Here are 16 important things I learned this year. Actually they are not all important or even new, but I'm a slow learner, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

I feel as though I am saying goodbye to Nelson Mandela not just for me, but for my mother, Cherry Hill, who died last year, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

I don't know exactly when it happened. But somewhere along the line I seem to have stopped wanting to be rich. This could be a problem.

Deborah Hill Cone's experience has left her even less on board with the national handwringing over heteronormative young couples and their high lifestyle expectations.

The word itself is wrong. Depression. So bland - a wimp of a word, William Styron called it.

People with high social dominance fill the news and for the rest of us that can be disquieting as our cortex registers we are not included in this clique, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

I'm a bit in love with Finland, or at least its education system, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

There's a saying in autism circles that a worried mother does better research than the FBI.

I really hope Kate Middleton doesn't suffer from post-natal depression, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

I go and help my 5-year-old son with his storywriting at school a couple of mornings a week which means sitting in on mat time.

I was too scared to open my laptop much of last week because of the vitriol hissing out. Deborah Hill Cone explains her comments about female journalists.

I've been reading my kids a book called Maude by Lauren Child, but I think it might make a cautionary tale for journalists.

Here is something I have learned this week: systematic variance is the deviation of the group means from the grand mean and an F test is a ratio of systemic variance to error variance.

There has certainly been a lot of noise following the Government's announcement it will provide breakfast for children at school.

It's weird, but before I had kids I thought it was excellent to subvert young minds by indoctrinating them on political issues, writes Deborah Hill Cone. Now I'm not so sure.

Behaving badly towards those who are vulnerable might be a sign you are in the most need of help, writes Deborah Hilll Cone.

Many left-wing thinkers believe we have no "agency" or ability to make conscious choices, writes Deborah Hill Cone. Until we can work this one out we are not going to make much progress with rewiring criminals.

There was a screaming meme (boom boom) doing the rounds on the internet last week.

Naming clothes is one of the many new things you learn about when you first put your parent in an old folks' home, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

TS Eliot once said, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality". But I'm not sure that he read a real estate advertising section, says Deborah Hill Cone.

Oh-kayyyy. So Mike Williams, a former Labour Party president, calls parents who try to get their kids into higher decile schools "dumb", writes Deborah Hill Cone.

I had a bit of a bung week. And when things feel a bit bung, you just can't seem to care about anything but yourself and your own silly bung first world problems.

So taxpayers have generously decided to bail out Wanganui Collegiate - what, no H? - to the tune of $3 million a year and $4 million for upgrading its buildings.

Deborah Hill Cone is fed up with New Zealand's oppressive attitude to home ownership.

I am writing this lying in bed and staring out at the Hokianga Harbour in the Far North.

I was once "the most hated woman in New Zealand". In April 2000, writes Deborah Hill Cone. I chose to name the policeman who shot a young young man called Stephen Wallace in Waitara.