Garry's Blog

Heritage Buildings and Earthquakes: Christchurch and Elsewhere Christchurch heritage suffered a devastating loss in its earthquakes. The Council there (like others) had been remiss in not requiring earthquake strengthening of masonry buildings on a more rapid timetable, but even if it had the result may have still not been happy. The size of the earthquake was such that even when a strengthened building may have stood and saved lives, it was still likely to suffer irreparable damage. What can be done with damaged buildings? Simply it is not sensible to repair or rebuild them as masonry buildings. That is recreating the danger. One Listener columnist seemed to think this was what heritage advocates wanted and dismissed us all as mad. In some cases if the facades are reasonably intact it is possible to build a modern frame building behind and then attach the facade to it. Where this is not possible then a replica is the only option – using some of the original fabric where this is ...

The Story of an Immigrant Ship, Garry Law Published in Heritage Matters. Issue 25 Summer 2010/11 About RMS Remuera.

Strangeness on Maungawhau The Pou The Maori inscription The other inscription ?????? What on earth is this about? The sign

The Last Spike - Feilding and District Historical Society, 2008. 138p ISBN 978-0-473-13715-1 Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the completion of the North Island main trunk railway. A superb collection of photographs enliven the text. As a primer on the civil engineering methods and practices of the time this is hard to beat.

Heritage Matters have published a short article of mine - a much shortened version of the on-line paper. Garry Law 2008 “The Great White Fleet in Auckland” Heritage Matters Issue 17:38-9.

More scientific illiteracy at TVNZ. Last night they had the Hubble telescope seeing planets around a star in another galaxy . Oh dear - we will be waiting a while for that one to be true. It was of course another solar system. It's 25 light years away. The closest galaxy is a dwarf companion to our own and it is 42,000 light years away. The BBC got it right. BBC story

The Awa Book of New Zealand Science. Edited Rebecca Priestley, 2008, The Awa Press. What a great book – extracts from papers and writing about science from through our history, embellished by some relevant pieces of our poetry. Of course much of the material is largely of local interest – the pieces by the likes Cockayne, Cotton, Guthrie-Smith will resonate with New Zealanders but less for people away from here. They are well chosen – Priestley has a good eye for what is readable as well as significant. For archaeologists the pieces by Rafter and Adds connect us to the bigger picture. It is the bringing together here of the international contributions that is not often done. If one puts together the pieces by Rutherford and Marsden on the discovery of the atom’s nucleus, Tinsley on the nature of the universe, Wilkins on DNA, and Alan Wilson (with Rebecca Cann) on our recent African Genesis this is an astonishing contribution to knowledge of the fundamentals of our world and ourselves. ...