We are surrounded by reminders of the force of nature and the simultaneous fragility of the same.
For those of us who live on the Otago Peninsula, at Broad Bay or beyond, it's just a small nudge: the minor inconvenience of having, for the past couple of days, had to detour up along Highcliff Rd due to the slip that brought trees rocks and mud down to block the coastal route.
For farmers on the Taieri, residents at Henley, and others around Otago the consequences of the rains have been much more severe; another day or two's downpour and it would have been a whole lot worse.
When we were flying in over the plain on Sunday, the Taieri resembled nothing so much as a muddy mill pond.
But at least we could fly: international travellers have of late discovered just how malevolent an erupting Icelandic volcano can be.
The disruption to air traffic over Europe, which continued intermittently for some weeks and even now still threatens, demonstrates how the ingenuity of man is consistently challenged by latent powers unleashed.
Sometimes it takes man's helping hand: the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the seabed at a depth of 1.5km is a good example.
It is shaping up to be the biggest environmental disaster in the United States and there is still no end in sight, no viable solution that will save the waters of the Gulf and the southern coastline from yet further degradation.
There is a certain simplistic equation that lumps this travesty at the feet of US President Barack Obama, and while there is an inevitability that some of the tarry Louisiana sand will stick, the real culprit is our Western civilisation's continued obeisance to oil as our prime energy source.
And the leadership of the last generation or so that has refused to cut a different course.
Instead of putting the resources and investment into renewable energy, along with the tax breaks and incentives that might make this more attractive for energy companies, we have stuck with the easy route: more of the same, to the extent that oil companies have found it profitable to develop the technologies and wherewithal to harvest it from miles below the surface of the ocean, all the while insisting that the process is quite safe.
Well, now we know it ain't so: the southern coast of the States is a mess, Gulf fishermen have lost their livelihoods for the foreseeable future, and the consequences for marine and coastal fish and bird life don't bear thinking about.
And neither does the prospect of a similar disaster off the Otago coast should proposals for deep-water drilling go ahead there.
The way TVNZ has been blowing its trumpet over the last week or two - marking 50 years yesterday since the first home-grown television broadcast - you'd think it was a force of nature itself.
Yet far from cause for celebration, the clips and flashbacks have only served to remind us of what a hollowed-out shell of its former self the national television broadcaster is today.
A certain pride in past glories is not unearned.
Honourable mentions have gone to Selwyn Toogood, Gliding On, Brian Edwards, Hudson and Halls, Country Calendar, Fred Dagg, McPhail & Gadsby, Shortland Street and so on.
The overwhelming commonality is the New Zealandness of it all.
And while decades on we don't feel perhaps quite that same self-conscious need, it is hard to anticipate much of today's home-grown crop that will be worth remarking on in a further 50 years.
Sit down, for instance, to what used to be an oasis of quality drama on a Sunday evening - one of the very few it has to be said - and what do you get these days: a couple of hours of the ten-a-penny American crime dramas (Criminal Minds, Cold Case) that vie with numerous other acronym-heavy clones (CSI, NCIS, etc) which, along with a whole series of Survivor variations and related tribes, clog the viewing space.
It's a favourite bugbear - to which, at the risk of being boring, I return because quite simply it is scandalous - that the best of local current affairs is screened on Sunday mornings (The Nation, TV3; Q+A, TV One).
Otherwise, for a glimpse of what a less ratings-sensitive news hour might look like, there is Freeview 7's 8pm nightly news, which is not so breathless as, and considerably more intelligent than, its 7pm One News counterpart.
Freeview 7 also hosts the generally excellent Media Show. Why should we care?
Well, when the media shapes so much of how we perceive current events in the country, it is useful, not to say necessary, to reflect critically on how it performs.
Simon Cunliffe is assistant editor at the Otago Daily Times.
