Rethinking Team Rankings

Economist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New Zealander Niven Winchester, who studies sports rankings as a hobby, argues that The National Football League (NFL) should rank teams more the…

Dishing Up Comfort Food

Peter Gordon’s 2012-published Peter Gordon Everyday is one of Catherine Phipp’s ‘Best Food Books of the Year’. “Flashes of trademark fusion sit with more personal dishes from…

Quigley’s Own Heroic Symphony

New Zealand author Sarah Quigley’s novel The Conductor is a “vivid evocation” of winter in Leningrad during the years 1941-42. “As the German army besieged the city, her citizens…

Through A Child’s Eyes

In Sailing the Unknown: Around the World With Captain Cook, American poet Michael J. Rosen imagines the journal of the real-life 11-year-old Nicholas Young, the youngest sailor aboard Captain…

Role Of The Year

New Zealand actress Melanie Lynskey’s role as depressed twentysomething divorcée in Hello I Must Be Going is one of Paste magazine’s ‘25 Best Movie Performances of 2012’. “Most recognizable…

Home in the Desert

Moving to Las Vegas was a dream come true for New Zealander Jennifer Scott, a former journalist and magazine editor. Scott said she has had an obsession…

Surprise Involvement

When the premiere of West of Memphis was first announced for the Sundance Film Festival this year, the participation of Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson was…

Outsider Looking In

“This smart and sophisticated novel by prolific New Zealand writer C.K. Stead surveys the atrocities of our time – the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, the…

Librarians Confer

Under a new five-year Arrangement on Cooperation agreement signed by the National Library of New Zealand and the National Library of China, the two institutions will share…

What Could Be Better

The New Zealand specialty bacon and egg pie features in The New York Times’ ‘Diner’s Journal’ weekly column and video. “I got the inspiration to make a bacon and…

American Deal For Angels

Wellington company Angel Delivery, owned by Becs Cass, has struck a US partnership that will see the four-year-old freshly made meal and treat delivery service enter the…

Brilliant Ideas Remain

Gifted Wellington-born academic Amanda Rohloff, who has died aged 30, is fondly remembered by her friend, Philippa Chandler in a Guardian obituary. “She grew up in Karori, excelled at…

Must See On The West End

Everyone should see New Zealander Sam Wills in The Boy with Tape on His Face, writes Telegraph reviewer Dominic Cavendish. “But not everyone should sit near the front or…

Review Of Whimsy

Magazine illustrator New Zealander Peter Campbell’s work is collected in Artwork and describes his 30-year career as art director, contributor (writing more than 300 articles) and, from 1993, cover…

Look At That

Auckland-born Academy Award-nominated director Andrew Adamson – of Shrek and The Chronicles of Narnia fame – returns to the realm of the fantastic with Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away,…

Speed Demon Wins In US

New Zealand Paralympic skier Adam Hall, 25, was at Copper Mountain, Colorado for the 2012-13 IPC Nor-Am Cup, where he won two silver medals in the men’s standing competition….

Not Just Any Caravan

New Zealand architectural and interior design firm W2 have designed a fold-out luxury caravan “unlike anything we’ve come across before,” Gizmag’s Loz Blain writes. “The Romotow looks…

Big Ears Of The Insect World

The iconic New Zealand weta has ears similar to those of a whale, researchers at the University of Auckland have found. The ears of this 8cm-long Auckland tree weta…

Woman Alone

“A mythic quest involving fellowship and solitude; the startling beauty, by turns lush and austere, of a wild land: if you now have visions of The Hobbit floating in…

Retro Ads Bank On Paradise

Five vintage New Zealand travel advertisements feature in Jaunted this week. Among them the ‘Fly TEAL’ ad, which “pushes the airline’s popular Coral Route, which once flew passengers to…

Bond Gets Nastier

Researchers from the University of Otago have analysed 22 James Bond films and discovered that violent acts in the films have more than doubled since Dr No in 1962….

Lord of the Rings was Perfect

“The Lord of the Rings was the work of a filmmaker perfectly in tune with his source material. Its too-muchness — the encyclopedic detail, the pseudoscholarly exposition, the soaring…

Get Out The Velvet

Fashion blogger New Zealander Laura Allard-Fleischl’s take on velvet makes her one of MTV Style’s ‘Bloggers of the Week’. “, is getting back to…

Discerning Types

Melanie Lynskey, 35, is one of ten Indie actors on the verge of mainstream, according to Loren DiBlasi writing for Highbrow Magazine. “In 1994, the New Zealand native won…

Long Line Of Macs

New Zealander John McIntosh can trace his family lineage to the inventor of the raincoat, Charles MacKintosh and to John Mackintosh, the inventor of Mackintosh’s Toffee. McIntosh is now…

Home On The Range

A Queenstown detached home with “views of the mountains, deer roaming nearby, and hills that change colour with the seasons,” is the Wall Street Journal’s ‘House of the Day’….

Made From Milk Honey

Broken Shed vodka, which is distilled from whey, is “vodka for the vodka haters”, according to one of the Huffington Post’s editors. “When we caught wind of…

Distinguished Man Of Figures

Wellington-born applied mathematician Professor Bruce Morton has died in Melbourne aged 86. Under his leadership, Monash, where he worked for 25 years, became the leading university for its atmospheric…

Strange Volcanic Goings-On

A peculiar lava spine between 20 and 30m across has appeared in the crater of White Island. Wired’s Eric Klemetti is “not even sure how to describe it.” “The…

Holding It In For A World Record

Free divers, like New Zealander William Trubridge, 32, are taking extreme sports to new depths, while ever mindful of not being shark bait, reports The Sydney Morning Herald’s Emma…

Improvising Love In NY

New Zealand filmmaker Florian Habicht, 30, lets the people direct his tale of romance in the Big Apple. In New York he fell in love every few minutes, Habicht…

Knock Out For Life

New Zealand All Black and kickboxer, Hastings-born Hika Elliot, 26, unbeaten in 62 fights, will square off against Australian league player Paul Gallen in the Fight For Life boxing…

Where Do We Come From

A two-year study, called “The longest journey — from Africa to Aotearoa”, could provide a snapshot of the lineage of all human history, according to biological anthropologist Lisa Matisoo-Smith,…

Cooking Stones With The Force

Hangi rocks could reveal the magnetic history of the Earth going back hundreds of years, new research from Victoria University suggests. The findings, which were presented at the annual…

Boyens’ Cinematic Adventure

Asked one day in 1997 if, as a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, she might have any interest in helping out friends and fellow New Zealanders Peter Jackson and Fran…

Hong Kong’s Fashion Heroine

New Zealand-born fashion writer Jasmine Webster, 29, who is based in Hong Kong and is the face of Dress Me blog, talks to the South China Morning Post about…

Everyday Finery

Designer Karen Walker caught up with Vogue Australia to talk about her new Diamond jewellery collection. “The inspiration behind all our jewellery designs is jewellery for modern occasions,” Walker…

Capital Freebie Tourism Activities

“Whether you’re a fan making a pilgrimage to the city where the films were made, or you have no interest whatsoever in dwarfs and goblins, there’s plenty to…

Super Plan Most Innovative

The New Zealand Superannuation Fund has been named the world’s most innovative sovereign fund, winning the prestigious Sovereign Wealth Fund category in the 2012 aiCIO Industry Innovation Awards…

Canines Take To The Wheel

Dogs rescued by the SPCA are being taught to drive in a campaign to show how intelligent canines, and even those abandoned, really are. Astonishingly, it took three dogs…

Player Of The Year

All Black Dan Carter has been named player of the year in London at the 2012 International Rugby Board (IRB) awards, with Steve Hansen winning coach of the year…

Very Clean At The Helm

New Zealand is the least corrupt country on earth, says Germany-based Transparency International. Overall, the top spots are occupied mostly by European countries, with the exception of New…

Balance In The Workplace

“YWCA Auckland and DDB New Zealand lay out the ridiculousness of the gender pay gap reality with a straightforward TV spot that shows you how absurd it is for…

Neighbours Row On Whereabouts

If a New Zealander is called an Australian, is it a racial insult, ponders The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf. “As an outsider, I won’t pretend a sophisticated understanding of the…

Jackson Our Resident Wonka

“With his first of three Hobbit films, An Unexpected Journey, Peter Jackson daringly attempts the same manoeuvre , aspiring to…

Jackson’s Capital Effect

“No part of New Zealand has been more changed by Jackson’s movies, and by the growing film-production industry they sparked here, than the city of Wellington,” Michael Joseph…

It’s About Flying People

Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe is one of 20 people profiled in this month’s Monocle, in a feature which explores who “would be ideal collaborators.” “Make sure…

Foiled By Fourth Best

New Zealand, the world’s No 1-ranked side, was defeated by England 38-21 at Twickenham, bringing the All Blacks’ unbeaten run of 20 back-to-back wins to an end. It was…

Banking on Dancing Colours

Christchurch-born Len Lye’s “deliriously jazzy 1930s animation for the Post Office Savings Bank shows public information films needn’t be dull,” Judith Mackrell writes for the Guardian. “The colours might…

Collected Stories of Our Time

Auckland University has launched the first anthology of New Zealand literature bringing together fiction and non-fiction, poetry and prose into one volume. The 1184-page Anthology of New Zealand Literature…

Nebraska’s Prize Prospect

Huskers point guard prospect New Zealander Tai Webster is considered the prize of Nebraska coach Tim Miles’ first recruiting class. ESPN.com rates Webster as a four-star recruit with the…

Coral Sea Island Undiscovered

Pictorial librarian at Auckland Museum Shaun Higgins has identified the origin of a cartographic error, as a 19th-century whaling ship, which first ‘spotted’ the non-existent Sandy Island in 1876….

Activist Paddling

New Zealand-born Billabong surfer Dave “Rasta” Rastovich, 32, has paddled 350km from Taranaki to Piha to raise awareness about seabed mining off New Zealand’s coast. Rastovich, who lives in…

Mementoes of Freedom

Auckland-born photographer Paul Nathan’s new book Generation Ink: Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was launched at Saatchi & Saatchi in New York on 29 November. Generation Ink features 55 images…

Murdoch Memorialised

Before taking care of business in Wales, the All Blacks made a pilgrimage to the hotel where one of their own went down fighting before disappearing without trace, the…

Fans Flock to Spot the Stars

One hundred thousand Hobbit fans descended on Wellington’s Courtenay Place to catch a glimpse of their favourite Tolkien character strutting the 500m-long red carpet ahead of the world premiere…