Shot and trapped

All of us get fear drummed into our heads every day. From the news, from the Porsches and the blanket-man at the curb, from colleagues... from the elevated paradigm of constant competition. This fear lets us shift gears in that rat race instead of slowing down and help those who have fallen. The latter group is constantly growing - so if you stop with dignity and help, it will be us, resting.

A challenge forces the brain figuratively to leave the comfort zone and enter a terrain of uncertainty. As a result it creates a gap of information to support one’s view on an issue and leaves gaps in the brain’s structure of knowledge. This “uncertainty effect” has been scientifically evaluated in 2006 by the Boston MIT and led to disturbing conclusions: The brain replaces missing information with an inexplicable fright, an “irrational by-product of not knowing — that keeps us from focusing on the possibility of future rewards”. Frankly: People want to know what they are already inclined to believe.

Imagine when you have to work 30-odd years to afford a two-bedroom house (or just the rent), trying to keep your head above water, moving to places that your job demands and not your lifestyle. This is anything but Kiwi. A devastated social structure is what current economics leave behind and while the rest of the developed world is moving to the right because of this.

This is not just a matter anymore for EU politicians but for every European citizen to remember that there is actually something which has been abstract and in Brussels for the past years. As a European people may now start to ask more concretely what the EU actually stands for. The UK may be hit the hardest; by exiting they will definitely teach the world, themselves included, what the union means.

He most probably won’t, but everyone who ever heard of Donald Trump may have had thought about what happens if Trump gets elected president. Maybe even a few of his supporters. This article asks the “what if” question and scratches along some issues that made the rise of Trump-superstar even possible. Concluding from Trumps behaviour and his claims, which seem to follow no reasoning but his own mood, it seems unpredictable what Trump will do next. However, a picture can be drawn of a future where Trump is American president from this very unpredictability if we apply the paradigms of modern capitalism. These may be arguable but for an outlook on things they shall serve as basic premises of political […]

Doch weder hier sind substanzielle Ansätze zu hören, noch schafft Petry es, sich von Hassrednern zu distanzieren. Man bekommt Petry nicht wenigstens zum Eingeständnis fehlendem Anstands. Subtrahiert man ihre (zum Teil berechtigte) Wut auf das System, bleibt doch nur eine durchschnittliche Politikerin, formatlos wie jene, gegen welche sie wettert - gefährlich wie jene, die dogmatisch-ultranational ihren Haß ausgießen.

"...hungry kids: up, inequality: up, pollution: up, electricity costs: up, housing costs: up, foreign ownership: up, debt: up, corruption: up"

The movie 8 Mile, which chronicles the rise of aspiring rapper Jimmy ‘B-Rabbit’ Smith (played by Eminem), has been translated into over 15 languages including Russian, Dutch and Japa- nese. Noticeably absent from this list is Elizabethan- Era English (EEE), the language used by William Shakespeare. From a commercial perspective, this omission is perfectly understandable, as there seems to be few native EEE speakers alive today. How- ever, from an historical and academic perspective, this omission is unfortunate, as Shakespeare’s works have often been compared to rap lyrics (Brock 2009, Bradley and duBois 2011, Lars 2012, Akala 2012), and a recent analysis lists Shakespeare as having the 15th most unique vocabulary among rappers (Daniels 2014). Thus it would be interesting […]

So is true after all, that New Zealanders are lazy bums? Maybe as bad as the greek? Ouch, that hurt... Well, let me explain this by investigating the housing market. Some may remember the big headline in the herald around 2006, when the cover story was a private Auckland property selling for over NZ$1 m. Back then it seemed like a whimsical one-time-thing. But who would have thought?