Wikipedia
Psychology
Science Fiction
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Other hobbies and interests
last updated April 11th 2009
last updated April 11th 2009
Take for example the New Zealand flag (right). It says quite a bit about the country as it was in 1902, when the flag was adopted. The flag of the United Kingdom (usually, incorrectly, referred to as "The Union Jack") sits at the honour point - the place closest to the top of the pole. The rest of the flag is blue and features the four main stars of the Southern Cross constellation in red, fimbriated (outlined) in white. This tells us that New Zealand is a former British colony with close ties to 'the old country', in the southern hemisphere. In recent years, the weakening of ties to Britain, the recognition overseas of the silver fern as our national emblem, and increasing calls for the flag to include some representation of our Maori heritage have led to calls for its replacement. This matter, as with many concerning flags, is highly contentious. For my own views (and suggested alternative flag), read an article which I wrote on the subject in mid 2002, and which was published by the New Zealand Herald.
Surprisingly,
there is no official flag for either of New Zealand's two main islands,
even though they are quite different in nature and population. For the
last few years I have been championing a design which I created for a South
Island flag (left).
On it, the four stars from the national
flag hover over a green, blue, and white background, representing the pastoral
land and mountainous scenery for which the island is famous. It also echoes
the Maori name for the island, Te Wai o Pounamu (the waters of greenstone),
which itself refers to the rivers from which the Maori extracted the precious
nephrite jade which they turned into intricate jewellery and powerful tools.
My interest in flags extends to collecting them. I have about 90 flags, mainly national flags with a hoist length (i.e., along the flagpole) of 60 cm (2 feet). I occasionally confuse the local community by flying them from a flagpole which is in my garden.
I am an active member of the online Flags of the World community.
I have been contributing to Wikipedia for several years (using the username Grutness), and have been an administrator on its English language version since 2005. During that time, I have made over 100,000 edits (one of the thirty or so most prolific editors worldwide), started over 1900 articles (many of them on New Zealand geography) and uploaded some 800 maps, photographs and illustrations.
My main experimental and theoretical work - that which I covered in both my M.Sc. thesis and in my shelved Ph. D. thesis - dealt with our perception of egocentric angles - that is, angles presented in such a way that our eye forms the angle. The angles of the corners of an object are not egocentric - they form the angle between two sides of an object, and that angle can be drawn or presented horizontally in front of us. The angle of an object above or below the horizon, or the angle between two ends of an object as subtended on our retina is an egocentric angle.
Normally humans tend to overestimate egocentric angles in a systematic way. My theses deal with this tendency and compare several mathematical models that have been proposed to map our estimates onto the real angles they represent. These models include linear, quadratic and exponential models, as well as one of my own, a trigonometric model.
My one published paper is on a different topic - governmental attempts to impose the metric system of measurement on the public, and the limited success that they have had in this aim. New Zealand has been using the metric system for 25 years, but despite this many people (including those under the age of 25) still consistently use imperial measures at certain times and for certain measurements. My paper (Dignan, J. R. E., & O'Shea, R. P. (1995). Human use of metric measures of length. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 24, 21-25) investigates why this might be so, and whether there is some advantage to using both the metric and imperial systems.
Though I have not done any published work in the area, one field which greatly interests me is the border area between perception and aesthetics, particularly as it relates to art and music.
If you're interested in finding out more about my research on these or other subjects, feel free to email me.
My first interests in science fiction were
probably (like many people) with Star Trek and Dr. Who, and
with the adolescent novels of Andre Norton. Over the years I developed
a deep interest in the science fiction short story, and over the years
my favourite authors have included Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Randall
Garrett, Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, Alfred Bester, Terry Pratchett, John
Sladek, and Larry Niven.
Media
As far as the films and TV are concerned, I'm less of a fan, although as far as movies are concerned, Metropolis and 2001: A space odyssey are both favourites of mine, and very little can compare to the opening flypast of the original Star wars movie, the sheer oppressive atmosphere of the near future of Blade runnerand Batman returns, or the (sadly now clichéd) ending to the original Planet of the apes movie. Of more recent movies the Lord of the rings trilogy has joined this group.
With TV, my favourite s.f. series was the short-lived love-it-or-hate-it series Sapphire and Steel. There was a sense of unrequited foreboding in every scene and just enough was left unexplained for the magination to run rampant. This feeling is similar to the sense of something imminent and unseen that I like in both art and music, as explored in a short essay here. Other notable series to me include The prisoner, Dr. Who, Blake's seven (for its excellent development of unlikeable anti-heroes), Red dwarf, and the miniseries Whoops! Apocalypse (the British version with Barry Morse, John Cleese, Peter Jones et al.). Honourable mention goes to the '60s series The avengers, which was more often than not science fiction. I have written some articles about ancient TV science fiction, which can be found here.
Fandom
Since about 1985 I've been involved in the New Zealand fan community. For many of those years I was heavily involved, and was at various times President, Secretary, and Treasurer of the National Association for Science Fiction (NASF),. I edited NASF's magazine, Warp, for two years. I was also a member of Aotearapa ("the apa"), an amateur press association run within the fannish community, for many years, and was official editor of that for three years. In 1996 I was fan guest of honour at the NZ National Convention, ConFusion.
NASF went into recess in 1997. In June 2002, a new NZ national science fiction organisation came into existence, under the name of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ). I am currently on the national committee of this organisation. Other than this organisation and the apa, I currently have little involvement in fandom, although I do go to the occasional convention.
In both football (soccer) and cricket, I was for many years a member of a very social team called Lord Louis' XI, which competed in local competitions. We were infamous for our generally poor performance. At cricket, for example, I had the unlikely distinction of top scoring for our side in one match with four (we were all out for seven runs). We did have our good days, though, and I did gain one 'five-fer', 5-43 off eight overs of loopy slow right-arm spin. An average season saw us win about one game in six. In football, our first season saw us score eight and have about 60 scored against us in ten straight losses. We improved to a 4 wins, 1 draw, 5 losses ratio in our final season (a season in which I also scored six goals from my position on the right wing).
When the team disbanded in 1997, I was in my early 30s and was nursing a recurring knee injury, so I was pretty sure my playing days are over - until 2002, when I started playing some indoor soccer. In 2003, I found myself playing 9-a-side outdoor soccer for Mornington Blue in one of Dunedin's social grades. At around forty, however, the chances of returning to the eleven-a-side game sadly seemed remote then, and even remoter today..
Of course, many of my interests largely lie in the vicarious side of various sports: