Weather Eye with John Maunder A sunspot is a relatively dark, sharply defined region on the solar disc - marked by an umbra, a dark area, which is 2000 degrees cooler than the effective photospheric temperature. The average... Read More

Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny It's in your face, beckoning, tugging at your wallet. ‘It' is Christmas. And it seems to come calling earlier and earlier. This year it was about seven weeks out from Christmas,... Read More

Music Plus with Winston Watusi watusi@thesun.co.nz As I believe has been occasionally noted, New Zealand is not a large country. So it seems all the more unlikely we should produce two internationally-regarded musicians,... Read More

Sports correspondent & historian with Sideline Sid While an avid horse racing fan since my early teens I am getting increasingly fed up with the incessant TAB ads extolling me to 'Get Your Bet On”. The gist of... Read More

Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny NEWS ALERT! Commonsense has crashed in a mad tangle of holly, baubles and tinsel in Christchurch. Santa's elves were ordered to wear safety belts on their Santa parade float after a health... Read More

Music Plus with Winston Watusi watusi@thesun.co.nz We're pretty much into December. It focuses the mind, doesn't it? As I mentioned last week, gigs drop off the closer to Christmas we get. It's just too busy. But the... Read More

A message from Mayor Mahé with Mahé Drysdale Articles about council annual plans probably make most readers' eyes glaze over, but I'm hoping this one will prove the exception. Tauranga City Council elected... Read More

Sports correspondent & historian with Sideline Sid As I have mentioned in several previous pieces, one of the joys of being an amateur sports historian is discovering and confirming new information about the distant past. Looking... Read More

Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny The sun's up over Waikareao Estuary. 'Sparkling waters of the new day” it means. Doesn't te reo Māori paint wonderful pictures? And today Waikareao is living up to its name. The tūī... Read More

Music Plus with Winston Watusi watusi@thesun.co.nz We must be getting close to the end of the year - gigs are starting to wind down. Not the gigs themselves of course, but as December arrives they get sparser. It's... Read More

Weather Eye with John Maunder My sister Valerie died in Ashburton, New Zealand on the 12 th March 2001 after several years of bowel cancer. On my way to the funeral I called into a shop at Springs Junction on the Lewis... Read More

Sports correspondent & historian with Sideline Sid One of my mates asked me a question at last year's Boxing New Zealand National Championships held in Tauranga, which I have quietly considered for the last year and a... Read More