The 2,500-year history of ice-cream

We all scream for ice-cream, especially as temperatures soar in the summer. Ancient civilisations had the same desire for a cold, sweet treat to cope with heat waves.

There are plenty of contenders claiming credit for the first frozen desserts, from Italy and France in the 17th century to China in the first century.

But before you can make ice-cream, you need a reliable source of ice. The technology to make and store ice was originally developed in Persia (modern-day Iran) in 550 BCE.

Martin Devlin: “Old man howls at moon. Again”

Yet our sycophantic politically-biased hide-everything tell-no-truth take-the-PIJ-money-to-buy-silence “legacy media” won’t ever report it. There are very good reasons why I don’t/won’t talk/write about politics.

There’s a really good reason I only talk/write about sport. It’s because sport, for me, is an escape. The utter unimportance of something taken as so seriously important is the exact kind of absurdity I thrive on. Sport allows, for however minuscule be the moments, our minds to drift away from the humdrum of everyday life, a life that for most here in NZ has increasingly become a struggle for cost survival. Ask yourself. Who isn’t feeling the economic squeeze? The mile long queues at service stations on Friday 30th June were the most obvious indicator yet that for many many Kiwis right now life is about nothing but paying the bills and trying to keep the financial head above water. There’s a reason I concentrate on sport. Because I resent this current government and everyone in it responsible for the state our country is in right now.

Matt Ridley: Eco-extremism has brought Sri Lanka to its knees

 

An obsession with organic farming ‘in sync with nature’ triggered an unsustainable but predictable economic crisis

Sri Lanka’s collapse, from one of the fastest growing Asian economies to a political, economic and humanitarian horror show, seems to have taken everybody by surprise.

Five years ago, the World Bank was extolling “how Sri Lanka intends to transition to a more competitive and inclusive upper-middle income country”. Right up to the middle of last year, despite the impact of the pandemic, the country’s misery index (inflation plus unemployment) was low and falling. Then the misery index took off like a rocket, quintupling in a year.