Fatbergs, toilet water, and the number 2 bus: Laurie Winkless: WORD Christchurch Festival 2018

When Laurie Winkless, author of Science and the City, in conversation with Michelle Dickinson (aka Nanogirl) at the WORD Christchurch Festival yesterday, immediately outed herself as massive train and tunnel geek, I knew we were in safe hands. “London life” she said, “is defined by tube lines”. Laurie knows what she’s talking about. She lived in London for many years, as a student at University College London and then working at the National Physical Laboratory. Since then, while writing her book, she has been looking into how cities around the world work, and how science and technology can be used to improve the lives of city dwellers. I’ve blogged about this topic before, so I was delighted to hear more about what she found out.

Laurie Winkless. Image supplied.

The conversation quickly turned to fatbergs, stinking accretions of fat and other unsavoury substances that so many of us misguidedly pour down our drains, which clog up the sewers of cities around the world. Reference was repeatedly made to the mythical place called “away” that we refer to when we “throw things away”. There is no away; these things have to end up somewhere. So-called “flushable wipes” may be flushable in the sense that they will go round the U-bend and disappear from view, but that doesn’t mean they are biodegradable and will breakdown somewhere in the waste disposal system; it just means they are someone else’s problem now, although they are still all our problem in the end as we have to pay for the resulting mess to be cleared up.

The tone of the conversation lifted only slightly when the topic turned to the concept of “toilet to tap” drinking water. This is the reverse of the usual situation. Laurie was incredulous that we currently flush our toilets with water that is clean enough to drink. How ridiculously inefficient is that?, she asked. With the right kind of processing however, toilet water can be turned into potable drinking water. The processing of course is crucial (“you really don’t want to have contact with faeces”, she said), and expensive, so this is only really a solution for drought-prone cities. Remarkably, blind taste tests have revealed that people actually prefer the taste of recycled water over tap water.

Even when the topic turned to transport we were straight back to hearing about human waste. We were shown a picture of a poo-powered bus. Hilariously, this was the number 2. Apparently, the taxis in Stockholm are partly fueled in this way. It’s genius really when you think about it, turning one problem (waste disposal) into the solution for another (fuel consumption). Brilliant!

Another huge source of waste is the way we treat our electronic devices as disposal ephemera, but this is changing. Landfill mining is now a major source of recycled materials for the industry. Experiments are currently underway to turn single-use plastic waste into building materials. There is even a trial of an asphalt mix that incorporates waste plastic currently underway at Christchurch Airport.

While Laurie had managed to restrain herself until now, she went into full on rant mode when it came to cars, roads, and traffic (although she confessed to being a motorsports fan). New Zealand, she told us, has the highest car ownership in the OECD. While there are understandable reasons for this that she recognizes (small pockets of people separated from each other by large distances) this threatens to impact on the clean green image that we trade on. Don’t think “Oh no, I’m stuck in gridlock” she said, “you are the gridlock!”. Fewer cars on our cities’ roads would have measurable economic and health benefits, but this would require alternative means of public transport, which would necessitate something of a culture-shift.

Michelle raised the interesting question of what cities might look like if they were designed by women. Laurie wouldn’t be drawn into making any firm conclusions, but she did make the point that “to build better cities we need to listen the voices of the people living in them, half of whom are women”. She seemed more concerned about listening to older people and those with access issues. “Cities built with older people in mind”, she said, “will be better for everyone”. “Modern cities are built to be easy to get to, but not worth arriving at”, she quipped.

This led on to a nuanced discussion of green spaces. Laurie is a big fan and cited many benefits of urban trees, not least their effect on cooling cities down. “We need to prioritise green over grey” she said. But she’s not such a fan of more gimmicky solutions, like living walls and vertical gardens, which she sees as largely hype and greenwashing, and she was ambivalent about urban farming. She would like to see a more evidence-based, problem-focused approach. Ask first what we are trying to achieve and then pick the best tools to do that job.

The conversation then moved on to smart cities. Smart cities rely on sensors she said, but these are difficult to incorporate into concrete buildings. There is a trend among urban planners and designers to add more and more sensors to every new structure that we build, but how we will use the enormous amounts of data that they collect is less clear. Laurie seemed to be calling for a more mindful approach, in which sensors are deployed to achieve particular aims, rather than incorporated willy-nilly into all our new buildings by default.

Before questions, the main part of the session concluded with a brief, but fascinating, discussion of driverless cars. They are not coming to all of us anytime soon, Laurie said, but we don’t have to wait for everyone to have one to reap the benefits. To illustrate this, we were shown a compelling video, which demonstrates that just one driverless car can improve traffic flow on a busy road.

Questions were taken at the end, most of which focused on local issues. Laurie clearly felt that New Zealand is doing some amazing things in this space, but not taking the credit it should for that. “New Zealand’s energy mix is the envy of the world”, she said. Let’s hope that local and central government start taking more notice of people like Laurie who have looked at cities around the world and understand the evidence the underpins the ways that science and technology can be used to improve our cities to all our benefits.

Further reading

For more on this topic, check out the booklist I put together for my blog about the Smart Cities Christchurch Innovation Expo

For more about how Christchurch City Council are using smart technologies check out the Smart Cities page on the Council’s website.

Also, check out The Kitchen Science Cookbook by Michelle Dickinson, which has received some rave reviews…

Poetry on a winter’s night – Hell Fire Poetry: WORD Christchurch Festival 2018

Spring has arrived at last, and the sun is shining! But the final day of winter here in Christchurch was a cold and wet one, so it was nice to be holed up in the warm and welcoming Hell Fire Club in Lyttelton last night for an evening of performance poetry as part of the WORD Christchurch Festival.

We heard from three poets at the top of their game, expertly hosted by local Ciáran Fox, who kept things moving along in tag-team fashion.

Dominic Hoey and Michael Pedersen. Image supplied.

First up was Michael Pedersen from Leith in Scotland, winner of a Robert Louis Stevenson award, amongst others, who kicked off with the title poem from his recent collection Oyster. Tall, wiry, and charismatic, with a mop-top haircut and mellifluous lilting Scottish brogue, he was the epitome of self-assured creativity and Celtic coolness. This was a tour de force in embodied performance. He was animated as he spoke, his body moving around to the rhythm of his poetry, bobbing up and down slightly, leaning forwards into the mic to emphasise certain syllables and cadences, as words tumbled out of him effortlessly.

After a short set, it was the turn of Dominic ‘Tourettes’ Hoey from Auckland to entertain us with his unique brand of kiwi slacker wordsmithing. He started with a few short poems written “in the car on the way here” read from scraps of paper that he tossed aside as if they were useless ephemera rather than carefully constructed one-liners from a literary master-craftsman. It wasn’t always clear where his conversational interjections ended and the poems began, as Hoey didn’t seem capable of saying anything that wasn’t charged with an undercurrent of unpretentious poetic meaning.

Before return sets from Pedersen and Hoey we heard all too briefly from a surprise guest, the incredible Omar Musa who gave us just one very powerful poem about his homeland re-imagined as “Un-Australia”.

Inevitably, one of the themes that emerged from all four poets who took the stage was the role of the arts in modern society, and the mood seemed gloomy and combative, but not without some upbeat moments. At one point, Ciáran invited us to imagine an empty stadium for a Crusaders game. “Where is everyone”, they would ask? “Down the road at the poetry reading” would come the reply. The audience loved it. We can only dream!

It’s a long time since I’ve been to see live poetry, but last night I was transfixed and entranced and based on the richness of the experience, I’m sure I will be going again very soon, and much more often. In fact, if the quality continues to remain this high, I can imagine becoming an obsessed regular.

Further reading

• Play With Me
• Iceland
• Here Come the Dogs
• Millefiori
• Parang

 

Follow our coverage of WORD Christchurch Festival 2018

Opium licking, self-mummification, and whistling trees: Jonathan Drori: WORD Christchurch Festival 2018

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 Festival an audience of enthralled drendrophiles (tree lovers) and nemophilists (woodland enthusiasts) got to hear Drori tell us about his passion for trees, and recount some enlightening stories from his recent book Around the World in 80 Trees.

Jonathan Drori. Image supplied.

Jonathan was first introduced to the wonderful world of plants by his father, a Russian emigre to the UK, who would take him to botanic gardens where he took a very unorthodox approach to botanical education. His father would feed him small pieces of the plants on show, some of which were psychoactive (like the opium poppy his dad suggested he lick), or even poisonous, like the unfortunate plant known as the dumb cane. The story behind this particular plant is deeply unpleasant as the name comes from that fact that slave owners fed it to their slaves as a punishment as it was extremely distasteful and could cause the mouth and tongue to swell up until the slave could no longer speak.

There is much talk these days, Drori said, about what people need, but he is more interested in what trees need, and this provided the structure for much of his talk. Firstly, trees need water, and it seems that this sets a fundamental limit on how tall they can grow of about 120 meters, above which they are physically unable to bring water up from the ground to the leaves, flowers, and fruits in their uppermost reaches. For this reason, none of the tallest tree species ever exceed this height, and they never will, despite any evolutionary pressure that might otherwise drive them to do so.

The second thing that trees need is food, which they get not from the soil, or even sunlight (although that does drive the process), but in fact the mass of a fully-grown tree has almost entirely come from carbon dioxide in the air, a fact that is of obvious significance in the context of climate change.

A perhaps less known requirement of trees is for particular species of fungi, called mycorrhizae, that live in the soil and form close associations with tree roots. In many cases, the trees can’t survive without them. These associations are often very specific, for example the fungi that birch trees need form the familiar red mushrooms with white spots known as fly agaric, which are very poisonous. (Drori had some entertaining stories about these mushrooms, but I’ll let you discover them for yourself in his book, see p.21). The mushrooms themselves are only a temporary, and very small part of the fungus as a whole, necessary only for its reproduction, but the vast bulk of the fungus is in the form of thin threads, hidden from view in the soil, which wrap around and interact with the roots of trees and other plants. Drori painted a picture of a vast information super-highway of fungal threads that allow trees to communicate. For example, when one tree is attacked by insects it can use these fungal threads to warn others around it, so that they can activate their defenses.

Defense was the next need that Drori told us about, and he spent quite a long time on it, telling us several amazing stories. He told us how caffeine is used by plants to defend themselves from attack by plant-eating insects. We learned that the alder tree, which lives in boggy ground and is highly resistant to rot, was used extensively for building in water-logged renaissance Venice, and apparently its charcoal makes the best gunpowder, still favoured by the military.

We heard about the whistling thorn, which whistles in the wind because of small holes made by ants that live inside the tree and protect it from other insects. A particularly gruesome story in this section was about how certain Buddhist monks used a tea made from the sap of the lacquer tree to mummify themselves while still alive, becoming ‘whole-body relics’, a truly horrific form of suicide by dehydration that is now thankfully no longer practiced.

Drori then moved on to talk about sex and seed dispersal, as trees need to make more trees. We heard that the laxative properties of many fruits are an evolutionary adaptation to make them pass through the gut quickly before the seeds are digested so that they can be deposited elsewhere in their own little pile of fertilizing dung. We heard about the extraordinary, and provocatively-shaped coco da mer, the heaviest seed in the world, once highly revered, which exchanged hands for extraordinary sums of money. We also heard about the traveller’s tree of Madagascar, the blue seeds of which can only be dispersed by lemurs as they are the only animals strong enough to break open their seed pods. This means that the fate of the tree is tied to that of these endangered lemurs, emphasizing the connectedness of trees with the other organisms in their environments, and the extent to which species rely on each other in fragile ecosystems.

This brought Drori to his final, and perhaps most important point; trees need love. To make this point he talked briefly about his involvement with the Eden Project, “the largest rainforest in captivity”, and mentioned the possibility of an Eden Project coming to Christchurch’s red zone, although in a rather different form much more suited to the needs of the local community, and in keeping with our own native flora. What we need, he said, is “a mycorrhizal network of people” dedicated to caring for, and looking after, the interests of trees. Inspirational stuff!

Drori finished his talk by pre-empting a question he had been asked before; if you could be any tree, which one would you be? The Quiver tree, the national tree of Namibia, he said. Why? Because whenever anyone sees one they smile, and then they want to stroke it – a lovely end to a delightfully entertaining and informative tour of the fascinating world of trees.

Drori’s talk was accompanied throughout by beautiful illustrations from his book drawn by Lucille Clerc. They are truly stunning, and this is one of the most beautiful books I have seen this year. It is full of many more amazing stories about trees like those we heard in this wonderful talk and I can’t recommend it highly enough!

• Jonathan Drori’s sessions at WORD Christchurch Festival 2018
• Find works by Jonathan Drori in our collection
• Follow our coverage of WORD Christchurch Festival 2018

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: A Listener’s Companion, Ian Chapman. Ian was brilliantly accompanied by Liam Donnelly on piano and Pania Simmonds on acoustic and electric bass, and sounds they made together were sublime. Those lucky enough to be there were treated to a wonderfully entertaining celebration of eccentric creativity, a trait that Bowie and Chapman clearly share in abundance, and which Ian refers to as the art of being different.

The trio played two mesmerising sets of early Bowie songs, which bookended a remarkable talk by Ian who explained to us exactly why David Bowie had such a profound impact on so many people’s lives, not least his own. This is perhaps best illustrated by comparing the two alternative covers of the 1970 album The Man Who Sold The World. The British version features a picture of David in a full length dress and boots reclining on a chaise longue. This being a bit too gender-bending for the Americans at the time, the US release features a cartoon version of a scene set in front of a rather imposing gothic building, which is the mental hospital where David’s brother Terry was incarcerated. The British cover symbolises David’s ever-changing persona and his compulsion to explore all aspects of his creative self, continually reinventing himself anew by inhabiting different identities; as evidenced by a comment on the back cover of the album Hunky Dory, David considered his performance to be an act rather than a reflection of his true self, whatever that may be. The American cover represents Bowie’s embracing of the outsider, rooted in his relationship with his troubled brother. As Ian told us, someone once described Bowie as “a flame towards whom dysfunctional moths flew”, which David was more than happy to make a virtue of.

Cosmic Jive Trio. Image supplied.

The second part of Ian’s talk was much more personal and we heard what David Bowie’s music meant to Ian after things went terribly wrong for him as a child when his life was turned upside-down by a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, a message that Ian now takes to schools to empower young kids and address the issue of bullying. In the end, what we were treated to was a tour de force on the transcendent power of music and performance to lift us out of our everyday existence and, if only for a brief moment, to take us to another place entirely (brilliantly captured in a picture taken by Mick Rock that was eventually rejected as the cover image for the Bowie-penned single All The Young Dudes by Mott The Hoople). We may have been sitting in a dark room in a college building on a late winter’s day in Christchurch, but for me at least, for an hour or so this afternoon I was transported to the heady days of glam rock in 1970s, and nothing else seemed to matter. This was a wonderful tribute to a much loved, and much missed genius, by someone who delighted in sharing his obsession with us.

Before I go, I’d must give a shout out to whoever was operating the lighting. Nice work! It really added to the atmosphere.

Ian Chapman is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Music at Otago University and Head of their Programme for Performing Arts. His doctorate was on David Bowie, and he has published many academic articles as well as several books about glam rock and the New Zealand music scene…

For more about David Bowie, check out these two excellent online resources, which are available free to Christchurch City Library members…

• Bloomsbury Popular Music
• Rock’s Back Pages

A favourite book of mine that touches on the darker side of some of the themes raised in Ian’s performance is All The Madmen (which interestingly, also features two of the musicians we heard playing before and after Ian’s show – Ray Davies of The Kinks, and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd).

As well as Ian’s books, you can find dozens of others about every aspect of Bowie’s life and work on the shelves of your local branch of Christchurch City Libraries, as well as CDs of his music, including my own personal favourite Bowie album, Hunky Dory.

What’s your favourite?

More music at WORD Christchurch Festival 2018

A Date with Dylan at The Institution at tonight’s New Regent Street Pop-up Festival,Thursday 30 August 6pm
Philip Matthews, Adam McGrath, Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, and David Slack talkin’ bout Bob Dylan.

Soundtrack Or, Dancing about Architecture Sunday 2 September 11.30am to 12.45pm
Featuring Philip Hoare, Pip Adam, Chris Tse and Nic Low, hosted by Kiran Dass.

Samuel Flynn Scott: On songs Sunday 2 September 2.45pm to 3.45pm

More about Ian Chapman: Read Kim’s interview with Dr Ian Chapman: The Dunedin Sound and a passion for music

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 the sun but are too small to be considered planets, or even dwarf planets. They usually have roughly circular orbits and are mostly found in a dense belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Occasionally however, gravitational forces kick asteroids out of their usual positions and send them hurtling towards the inner solar system.

Sometimes, these asteroids even collide with our own planet, and when they do, the consequences can be catastrophic. Evidence suggests that about 65 million years ago, an asteroid that would have been between 5 and 10 km across hit the Earth in what is now Mexico, causing an explosion so enormous that its effects caused the extinction of more than three-quarters of all the plant and animal species alive at the time, including all of the dinosaurs (although not the birds, which had evolved from them and are therefore part of the dinosaurs’ evolutionary lineage).

On the morning of 30 June 1908, a much smaller asteroid (perhaps around 100 metres across) exploded in the Earth’s atmosphere above a thankfully sparsely populated area of eastern Russia called Tunguska, which is why International Asteroid Day takes place on that day. Despite the fact that there was no actual impact, it completely flattened a 2,000 square kilometre area of forest. Understandably, there is now a global effort to track near-Earth asteroids that are a potential threat to our survival, and International Asteroid Day aims to raise awareness of the need to protect Earth from asteroid impacts.

Asteroid art by Daisy

Thankfully though, it’s not all bad news. Although we tend to think of asteroids as a threat, they also represent a huge opportunity as they are often rich in valuable mineral resources that are rare here on Earth. Asteroid mining is a staple of golden-age hard science-fiction, as well as a priority for current spacefaring nations and private companies. The European Space Agency’s recent Rosetta mission showed that it is technically possible to travel to, and land probes on, such objects, although after close fly-bys of two asteroids, it actually landed on an icy comet rather than a rocky asteroid. Excitingly, the Japanese spacecraft Hyabusa2 is currently on its final approach to the asteroid Ryugu, and with other similar expeditions planned, like NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission, exploitation of asteroids looks set to be an increasingly important feature of space exploration in the near future. Once perceived only as a threat to humanity, asteroids may eventually become a source of materials that could help us explore the furthest reaches of our solar system, and beyond.

Since the discovery of the first asteroid in 1801, these lumps of rock have captured our imaginations. The dual nature of asteroids as both friends and foe has given rise to a rich literature of both fiction and non-fiction. This International Asteroid Day, why not check out some of the books about asteroids that we have here at Christchurch City Libraries? To help you, I have a compiled a short list of places you might want to start…

Asteroids

List created by robcruickshank
Books about humanity’s long-standing relationship with asteroids, what they are, why they’re important, including both fiction and non-fiction.

Catching Stardust

What the latest scientific studies of asteroids and comets tells us about the origins of the solar system.

The End

A book about the many ways that natural disasters threaten human survival, and what we might be able to do about them – includes a section on asteroid impacts.

The Ends of the World

A looks at the scientific evidence for the great mass extinctions, including the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs.

Evening’s Empires

A science fiction novel about a man stranded alone on a barren asteroid.

The Hammer of God

A classic science fiction novel about the discovery of an asteroid on collision course for Earth.

Impact!

A book for children about the scientific effort to track asteroids and avoid their devastating impacts.

Nameless

A fish-out-of-water young adult novel about a Russian teenager and physics prodigy recruited by NASA to prevent an asteroid colliding with Earth.

Learning to Swear in America

A graphic novel about an attempt to save the world from an impending asteroid impact.

Nemesis

A young adult novel involving lies, conspiracy, and a life-threatening asteroid.

Rosetta

A book for children about the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Mission.

View Full List

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 of the new technology they, and other cities around New Zealand, are using to increase their efficiency and provide better services to their citizens, while keeping costs as low as possible.

The smart city concept is essentially made up of three parts; (1) collection of data – often enormous amounts of it – about some aspect of the quality of the urban environment, or how the city is being used, (2) number crunching and visualization – often on maps – to make sense of all this information, and (3) using the results to make changes that improve the functioning of the city and enhance its citizens’ wellbeing.

Easy to say, but hard to do! To take a simple example; sensors inside rubbish bins could be used to tell refuse collectors whether they need emptying, so that needless trips can be avoided, and resources can be deployed more effectively. To take this idea to its extreme, we can imagine a day when most of the things we own are collecting and sharing data that is used to improve the overall efficiency of the vast interconnected system to which they belong, to all our benefits. This has sometimes been called the Internet of Things (IoT) – a phrase that was ubiquitous throughout the Expo.

The focus of the Expo was mostly on technology, but there are, of course, significant social, legal, and ethical issues to be considered. For Smart Cities to work, we must be happy for these data to be collected, shared, and used for this purpose. We also need to be sure that the data are secure. Imagine the chaos that might ensue if someone was able to hack into the systems that run our city. Nevertheless, the feeling at the Expo was, as one might expect, optimistic that these challenges can be met, and there was even some talk of making data open access, available to everyone (suitably anonymized, of course) to empower all citizens to use it themselves in whatever way they see fit. In fact, a lot of data collected by government (both local and central) are already available, if you know where to look and how to make sense of it. For example, freely available data from the last year’s general election were used to make an interactive map of how party votes were distributed across different polling stations.

Many of the exhibits at the Expo focused on the first part of this triangle. There were devices for detecting and sensing all manner of things such as traffic, pollution, noise, vibration, etc. etc., to name just a few – the list is endless. In most cases, the data being collected are objective and easily quantifiable, but one particularly interesting application comes from a tool called Sensibel, which enables cyclists to record their subjective experiences as they cycle around the city. They can record a thumbs-up or thumbs-down at any point on their journey by pressing a button attached to their bike.

Using GPS, this records the location where it was pressed so that later on they can log in and give a lengthier explanation of what made them feel the way they did. As they do so they are presented with a view of the street where they were to jog their memory. Data collected in this way can be used to make improvements that will hopefully make cycling in the city a much more enjoyable experience, perhaps increasing the number of people prepared to ditch their cars and switch to a bike. The possibilities for using real-time data about personal experiences to make changes that will enrich our lives seem almost limitless, as long as we are prepared to share that information.

The second part of the triangle – data analysis – is harder, but again there were lots of fascinating exhibits demonstrating that rapid improvements are being made in this area. Perhaps the hardest thing of all is to translate all of this into meaningful actions – either short-term responses, medium-term policy development, or longer-term strategic directions.

It’s still early days for the Smart Cities approach, and there is much more progress to be made, but one thing is for sure, our data are increasingly going to inform how our city is run, so to be fully engaged we all need to be a bit more aware of how our data are collected and used. There has been a slew of excellent popular books about the uses and abuses of what is sometimes called “big data” published recently. Why not check some of these out of the library and explore what our future city might look like? Here are a few places you might like to start…

Big data

List created by robcruickshank

Books about the uses and abuses of “big data” and statistics. A toolkit for life in the digital age.

Automating Inequality – Argues that the use of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk modelling by governments and law enforcement agencies selectively disadvantages the poor, reinforcing existing power relationships and inequality in society.

The Efficiency Paradox – Questions whether, in our relentless pursuit of efficiency, we may as a society be missing opportunities to benefit from “the powerful potential of serendipity”.

Human + Machine – Explores the many ways – good and bad – that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the workplace.

Randomistas – Looks at how randomised controlled trials are increasingly being used outside their traditional home of medical science in areas as diverse as social policy, politics, business, and law enforcement.

View Full List

Find out more about Christchurch City Council’s Smart City Programme

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 journalism into literature, to be read for pleasure, inventing in the process a new kind of non-fiction and influencing generations of authors whose work I have been enjoying ever since. But for me, Tom Wolfe’s legacy is a decidedly mixed one.

In my youth, I loved the vivid, day-glo prose of his psychedelic classic, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. As a window onto a world I knew very little about it was one of those books that broadened my horizons and helped me become aware that there are many more ways to live a life than my rather conventional upbringing had prepared me for. Another favourite was The Right Stuff, about the Mercury Seven astronauts, arguably the real pioneers of manned spaceflight (at least in the Western hemisphere), among the very first to venture off-planet, and lone-travellers in their single-seat capsules. It wasn’t just the incredible tales of the astronauts themselves that I enjoyed, but also the stories of those around them, their girlfriends, wives, and families, and the ground crew that supported them, which made the space race feel, to me at least, like a crazy mad adventure that (unlike the trips of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters described in “…Acid Test”) everyone could buy into – at least that’s how I felt at the time – and it helped to fuel my life-long interest in science and technology.

When I was a bit older I read, and thoroughly enjoyed, From Bauhaus to Our House, Wolfe’s searing critique of the worst excesses of modernist architecture. It was bitingly funny and satirical, but actually, I gradually realised, I quite liked a lot of the buildings Wolfe was ridiculing. Although I was with him in his disdain for the cynical manipulation of public taste by those in power, which he so expertly took down, was I simultaneously allowing myself to be manipulated perhaps? Nevertheless, I thought I saw a conservatism coming through in his writing that I hadn’t noticed before and it didn’t sit well with me, which might be why I stopped reading his books after that. It wasn’t a deliberate, or even conscious, turning away, it was just that there were always other things I wanted to read more. So, I never read any of his fiction, which came later in his career, or the books he is now perhaps most lauded for, such as Bonfire of the Vanities. Wolfe’s right-wing credentials were confirmed when he came out as a supporter of George W. Bush, but I think his politics were more complicated and nuanced than this might suggest, and the claim that he was a racist because of derogatory remarks he made about the Black Panther Party in his book Radical Chic, in which he mocked all manner of left-wing intellectuals, are, I think, overstated; above all it seems he was a contrarian who delighted in taking an opposing view to whatever appeared to be the zeitgeist at the time.

As someone who has spent much of my adult life as an academic working in the field of evolutionary biology, for me, the last straw came with his book The Kingdom of Speech, which was strongly critical of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution by natural selection, the cornerstone of modern biology. I haven’t read this book, so perhaps I shouldn’t comment on it, but I remember the furore it caused at the time of its publication for its anti-Darwinian stance. Some biologists saw value in Wolfe’s critique, not I think of Darwin as biologist, but of the way his ideas have sometimes been applied outside biology, but for most I think the feeling was something like ‘How dare this hack, without any formal training in biology, take on one of our most treasured icons?’. But of course, daring iconoclasm was what Tom Wolfe was all about, and he was well-versed in evolutionary theory, although for me at the time this felt like a step too far.

For these, and other reasons (like his affected style in later life of wearing white suits and carrying elaborately carved wooden canes – a harmless eccentricity perhaps, but one I found off-putting), I have been ambivalent about re-reading Wolfe’s books, or filling in the gaps, but his death has led me to reconsider. The other day I pulled “…Acid Test” off the shelf, and the first few pages immediately brought back the excitement I felt reading it for the first time all those years ago, so I think I will finish it. I’m not a big re-reader of books, but I think there are things in it that I will see quite differently this time. For example, in the opening scene, one of the hippies in the back of the van hurtling through the streets of San Francisco to meet Ken Kesey after his release from prison is none other than the environmentalist Stewart Brand. I wouldn’t have known who he was when I first read the book, but since then I have read some of Brand’s own books, and followed his more recent enthusiasm for de-extinction (another controversial topic, which I will perhaps re-visit in another blog). I think there’s a good argument to be made that “…Acid Test” is a modern classic that should be widely read. I’m not so sure about “The Right Stuff”, which I don’t intend to read again. I don’t think Wolfe’s glorification of the test pilots, turned early astronauts, and their male-dominated world would seem so appealing to me this time round, and in any case, since then I’ve read lots of other books on the subject that I would far rather read again (again, a subject for another blog). I’m not sure about re-reading “Our House to Bauhaus”, and it’s not a field I’ve continued to follow or read many other books about, but for satirical bite I think I might try The Painted Word, which I haven’t read before, but is on a similar topic and of a similar vintage. As for the fiction, I think I might leave that for my retirement.

In the end, my remembered fondness for Wolfe’s early books must trump my reservations about his later work. Despite his flaws, I think my reading life has been significantly enriched by my encounters with Wolfe’s writing and those he influenced, and for that I am very grateful.

Farewell Tom, and thank you!

Find Tom Wolfe’s works in our collection.

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 up with old friends. For me, it wasn’t so much the stamps I found appealing as the people who collected them, who seemed an unusually obsessive bunch with their own arcane rules, jargon, and preoccupations that appeared baffling from the outside.

I was therefore delighted to discover, in the Library’s catalogue, a book called “The One-Cent Magenta: Inside the Quest to Own the Most Valuable Stamp in the World” by James Barron, which is full of stories of people like those I remember.

This book tells the extraordinary tale of a single stamp, the only one of its kind, as it changed hands and rapidly increased in value with each new owner over it’s 150 year history. (The title of each chapter reflects the stamp’s value at that point in the story.)

The stamp in question is really just a tiny scrap of coloured paper bearing an almost indiscernible design. It was printed quickly in what was then British Guiana (now Guyana) to replace some stamps that had gone missing on their way from London. As stamps of this value (unlike the more common four-cent stamp that was also printed at the time) were mostly used for newspapers and magazines, almost all of the them were thrown away when they were finished with, but miraculously a single stamp survived and was rediscovered some years later in 1873 by a 12 year-old boy among papers in his uncle’s house.

After a number of changes of ownership, that stamp eventually sold at auction in 2014 for the astonishing sum of US$9.5 million (about NZ$13.5 million) – more than a billion times it’s original value! At just 2.5cm x 3.2 cm that means each square millimetre is worth nearly NZ$170, making it the world’s most valuable object for its size and weight.

British Guiana 1c stamp issued in 1856. Last sold for NZ$13.5 million. (Public Domain image from Wikipedia)

The reasons why someone would pay such an inordinate sum of money for something with no real material value, and why some very rich people find extreme rarity of this kind so irresistible, is the central question explored in this book. It would be tempting to consider these people crazy, but they all made excellent returns on their investments, and future owners will continue to do so as long as the stamp remains so highly sought after.

The book is a real page-turner, and there are lots of astonishing tales along the way about the people involved, such as the man who tried (unsuccessfully) to use the stamp as a bargaining chip to get out of a murder charge, or another who may (or may not – no one really knows) have found a second one cent-magenta and destroyed it to maintain the value of the first. These stories may sound incredible, but in the bizarre world of high-value stamp collecting this sort of behaviour is not out of the question.

This book reminded me of the 1936 novel “Antigua, Penny, Puce” by Robert Graves, about a brother and sister who fall out in spectacular fashion over a dispute concerning the ownership of a rare stamp with many similarities to the one-cent magenta, which is well worth reading too if you find this sort of thing as fascinating as I do. The Library doesn’t have a copy, but as it’s out of copyright, it is available as an e-book from the Internet Archive, where you can also find the audio of a 1995 BBC Radio dramatic adaptation of the book.

Enjoy!

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, city planners are increasingly turning to science and technology for what are sometimes called smart city solutions.

As part of Techweek 2018, on Monday 21 May, Christchurch City Council’s Smart Cities programme will be hosting the 2018 Smart Cities Innovation Expo at Novotel Hotel, Cathedral Square Christchurch. Entry is free, and from 10am – 4pm visitors will be able to see a wide range of interactive exhibits showcasing local and national cutting-edge ideas for improving city life, from urban augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, and smart sensors, to rapid earthquake response systems, cycling innovations, and interactive apps. In anticipation of this event, I’ve put together a list of books that explore the many ways that science and technology can help us to understand cities and make them better places to live. Enjoy!

List created by robcruickshank

Books about how science and technology help us to understand cities and make them better places to live

Aerotropolis – A look at one possible future for the world’s cities

Built – This fascinating history of structural engineering from ancient times to the modern day

Built on Bones – What happened when we started living together in cities? – the archaeological evidence

Christchurch: Our underground story – A brilliant locally produced “lift-the-flap” book for children about what lies underneath our feet here in our very own city.

Darwin Comes to Town – Why cities are the best places to study evolution

The Endless City – A look at the future of cities around the world from the Urban Age Project at the London School of Economics – also check out the sequel – Living in the Endless City

Feral Cities – A fascinating account of urban wildlife around the world and how animals are adjusting to city life

Happy City – A travelogue the looks at the psychology of urban life around the world and how we can make cities happier places to live

A History of Future Cities – A fascinating look at how four global cities have each developed and embraced modernity in their own unique ways.

View more titles in the full list

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 books, magazines, and other resources that you can find at Christchurch City Libraries.

Books

The Library has thousands of books and eBooks about archaeology for both adults and children. Because archaeology lies at the interface between art, history, and science, books on this subject can be found in several different places among our non-fiction collection, so if you’re having troubling finding what you’re looking for, then ask a librarian for help.

Here is a list of a few of my personal favourites that have recently been added to the library’s shelves, including some fiction that features archaeologists as characters…

Archaeology

List created by robcruickshank

Books about archaeology and archaeologists for adults and children, including both fiction and non-fiction

The 50 Greatest Prehistoric Sites of the World – A guide book to archaeological sites

A’a – The fascinating story of a Polynesian artefact, now in the British Museum, that became an inspiration for Picasso

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes – The consequences of an archaeological hoax come back to haunt the characters of this 1956 novel

Built on Bones – What happened when we started to live together in cities? – the archaeological evidence

Cigars of the Pharaoh – A classic!Cigars of the Pharaoh

The Incredible Cabinet of Wonders – Not just archaeology, but I love this children’s “lift the flap” bookThe Incredible Cabinet of Wonders

Keeping Their Marbles – The uncomfortable story of how archaeological objects from around the world were acquired by western museums, often by coercion and theft

A Little History of Archaeology – Stories of some of the great archaeologists and what they found – one of the “Little Histories” series

Lost in A Pyramid – Twelve tales from the golden age of the mummy story, collected and published by the British Library

Mayan Mendacity – The second mystery for Dr Elizabeth Pimms, archaeologist and librarian – sequal to Olmec Obituary

My Life in Ruins – What is it actually like to be an archaeologist?

The Quest for Z – A delightful retelling for children of a doomed expedition to find a lost city in the Amazon jungle

The Story of Tutankhamun – A beautifully illustrated book for children about perhaps the most celebrated of ancient Egyptian pharaohs

View Full List

Magazines and eMagazines

The magazine Archaeology is available both as a hard copy and as an e-magazine through RBDigital. Check out the January/February 2018 edition for an article called “New Zealand’s First City, Uncovered”, which tells the stories of the early European colonists of Christchurch through some of the artefacts found among the rubble in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes, as well as presenting evidence of earlier occupation by Māori dating back as far as 1250 AD.

We also have many other general science and history magazines that include articles about archaeology, such as All About History, BBC History Magazine, Discover, Smithsonian Magazine, etc., in both hard copy and digital formats. Check out the library catalogue for details.

eResources

A library card gets you free access to a huge number of electronic resources that contain information about archaeology, many of which can be accessed from home. The best way to find out about these is to log on a take a look. In particular, you might want to check out some of these:

• Gale Virtual Reference Library
  
• History Reference Centre
  
• National Geographic Virtual Library
  
• New Zealand Geographic Archive(including NZGeo TV)
• New Zealand History Collection
  
• Opposing Views in Context
  
• Oxford Art Online
  
• Research in Context
  
• Science in Context
  
• Science Reference Center
  
• Scientific American Archive
  
• Student Resources in Context
  
• Teacher Reference Center
  
• World Book
  
• World History in Context

These are in addition to our extensive collection of eResources about local and family history. If you are a Christchurch resident, but not yet a member of the library, you can join online, with the option of a digital only membership if you just want access to our online resources.

Other places of archaeological interest in and around Christchurch

Fans of Egyptology should check out Tash Pen Khonsu, an Egyptian mummy on display at Canterbury Museum. For those with more classical tastes, the Teece Museum of Classical Antiquities, run by the University of Canterbury, is well worth a visit. This relatively new museum opened in May 2017 and is located in the recently refurbished Arts Centre on Level 1 of the Old Chemistry Building at 3 Hereford Street. It is currently closed, but will re-open during New Zealand Archaeology Week on 5 May with an exhibition called “Beyond the Grave: Death in Ancient Times”.

More information about archaeological sites in Christchurch can be found on the websites of Christchurch City Council and Heritage New Zealand (formerly known as the Historic Places Trust), which has an extensive archaeology section that includes a wealth of fascinating and useful information, and of course on our own Library Website.

Happy digging!