Jonathan Drori loves trees. So much so that he has spent a career working with them as a documentary film maker at the BBC, and on the boards of Kew Gardens in London, and the Eden Project in Cornwall. On a very wet afternoon yesterday in a full auditorium at The Piano for WORD Christchurch…
Ian Chapman Rocks WORD Christchurch Festival
David Bowie, who had many connections to New Zealand, sadly only toured here four times, but for fans there was a rare opportunity to experience his genius again today at the WORD Christchurch Festival through an extraordinary and rousing performance by the academic musicologist and Bowie aficionado, and author of the book Experiencing David Bowie…
Asteroids – friends or foe?
Did you know that 30 June is International Asteroid Day? I didn’t until recently, but when I found out, it prompted me to take a closer look at what asteroids are, and why they’re important, and what I found out was fascinating, but also a bit scary. Asteroids are essentially lumps of rock that orbit…
Sensors, maps, number crunching, and the Internet of Things: Reflections on the Smart Cities Expo
As the dust settles on Tech Week 2018, which was brilliantly opened in appropriate fashion by our prime minister appearing as a hologram, I thought I’d report back on the Smart Cities Expo, which was held in Christchurch last Monday. This was an opportunity for Christchurch City Council, and their commercial partners, to demonstrate some…
Remembering Tom Wolfe – a personal view
It is, of course, with much sadness that I heard about the recent death of Tom Wolfe, who was without doubt a towering figure in literary circles for most of the second half of 20th century. Along with people like Hunter S. Thompson, and several other (mostly male) American writers of his generation, he turned…
The world’s most expensive piece of paper
Long before I was born, my dad worked briefly for a firm of a stamp auctioneers in London. Apparently he helped, in some small way, to sell King Farouk of Egypt's stamp collection! He had a small collection of his own and he used to take me to stamp fairs, mostly I think to catch…
Science and the city
More than half of the world's population lives in cities, and this number is continuing to rise. As more and more of us are crammed into these cities at ever increasing densities, there is an urgent need for innovative ideas that enable us to live together happily in comfort and good health. To achieve this…
Digging up the past
New Zealand Archaeology Week runs from 28 April – 6 May, with events up and down the country, including an exhibition courtesy of Underground Overground Archaeology at our own South Library called Pubs of the Past: the archaeology of Victorian Christchurch Hotels, so this seems like a good time to mention some of the archaeological…
Mutton chops and door knockers, face fungus and designer stubble – Lucinda Hawksley at the Christchurch Art Gallery, WORD Christchurch
Having sported a beard of varying bushiness for many years, I have a longstanding interest in facial hair, so I was delighted to discover that this was the topic of a talk by Lucinda Hawksley at the Christchurch Art Gallery on Sunday, presented by WORD Christchurch. On a rainy Canterbury afternoon an audience of bearded and un-bearded alike…
The joy of coding
At school in England in the early 1980s I was given the opportunity to join an afterschool computer club. The only problem was that, being the early 1980s, our school didn’t actually have a computer. We had to write our programs in thick, dark pencil on stacks of cards that were taken away to a…
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