27 articles
As much as I love what we have here in New Zealand, when I get to be on the other side of the world I always look with envy at what they have there. It’s amazing how much more you can do when you have enough people. You notice it in all kinds of ways, large and small. A good restaurant can sustain i
David Slack on his dad's cataract surgery and the eyecare professionals who make it all possible
I will forever marvel at the thought that all this life around us began as nothing more than an amoeba on a rock – from the iridescence of birds or the perfect tiny hands of a baby to the anatomical closeup of the human eye as I sit waiting in a clinic to learn if my sight is in peril.
In Europe, there is a thing of beauty called the EuroVelo network. At 90,000km long, it connects and traverses the entire continent with long-distance cycleways.
In a BBC survey of the greatest innovation, the answer was, emphatically, the humble bicycle.
What gives a life purpose? Nearly four decades ago, in Lower Moutere, my friend Hazel Nash decided to put the orchard land she was living on to another use. She had an outdoor education centre in mi
As a kid, events before you were born, even just one or two decades earlier, lie in an unimaginably distant past. For me, the Second World War was that long ago place. Whoever those people were in the black-and-white footage, living in unimaginably different times, bore little resemblance to the peo
There is a well-understood narrative for the history of humanity. It describes how we made our way from the Stone Age to Instagram and all of those small miracles we take for granted: the computer in our pocket, the satellites we put in space, the digital clocks on our appliances that blink ‘00:00’,
Social media is always super excited to let me know about clever new technology. The latest recommendation is the Laundry Jet, a domestic revolution in a tube! Tired of walking to the laundry? A vacuum-powered laundry chute whisks away your dirty T-shirts and socks from any room with a Laundry Jet p
The first time I heard about a monster bike ride from Cape Reinga to Bluff, I was in the doctor’s surgery. My GP was wiry, a keen bike rider, a role model. He and half a dozen friends were about to set off on a mighty fundraising adventure, riding the length of the country in honour of a mate who ha
