Environment

When Brockie goes rogue

Bob Brockie has been writing for the Dominion Post for years as the paper’s science columnist and regularly delivers up entertaining comment on the state of science and what is filtering out of the peer-reviewed literature. He also creates his own cartoons which adds a nice personal touch. Bob is a biologist, one of a […]

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Transit of Venus: A sight for sore eyes

Those of us in Gisborne yesterday were among the lucky few in New Zealand who got to observe the Transit of Venus yesterday. It was a very special day out at Tolaga Bay where the locals treated us to amazing hospitality. Here are some photos… Look carefully at about 5o’clock on the image of the […]

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Transit of Venus: Live from Gisborne

I’m in Gisborne and all set to observe the Transit of Venus tomorrow and take part in the Transit of Venus forum that is taking place on Thursday and Friday. Why Gisborne? Mainly for cultural rather than scientific reasons – Tolaga Bay was where Captain Cook came ashore in 1769 and apparently had the first […]

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The dead centre of the Garden City

Over the weekend I borrowed a charming old bicycle from my architect friend Guy Evans and we rode around the accessible bits of Christchurch’s CBD. The vibrations of demolition shook the ground as we passed numerous large office buildings in various stages of being dismantled. The tool of choice for doing so is not the cliched wrecking […]

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Budget 2012: What's in it for science?

Over at the SMC we rounded up reaction from the science sector on Budget 2012. Here’s some of the commentary… The Government this afternoon unveiled Budget 2012 including $326 million in new funding for science, innovation and research over the next four years. A total of $59 million will also go into engineering and science […]

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Episode 28: the not-so-good oil

The latest episode of the Sciblogs Podcast is out now, presented by Peter Griffin and produced by John Kerr. On the Sciblogs Podcast this week we hear from Professor Chris Battershill on the environmental impact of the Rena oil spill, we check out an award winning documentary on Ecuador’s proposal to save its pristine rainforest […]

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Episode 27: Clever endeavours

This week’s show is an eclectic mix, taking you from the Swiss lab of cancer researcher Dr Chris Rodley to the Endeavour Crater on Mars where a robotic vehicle has identified evidence of water having existed there in the past. In between, we talk innovation with Sciblogger Peter Kerr and bring you the best of […]

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Episode 26 – the future is up for grabs

What a show for the re-launched Sciblogs podcast! I talk to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, the creator of the Apple I and the engineering genius to Steve Jobs’ design brilliance. We catch up with futurist Mark Stevenson who was in Wellington recently as a “brain for hire”. And I ask Sciblogger, Professor Shaun Hendy, what […]

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Thankfully no tsunami – this time

People living along the coast of Indonesia and indeed around the fringes of the Indian Ocean will have had a spine-tingling moment last night as they felt the vibrations from the magnitude 8.6 earthquake that struck off the west coast of Northern Sumatra. Many will have had flashbacks to 2004, and the Boxing Day tsunami, […]

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