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Hey Kiwis! Check out the cover for North & South magazine this month, headline: Test-tube babies: A NEW SPECIES?

Not only is this hilariously tabloid, it directly contradicts a quote within the mag. A study has recently been performed on a limited sample of IVF babies (140 participants, half IVF half not, only fresh not frozen, no premature births, no multiple births - which is about half of all IVF births - kids only between 5 and 11) and found that IVF babies are slightly taller, slimmer, and have basically better cholesterol than all of y'all normals. One of the guys who did the study said that he specifically didn't want to be frightening with talk of a new species or whatever - so naturally that's what North and South did on the cover.

I actually would be interested in reading the study, if only to find out whether or not this shit is adjusted for variables like wealth and so forth. It's all very well to invent some explanation about environments outside the womb, but IVF is 1. expensive unless you got it funded 2. difficult. This implies things like, for example, IVF births are not likely to be accidental births. IVF parents are going to be very prepared for pregnancy and are going to have spent a lot of time on their environment (physical, i.e. folic acid, especially) to prove that. IVF parents are probably wealthier than other parents. etc. So I would like to know if this study corrects for that or not.

I am an IVF baby, BTW, which is why I find this interesting.

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Yea, it's definitely the journal of middle class anxiety.

Although you know I remember a day when the Listener was actually fairly progressive... and it was basically the only left-leaning mainstream media outlet in the country. I think the change in editors in 2005 was pretty decisive for its politics.

That sounds about right; I remember very much liking the Listener's current affairs coverage when I lived with my parents, didn't read it for a year in the Halls of Residence, and then was very disappointed in it when Tui and I went flatting and she had a subscription. That was 2004-2006, and it's never been the same since.

I remember someone on the Public Address forums concluding that the ideal Listener cover nowadays would be "Does My House Price Look Fat In This?", with a smaller feature on "NCEA: Failing Our Children, or Crippling Them?". It'd be funny if it hadn't once been a decent read.

Well I guess I hold out hope that with another change of editors it might swing back left. But I probably wouldn't go back to reading it anyway. We were doing media in politics in tutorials this week and it was pretty depressing to see that almost all of New Zealand's mainstream media tend to the right. (And a fair bit of its non-mainstream media, too)

Wow, this totally distresses me to hear about the Listener! I haven't read it since I left NZ in ~2001 but it had some pretty leftcore undercurrents for most of the time I read it in my formative years. And Dylan Horrocks, man! Also a terrific crossword.

Aye, I pretty much grew up with the Listener and it definitely went well downhill in my last few years of reading it.

Interestingly, the conservative swing pretty much exactly coincided with my parents' post-50 conservative swing (they're still Labour supporters, but a lot more angsty about things like crime than they once were, as seems to be common in their age group). I almost wonder if they were intentionally trying to move with an aging audience.

It may simply be that people of that generation simply got senior enough within the Listener organisation.

Come to think of it I did really enjoy their cover story on the current recession three weeks ago, but that might be an exception.

I think the change in editors in 2005 was pretty decisive for its politics.

Agreed. It was a fairly obvious and dramatic change, actually.

I wasn't reading it at the time but one of their photographers told me that she was pretty upset about it. Apparently they had started sharing office space with the Herald and she felt that there was a bit of culture creep going on. I think she's since quit.