Viewing entries in
Science in Our Lives
There is insight in the stories that numbers can tell, and for some of us that insight offers a sense of calm in turbulent times. Which may be why In the midst of this year’s rains I started making graphs of the accumulated rainfall and how it stacked up against previous years.
We should set ourselves the goal of doing things in space that make people here and elsewhere look up and say, “Wow, the Kiwis are doing that? That’s AWESOME!”
Once upon a time, the “tyranny of distance” defined the Pākehā experience of New Zealand, locating immigrants from Britain 12,000 miles from the country they often referred to as Home. But in the years to come that distance might be the best thing that ever happened to the people of these islands.
On New Year’s Day, social media in New Zealand was flooded with images of eerie orange skies above the South Island as the smoke from a continent-scale fire disaster crossed the Tasman Sea.
One of my earliest memories is standing with my father on the balcony of my grandmother’s house in Auckland. “Ma’s House” had a spectacular view northwards, across Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf, and the Moon was visible in the early evening sky. Following my eye, my father pointed and said, “I think there are people there at the moment.”
