> has to do with our irrational and deeply held national belief that nobody from this country could ever really do anything as well as people from Overseas. Another name for it here is the "cultural cringe".
>

Well, there you go. That's either the name of yet *another* handy cultural concept -- or it's an exotic and thrilling new snack food. Who says NZ doesn't enrich our lives with the joy of crunchy, value-added goodness?


> Brunnen-"can't count how many textbooks I've read that describe Ernest Rutherford as an Englishman"G

Oh yeah, Ernest. That guy. You'll like this story, if you haven't heard it before.

Back when I was in university, I was sitting one day in the Physical Sciences Library at McGill. I began to wonder why the PSE Library, which dates from the late 19th century, had a kind of gutted look to its architectural support structures. It turns out that Ernest Rutherford had used the basement of the PSE Library as his laboratory when he was at McGill. He managed to make the place so entirely radioactive that they had to rip up the floors, degrout and knock down all the walls, etc. Right dinkum wobbly, eh.

Wolf "Rutherford? Want to repatriate him BACK?" spirit