Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Search Te Ara and you will discover each of the seven deadly sins. I encourage you to search again when the entire Social Connections theme is completed if you’re interested in the subject, as that is where I expect to find the most sinning.

This month’s quiz covers each of the seven deadly sins, plus a few more for good measure. I hope you enjoy it, but not too much…

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When I think back to my childhood, I see myself as a kid who believed in fairness. At no time was this truer than when chocolate was involved. Chocolate bars in our house were cut into three – one piece each. A box of chocolates was a treat that involved a ritual of identifying a desired flavour from the box lid, picking the corresponding chocolate and handing the box to the next person. The ritual was repeated until the layer, and ultimately the box, was finished. It felt fair, it felt like equality.

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Te Ara has just launched the Waikato ‘Places‘ entry; so here is a Waikato quiz to whet your appetites. Among other things, this region is home to Hamiltron, the City of the Future.

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Possibly it’s because we have so much coastline here in New Zealand – over 15,000 kilometres in fact – so a lot of life is lived around the coast. For some, this means life revolves around boats and sailing. For me, I’ve been sailing only once, not in New Zealand but in Vancouver. It was a short trip across the harbour for a cup of coffee; I admit it felt very novel, but not half as exciting as the trips friends of mine have embarked upon, across oceans and seas to far off lands. Still, you know, the coffee was nice…

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101 Stories, 288,000 words, 2,600 images and 198 videos

Before an enthusiastic audience, the minister for ICT (not to mention Transport and Tertiary Education), Hon Steven Joyce, formally launched the Economy and the City theme of Te Ara in Auckland last night. The guests included some of the Queen City’s leading businesspeople such as Stephen Tindall and some of the city’s movers and shakers such as Michael Barnett.

A view of economists

The economy may not seem the sexiest subject and you probably share the view, beautifully expressed in Sid Scales’s cartoon, that economists add nothing but jargon to the sum of human enlightenment. But all of us have to earn a living, so it is really important that we get a clear, user-friendly, and perhaps amusing, introduction to subjects such as balance of payments or prices (even the home page of that entry raises a smile).

As Malcolm McKinnon, theme editor for the economy section, said last night, we also made strenuous efforts to enliven the inevitable graphs in the theme. He pointed to two which tell us much about the economy of New Zealand’s drinking habits – the first shows how the amount of beer consumed by New Zealanders rocketed up as the number of breweries fell; and the second showed coffee replacing tea as our non-alcoholic drink of choice.

Motorways as art?

As for cities, New Zealanders are among the most urban people in the world, so, as theme editor Ben Schrader showed last night, the story of how we moved from Queen Street as a dangerous sewer to a home of fashionable streetwear encompasses much about this country’s history. Make sure you see the film clip showing how people adjusted (not very successfully) to the presence of cars on city streets.

The 101 entries in the new theme explore some fascinating subjects. Besides sections on the economy and the city, here are some highlights from other parts:

• Eight entries about Infrastructure and Services which includes a lovely film clip of Wellington’s dusties and a brilliant interactive on the disastrous fire in Ballantyne’s department store in Christchurch in 1947.
• Eleven entries about the Labour Force where you can find a chilling image of two miners’ thumbs deliberately cut off to obtain compensation. There is also a classic film clip about do-it-yourself.
• Twelve entries on Manufacturing and Building. Look for the hero image to the Clothing and footwear manufacturing entry, and the special blanket designed to keep stranded whales cool and moist.
• Fifteen entries in the section on Retail and Commerce which not surprisingly include some classic Kiwi advertisements – such as the prize-winning ‘Dear John’ ad of the 1980s and the Toyota ‘bugger’ ad of 1999 (both found in the Advertising entry) through to the ‘They’re stealing our stuff’ ad in the Insurance entry.
• Another 15 entries about Transport featuring two great interactives prepared by our magnificent team of designers. The first is for those who like bicycles. The second is for those who want to understand how bridges work.

'Dear John' - An example of our new video player

And if you really want to enjoy some of the 198 film clips in the new theme make sure you play them full-screen using our new video-player.

Special thanks to the Te Ara team who as usual have done a wonderful job writing, checking, editing, resourcing and designing the entries, and to all those in the community who contributed words and images. This is truly a team effort and you all deserve a collective bow.

So explore the Economy and the City and don’t forget tell us which is your favourite image or film clip or interactive.