Late last month, a soccer ball that had washed up on
Middleton Island in the Gulf of Alaska was discovered by a
technician at the radar station there. The ball was found to
have come from a school in Japan, about 6000km away, which
was struck by the tsunami of March 11, 2011.
Students encountering University of Otago Associate Prof
Allan Blackman during one of his huge first-year chemistry
lecture classes can expect plenty of enthusiasm, a dash of
humour and even a few chocolate fish.
As I'm sure you know, the Otago Daily Times recently
celebrated its 150th anniversary, and so in this, the final
column of the year, it seems appropriate to look at what was
happening in chemistry in the first year of its publication,
1861.
We often think of fraud as being the exclusive domain of the
financial world - one only has to look at the number of
finance companies that have gone bust recently - but it is
not unique to this.
The summer of our discontent has made for a glorious winter.
While the rest of the country seems to have been beset by
winds, floods and even tornadoes, "winter" in Dunedin has
been a succession of relatively warm, cloudless days, as
evidenced by my kowhai flowering in early July.
The job descriptions for some professions require little
explanation. It's pretty much self-evident that butchers are
going to deal with dead animals, accountants are going to do
something with money, and doctors are going to help you get
better when you're sick.
Technological advances have often come at a cost to the
environment. While the industrial revolution gave us
mechanisation, it also heralded the start of steadily
increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Apparently there was some big wedding in London recently. I
can't say I watched it. I was probably still too apoplectic
over why Mr Pollock chose not to yellow-card a single Blues
player earlier that evening. Or maybe I just didn't care a
jot.
I was going to write about the chemical element boron this
month because it has been in the news recently. Indeed, it
has provided a most unlikely link between the New Zealand
Parliament and the earthquake-and-tsunami-ravaged Fukushima
nuclear plant in Japan.
