by Paul Thomas | Sep 11, 2015 | The Age of Terror
Paul Thomas2015-09-11 Burning Monk Syndrome (BMS) has always been with us but is becoming more prevalent due to advances in communications technology. The condition takes its name from the periodic spectacle of monks setting themselves on fire to draw the world’s...
by Paul Thomas | Sep 4, 2015 | Strange Days Indeed
Paul Thomas2015-09-04 They say there’s nothing new under the sun and, as usual, they are pretty much on the money. Fashions, trends, fads, waves, movements come and go. Then the wheel turns and they come around again. No matter how silly, unsightly or impractical a...
by Paul Thomas | Aug 14, 2015 | Americana
Paul Thomas2015-08-14 For the sake of argument let’s assume Donald Trump is, in American parlance, an asshole. So the question is: why is an asshole – and not just any old asshole but someone widely regarded as a gigantic asshole, one of the world’s biggest – holding...
by Paul Thomas | Jul 17, 2015 | Americana
Paul Thomas2015-07-17 Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz called it “the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history.” Was he referring to: The outbreak of the American Civil War The assassinations of Abraham Lincoln or John Kennedy or Martin Luther King The 1929...
by Paul Thomas | Jul 11, 2015 | Canon Media Award 2016, Sports
Paul Thomas2015-07-11 Next week’s All Blacks-Samoa test in Apia will be, among other things, a celebration of the Samoan influence in New Zealand rugby. While there’s much to celebrate, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the Polynesian presence in our national game wasn’t...
by Paul Thomas | Jun 27, 2015 | Sports
Paul Thomas2015-06-27 For years the English satirical magazine Private Eye has boasted about the Curse of Gnome, the bad karma that tends to befall powerful individuals who take legal action against the Eye to prevent it publishing embarrassing material or in revenge...
by Paul Thomas | Jun 12, 2015 | Strange Days Indeed
Paul Thomas2015-06-12 Jerry Collins’ fatal accident is a stark reminder that there’s one form of sudden death to which we’re all susceptible. We think of death on the roads as something that happens to other people. But when that other person is someone we feel we...
by Paul Thomas | May 2, 2015 | Sports
Paul Thomas2015-05-02 Many top-line athletes are combinations of beauty and the beast but few more so than Uruguayan soccer player Luis Suarez. Playing for Barcelona in a Champions League tie against Paris Saint-Germain, Suarez scored two breathtaking goals both of...
by Paul Thomas | Mar 14, 2015 | Sports
Paul Thomas2015-03-14 Almost 30 years on, Buck Shelford’s scrotum is back in the headlines. A new book by French investigative journalist Pierre Ballester (sic) exposes widespread drug use in French rugby during the 1980s and 90s. Ballester quotes the French team...
by Paul Thomas | Jan 30, 2015 | Kiwiana
Paul Thomas2015-01-30 Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker-prize winning novel The Luminaries shows she knows a thing or two about astrology, but I doubt she foresaw the stoush triggered by her remarks at an Indian literary festival. It was a heavyweight clash: in Catton’s...
