{"id":193,"date":"2007-01-28T23:02:50","date_gmt":"2007-01-29T07:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=193"},"modified":"2021-10-13T12:40:45","modified_gmt":"2021-10-13T17:40:45","slug":"haere-mai-kia-ora-tatou-eh-whatever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=193","title":{"rendered":"Haere mai, kia ora tatou … eh, whatever"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve just come from a thin strip of volcanic ash near Antarctica, on which no mammal except bats set foot until a thousand years ago, and which today is mostly inhabited by sheep and by people who say “nigh-oh” when they mean “no.” I’m referring, of course, to New Zealand — or as the locals call it, “Middle Earth.” My colleague Andris Ambainis and I were in Auckland for four days, en route to QIP’2007<\/a> in Brisbane. While there, we were fed and sheltered by our friend Miriam and her boyfriend David. Miriam was both my housemate and officemate my first year at Berkeley; she now does user-interface research for a web-design company called Shift<\/a>. You can see some of her handiwork, and<\/em> learn more about her sheep-intensive homeland, by visiting this<\/a> website. Hey, if Miriam took you<\/em> around a place like this<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/center>you’d shill for her too.So, now that I was surrounded by one of the last relatively-intact wildernesses on Earth, what did I do there? If it were up to me, mostly blog, eat, and check email. Fortunately Miriam didn’t let me get away with my default ways, and repeatedly dragged me by my ears on Cultural Learning Experiences. And that’s what allows me to present the following Shtetl-Optimized New Zealand Educational Supplement.<\/p>\n