing a chromosome from sucking too much dick. If my mum had lost anywhere near as many as yours I too would realise the connection. Yeah I went there. On a side note can everyone please have the common courtesy to: A)not stand and crowd main thoroughfares B)stand and crowd entrances to lectures We all have places to go man and you standing in the way is not helping either mine or your cause in getting in any quicker. So move fuckers. And this is not directed at 1st years. I’m talking to you, future faceless Lambton Quay dwellers of Pipitea. Sort your shit out The Shady Chef

DFTBA Dear Salient Congrats on making this years edition really interesting. I especially love Overheard at Vic, Dinocop and the return of Faces to Deface. Thanks for including Totoro in the faces from our childhood, I am a huge fan of the Ghiblis and have spotted a fair few Catbus pencil cases throughout the uni during my time here. Now to business... I am a Nerdfighter and would really appreciate an article/review discussing the phenomenon which is Nerdfighteria and the glory of John and Hank Green. That way, when I wear my nerdfighting shirt with pride around campus, I will get the grateful nods of recognition rather than stares of incomprehension. Yours Faithfully Fireball Wilson Roberts

I Moustache Where You Got That Idea? Dearest Salient, As an avid reader of you ramblings I have spotted couple flaws that could be easily remedied. So I have compiled a list(of two) of suggestions that I feel will significantly improve the Salient experience for everyone. Firstly - It is a commonly know fact that Polar bears are and always will be the ‘animal of the week’ and you have yet to give them this placement even once... The solution to this problem is simple, merely rename the column ‘Animal of ∞’ and instead dedicate it to potential Polar bear splices. I’ll get you started for your next issue ‘Animal of ∞’ HammerheadPolar bear. Secondly - I am yet to have even the slightest chuckle whilst reading ‘The ginger chronicles’ comic. For instance the ‘Movies for math majors’. As a math major myself on reading the title I instatnly got the chubbs, only to read on to see a series of incredibly lame punns such as ‘American π’ <insert dry cough here> so instead I vouche you remove

salient.org.nz

Salient Letters Policy 2011 these so called ginger chronicles(in which I am still yet to see a ginger gag) and replace them with a compolation of hilarious moustaches (any moustaches).

Where we put our Faces is our own damn business

A diddlehead

I liked it when you put Faces to Deface on the back cover. More plz. <3 holy-shit-salient-is-so-much-betterthan-craccum

It’s the Word Search guy!

Loss of a Hard Case

Dear confused puzzler:

Dear Salient.

I know how you feel. I, too, longed for something simple to occupy me in early lectures. Cryptic crosswords and Sudoku require thought, and I don’t have that before 2 p.m. The problem with wordsearches, though, is that they are damn boring, and very, very quick. ‘There-it-is-there-it-is-done’ and all that. So I decided to try something: a wordsearch that takes about twenty minutes to do.

I am sad my headphones disappeared. I think I left them on the 4th floor of the library.

I hope to see these improvements in the next issue, Cheers,

You’re right - some of the early ones were very, very difficult. My own brother, upon seeing the puzzle where you removed pairs of letters, sent me a txt saying “you are a big old bag of dicks”. So I’ve toned them down a bit, while still trying to keep them new, interesting and entertaining. So here’s the deal: write to me again at the end of the trimester; let me know how these new ones are. I hope this kickstarts an improvement of the magazine, or a shitstorm, whichever you deem more entertaining. Eternally messing with your head, Puck

TL; DR Hi. Hello there. Hey. I missed the deadline to write in last week. I have a good excuse though; I was harnessing my newlydiscovered talent for bleeding from the face. I plan to use it to fight crime. That, or commit crime. Probably both. Now I have two weeks worth of random tidbits I no longer care to pretend are interesting to everyone else. Apropos of general not-caring: Starscream is right. He may be a whiny, pathetic, back-stabbing prick, but it would take more than that to make him less cool than a volkswagen. Just saying. I’m having such a disparaging week, but were I to write a summary of it, it would be headed, “Dear Katie Morton; the way you walk as if you’re dancing with a matador is sexy.” and the song from end-credits of Portal will always cheer me up. (Though the game bored me senseless) Speaking of song, I haven’t shared any lyrics/poems in ages. I shall fix that Hope is a butterfly, And no net it’s captor. She beats her wings And sweatly sings Of summer scent and children’s laughter. (Hah! I lied. It’s actually a song title.) >:| As a side note: Fuck Cuba Kebab. I wouldn’t eat there anyway. Everything I cook is a combination of asian food and mexican food. Why eat out? Much love, ~YY? O GOD, YY?! (is still bored with life)

They were very pretty grey skull candy “titanium” in-ear ones, in a very pretty hard case. They also had orange paint on the cord left over from painting the Quad last year. Maybe I should check the lost property place whatever ya call it and see if some nice person found them for me. Love, A response to your facebook plea for letters. PS: What’s with the government INCREASING welfare benefits when they’re supposed to be trying to DECREASE spending? I don’t get it.

Not just your average reading... As I stumbled through my readings that accompany an English major I discovered something that made me put everything aside. It came in the form of contemporary Polynesian poetry. Some poems were long and some were short, but each one I read had something gold. The poems present the ideas of migration, colonisation, heritage and identity through Polynesian eyes and strongly challenge and question these issues. Each poem is infused with passion, determination, strength and quite often subtle humour. They create vivid images that make us question social norms and truly think about happenings so close to home. So next time your after an engaging read, head to the library or Vic books and pick up Mauri Ola; Contemporary Polynesian Poems and enjoy the fresh insights these poems have to offer. The editors explain the basis on which the anthology is based: “Think of ‘mauri’ as the creative energy that imbues all things, while ‘ola’ is well being, the essence of life itself. Thus we have life’s energy: handed down from our ancestors to realise our potential.” Toni-Maree Westcott

Pissed about toilets Dear Salient-step wub wub. Firstly give Seamus a hug, he seems a wee sensitive lad. secondly. It has come to my attention, through no fault of my own, that the toilets on the 2nd floor of the library are rather awkward. You see the only urinal is a mere SSG (sneaky shoulder glance) form the basins. This creates an uncomfortable situation for both parties.I demand recourse. p.s. All the recent letters are TL;DR and pretty boring, yea you heard me. p.s.s Ctr?, Ct r< Tekken 3, boom Ulysses ft. Mista Miyagi Dear literate of kittens,

Salient welcomes, encourages and thrives on public debate—be it serious or otherwise—through the letters pages. Write about what inspires you, enrages you, makes you laugh, makes you cry. Send us feedback, send us abuse. Anything. Letters must be received before 5pm Tuesday, for publication the following week. Letters must be no more than 250 words. Pseudonyms are fine, but all letters must include your real name, address and telephone number. These will not be printed. Please note that letters will not be corrected for spelling or grammar. The Editors reserve the right to edit, abridge or decline any letters without explanation. Letters can be sent to letters@ salient.org.nz, posted to Salient, c/- Victoria University, PO Box 600, Wellington or dropped into the Salient office on the third floor of the Student Union Building.

m to ~

Send ‘e

.nz nt.org @salie letters / c t Salien ity nivers U ia r o Vict 0 x 60 P O Bo gton Wellin

This being Wellington you’d think that Vic would be riddled with this shit Does anyone else think there should be a poetry club on campus? For open-mics, workshops, literature discussions, and an excuse to socialise while pretending to be more interested in pretentious and/or eloquent things than just hanging out with bohemians and beatniks...? I would be seriously keen for that. ~YYanting to perform more spoken YYord

Come back SUMR2 - all is forgiven Dear VUWSA, A week ago, I left my email address at your reception, and nobody has contacted me yet. That was the day I joined a club which plays videos, whose meeting is now in SU217. Its previous meeting room, SUMR2, under the stairs, had the following advantages: - the blackout curtains were dark enough to enable the videos to be seen - the windows opened without flexing until they jammed - there was sufficient sound separation from (what is now called) the Hunter Lounge, that we could hear the video rather than the band SUMR2 is currently empty. Please bring it back, as a bookable meeting room, and consign one of the new rooms to its intended role, which is rumoured to be storage. Sincerely, James the BA Student

U O 2 M R B W T G E R T E S

F C O H A M 1 8 R G L I E R

W S H D E E T R Y A N 1 A L N

DOWN: 2. Commotion (6) 3. Abstain from (8) 4. Benevolence (5) 5. A swap (6) 6. Earliest (10) 7. Collect (6) 8. Feasible (6) 12. A chant (6) 15. Assist (4) 17. Light (10) 18. Yank (4) 19. Agile (6) 22. From various styles (8) 23. Pitiable person (6) 24. Dense (6) 25. Drawing utensil (6) 27. Elder (6) 29. Frightening (5)

ACROSS: 1. Floating (6) 4. Calamity (6) 8. Despicable (4) 9. Furnishings (5) 10. To maintain (6) 11. Immobile (6) 13. Coax (6) 14. Furtiveness (7) 16. Tastless (6) 18. Euphoria (10) 20. A lord (10) 21. Pandemonium (6) 26. Excess (7) 28. Dawdle (6) 30. Reviewer (6) 31. Nauseous (6) 32. Contemplate (5) 33. Affluent (4) 34. Frugal (6) 35. Deficient (6) E

CRYPTIC DOWN: 2. The truck usually is a big fuss (6) 3. Swore fear to renounce (8) 4. The compassion of my recording (5) 5. Exchange the South-West irritation (6) 6. Ancient Optimus or laid back (10) 7. Harvest great hydrogen (6) 8. It’s possible through a bit of bleeding (6) 12. Art, namely intionation (6) 15. Back up a gamble (4) 17. Slight ewes are buoyant (10) 18. Tug just every royal king (4) 19. Swift megabytes in line (6) 22. Half a lecture after the European Community, I see you chose from widespread sources (8) 23. A bum like vomit (6) 24. Solid atop a queue (6) 25. No, why arc to colour? (6) 27. Rinse and owe the superior (6) 29. Creepy vehicle with stripey edges (5)

CRYPTIC ACROSS: 1. Loose after-death division (6) 4. Map his misfortune (6) 8. Wheel ivory, horrible! (4) 9. Green in the doctor like the interior ration (5) 10. Be adamant about tin sibling (6) 11. Staionary cats around it (6) 13. Hello Jack, back to wheedle? (6) 14. The last craftiness (7) 16. What, dry is cheap? (6) 18. Belay after the Jew and shun joyousness (10) 20. A wrist, oak rat is noble (10) 21. Me, bald? Mayhem! (6) 26. Slur and sup the leftovers (7) 28. Waste time like Harry (6) 30. Dunedin’s judge (6) 31. Sick wharf starting extra shipments (6) 32. Reflect on narrow thousand (5) 33. Wealthy centric history (4) 34. Sing thank you to the thrifty (6) 35. Short supply of credit card and ears (6)

Puzzles answers

46 Salient Vol. 74

Your Number Is Up I M S W E N 9 K R 2 E N 1 0 K AIRFREIGHT LEONINE

B D F O E R B A L 4 3 G W I R BALFOUR MEN AT WORK

T I H Y R R 2 N O D Y T H 9 2 BILLY MAZEROSKI MOSQUITO NET

E A L 1 M A E R R B I T O A A CANINE UNIT NETWORK NINE NEWS

G L E L H T H N A I 7 E N I N DIAL TONE ON EGGSHELLS

G T S O Y P B B O U L E R I E DON’T WORRY PIONEER

U 1 C S N M 1 G O 2 A F B A M FLATWORM RYAN O’NEAL

O L H A L G A T L P R L A O 2 FORTUITOUS EVENT STUNTWOMEN

Y F Y E 9 L I 0 H 8 E T S R N GONE BABY GONE TOUCHTONE PHONE

D I L H A U E B S C P Q H E U HARTWOOD ‘WE’RE NOT WORTHY!’

E L I A T V N H E K U I V Y T HEAVYWEIGHT WHEN I NEED YOU

9 E I R 2 N Y I S I I O 1 N S

ACROSS: DOWN:

5. LULLABY 8. AKIMBO 9. ABUNDANT 10. RIVER 11. UPSET 13. HAIKU 15. NASTY 17. EVER 19. MIRTH 22. QUENCH 23. ABIDES 24. TENSE 26. JOKE 28. CANOE 32. INANE 33. AVERT 35. COMIC 37. HYSTERIA 38. SQUIRM 39. REMORSE 1. FAILURE 2. SMILE 3. COAX 4. PENCIL 5. LEAGUE 6. LATRINE 7. BEREFT 12. SKELETON 14. YACHT 16. SYNDROME 18. OMEN 20. REEK 21. HARSH 25. TEACHER 27. EXTREME 29. AROUSE 30. TISSUE 31. LATENT 34. VENUE 36. GASH

Last Week’s Word Find Solution

Word list: South Dakota, Texas, Arizona, Montana, Pennsylvania, Silicon, Titanium, Arsenic, Mercury, Potassium, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, Mexico, Peru, Serpentine, Topaz, Amethyst, Moonstone, Peridot, Satsuma, Tangelo, Apricot, Mango, Papaya.

Solution: ‘All persons are puzzles until we find the key to the man, to the woman.’ –

SUDOKU

Issue 7 Beliefs

Comics

salient.org.nz

Salient Vol. 74

For further information, contact VUWSAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Clubs & Events Manager on clubs@vuwsa.org.nz or (04) 463 5060 or check out vuwsa.org.nz