New Zealand, The Final Numbers

New Zealand's roads are 7% more dangerous than US roads, and, in terms of violent crime, it is about as safe as Philadelphia.  Both, arguably, reflect negatively on New Zealand (Sorry fans of Philadelphia).  I will be the first to admit, that I am not a glass half full person.  Jason, perhaps, described my demeanor best when he said that I "thrive in negativity." Knowing this about myself, I acknowledge that I do often look for negatives.  I am good at finding what is wrong with a situation.  So, I wanted to find something that New Zealand was better at.  Unfortunately, every metric that I come across reflects poorly on New Zealand.  Though one analysis remains uncompleted, and if Edmund Hillary is correct, then New Zealand will trump the US in this aspect.

I will address Hillary's opinions towards the end, and instead begin with safety in the workplace.  I was recently nominated to the safety committee at work.  Without divulging any sensitive information, I was startled at some of the trends in the incidents, and was appointed to give a presentation about the importance of incident and near miss reporting.  One of the things I discovered while preparing this presentation was that New Zealand's workplaces are, well, shockingly dangerous when compared with US workplaces.  This might be related to the fact that construction workers work in trenches beneath heavy equipment without hard hats or safety glasses, or that scaffolding rarely has toe boards or railings.  It could also be the "New Zealand ingenuity," that makes Kiwis "make" things work.  Whatever it is, the safety comparison is best shown with a graph.

While that is not the most beautiful chart I have ever made, a given industry is in the same color, with US numbers presented with a black border.  In the categories of Total (all industries), Mining, and Construction, NZ workplaces have, approximately, three times the recordable incidents as US workplaces.  In Government, the categories are quite a bit different.  The US statistics include construction and healthcare (a surprisingly dangerous occupation), while NZ excludes these professions.  New Zealand does include "Defence" which sounds like it might be dangerous.  Either way, NZ government jobs are on par with the safety in the US, and everything else is more dangerous.  (Sources for US and NZ.)

While trying to think of another measure to return balance to the NZ side, I was listening to the radio when they reported on a recent paper in the Lancet.  Apparently, infectious disease rates are on the rise in New Zealand.  I might not have thought too much about this, but a Modern, Western nation should have a falling infectious disease rate, and a rising chronic disease rate.  I have not read the article in the Lancet, so I cannot verify either way, but it seems that there are two interesting parts to this.  First, that this is the first study of this kind.  I am not sure if this is the first study of this kind in New Zealand, or if it is the first anywhere.  I imagine it is the first in NZ, as this seems like the type of data that the CDC would tabulate annually.  That said, I have not been able to find these data on the CDC website (with only brief, late night searches).  Second, many sources allege that NZ is the only Modern, Western nation with this trend.  If this is true, one has to ask, does this preclude modernity?

The Edmund Hillary metric came from his autobiography, Nothing Venture, Nothing Win.  In his book, Hillary states that one of the things he did not like about the US was the lack of public land when compared to New Zealand.  This was incredible to me.  When I go to Delta, if I climb to a promontory, I can see public land in every direction I look.  In Socorro, the same was true.  Vegas was rimmed with public land, as the mountains rising out of the valley where the city resides are all public.  I have had similar experiences in Seattle, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and cities in California.  I have driven countless miles through public lands on interstates and back roads.  In New Zealand, or at least around Taupo, there is only one area that seems truly public that one can see from Taupo.  Part of this might be that the North Island is flat, so very little sticks above the horizon, but many of the forests are private (for logging), and most of the open country is private farms.  If Edmund Hillary was from a small town along the Western edge of the South Island, I might understand that Chicago would seem like it lacked public lands.  He wasn't.  Hillary is from near Auckland, where the public land situation seems similar to the Central North Island.  Maybe this has changed since 1975, but somehow I doubt that New Zealand's Great Enclosure occurred in the last forty years.  This seems like a fantastic numbers game, and a great test of how "outdoorsy" the country is.  Are Kiwis really adventurous?  Do they really value wilderness?  I think, contrary to what Hillary states, that public lands have never been that important to Kiwis, and that wilderness gets short shrift in this little island nation.

Obviously, in straight numbers the US dominates.  The US Forest service manages about 780,000 square kilometers of public land, or about 3 New Zealands.  Which, while highly unfair, it seems like Hillary could have found a little slice of nowhere somewhere in that vast stretch of forest.  To keep with the unfair numbers, 76% of Nevada is public land, of which 194,000 square kilometers are BLM land.  In the unit of New Zealands, Nevada has about 0.8 New Zealands managed by the BLM.  The US has about 435,000 square kilometers of Wilderness Area, about 1.6 New Zealands.  Nationwide, the BLM manages about 3.8 New Zealands, and the National Park Service manages 1.25 New Zealands.  These do not include lands managed by DOD (not always open to the public), Bureau of Reclamation, National Monuments (
Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument is 360,000 square kilometers of ocean, or 1.3 New Zealands), Department of Fish and Wildlife, state governments, or local governments.  Much of the Federal land falls under the auspices of the Department of Interior, which manages 2,050,000 square kilometers, or about 7.6 New Zealands!  Thus, the quantity of public land in the US is staggering, but to be fair, the US is a lot bigger than New Zealand.


The New Zealand Department of Conservation manages essentially all of the public land in New Zealand.  There are city parks, and some Maori trust land that is open to the public, but DOC is the big one.  DOC manages, according to Wikipedia, "almost a third of New Zealand's land area."  Rounding that up to one third, that is about 89,000 square kilometers.  In the US, about one third (on the order of 31%) of the land is administered by the BLM, Forest Service, National Park Service, Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Army Corps of Engineers.  This does not include some land, like that managed by the Bureau of Reclamation, but it is surprisingly difficult to break out the land that is public, in the sense that it is open to people, and land owned by the federal government that would not be open to the public (e.g., military bases).  This problem exists in New Zealand as well.  While it is fairly easy to filter out military bases (I think), forestry land may be closed to the public, even though it is public lands.  While this does happen in the US as well, the scale seems larger here.  Regardless, with federal public lands, the US and New Zealand are neck and neck.  In the US, the states also control vast quantities of land.  I have not found a number for New Zealand, but it seems that district parks are often quite small.  It seems unlikely to me that New Zealand district councils hold 10% of the country, like the states do in the US.  Thus, it seems safe to say that public land in the US is closer to 40%, while it is closer to 33% in New Zealand.

If one sets out to prove Hillary correct, then perhaps total area of public land is not a good measure.  Maybe, percent of total land area is also not a good measure.  Maybe, the best measure would be public land per capita.  I think, in this measure, New Zealand has more public land than the US.  By my poorly thought out estimation, the US has about 79 people per square kilometer of public land (including state), while New Zealand has about 49 people per square kilometer of public land.  While I'm doubtful that this is what Hillary was talking about, it is a value worth noting.

However, it almost seems like a group of people who have to live in denser cities are giving up more, to preserve their public land.  It seems fair to argue that the people of Manhattan are giving up more than the people of Las Vegas.  Thus, in thinking about it, I might argue that New Yorkers value the knowledge of having public land more than the people of most Western States, and, accordingly, more than Kiwis.  Yet, to really delve into who values the wilderness more is a complex issue that does not really fit the scope of this post.  Yet, population density does seem to have an affect on an earlier item.  It seems, that infectious diseases would ravish places with high population densities more than those with low population density.  It seems that, if I am to concede that New Zealand has more public land on the grounds of population density, than it be only fair that New Zealand takes a double hit on the infectious disease front!

I may do another piece about New Zealand in, what looks to be, my last two months in this country.  I thought about covering debt, healthcare, and civil rights / racial tension.  I had thought about comparing New Zealand to Greece, as the country seems to have positioned itself for an economic meltdown.  Discussing the fact that while New Zealand does have public healthcare, the healthcare system still unfairly favors the rich (and is woefully behind other nations when it comes to things like hygiene and patient privacy).  Further, I thought about discussing the relationship between Europeans and Maori.  Yet, in reality, the last two are pretty convincingly covered by the paper published in the Lancet.  I may write these pieces, I may reflect on New Zealand after I have left.  Or, I may leave it.  Either way, my intention is that this will be the last piece about New Zealand when it comes to the numbers.

This is an impoverished little nation, with backwards policies, poor records on health and safety, and closed minded, arrogant people, which is okay.  For my money though, Hawaii is a nicer, safer tropical get away, and BC and Alaska have far superior mountains and coastlines.  New Zealand's splendor is something like Washington's Olympic Peninsula, it isn't that it is bad there, because it is pretty amazing, you just know there are better places.

This American Life

I have listened to This American Life for years.  I enjoy the way Ira Glass, and all of the people who work on the show, capture, well, this American life.  I find that the format they have created is, quite probably, the very best story telling on the radio, or maybe even anywhere.  Since becoming an ex-pat, it has become my very favorite way of staying in touch with the country that made me who I am.  If you do not listen, I highly recommend it.

In January, This American Life broadcast a story about working conditions in factories making Apple products in China.  The story was, largely, an excerpt from a monologue performed by Mike Daisey.  Sarah and I were driving to New Plymouth when we listened to the show.  It was captivating.  It was one of the most memorable TAL shows I have heard.  Without a doubt, The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs was perfect for the show.

Some aspects of the monologue seemed impossible, yet when viewed through the lens of a performer, travelling to China on a whim, and seeing, what must have been an alien world to him, not unreasonable.  This week, Sarah sent me a link to a New York Times blog post regarding the episode.  In many ways, I did not want the story to be untrue.  I do not want working conditions in China to be appalling, but the story was so captivating, well told, and emotionally enchanting, it had to be true.

I read the TAL retraction statement.  Then I read Mike Daisey's statement.  I re-read both, and they did not seem to jive.  Something had to be missing.  I started thinking, maybe this is a mistake.  It seems like Daisey did not talk to the n-hexane folk, but does that matter?  Does that make it untrue?  Does that make it worth retracting?  I waited for the podcast to download, and now, I have listened to it.

It seems clear that Mike Daisey was not truthful with TAL staff when they did the fact checking, and that is, undoubtedly wrong.  Further, Rob Schmitz discounts much of what Daisey said happened to him.  The translator, whose credibility is only slightly better than Daisey's, is paramount in discrediting the story, and again, I wonder how well Daisey and the translator actually communicated.  How much was honest misunderstanding?  No one will ever truly know, saving Mike Daisey, buy misunderstanding aside, it is without a doubt, that Daisey was not completely honest with TAL.

Listening to Daisey re-interviewed by Ira Glass, I heard students and professors talking about cheating.  I have been accused of cheating when I did not.  I have gotten away with cheating.  I have also witnessed people being accused of cheating, suspected students of cheating, and accused students of cheating.  People always regret being in the situation, but almost never regret doing the cheating, and this is exactly how Daisey seemed to feel.

I do not know if I would have been honest about cheating when I was guilty.  Looking back at the times I was "academically dishonest" I think that was the goal of the people who made the rules.  In undergrad, we were given more work than a person could do.  One of two things happen when you give people an impossible task, they quit, or cheat.  Everyone who has succeeded has cheated, including Mike Daisey.

Mike Daisey saw an impossible task.  He saw the need to make people care about people they never met.  I recall a story, that was based on "Button, Button," by Richard Matheson.  Rather, what I recall seems based on the Twilight Zone episode of the same name (for all I know it could have been an edited version of one of the two, as it was in a literature class that I was exposed to it).  In "Button, Button" the protagonist can push a button, and receive a large sum of money.  The catch is that when you push the button, someone you do not know dies.  In the story, this is a major moral dilemma, but in reality, if offered this device the only question would be how many times you can push the button (yes, there are some twists in the story that makes this a bad option).  Mike Daisey found a way for people to care, momentarily, about the person who died more than the reward when they pushed the button.  Because, to be honest, every single comfort of life is afforded us by the discomfort of another person, and we never give those people a second thought.

This American Life thought they were airing a journalistic account of working conditions in China.  Unfortunately for everyone involved, they were mistaken.  They were airing a story about pushing the button.  They were airing a story about the essence of being American, about having more than everyone else, and pushing the button everyday, without consequence.  Mike Daisey, regardless of truthfulness, did an incredible job with his story.  TAL captured, unknowingly, the essence of living this American life, better than they ever have.  I do not regret  or begrudge either entity for what they did, when they did it.  In fact, I quite appreciate the whole occurrence as a happy outcome.  The only regret I have is in the situation.  Daisey's monologue would have been an excellent act one for a story about getting the American Dream by taking the dreams of others.

The Northern Circuit Trip Report

By Google Earth measurement the track was closer to 45 km than 55 km, and it seems unlikely that the trail twists, turns and rolls for an additional 10 km.  Regardless, the walk was pretty great, and my first Great Walk of New Zealand.  Pictures are posted in Picasa, and a Google Earth image with elevation profile is included below.

There was very little running, but the pace was enjoyable (approximately 11:20).  I think doing it as a run would be phenomenal, saving the western leg from Whakapapa Village to Mangatepopo, which is a dull grind with poor trail conditions.  My cohort would be welcome on future endeavors, so hopefully I have found someone who is interested in continuing to go outside.  

I think the photos capture the scenery fairly well, so I'll leave the trip report there.  

The Northern Circuit

I convinced a coworker (with surprisingly little effort) to do the Northern Circuit tomorrow.  The conversation went something like this:

"Want to do the Northern Circuit on Sunday"?
"Do you mean the Crossing?  Isn't the Circuit multi-day"?
"No, I mean the Circuit.  The website says it is multi-day, but I think we can run it in a day."
"How far is it"?
"Like 55 k."
"How far is that in miles"? (She is from Juneau.)
"Like thirty something."
Officemate:  "34."
"Okay."
"Really?  I was getting ready to have to persuade you."
"The most I've ever done in a day before was 26, but let's do it."
"Righteous."

In further discussions, the date was moved from Sunday to Saturday, and she agreed to do an early start.  As such, I will leave my house between 03:30 and 03:45 tomorrow (about 7.5 hours from now).  We'll drive from her house, and should be on the trail about 05:00, headlamps blazing, for sunrise high in Tongariro National Park.

You can track our progress via my SPOT page.  SPOTs do not do too well in thick cover here, so some of the legs might not show up, but overall, I'll be beaming my location to the internets via satellites every ten minutes or so.

To clarify a few points, I do say righteous, and bitchin', which does not get near enough use.  The conversation began on email, but was simplified in the interest of story telling.  There was also a lack of enthusiasm for the running aspect of the trip, but I'll work on that as long as she doesn't decide to do it in boots.  Lastly, the Department of Conservation describes it as a four day trip, but really, 55 k in four days?

Violent Crime

There is a notion that nothing happens in New Zealand, making it intrinsically safe here.  Conversely, it is generally assumed that the US is relatively unsafe (based on violent crime for a modern, western nation).  Theft is common in New Zealand like most places, though it seems more common here than other places I have lived.  Home robberies happen, and a few exquisite examples from Taupo include a robbery where the people left town for a vacation, and came home to their house entirely empty, as if they had been moved out.  Prowling is also common, as it is in most places with a lot of tourism.  While being robbed is an incredible violation, things, for the most part, can be replaced.  Trying to filter these reports through the exaggeration of scuttlebutt is difficult, but it seems clear, robberies happen in New Zealand, like everywhere else.

Another type of crime catches my attention more.  Everyone talks about theft, and it is easy to exaggerate, or accept, this type of crime as something that "happens."  Violent crime, on the other hand, is a bit easier to quantify, but maybe harder to understand.  Cars get broken into, but assessing the probability of your car getting broken into is complex, as I am sure the reporting rate is proportional to the value of what is stolen.  One could make some assumptions, that reporting rates are similar, average tourist and non-tourist areas, etc., but in the end common sense would still be the best method of prevention.  With violent crime, while one has to make many of the same assumptions, and common sense is still a good preventative step, one can assume, that with the exception of domestic violence and sexual assault, reporting is pretty good.

Violent crime, I assert, is harder to understand, because it is fairly rare.  New York City in 1990 had 2245 murders.  That is the population of a small town!  However, the population of New York City in 1990 was 7.3 million.  Dividing the number of murders by the population would give the per capita murder rate (a very small number), then multiplying by 1,000, or 100,000 gives a murder rate (per year, while a rate needs a unit of time, it is generally left off).  I will use rates per 100,000 people, though New Zealand statistics are generally given in per 1,000 (thus, I multiply their numbers by 100 for ease of comparison).  Running this calculation, the murder rate in New York City in 1990 was 30.6.  This is very high.  Not on a world scale (countries with ongoing drug wars approach 100), but very high for a country like the US.  The number is nebulous though.  It no longer seems as frightening as the population of an entire town being murdered in a single city.

The other trick to rates is that a small town, say population 1,000, would have one murder every hundred years to have a murder rate of 1 per 100,000 (remember, the rate is per year).  For this small town to have the same murder rate at the peak of NYC's murders it would need one murder every three years.  Same murder rate, but one murder every three years seems a lot safer than 2,245 murders in one year.  The population of New Zealand is 4.4 million, just over half the population of New York City, or about the population of the San Francisco metropolitan area.  Thus, the number of violent crime in all of the country of New Zealand would be equal to the number of violent crimes in San Francisco for the crime rate to be the same.

The next issue in comparing all of this is that every jurisdiction counts crime differently.  For example, rape is a violent crime in the US, but a sexual offense in New Zealand.  I tend to think of rape as a violent crime, so I will add those data to those of the violent crime rate for New Zealand.  I will then compare the total violent crime rates.  Obviously, there are a lot of assumptions here, and I am doing this for fun on a Sunday morning, which means my methods are probably rife with statistical errors, but I think the point and the trend will be obvious and meaningful.

My curiosity on this subject has stemmed from two things.  First, I compared safety data for industries in the US and New Zealand, and the results were surprising, but that might be a good topic for another post.  Second, there seems to be a lot of violent crime  here.  A tourist was beaten to death with a bat by a teenager one night in Taupo.  A five year old girl was raped and beaten by another teenager in Turangi (population 3,240).  These are small places, which means the violent crime rate is going to increased a lot by single incidents.  There is also, it seems, a very large problem with domestic violence in this country (as I have previously blogged about).  Thus, I have begun to doubt the safety, or supposed low crime rate of this island nation as commonly touted.

In 2000 (the most recent data I found for New Zealand), the total violent crime rate for the US was about 500 per 100,000.  For a discussion of what violent crime is in different countries (including the US and New Zealand), the Wikipedia Violent Crime page is pretty good.  In New Zealand, the total violent crime rate in 2000 was 567 (obtained by summing crime rates for the following categories; grievous assault, serious assault, other (including homicide), robbery and sexual attacks).  If the entire violent crime rate for New Zealand is used (this adds the categories of minor assault and intimidation/threats) the violent crime rate rises to 1,154 per 100,000.

A Lonely Planet guide (I think), described New Zealand as being "relatively safe."  My first question here is relative to what?  Relative to Detroit (violent crime rate:  1,887/100,000), New Zealand is pretty safe.  I doubt anybody really makes their safety decisions based on the safety they would expect in Detroit.  Contrast with Honolulu (violent crime rate:  268/100,000), and New Zealand is relatively unsafe.  Perhaps, tourism guides should instead say, "New Zealand is about as safe as Philadelphia" (violent crime rate:  1,189/100,000).

In New Zealand, something does happen.  That something is violent crime.  Can a place be beautiful with a high crime rate?  Yes.  I enjoy D.C.  I am not sure I would want to live there, but that is related to a dearth of mountains, more than the crime rate.  Does the violent crime rate make me want to leave New Zealand?  No. That said, on the matter of public safety, the nation fails to deliver upon the utopian mythology that the rest of the world has developed for the most isolated nation on the planet, which does not make me particularly want to stay.

Note: To obtain data from charts regarding New Zealand crime statistics I used Data Thief, for US crime data I used visual estimation.

"How much would you pay for the Universe"?

A video compilation of Neil deGrasse Tyson speaking about NASA, an eloquent variation on the theme of a previous post, shared with me by Denise.

Toe-paw

As with any colonizing language, local names can look pretty intimidating.  Tonopah and Roanoke come to mind.   Yet, generally, if you know the phonetics of the colonizing language, Spanish and English for Tonopah and Roanoke, respectively, one can pronounce (or nearly pronounce) the name.  It should be noted that Tonopah is not Spanish, and Roanoke is not English, these are Native American words written using Latin letters, and European languages.  The same cannot be said of the English created/derived Māori language.

I live in the city of Taupō, on the shores of Lake Taupō, with a population of Kiwis who generally refuse to pronounce the name correctly.  I find it inexcusable that people know the correct pronunciation, yet refuse to use it just to be culturally insensitive.  In addition to purposeful cultural insensitivity, I discovered recently that many people seem to lack the knowledge of how to pronounce the word in general.  I made this discovery recently chatting with a woman who had grown up in Taupō.  The conversation went something like this:

"You grew up in Taupō"?
"Yeah, people are always surprised when I say that."
"It doesn't seem like you meet many people from here."
"I think lots of people move away because there isn't much here for young people."
"So, why don't you pronounce it correctly"?
"I don't know, I just never got around to changing it.  I should."
"I don't understand why more people don't, lots of folk look at me like I'm crazy when I say Toe-paw."
"That's because you're saying it wrong."
"Really, I was told it is toe (pointing at my foot), paw, like an animal foot.  Toe-paw."
"No, keep the toe, but say poor, rather than paw."
"Say what"?
"Poor, like you don't have any money, Toe-poor."
"I don't think there is an r in the word."
"No, but that is how people say it."

It turns out that people say it many incorrect ways.  If you are curious about how it is mispronounced, and how to correctly pronounce it, the tourism board actually made a video to help.  It is totally corny, but I think it gets the point across, Toe-paw.  Admittedly I speak with a strong Western US accent, which means I enunciate the words of the English language, which does confuse Kiwis a bit (in Kiwi, wit=wit, wit=wet, wit=wheat, etc.), but Taupō is pronounced Toe-paw, pretty simple.

The interesting bit about Māori is that it was created at Cambridge University, is Latin letter based, yet written Māori does not use English phonetics, or seemingly, any phonetics at all.  This tells one a couple of things.  First, there is a reason it is the Oxford English Dictionary, and not the Cambridge English Dictionary.  Second, that the English love to make languages that are difficult to learn owing to a plethora of exceptions to rules.

The first thing to learn is that wh makes the f sound.  So in Māori, who would be foo (ignoring vowel sounds for now).  This can make for some giggles because many words are spelled Whaka-, for example, the coastal town of Whakatane (faka tawny).  Next, ai is y.  This will be familiar to Americans who dream of going to Waikiki Beach in Hawaii.  These two tricks put you off and running.

Unfortunately for English speakers, the macron (the bar over the vowel) indicates that one should hold the vowel sound.  Kiwis will tell you it indicates that you make it "long."  It has been a long time since Hooked on Phonics, but if I recall correctly, the macron, makes a vowel "hard" or "long," meaning A not ah, or I not ih.  What they mean by long here, is that you hold it for an extra beat.  I think this would generally be done with an h in English, maybe a couple of them if you really wanted to prove the point. Ah, or ahh, or ahhhhhhhhhh would be ā.  So Māori is pronounced Mah-ori (when I was being instructed on this matter the r sounded almost like the Spanish rr.  I am not sure if that was intentional, or simply to illustrate how to say the word to a Yankee), not May-ori.  From Māori, one also gleans that o is essentially pronounced o, and thus ō would be oh.  You can listen to the Māori vowels at Maorilanguage.net, where indeed, o is pronounced O.

Those of you who want consistent vowel sounds will recognize the issue here.  If Māori is Mah-ori, then Toe-paw would be Topā, maybe Tōpā, but not Taupō.  Alas, Taupō is pronounced Toe-paw, and it is challenging to figure out the correct pronunciation of Māori words that do not follow the rules, or rules that are complicated.

Another Kiwi piped in during the conversation about the the pronunciation of Taupō, that the word is not English, but Māori, so one could not expect English phonetics.  Further, she pointed out, that there were lots of local dialects, so one written language could not possibly cover all of the Māori words adequately.  Interesting that the English were able to do it for the Eastern Seaboard; the French for the Hudson Bay and Great Lakes area; and the Spanish for the Southwest US, Latin America, and half of South America.  Thus, the Spanish were able to apply their phonetics, albeit not perfectly, to the native languages of on the order of 5 million square miles, but one written language could not be created to cover the dialects of two islands that cover one hundred-thousand square miles.  In numbers, Spanish was sufficient for 5,000,000 square miles, while written Māori is insufficient for 100,000 square miles.

Kiwis, I find, are always piping up with this kind of wisdom.  Whereby, they come up with some explanation for why they cannot do something correctly, without understanding that every other nation on the planet deals with these same issues at a grander scale.  The effect is that when you think about what they just said, it makes them seem even more feeble and sad than you had previously thought.  When there simply is no explanation, they, beaming with pride, will defend it as how it is done here.

The pronunciation of this little town is a great place to begin to look at this little country.  Travelers and travel guides will make claims about this country like, "it is like the US 50 years ago."  Kiwis will brag about their country with things like "the possum is the only animal that Greenpeace says is okay to kill for fur." (I have not verified that claim.)  Kids who grew up in downtown London will marvel at the "wilderness" they find in managed forests, and clear-cut farmlands.  A question starts to emerge though.

"Are these good things"?

Over the next month or two, I will try to find the answer.