Joanne McNeill.
Ductility: what a lovely word.
Apparently it means being able to stretch under tensile stress.
It surfaced last week when seismic mesh used in concrete slab floors in the Christchurch rebuild failed strength tests.
Why they're rebuilding shaky Christchurch with concrete is a mystery.
Who wants to die crushed under concrete and twisted steel, or see liquefaction oozing up through cracks again?
Clearly the survival there of many old wooden villas - while supposedly more substantial brick, stone, concrete and tile edifices collapsed in heaps - indicates old-fashioned piles, weatherboards and corrugated-iron roofs are relatively flexible and reliable.
Obviously though, the clean slate opportunity the quake devastation offered - to create a unique, safe, sustainable, innovative, eco-friendly city of linked, floating, low-rise villages - has been elbowed out by corporate developers and suppliers rushing to make a quick neo-liberal, economy-boosting buck from the same old toxic, leaky buildings which blight every city.
Similarly, it was clear from media images the first-floor wooden Dunedin balcony which collapsed under concert-goers was not equipped with supporting posts.
It just stuck out into thin air. Look ma, no hands!
It may be fashionable and profitable to build unsound structures but the addition of some pinus radiata 4x4 posts underneath could have saved a lot of injury, trouble and costly reports, but perhaps they're unavailable now the home-grown wall of wood is all exported raw?
On the South Island's West Coast, the mighty Tasman Sea is threatening to consume a chunk of a waterfront Punakaiki camping ground. Locals are filling sandbags.
Someone I knew lost 75 per cent of the cliff under a house along that coast just after it was bought, leaving the house perched on the edge where booming waves underneath broke all the windows.
And I don't know if you've ever tried to swim in the truly awesome Tasman. I have. It just picks you up and hurls you bodily at the Southern Alps.
Don't you love the way people are so optimistic in the face of hopeless quests though?
Earth and sea are living, changing, volatile forces. Attempting to hold them back or tame them, and building on shaky ground with allegedly permanent materials, are crazy acts of misplaced faith - like voluntarily taking the punishment dished out to the mythical Greek Sisyphus who had to roll a boulder up a steep hill every day then watch it roll down again, for all eternity.
Mind you, domestic disaster can be equally intractable.
Having taken down the living room curtains over summer - to prevent infestation with the clay mason-bee nests which admittedly are intricate marvels of efficient construction but undesirable decorations for soft furnishings - an autumnal nip meant it was time to wash them before re-hanging for winter.
This cosy efficient plan lasted about five minutes before a visit to the wash-house revealed a flooded floor and disintegrated curtains in shreds clogging the machine's innards. Oh dear, I suppose they were quite old.
Having sopped up the mess and de-pulped the machine I haven't been game to check whether it's still working.
All I can say is, if it's a goner and we're facing a winter of hand-washing, Sisyphean reserves of optimistic personal ductility will be required.
What does the weather have in store for Northlanders this festive season?