Anna Chinn's blog

Giants have been in the news again.

In which a subeditor writes an email to the garden writer, and then decides to make a blog entry of it.

Dear Mrs Vine,

I write to blame you.

This comes from under a rainy tarpaulin that fills and spills into an enamel bowl here, plastic buckets there, halfway up a hill near Motueka.

It was night-time. A man stumbled halfway up the steps of the old chief post office and said, "Hey, wanna earn some money?"

"Hm, no thanks," I replied from the shadows.

"You sure?" he said.

"Yes, I am just here to tidy the library."

"So can we expect a Christmassy blog from you, full of festive cheer?" asked website deputy Blair.

First, you participate in a scientific study. You give the scientists a 24-hour urine sample which they will consult for its salt content, and in exchange they give you a $30 New World voucher. Also, paraphernalia: a plastic measuring jug, a plastic funnel, and two plastic bottles, all to be used in the collection of pee.

Hector's dolphins are political animals. Sort of. They themselves, you have to assume, are blithely unaware their death rate far exceeds their birth rate and this is the fault of people and the politics of protection.

There are what, 8000 of them remaining; in the 1970s there were what, 30,000.

How would a person go about growing a brain by the age of 30 these days?

"How're you going there?" asked my longest-serving friend.

An article that appeared recently in our World Focus described a new robot that can learn tricks it has not been programmed to do, by consulting the internet as to what is required.