Throw-aways on Papaiti Rd.
Road rubbish
As long as I can remember, Whanganui has been a particularly clean, well cared-for environment.
Recently I have noticed more rubbish being chucked on to road berms.
Pictured is a selection of stuff picked up on Papaiti Rd over the last couple of months from north of Mosquito Point up to the kiwifruit farm near Sandy Hook.
Plastic, paper takeaway bags, polystyrene, drink and beer cans, smoke packets, plastic coffee cup lids and odds and sods.
OK, some of it might have blown off the backs of trucks, but mostly I think some lazy person has just chucked it away, too careless to clean up their own mess.
What happened to "be a tidy Kiwi"?
DEB FREDERIKSE
Papaiti Rd
Lost honorifics
Hey, Chron folk – thanks for the wee story and pic (Thursday, April 19) about my school holiday children's felt-making workshop.
I appreciated it, but what didn't sit well with me was being called "Shand". I identify with a few public names – Susan, Sue, Mrs Shand, but what I would never identify with is being called Shand.
Through my teaching, I know the importance of getting a person's name right and Maori, rightly so, say that their name is taonga –a precious gift. I feel like that about my name.
Please reconsider following along with this practice of dropping honorifics as well as Christian names.
SUSAN SHAND
Whanganui
Bad physics
Did any of our keen high school physics students spot it? ("Ice melting faster — study". Chronicle, P6 April 20). It's in the second sentence (quote): "…melting glacial ice sheets make the ocean's surface layer less salty and more buoyant." Er, no. That statement is only partly right! Think about it, kids.
The article goes on to explain that fresh (as in "not salty") glacial water is less dense than salty sea water and, being less dense, therefore sits on top of the sea. And we realise from a quick study of a few related laws of physics, the fresher surface layer over the Antarctic seas must therefore be less buoyant, not more.
Put the other way around, the salty sea is more buoyant than fresh water. As evidence, think of the very highly salted water of the Dead Sea. It's much more buoyant (denser) than "regular" sea water.
The denser the liquid, the more buoyant it is.
NZME must have gotten this report from a scientific source.
However, somebody, science writer or media reporter, made a "typo", nothing more, for this concept of relative densities must surely have been introduced to children at about school year 10.
So how did the kids in the family do at spotting this?
STAN HOOD
Whanganui
Not helpful
Steve Baron has certainly jumped on the bandwagon over Israel Folau's assertions about gay people. He has joined the company of the many who have condemned the man.
While it's not difficult to understand their reactions, given that homosexuality remains a sensitive issue for many, it seems to me that they give him too much importance.
Although I agree that some gay people (especially young) will be disturbed and troubled by a so-called "role model" expressing his beliefs in this way, I hope that they will be helped to see that Israel Folau is simply expressing his beliefs, based on his interpretation of the Bible.
Many thousands of Christians believe the same thing (and many more thousands don't), but just because they believe it doesn't make it true.
People throughout the ages have believed the most astonishing things and still do. However, most of them don't make their beliefs public.
Israel Folau isn't hateful. He's a young man who sincerely believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible. He's chosen to make his views known, which most of us agree isn't wise or helpful. But rather than judging and condemning him (and thereby doing what he's doing to gay people), we could choose to remind him and others like him that their beliefs are simply that – their beliefs, not the truth.
PHILIP MCCONKEY
Awapuni
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