Category Archives: Miscellaneous

SOME BACKGROUND TO BRIAN EASTON.

Headlines Born March 1943 in Christchurch to Harry and Thelma Easton. Eldest of three. Keith (1944-2015), Jean (1950-) Married Jenny in 1966. We went our separate ways from 1996. Anita (1971-); Tama (1974-) Education 1947: Selwyn St Kindergarten 1948-1953: Somerfield Primary School 1954-5: Christchurch South Intermediate 1956-1960: Christchurch Boy’s High School 1961-63: University of Canterbury…
Continue reading this entry »

Brian’s BOOKS & MONOGRAPHS

Books The Future of New Zealand Medicine: A Progressive View (Peryer, 1974) 150pp – joint editor, with D.W. BEAVEN, and contributor. Social Policy and the Welfare State in New Zealand (Allen & Unwin, 1980) 182pp. (Japanese Edition, 1987) Pragmatism and Progress: Social Security in the Seventies (University of Canterbury, 1981) 128pp. Economics for New Zealand…
Continue reading this entry »

Brian’s Honorary Positions and Distinctions

Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society (1967-) Honorary Research Fellow, Research Project on Planning, Victoria University of Wellington: 1986-2000 Downing Professorial Fellow in Social Economics at the Department of Economics at the University of Melbourne: 1987 Social Science Research Fund Committee Hodge Fellow at Massey University: 1989- Associate, Institute of Executive Development, Massey University: 1993-2000…
Continue reading this entry »

A NEW HOME FOR BRIAN EASTON

Notice in the Gilling New Service: 9 September, 2014   Keywords: Miscellaneous;   Brian Easton will be doing a weekly column on the website Pundit: http://pundit.co.nz/.   Usually it will be put up Monday; sometimes Tuesday. His first was this week at http://pundit.co.nz/content/how-good-is-our-schooling-really-0.   Brian says, ³the initial reaction when the Listener column was ended…
Continue reading this entry »

Uh! Oh! Something for Nothing

Published in New Zealand Herald, 13 July, 2013.   Keywords: Miscellaneous;   In June, a brochure arrived in the letterbox advertising a Malaysian travel agent, ‘Embrace Holiday’ celebrating, it said, their tenth birthday. It looked professional enough, and announced a ‘Complimentary Lottery’. I idly scratched the card – it was a very boring meeting –…
Continue reading this entry »

My (almost) Chemistry Career

Thiis was prepared for an essay competition on Chemistry, However it did not meet the competition rules. The ‘Listener’ column it refers to is ‘My Chemical Romance’ at http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=934 Keywords: Miscellaneous; The Listener economics column which follows this introduction was published in a January when I write columns which, while covering an economic topic, are…
Continue reading this entry »

For Paul

I went to Christchurch Boys’ High School with Paul Dunlop (1943-22 February, 2011). While our paths diverged at university – after physics, he worked as an optician in the Christchurch family firm – we kept in touch. He was one of three in Christchurch’s Methodist Durham St Church rescuing a pipe organ (they were his…
Continue reading this entry »

Db, Nordmeyer and Me

Keywords: Miscellaneous; In July 2009 I was approached by Colenso BBDO in regard to an advertisement they were doing for DB involving the 1958 ‘Black Budget’. They explained they wanted to promote the contributions of Morton Coutts, the man who – among other things – sometime earlier invented the continuous fermentation method of brewing beer….
Continue reading this entry »

2009 Nzier Economics Award

Citation of Award made on 3 September, 2009 at the NZIER AGM   Keywords: Miscellaneous;   The NZIER Economic Award’s Operating Guidelines enjoin the Awarding Panel to “look for outstanding contributions to the advancement of economics and its applications in New Zealand”. To qualify for the Award, a contribution “must advance economic matters of direct…
Continue reading this entry »

Should We Rename the Marsden Fund?

Revised version of a letter to Royal Society Alert 374, 20 May, 2005

Keywords: Miscellaneous;

I am a fortunate recipient of a grant from the Marsden Fund, administered by the RSNZ, fortunate because there are so many deserving researching who are missing out because of the limited funds. My good fortune has led me to recognise a problem with the Fund’s name.

Mum: Dorothy Thelma Easton (4-4-1919 to 6-11-2004)

My oration for Mum at her memorial gathering at the Thelma Easton Library, Hillmorten School, 11 December 2004.

Keywords: Miscellaneous;

Tena kotou katoa. Friends of my mother, and so friends of mine and of her family, welcome to this gathering to remember and honour Dorothy Thelma Easton. I’ll call her Mum, because that is what she was to me.

830 New Zealanders (review)

A STRANGE OUTCOME: The remarkable survival of a Polish child by John Roy-Woljciechowski and Allan Parker.

Listener: 22 May, 2004.

Keywords: Miscellaneous; Political Economy & History;

One of the proudest letters any New Zealand Prime Minister wrote was by Peter Fraser in 1943, beginning, “With reference to our discussion concerning the reception of Polish refugee children in New Zealand … I have to inform you that the New Zealand Government would be very willing to afford the hospitality in New Zealand to a total number … of 500-700.”

Essays from Washington

On occasions while in visiting Washington as a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in April and May 2004, I wrote items, sometimes almost full essays – often with an hour of returning home – about some of my experiences to send to friends. There are published here.

Keywords: Miscellaneous;

The Pro-abortion Anti-Bush(?) Demonstration
Mont Vernon: George Washington’s Farm
The House Agriculture Committee
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The Mayas At the National Gallery
Freedom Park
Shakespeare in America
The Baghdad Times

A Dissertation on Rare Essays

Presentation to ‘First Loves’, a session at ‘Reader’s and Writer’s Week, 17 March 2002.

Keywords Miscellaneous

Sometime in middle school – between Standard Three and Form Four – my class was read Charles Lamb’s Dissertation on Roast Pork. It may have come from a school journal, because others of my age have a similar memories, whereas commonly those who are a little younger dont know the essay. …

Copenhagen: Can We Ever Really Know?

Listener 29 September 2001.

Keywords History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Miscellaneous (Literature)

The ‘Copenhagen model’, developed in the 1920s, remains the foundation of the quantum mechanics account of the atom which physicists use to this day. Two of the revolutionary developers were Dane Niels Bohr, then about forty, and German Werner Heisenberg, in his twenties. …