dontalkdo

The Apple falls far from the Valley...

2011-10-07T23:44:00.000-07:00

Thursday 6th October 2011 and thanks to Mikhail Peppas for the title...

An Icon has died. It is the end of an era that started on the
Californian West Coast and is now in your pocket and if not, either in
your dreams or somehow has a direct effect on your life. I am talking
about Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple inc. who died yesterday at
the age of 56. That I am also 56 makes it even more poignant, as we
find ourselves in a time when so sadly many of our peers are leaving
the planet.
As a reminder of our close yet distant journey together, I will be
showing the classic film, Pirates of Silicon Valley, at our home in
Nairobi this evening and hopefully on other occasions , shared with
friends. The movie is a docudrama looking at how the rivalry between
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates created the energy that spurned the personal
computer age.
One of my fondest memories that define who I am and what I love doing
most is from the day I first heard about the Apple computer. I was a
young electronics student at the then Natal Technikon in Durban, South
Africa and our electronics lecturer, one Mr Whittle, showed us the
circuit diagram of the new Apple computer he had just purchased at
Deon's in Johannesburg. I was rivetted and wanted immediately to try
and make one from the circuit. But the next day this idea was
supplanted when I heard, at Tech, that the son of a friend had an
Apple at home and I could go and try it out. My friend, Thomas
Potgieter and I ran all the way from town to Ridge Road, some 4kms
away, and when I arrived there my life changed forever. The first
software that we looked at was called FSIM. It was a very basic flight
simulator program with an aeroplane made of a simple cross that you
could control from the keyboard. I was blown away and knew that I HAD
to have one of these.
Some thirty years later and I am still empassioned by the technical
and creative magic of what the original FSIM software has become.
These days it provides a fully immersive real world experience of all
aspects of flight and is used in various forms in real world flight
training. It is so accurate and realistic that the FAA (US Aviation
authority) has certified X_Plane, a modern day derivative, as a valid
way to build up hours for real life pilots. But more so it has fuelled
in me a deep hunger to travel the world and see in real life some of
the marvellous places that I have visited in my virtual world of
aviation. It is this blurring between the real and the dreamlike
virtual that has, more than anything else, defined the new world of
social media and digital identities. The world at our fingers is now
boundless.

I did get my own Apple 2 eventually, but it was the much cheaper
Taiwanese copy, the CV777. This was my first and nervous foray into
buying online (though it was ordered then by mail). It reliably served
me until it was integrated into the broader community in my great
robbery of 2007. I wonder if those skelms have any idea of the history
that lurks in those rows of silicon chips?

Even if you have never had an Apple, the mouse and graphic interface
you use on your PC is thanks to Steve Jobs.
It is said that you use a PC but have a relationship with your Apple.
For me, it is always a relationship with my computers, no matter what
they are. But this is entirely because I learnt to love these plastic
and silicon beasts through the Apple Story.
And it is that story that I will celebrate tonight as I raise a glass
of the finest to a true hero of our generation.
As they mention in the NYT obituary: While the revolutionaries were
rioting on the campuses of the West Coast in the 70s, two young
friends were busy changing the world in a garage, just down the road.

budgie 6th October 2011

Science for Survival

2011-09-08T04:07:00.000-07:00

Here, there and everywhere

2011-07-11T13:08:00.000-07:00

TIRED OF THE RISKS OF BEING A PEDESTRIAN IN KENYA.....Ida and I decided to find somewhere really dangerous to visit....Having rejected anywhere in South Africa as being just too fraught with crime and tinkering we went thru our collection of old 7 singles and VHS flicks & came across 'Midnight Express'.Made sometime in the 70s, this tale of a young American caught smuggling hishhash out of Turkey, scared the living daylights outa me and I not only immediately gave up coffee but decided to never ever visit Istanbul. However, some years later (actually last week), I read a review of the movie which made me reconsider taking up the old beans again.

To quote: In Mary Lee Settle's 1991 book Turkish Reflections, she writes, "The Turks I saw in Lawrence of Arabia and Midnight Express were like cartoon caricatures, compared to the people I had known and lived among for three of the happiest years of my life."

Add to this the fact that my daughter, Sarah, had been not once but twice and returned only with tales of apple tea and sunsets, I decided to 'go and see for myself'.

So, we said a cheerful farewell to our pet giraffe and headed off to the place

where East meets West.

Part of the deal when headin' out to Attaturk country is the optional cultural immersion course provided by Emitrates Air.

We learnt 2 invaluable lessons:

(1) Islam and High Fashion can co-exist and

(2) Musgrave Centre in Durban is cheaper than the duty free section of Dubai International Airport.

Arriving at Attaturk International Airport I have an uncanny feeling that this is like home...with some crucial differences. Basically everything here is called after the Big Guy, Attaturk and it seems really justifiable as we discover later. The terminal, the customs, the friendly officials, functional and bright lights...all tell of a

functional society.

I am addicted to airports, besotted with aeroplanes and would be quite

happy to just stay there all week, but there is a strange calling deep inside

DO they drive on the left or the right? Can't say yet as all seems so fluid and

me that says, 'venture forth in the name of the African Explorers, venture forth into the land behind the veil.'

smooth, an antidote to the last few days of frustration at the chaos of

the Kenyan driver mindset. On a beezlebub scooter 2 chaps, one with helmet, the other, dark hair in the sun.

This is a sexy country full of sexy people, some behind the veil and others in gay abandon. Hippies, punks, burkas, apricot sellers, technofingers, waterpipers galore, tea drinkers, silver sellers, pedestrian cobbled lanes, pavement cafes, trams and prams. Seemingly no agro, crime is not a concept in this part of town, Taksim Square, where restaurants and sexy people radiate out into the East of Western Europe and the west of the East.

Sarah, my somewhat

traveled d

aughter still has some apple tea left in Cape Town. But clearly needs more.

' Ok sooooo! ISTANBUL!!!

Places you must try an

d go to.... :

The Blue Mosque of course

The Hagia Sophia

Topkapi Palace and the gardens surrounding it

Dolmace Palace

Buyuk Ada Island (beautiful little island in the Marmara sea, no cars only horse-drawn carriages and bicycles... and horses roaming free everywhere)

The underground wat

The Egyptian spice market

er chambers in Sultanahmet - its very close to the Hagia Sophia...

The Grand Bazaar, of course...

Take a ferry to the Asian side and just walk

around and explore, especially around where the train station is... just further on from there is also where you take the ferry to the island...

At the end of that long shopping street in Taksim that i was talking about, there are lots of very cool little shops and cafes and allyways.... just explore around there!

Go to the University grounds... they are close to the Grand Bazaar

Go and eat LAHMACUN - you will find

it almost everywhere!!!! Its

sooooo yummy :-) Also have lots of sutlac (rice pudding) and really good baklava... and drink lots of tea and apple tea... Ooooooh, im so jealous!!!!!! Please bring me back as much apple tea as possible :p

Have and amazing time, if i think of anything else, ill email you!!!!

Lots of love xxx

Sarah

Okee, now I have a mission! Tomorrow I will take an arb direction and walk for an hour. Stop,

Take a 2 minute video clip of whatever it is I am looking at and then trot home. Maybe I will find

a cycle shop en route. Then the next day I can cycle for an hour!

2011-03-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

"On a clear day you can see Mt kilimanjaro...and Mt. kenya."

Nani Croze stood and turned her sunblued focus from horizon to horizon. As if for the first time. We were 6 dogs, 2 tennis balls, several piccaninis and a golf ball on an evening walk.

Squinting at the one mountain we can see, Nani asks a small boy attached to a large Rotweiller what mountain that could be...."Longonot", he replies, confidently.

Somewhere en route we divert to visit an exhibition of art, pinned up on bushes and the wire cages of 3 sweet-smelling camels.

The artist and camel herder turn out to be the same person, Hassan.

18 hours later we are still at Kitangela Glass. Take the first turn left after the Nairobi National Park and follow the signs. Some folks get horribly lost and give up. Bad move. Even the right road is way out of synch with the average macadamized adventurer. It's times like this I am happy to be South African. The worse the road, the more my instincts tingle.

So stick in there and get there. Even if you are a travel weary Kalahari First Person who survives on the smell of a root and the thirst of the hunt, you cannot be prepared for what you will encounter in Nani's world.

The closest I have come to the feel of this unsolicited Eden was my first time in Piccadily Circus. 1977 and Londoners were looking decidedly different. Malcolm Maclaren had opened a shop called SEX in Kings Rd and a swathe of red was about to sweep the world. That it had a short and sharp life as the pure knee jerk of a frustrated generation was inevitable, but for a brief time it gave colour and voice and a vivid alternativeness to a world tired of tired hippies and undisciplined children.

Punk never was a particularly great idea, hardly a movement of the people, but in Piccadilly Circus that 70s day I was forced to engage with a chaotic mix of pinstripe suits, art for revolution, colour for no reason, body piercing unimaginable and by simply standing in one spot, a world passing around me.

It is lunch time. Nani's husband , Erick, thought he would retire in London one day, but didn't. He doesn't quite know whether he is actually retired yet or not. "I am waiting for this lady..." he points warmly to Nani. I have only eyes for her strong working hands, an equally strong gold band on her right ring finger.

She is on the phone to a French woman who is lost, coming to buy a pig. It turns out...as a pet.

In the small of my back a sharp pain tells me that Vultjie, a 31 year old Egyptian Vulture wants more custard.

A man in a harlequin boiler suit is reprimanding a Sikes monkey, a big bugger who, despite having had half our breakfast, is still waiting for his gap to grab our freshly baked bread.

OK, so take all the agression, frustration, pinstripes, buses, taxis, grey skies, bobbies on the beat, safety pins away, replace Piccadilly Eros with a 25 metre rust and glass crocodile with a barbeque in its gaping mouth and that's where I am, facing due south.

That is if Heaven has directions or Eden a magnetic field, because it seems that Salvador Dali died and woke up here....sort of in my body. Alice couldn't make it to tea but Dr Suess and Doolittle did. The horses smell of lanolin and the swimming pool of jasmine. A pair of star-scrossed starlings bathed furiously in the shallows behind the dragon's tail this morning, unable to distinguish between me and the baboons who occasionaly sit and on the swimming pool wall and watch Mzungus swimming.

This all works, I think, because no living creature here tells another to 'Get outa my country'. This is Eldorado, Naniland and like Piccadilly Circus, is a chaotic mix of a well kept secret garden and a shared public space.

Once upon a time, a dashing German named Ludwig, left his piece of Africa to his equally dashing cousin, Nani.

This was all she needed for her artist's heart to explode into abundance, a little like they say our universe did.

There have been, from time to time, other minor universes bursting into existance. the Owl House in South Africa, Barcelona, Macchu Picchu. But Naniland is the real thing.

You have a few options once you get here. Arrive, be blown away, see the glass blown, see the blown glass and buy a memory.

Or, book into one (it really does not matter which one as you will certainly return to try the rest) of the Suessy, dangly, mother Hubbard houses and work your way from the heart of this alternative universe back to a life that can simply never be quite the same again.

Oh yes, you will have to pay for the privilege, but that, like any real artist knows, is never the real deal. If the great creator within has half an eye open you will leave here with a deep desire to find your own creative way of paying back Nani, Erick, Mary, Savannah, Tolstoy, Vultjie, Monkey, Askari, Hassan, Kilo, etc etc etc etc for allowing you to feel that it's A OK to wear pink pyjamas to .... well....wherever.

p.s. Even if your religion forbids dogs you will find yourself totally comfortable with sharing the dinner table with other animals...and delightfully, Nani and Erick.

Before sunset worlds collide and once again upon a time, 8 varied sized homo sapiens shared a water hole on a cliff with 8 baboons. Never have 2 South Africans, 1 Londoner and 6 yelping children got into the drink faster than after the arrival of 1 very commanding and distinctly aggressive Alpha Male.

That, of course was not Erick, who however did arrive a little later for his daily exercise. Or, as he said in a soft voice, "All I wanted was a swimming strip and this is what Nani gave me."

101st airborne strikes a blow for gay rights!

2010-03-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

and it is my 101st blog!
and my favourite man of the cloth, Arch Desmond Tutu and I agree hugely on everything (except for the existance of God)
and here is what my hero Tutu has to say about Gay Rights in Africa.

This opinion piece was published in the Washington Post on last Friday, March 12 2010.

In Africa, a step backward on human rights

By Desmond Tutu
Friday, March 12, 2010; A19

Hate has no place in the house of God. No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity -- or because of their sexual orientation. Nor should anyone be excluded from health care on any of these grounds. In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights. We knew this was wrong. Thankfully, the world supported us in our struggle for freedom and dignity.

It is time to stand up against another wrong.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are part of so many families. They are part of the human family. They are part of God's family. And of course they are part of the African family. But a wave of hate is spreading across my beloved continent. People are again being denied their fundamental rights and freedoms. Men have been falsely charged and imprisoned in Senegal, and health services for these men and their community have suffered. In Malawi, men have been jailed and humiliated for expressing their partnerships with other men. Just this month, mobs in Mtwapa Township, Kenya, attacked men they suspected of being gay. Kenyan religious leaders, I am ashamed to say, threatened an HIV clinic there for providing counseling services to all members of that community, because the clerics wanted gay men excluded.

Uganda's parliament is debating legislation that would make homosexuality punishable by life imprisonment, and more discriminatory legislation has been debated in Rwanda and Burundi.

These are terrible backward steps for human rights in Africa.

Our lesbian and gay brothers and sisters across Africa are living in fear.

And they are living in hiding -- away from care, away from the protection the state should offer to every citizen and away from health care in the AIDS era, when all of us, especially Africans, need access to essential HIV services. That this pandering to intolerance is being done by politicians looking for scapegoats for their failures is not surprising. But it is a great wrong. An even larger offense is that it is being done in the name of God. Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God.

"But they are sinners," I can hear the preachers and politicians say. "They are choosing a life of sin for which they must be punished." My scientist and medical friends have shared with me a reality that so many gay people have confirmed, I now know it in my heart to be true. No one chooses to be gay. Sexual orientation, like skin color, is another feature of our diversity as a human family. Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people? Does God love his dark- or his light-skinned children less? The brave more than the timid? And does any of us know the mind of God so well that we can decide for him who is included, and who is excluded, from the circle of his love?

The wave of hate must stop. Politicians who profit from exploiting this hate, from fanning it, must not be tempted by this easy way to profit from fear and misunderstanding. And my fellow clerics, of all faiths, must stand up for the principles of universal dignity and fellowship. Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

The writer is archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/11/AR2010031103341.html

This article was forwared to me via the fabulous Internews Network, who time and time again confirm that the struggle for freedom and democracy involves us all thinking WIDE and acting LOCALLY.

Nothing Father from the Truth

2010-03-17T03:45:00.000-07:00

My 100th Blog entry. It better be good!

I've gone thru my blog history and re-read it all. There's posts on everything from bad science to virtual travel, figments of imagination to arguments about pigments. But one topic keeps coming up and so spurred on by my DVD salesman confiding in me yesterday that he hates all Americans and that 'did I know that the Iraq war was all about oil', and he as a Muslim knows that Lucifer and the Free Masons are to blame, I have resisted my intention to write about the joys of X-plane and laminar flow. Instead....

17th March 2010
Nothing father from the truth..
When I was younger, so much younger than today, I always looked forward to December. It was my annual chance of being Father Christmas. I especially recall one year in Cape Town, it must have been 1987 and Sarah and her brood of cousins were a captive audience. I took the opportunity to give them all a jovial lecture of how privileged they were to be getting gifts and how we should all pause for a moment to consider those kids on the flats (poorer areas) who would not have any evidence that Father Christmas had been their way at all.
I particularly liked donning the cottonwool beard and red dress because that was all it took for the kids to totally suspend their disbelief. There were no questions asked about how I had managed to get to see all the billions of children all over the planet nor how I had known what each of them wanted for Xmas. I felt and acted like an all-knowing, all powerful, all nice god....and they believed every word I spoke. So did the adults. Well, if they knew it was me, they certainly didn't let on. It was after all the season of good will and nobody was going to rock the boat by telling the Truth! Heavens no!
The next day we had all forgotten about Father Xmas and were happily finishing off the spoils of the excessive feasting of the day before. Boxing day we call it and it's a short and necessary recovery period for us to get our brains and bodies back into reality mode as smotthly as possible. Relaxation and leftover food normally does the trick.
22 years later, I still fervently believe in Father Xmas. I give myself over to the absolute reality of the magic that he brings to each child whose cultural norms entertain this particular annual manifestation of a lesser god of good deeds and benevolence. The great thing about Daddy Xmas is that he pops up but once a year and then disappears. Make no mistake, my belief in him is no imaginary illusion, no faith-based blind belief. I can easily test the hypothesis - simply go up to any Father Xmas around town and peep behind the beard and you find a real human being who is trying very hard to be nice to children. He really does exist!
Then there is the first Xmas when your own child becomes a co-conspirator in the grand illusion. He or she knows by now that Father Xmas is really Uncle George but has loads of fun not telling the younger kids, content that in time they too will see the light and hand the baton over to the next generation.
I know not of any child whose parents have conspired to keep Father Xmas' real identity hidden from their children past about 4 years old. Even if they tried, little Joe is by now mobile and intelligent enough to have his own tug at the cotton wool beard and woe on the hapless parents whose child makes that fatal move at the company kids' party!
All good physical theories hold on the basis of being able to be replicated experimentally. There is ultimately no absolute surety that the next time you test it it will be validated again. On the other hand, a theory can be utterly disproven by finding only one instance where the prediction is contradicted. This applies to physical phenomena as well as experiments of the mind or logic. This is why the myth of Father Xmas has to die for each and every child eventually. There comes a time when there is incontravertable proof that he is just not divine.
The reason Father Xmas stays alive in the Christian culture is simply because nobody over the age of 4 years old thinks that he is really supernatural. With that out of the picture his fans can get on with enjoying all that the Xmas ritual can offer.
So, on my 100th blog, the question I ask is: When will we, as humans, realize that it is entirely possible to sing joyfully, meet our mates on Sundays (or Fridays or 5 times a day or in a trance), to do good deeds because it the right thing to do, feel humble in magnificent architecture, be inspired by poetry from books written 2000 years ago, have parties where we pretend that wine is magic, all the while accepting that what we are believing is no more real than Father Xmas coming down the chimney.
Ah! you say.....big difference! We can prove that Father Xmas isn't all powerful, all knowing and totally good. You can't disprove the existance of God.
Actually, we can.
It's those kids on the flats, the ones that don't have Xmas joy because they have been abused or simply have no food at all. Their existance proves absolutely that there can be no super being who is all powerful, all knowing and all good.
So, if your parents forgot to tell you at the age of 4 that the God, Allah, Big Mo and Jesus stories are all much like Father Christmas then by now you are probably not going to believe a word I say. Instead, you are happy to suspend your sense of disbelief and surrender yourself unto some greater power. Gosh.

Sun City Soon

2010-03-05T08:46:00.001-08:00

I am still wondering if there is any meaning beyond sheer coincidence in the morse-like raindrop patterns I have been entertained with since the rainy season began. This is after all a scientifically correct blog and I must avoid any wild imaginings of extra-terrestrial conversations!
So, I'll put the morse on hold and see how else I can use the rain.

Dontalkdo has always been a bit prophetic. I forsaw with much disdain from vested interests the overturning of the low fat - high carb health fantasy of yesteryear. Pity that Dr Atkins hit the dust just as he was about to be proven right. It was on this blog that I predicted that the recent work in Brain Plasticity would preface a radical rethink in human behaviour and evolution. Last week the New York Times headlined - "Culture is the new Evolutionary Force" - Just as Norman Doidge MD predicted in his NY Times best seller 'The Brain that Changes itself'. My most consistent prophesy is the the one dealing with the demise of religion as we know it - the 'believing in God stuff'. This is going to be a self-fulfilling prophesy, something that religious folk are very familiar with. I am currently predicting that the Ugandan anti-gay laws will catapult the world into a new awareness of how our level of civilization and morality is measured by how we treat our fellow humans and animals - all of them. Before long we will see more and more the legalization of same sex marriage leading to a global acceptance of the power of Love over discrimination. This week alone same sex marriage has been legalized in Mexico and, wait for it, Washington DC.
My final prediction is that before the year is out I will have such a small carbon footprint that i will be able to make money by selling personal carbon points to ..... well, don't all line up so fast!
In this spirit allow me to present my gadgets of the week: a 15W Solar Panel and 10amp Charge controller, all bought at our local grocery store for the humble sum of $100.
Fat lot of good that will be in the rainy season! Ah! But I have a plan! Within minutes of the rain arriving a huge flood of water collects in our driveway and channels down a single open drain into the veggie garden some 30 feet below. That's quite a head if harnessed! So, phase 2 of my Alternative Reality Project is to link the Solar system to a small scale hydro generator. Could it be better? Water falls on my head, fuels my off sun energy and then waters the veggie patch - all without any pumps!
Initially I should be able to have a backup system for my computers and some low wattage LED lighting.
In time, and inspired by the USA Florida Solar Project featured in the NYT today, I hope to be able to kiss the grid goodbye and live happily ever after in an alternative energy reality.
If you want to play around a bit with the options in solar try the great simulation on this site:
http://www.freesunpower.com/

and for a peep at where I hope to end up..... (Madrid Polytechnical Uni project)

This is Bob's solar house and a highly detailed look at what can be achieved with a lot of passion and basic tools.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bgoodsel/solar/blog.htm

GOD SAYS NO! - Dis mos code exe!

2010-03-02T07:59:00.000-08:00

Most of you will have heard by now that our combined efforts to say 'NO!'to the bizarre planned anti-gay law in Uganda resulted in almost 450 000 signatures to the petition that was presented to the Ugandan Speaker of Parliament, Mr Edward Ssekandi. If you believe in God then one of those signatures is by definition, His! We were hoping for 200 000! Well done, but the battle has only just begun.
Whilst a standard email is circulating requesting more ongoing support, financial and otherwise, I have decided to write a short note to give you an idea of exactly why this bill is so bizarre, anti-religious, immoral and AFFECTS us all.

Here are 2 extracts from the proposed law:

2. The offence of homosexuality.
(1) A person commits the offence of homosexuality if-
(a) he penetrates the anus or mouth of another person of the same sex with his penis or any other
sexual contraption;
(b) he or she uses any object or sexual contraption to penetrate or stimulate sexual organ of a
person of the same sex;
(e) he or she touches another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality.
(2) A person who commits an offence under this section shall be liable on conviction to
imprisonment for life.

3.3. Part III of the Bill incorporating clause 7 to clause 14 creates offences and penalties for
acts that promote homosexuality, failure to report the offence and impose a duty on the
community to report suspected cases of homosexuality.

14. Failure to disclose the offence.
A person in authority, who being aware of the commission of any offence under this Act, omits
to report the offence to the relevant authorities within twenty-four hours of having first had that
knowledge, commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding two hundred
and fifty currency points (2500 US$) or imprisonment not exceeding three years.

(“authority” means having power and control over other people because of your knowledge and
official position; and shall include a person who exercises religious. political, economic or social
authority;)

The above clearly expressed clauses mean that the following can easily happen to YOU.

Imagine that you are on a bus entering Uganda on a dream safari holiday. The chap next to you finds you attractive (as happens to all of us on planes and buses!) and fantasises about where things may go. After chatting for a while he places his hand on your knee. In the next seat sits someone who has strong homophobia and decides to report the event at the next police road block.
You and your friend are arrested. based on the evidence of the claimant, you receive a $2500 fine for not reporting a homosexual act and the other guy gets life imprisonment. Oh, by the way, he is also tested for HIV and if found positive gets the death sentence. It is that bizarre!
However, if you are a single woman traveller and some guy on the bus hassles you and keeps trying to grab your leg, your have no legal protection. Why? Because Uganda is a heterosexual, family oriented country that tacitly accepts that it is ok for married men to have affairs and additional wives as long as they are the opposite sex.

Those who advocate this law, includes the Ugandan contingent and some pretty serious, mostly US based evangelical Christian groups. They also often criticize the opponents of this law as being from the morally lax West, yet by any logic this simply does not hold.

Either you believe in God or you do not. If you are a Christian, as most Ugandans are, then you must abide by the word of Jesus, that all life is sacred and we may not kill. If you are part of the group of humans who reject the supernatural then you will also understand that the unstoppable secular global movement towards increased civilization and respect for human and animal life and their right to life is the opposite of barbarism. This is and has always been the way the world progresses. You can be true to your faith or true to right action or both in Uganda. Both exclude the death penalty and anti-human actions.

The Speaker asked of the journalists in public, 'How would you like it if your son or daughter arrived at home with a boy or girlfriend of the same sex?'

Read more:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/03/02/2010-03-02_ugandan_antihomosexuality_bill_wont_be_dropped_parliament_speaker.html#community#ixzz0h7iyEuLu

My answer to that is simple: 'Sir, if my son or daughter came home with their same sex partner I would (and have) welcomed them as people who are celebrating the greatest gift we have, that of Love. Any less, I do not deserve the honour of being a parent.'

..and from the not so wild frontier.....

The rain is visiting us more regularly now. Maybe this is the beginning of the Big Rains. Or, maybe, the Little Rains. I had heard much about these monsoony happenings when we first came to Kenya, but am still waiting to experience anything that can be defined as more than 'a rainy day or two'.
So it was that I was typing away in my dungeon studio in our own corner of the Rwandan jungle (so to speak), that the pitter patter of rain drops on my window drew my attention. It was rather more a 'dee dee dee dee..dee..dee dah dee dee..dee dah dee dee..dah dah dah...
I am still sitting here wondering if there is something more to this than a great jazz beat. Maybe somebody is trying to send me a message?

Could it be Morse Code? I listened again and sure enough the same rythym and blues came through my window. A meaningful coincidence? Maybe...but maybe not. This time I wrote it down as a series of dots and dashes. It looks like this: .... . .-.. .-.. --- - .... .. ... .. ... --. --- -..

I also found a morse code chart! Have fun!

Nairobi calling..

2010-02-25T12:24:00.001-08:00

The weekend has come and gone and my Magnum Opus of deconstructing Science has not materialized. Well, I have a good excuse! In order to do the job in the ...well, spirit of the job, I need to make sure that all my ducks are in good evidential rows. Increasingly aware of the many nuances and influences that are brought to bear on any discussion about Science and Truth here in East Africa, I must first delicately explore such. The biggy, of course is that I write from a place of near 99% religiosity. It is the kind that always presents socially with a sweet and goodly smile that says, "We are God's people and can do no harm. How can you possibly find fault with this?"
So, I have to extricate myself gently from this warm and fuzzy feeling that all is OK as long as we simply are nice to each other. Where do I start?
I think, with giving you an idea of how weird a place this really is - how what is just taken as bizarre in the developed world is seen as normal here and visa versa. With a background of hardly any serious or violent crime life here is marked by learning the tricks, being polite and patient and finding the funny side of things.
We had a kidnapping this week of some smartypants Canadian but the nappers were none too bright and fell for the oldest trick in the book - the cops delivered the ransom money and after doing the swap simply shot all the bad guys. Whoops! Canadian Embassy velly happy.
In Nakuru the big news is that two pastors were killed in a car prang and the remaining pastor told everyone to come and pray over the coffins as God had assured him that the dead would come back to life again. Twice a day they lift the lids to check on the progress, but still no luck. They are, however, confident that the lord will deliver. Local police are accusing the church of causing a bit of a stink.
In the same town, in a global first, bicycles have been banned as they are causing too many problems for the cars.
Closer to home, a prominent TV presenter has resigned and moved in with the pastor of the Finger of God Church. Police arrested him yesterday for not being registered as a church and she has been referred to the state mental hospital to be tested for insanity.

In neighbouring Uganda, the uproar about the proposed anti-gay laws continues. The fundamental absurdity of legislating against gay people is that it is essentially like making a law against people having 2 ears. It would be worded something like this: "From such and such a date it is no longer legal for citizens to have 2 ears. Anyone actually caught displaying 2 ears in public or private will have their ears chopped off. It is known to the goverment that there are in our midst many people with 2 ears and while the decadent West may well consider this to be normal, we (and our friends in the earvangelical movement) are confident that our clampdown will successfully reduce the incidence of 2 -earedness in our beloved country.
In the words of the well known Italian patriot, "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears!"

I leave you with that lot to digest. of course, you reception of it will depend on where your bum is placed geographically and what cultural influences weave through your payche. But you understand how it is a confusing landscape in which to contemplate the meaning or non- menaing of Life!

The Holocaust cast

2010-02-24T08:29:00.001-08:00

The end of January 2010 marked the 65th annversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps. How do I, a South African living in East Africa, connect to this? My earliest memory is of secretly paging through the images in a paperback book on Adolf Eichmann that I found in my parents'cupboard. I remember hearing the news of Eichmann's execution on the school bus home and being horrified that a person could be killed for his crimes. Countless films and photos echoed these early memories over the years, but it is one castaway story from recent times that made me feel this history. A friend married a Jewish Italian man. I gave a keynote speech about her childhood at their wedding. When I visited Paris soon after, I and my partner were wined, dined and shown a personal Paris by this same couple. My first Eiffel Tower sighting and Pigeon and Peas in a crowded bistro. Only later did I hear, almost offhandedly, that Nick's entire family and extended family had been wiped out in the Holocaust. Seeing the gentle, intelligent and successful man that he was made me understand exactly the crime of lost lives and the horror of intellectually justified mass murder.

How do I, so many years later, define exactly what the Holocaust is? If I am of Jewish blood, or lost family or volunteered to fight against the defineable Nazi evil, then maybe I can feel what is means, no words necessary. But I am a child of another age, another side of the world. Is it the same as the genocide in Rwanda? Not so, the nazi hierarchy sytematically killed millions with a sophisticated intelligence and technology. Is it the same as the millions of unnecessary deaths of HIV positive people in South Africa under Manto's watch? Not so....Manto and Thabo really seemed to believe that they could save lives another way. There was no ignorance in the early 1940s, only mindful, deliberate evil. Yet, sometimes, when I look at the many stark burnt images from those days, I no longer see prime evil, just ordinary people, caught up in their own human fagility and the strange power of charismatic leaders.
It is surely not what others do to others that we must fear. It is what lies within each of us that we fail to fear enough.

The One Line Blog Posting

2010-02-19T07:49:00.000-08:00

Hellon defended the use of alcohol quoting Ephesians 5:18: "Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit".

The slippery slide decidedly backwards

2010-02-19T01:20:00.000-08:00

"As this decade ticks to its close, I am left thinking about fear. Racism, heterosexism, misogyny and xenophobia are still fueling our lives and shaping our world, and the common denominator is fear." - Lisa A Linsky (LGBT Legal)

I am really trying to write about Science but the world is conspiring against me. My fault, I guess, as I have already made a big announcement that Science without a conscience is like a public billboard running random ads.

So, before I get back onto quarks and quanta I am doing a sideways raga to square off against a very real and dangerous development in our (not looking so bright) continent of Africa.
The media focus started with the highly contentious and anti-human rights effort by the Ugandan Government to co-operate with ultra conservative Evangelical groupings to seriously criminalize homosexuality and the tacit support thereof by allied NGOs and the broader population. Mediawise the baton has been taken up by local Mullahs, Priests and Radio stations on the Mombasa coastal region where, as a result of claimed hate speech and broadcasts, there is, as I speak, a public outcry against a Kenyan Government Sponsored research project addressing the increased HIV levels in MSM populations (MSM-Men who have sex with men. This is the correct term used as under the local situation many people who engage in same sex activities are forced to present a parallel heterosexual life. Multiple concurrent partners is a ready bridge for HIV to spread across the wider population.)
But why is this such an issue on the coast. Well, the theory that could explain it is the one of evil that stares at us from our own mirror. The accepted ancient Greek and Arab traditions of using young boys for sexual pleasure and women for procreation is said to have survived in coastal Arabic culture. Thus there is believed to be a significant conflict between the hidden practice of sodomy and the dictates of Islam. The resultant guilt and denial is believed to be a strong driver of the extreme stigma that is promoted by contradictory practices. Of course this is open to dispute, but generally we can observe that those who have the least hangups are always the last to discriminate.

Back in Good Old South Africa, the echo has found a home as a Methodist Minister is defrocked after she legally marries her partner.
There remains a difference in that the popular condemnation of the Methodist Church is loud and omnipresent. That this is clearly illegal in terms of the SA constitution begs a strong legal challenge to a church that is hell bent on proving its moral decrepitude. Unfortunately all that is generally done is that debates continue in ever illusory religious circles, based mostly on conflicting quotes from the Bible. It is really time to discard this tired book of quotes and start thinking with a 21st Century brain.

Quantum Morality

2010-02-18T04:39:00.001-08:00

I have advertized my weekend blog to be 'So, what exactly is Science?'

This is clearly not an easy question to answer in one stream of consciousness, so I have spent some time this week pondering around what exactly I am going to say. It has been a little difficult focusing on this mission as the imminent Ugandan anti-gay law travesty is unfolding at a rather disturbing rate. I am extremely disturbed about this whole anti-gay thing that is going down here in Africa. I want to cry when I think of the many great and loving and warm and clever and moral gay people who have influenced my life. They have all brought a gentleness of vision and a richness of spirit to my world and I have watched how many gay activists have led the struggle for universal care and treatment for all who carry the burden of HIV.
Here's a link if you are not up to date.
If you are a devotee of any fundamental or evangelical religious group that advocates that gay people should burn in hell then please, you will not be humoured on this blog. It is my considered and firm opinion that you have no place in the 21st century. Coming to think of it, you are out of date by about a 1000 years, because that's when there was at least some excuse for hating and discriminating against other people (and animals). Am I now discriminating against you? Nope, I am stating that in a modern world where there is no longer any excuse to be willfully ignorant or hateful there are certain ground rules that should be agreed to.
If any child were to invent rules by which to live harmoniously they would probably be very similar to the last 6 of the 10 Commandments. No magic book necessary, just a little empathy and survival logic.
Ayn Rand, in her book "Atlas Shrugged" wrote:

"If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments."
As I read the words I have written here, I can see a beginning to my weekend blog. There can be no distinction between being a scientist and a human being. When we abandon the rationality and real magic that Science gives us we truly have sold our souls to an empty and illusory safety net.

Ellory F. Schempp, was the plaintiff in the case Abington v. Schempp. The case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court who declared in 1963 that Bible devotions in U.S. public school are unconstitutional. He suggests nine commandments:

1. You are a human, and neither Jesus, nor Mohammed, nor Buddha speaks for you. Take courage—you can live without a god.
2. Do not injure human beings or any animal; make reasonable exceptions.
3. When you see evil, make sure it is not in a mirror. Sometimes the enemy is us. Emotions are part of life. Feelings are good. Angry and fearful feelings are valid, but be circumspect.
4. Morality is about how you treat the life that has been given you—before you got asked. Once here, try to do some good and leave us a little better than when you arrived. There is no second chance.
5. Ideas are good. Some ideas are better than others. The best way to winnow is to seek evidence that supports an idea in a way that can be tested and evaluated. Covet not ancient ideas that contradict new evidence.
6. Love one another. Love is good, but trying. There is no god nor parent nor partner that loves you all the time, unconditionally. Keep not fantasies in your minds. Accept reality. Even when things look dark, there is lots of love around. Tap into it.
7. Sex is good. Have fun. Do not hurt another out of selfishness. Do not worry what sex others might have.
8. Honor thy parents, but remember they put their pants on one leg at a time.
9. There is great beauty in the world—on this Earth, in music, in the life around us. Take note for it and you shall be richly rewarded.

If you thought for one second that Science is boring and has no spirit or magic or poses no moral questions, I say to you - shake your head because your eyes are stuck! It is only by asking and asking again the core questions about our existence that we can continue on the journey of discovery that Life is. Once we decide that we know the answers or give up our right to question to a fairy godmother in the sky, then we have lost the very essence of our being and we will inherit nothing but the cold wind of self delusion.

Well, those are my first thoughts on what Science is all about!
My next thought starts with a memory of a good friend, who, at his son's coming of age party, gave him the following advice: "Just question everything".

It is this advice that I must next explore.

Looking for Goddo..

2010-02-15T21:27:00.000-08:00

In my last blog I enthused about the coming full power testing of the CERN Large Hadron Accelerator. I described why this represents such an important moment in our journey of seeking the Truth about Life and Existance. I had not expected my 'predictions' to bear fruit so soon. Today (the 18th Feb 2010) an announcement was made that at another accelerator, the Brookhaven Collider on Long Island, USA, temperatures and conditions that had only existed in the first microsecond of the existence of the universe were recreated. By observing and recording events that lasted only a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second something appeared to have occurred which defies a fundamental law of physics.
It is precisely this that physicists have been hoping to find. But what does this mean practically?
In ordinary speak, when the universe began it is calculated that an equal amount of matter and anti-matter was created. What is anti-matter? It is the opposite of matter, and like any true opposites in physics when they come together they destroy each other in a flash of energy, leaving nothing behind. Clearly however, there is a residue of matter in the universe. Something must have happened to create an imbalance when the matter and anti-matter combined.
A lot of what happens in nature and especially in the subatomic world is ruled by the laws of symmetry. This means that the mirror image of an event is identical to the original. However, this week's announcement comes with an experimental demonstration that at the extremely high temperatures of creation, these symmetries can break down, resulting in the imbalances necessary to give matter the edge over anti-matter.
The Brookhaven experiment measured temperatures of 4 trillion degrees celsius, 250,000 times hotter than the core of the sun, but still not hot enough to turn the liquid-like cauldron into a free flowing gas. For this to be achieved, the LHA at CERN must be used.
I look forward to more startling discoveries...as we get closer and closer to looking at looking for Goddo.

God Van Winkel & the Long Vacation

2010-02-14T09:02:00.001-08:00

Having promised all of last week to 'prove that God cannot exist and then show how we can create God' I must now be true to my promise.

There is a key precursor to my treatise as follows.

I am writing from a jungle paradise called Nairobi, Kenya. It is a land where probably 99.9% of folk are religious and hence believe fervently in the existence of a super being who is all powerful, all knowing and all good. Judging by the number of families who turn up well dressed at the local mall at about midmorning on a Sunday, I can only conclude that church and religion fulfill a crucial set of needs for many people here. Thus it would not be a positive action to simply negate the very real role that faith and its expression have in the lives of so many. Thus I present these words in good faith, hoping that it may be a seed that stirs more questions in a climate of minimal emotional distress.
Of course the counter to that perspective is the question of why I am so sensitive about affording the same right or ability to others to ask intellectual questions as I do to myself! Surely what is good enough for me is good enough for everyone else?

In my argument for the necessary non-existance of supernatural beings I am convinced that I have certain responsibilties. I should propose alternatives to replace the positive and social aspects of religion and be seen to be contributing to a better world for all. I should understand and promote a sensitivity to the neuropsychological realities that play themselves out in the way we as different human beings relate to reality.

At a recent lecture, Daniel Dennet, the atheist philosopher, was asked what atheist groups could do to best stem the criticism they receive from the religious quarter. He answered, "Tithe".

That being said, I hereby apologise to anyone who may be offended in whatever way by anything that I should say in this blog, or any future publication or speech by me for now and eternity.

The challenge with the existence or non-existence of supernatural beings is that the practice of the belief systems (some good, some not so good) that are in their name(s) are entirely linked to the 'reality' of their existence. It is thus difficult to argue for the non existance of supernatural beings without being seen to be condemning the social practice of religion.

But, that is precisely what I am obliged to do. I am convinced that intellectually at least, the fundamental problem with all religions is the idea that the existence of their supreme being(s) is real. It is precisely this aspect which makes it so easy for the extremes that flow from religious belief to exist. Great deeds of good and self sacrifice coexist under the same banners as the most dastardly evil ever committed by man. It has seldom happened that genocide or civil war has been justified under the banner of atheism, but from time immemorial global conflicts have and still do bear the label of religious idealism.

There is a clear cut difference between the state of belief or faith and the opinions that arise from it. We see too often how unquestioning faith in a super natural force can lead ordinary people to have unwavering opinions about the moral and human rights of others, whether they be women, homosexuals or just not sharing the same beliefs. It is this dangerous leap from faith to misguided action that I am condemning.

I am persuaded of the need to write this posting by 2 major events in the scientific world.
The first is the imminent full power turning on of of the LHA at CERN in Switzerland. The Large Hadron Accelerator has taken 10 billion US$ and 15 years in the making. What on earth can justify this?
The same question was asked of Michael Faraday, the father of practical electricity. His answer to the politician asking was 'I don't know, but one day you will tax it.'

Basically, the LHA bangs together very small subatomic particles in an effort to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang. The first conclusion we can make from this is that in the scientific community there is really no doubt that there was an intial event of sorts that we call, The Big Bang. If not, the 10 billion $ would never have materialized. Somebody had to believe in the basic premise of the LHA before giving that kind of money.

So how do we know that there was some kind of intial event? Easy. It has been conclusively shown by solid evidence that the universe that we can see is expanding. It is flying out rapidly in all directions. No matter where you are everything that you can see is moving away from you. This is like the surface of a balloon as you blow it up. Every point is moving away from the others as it expands. Well, if we work backwards then it is obvious that at some stage the universe must have been very very small. In fact, so small that everything that we know had to be squashed up into a space that was getting smaller and smaller all the time. How can this be? Surely there is a limit to the size of space into which everything can fit?

Well, Albert Einstein came to the rescue on this one with his famous equation E=MC2 which shows how matter and energy are just different forms of the same thing. The evidence for this is the atomic bomb which releases huge amounts of energy when enough pressure is put onto solid matter to convert it into pure energy.

It is reliably accepted that the reverse of this happened shortly after the absolute beginning point of the existance of the universe. Somehow a lot of energy was created which then, in a cataclysmic explosion turned into all the matter and energy that we now see in the universe. The purpose of the LHA is recreate the kind of temperature and energy levels that were around at the very beginning so we can understand more about how it all happened. There are a few theories that seem to explain it all, but lack the evidence that comes from good experiments. The LHA is providing just that.

The ultimate aim is to know where we all came from, and is the same question I ask all the time. In a file on my PC I have a family tree tracing my family back 400 years to Sweden, but it’s not enough. I want to know where it ALL started...and why. This is exactly the questions that formal religion attempt to answer, with a simply solution. God(s) made it all and the reason for it can be found in our holy book(s). SImple to understand and once or more a week on your holy day or time, you can get together with like-minded folk who, equally happy to have answered the fundamental questions of existence, can now get on with socializing in a meaningful world.
For a long time scientists had theorized that the universe had come into existence in a fiery ball about 15 billion years ago. Surely there must still be some evidence of that huge explosion? The answer was staring us in the face all the time, but it took what initially appeared to be a background hum in a set of radio telescopes to provide the proof. Try it yourself. Turn your TV onto a non channel area and listen and look at the fizz on the screen. A precentage of that is the distant echo of the Big Bang, coming to our TVs from the edge of the observable universe.

The much famed Hubble Space Telescope brought back startling images of an outer space you and I can only imagine, but could not see as far as the edge of the universe. This is the part that first came into existance and now is so far that it takes light 15 billion years to reach us.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is due to be launched in 2014. It is an orbiting infrared observatory that will complement and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope. It will look much closer to the beginning of time and to hunt for the unobserved formation of the first galaxies, as well as to look inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today.

These two scientific endeavours mean one thing. We are very near to being able to look directly into the creation events that underpin the myths of major religions.
Physicist Stephen Hawking was requested by the Pope to explain how New Physics explained the creation of Life and the Universe. After hearing the evidence, the Pope said that the Catholic Church would accept the theory of evolution of life and the universe, but that the intial moment of creation would have to remain in the hands of God.

What Hawking did not tell him was that as they were speaking substantial work had already been done to explain how the universe and all it represents could have come from nothing. It is called 'Creation ex Nihilo' and stems inevitably from the understanding of a strange and contradictory branch of physics called Quantum Mechanics.
It is this set of hypotheses that amongst others, the scientists at CERN will be attempting to prove with the LHA.

Already there are benefits that you and I experience from the program at CERN. The Internet was created there as was the science that drives almost all medical scanning devices, digital watches and GPS systems.

That is the basic science that allows me the confidence to have alternative evidence based solutions to the problems explained by religions.

It is also the kind of thinking that scientists use that allow me to make a sure argument for the impossibility of the existance of God(s).

I use the term God(s) as it is clear to most that belief by a young person in a particular God or religion is almost exlusively defined by the culture or religious disposition of their family before them. There is no such thing as a Moslem or Christian child, only children from Moslem of Christian families. Take any young person who has a strong faith and imagine them to have been born into a similar family but of different religious persuasion. That child would grow up with the same fervent belief in a totally different set of beliefs. Further, the fact that the faithful of one religion can dismiss the tenets of another as not being true, means that they have a direct understanding of what it feels like to be an atheist. The only difference is that atheists believe in one less religion.

We only have to apply basic logic to the question of the existance of God(s).
For the sake of simplicity I will refer to the Judaic-Moslem-Christian concept of a single male god.

My starting point has to be the concept of God being omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent. (All powerful, All knowing and perfectly good)
.
God cannot thus be the designer of the universe if any evil exists. That is obvious.

The answer that God created free will is also absurd. It is ridiculous for someone who knows everything and is all powerful to create something that can defy him. It is a solid contradiction. It cannot happen. Either free will exists and God is not all powerful or men are not free. If we accept the latter, that all was created by an all powerful god then we have to accept that it is possible for an all powerful being to exist. Has this all powerful being always existed or did he also come into being at a certain point. If the latter, we must ask, who or what created him. This is the same question that the existance of God is supposed to have answered!

If we say that God has always existed we have to answer some pretty difficult questions about how he in fact moved from a timeless state to one where clearly all events occur in a space and time framework.

Infinity is a hard one to get grips on. But basically it is impossible for an infinite God to act at a particular time. If we look at chance and probability it is clear that given enough time, anything that can happen, will happen. For example, if there is a 1 in 1000 chance of you winning the lottery, and you enter long enough you will win. If there is an infinite amount of time then you must by definition win an infinite number of times. Thus an infinite God must have created an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of humans etc etc. That we are clearly not seeing them implies that no creation occured from an infinite realm.

Maybe then, God just happened somehow to be created from nowhere. He then set out to make a set of laws by which the basic components of his creation would interact and increasingly become more complicated and intelligent. If the rules he made were absolute and fixed then whatever happened thereafter could only have happened as it did. Everything we see right now is the only way it can be. One thing leads to the next not something else. This is known in philosophical circles as 'Determinism'.

How then can we ever judge a criminal? Surely he or she is not responsible for the crime? God created the first state and the rules by which everything happened.
This argument for everything being determined held strong until the discovery of quantum physics. For the first time we had a glimpse of a world where we could by definition not say for certain what would happen next. All the evidence in the world cannot predict with certainty the result of a particular set of circumstances. The universe, it seems, is built on a shadowy underworld of probables rather than definites.

For the first time we saw how Free Will can truly exist. And if this Free Will exists then God is clearly less and less in control as the universe becomes more complex. This would explain the rather poor success rate of prayer. In fact the hit rate is no better and often a lot worse than if the supplicants had just got on with the job with a positive attitude and good information. The number of people who are cured of cancer at Lourdes is slightly less than the cure rate for those who don't leave home. The reason is that more get killed in the journey from home to the healing waters and back.

SInce the ancient days when God(s) were directly responsible for everything from the seasons to whether it rained, the jobs of the supreme beings have got less and less. It is no coincidence that the latest attempt by the religious right to have God as creator is packaged as Íntelligent Design'. This acknowledges the fact that his sole remaining portfolio is that of merely kickstarting the whole affair. This God could have gone to sleep 15 billion years ago and not made a jot of difference to what happened.
Maybe He pops in to the office every now and again and goes though his list of prayer requests and manages to only answer a small sample. This would explain how some good happens occasionally amidst a sea of suffering. But this is a lame super power and we would be better advised to seek local solutions with predictable outcomes. God, in every sense of the word is effectively getting more and more irrelevant to man as we progress.

The other promise I made for this post was that I would recreate God. I buy into the maxim that we should never destroy anything that we cannot replace.
Well, if my argument has in any way destroyed the concept of God then I must replace it with something at least as effective. I am hoping to show how we can go for Gold here by creating an almost all powerful, all knowing, all good God......without having to resort to infinity.

Looking forwards we can at least have a concept of a future of a long long time. If we understand how evolution works we know that more complex states are always favoured over less complex. That is how life and diversity evolves.

Google was founded on the premise of being able to catalogue all the accumulated knowledge of mankind in the foreseeable future. It has made remarkable progress already. Given enough time it will approach being all-knowing. the target of theoretical and applied science is to become more and more technologically proficient. Given enough time we humans will be almost all powerful. If the trend continues for good to be selected over evil for simple reasons of survival, eventually we will live in a close to all-good society.

Given an infinite amount of time we must end up as a complex expression of a state of being all knowing, all powerful and all good. Thus will God have been created logically.

This also answers the additional problem with a created God. Anything that is created must have been made by something or someone at least as complex as its own creation. Thus a God complicated enough to create the universe had to have followed from something more complex than it.

Maybe there is a God and he or she or it is no more or less than the ultimate expression of a previous near-eternity of development. By the previous arguments, such a god could be near perfect but not altogether so. This means that if there is such a god then he or she is still capable of mistakes. Basically, just one of the boys, but when he gets it wrong, big disasters can result.

For the above long term progression to the Godhead, it is clear that we need to ensure our own long term survival. If we do not respect our environment and if we do not value science and good deeds as being essential to our survival, we will simply not be around long enough to realize our innate need to truly experience what it means to be made in the image of God and for God to be made in the image of Man.

Death! Thy Fearful lack of Symmetry!

2010-02-10T04:25:00.001-08:00

Each morning I glide into a well honed and privileged ritual of taking a large Tea Mug emblazoned with Mr Obama's smile and a multitude of stars and stripes and my Netbook onto the verhanda perched amongst the evergrowing trees of our personal jungle. There's a morning patch of sunlight that warms my heart to noble endeavour. To this purpose I continue each day writing a chapter of a summary I am making of a book on Cosmology and Particle Physics. If this sounds a wee complex, it is...but, being an area of fascination to me I decided that the best way to get to grips and up to date with the subject is to rewrite it in my own words.

I find wonder and awe in Grand Science. My soul dances in the almost infinite space between the very huge and the teeny weeny tiny and often when I am grappling with a physical concept or mathematical process, I find myself being led down some unexpected creative lane of wonders.

So it was today. I was trying to get my head around the mathematical concepts of Symmetry and Invariance, when it occurred to me that there are metaphors a plenty in the weave of Life and Death. I have been pondering such over the last days and considering how to finding balance and inspiration in the midst of Life & Death.

Invariance and symmetry...symmetry and invariance.....the 2 are linked conceptually.

In Physics, the Symmetry of a system is the aspect of that system that remains unchanged (observed or intrinsic) when the system undergoes change.
This can be seen in a musical score which has an underlying motif that is built on, yet never changes.

My mind wondered next to a favourite word play I love.....From the Artist's Way we get 'The Art of Sway'. Again, the words change, but the underlying meaning does not.

From there I considered how 'the Art of Sway' can be related to our experience of Life and Death.

I closed my eyes and saw a tightrope walker balanced and then a circus acrobat swaying on an inverted cone. That's it! If I turn the cone to sit on its solid base I get a safe, secure and broadbased life that inexorably narrows to a pinnacle, where Life and opportunity slowly eke away.

What about inverting our lives so we start in a tiny naked singularity, a point with endless potential and risk? Then after a life of exploring and living that potential, maybe our passing can happen as part of an ongoing process of choice?

Pen and paper in hand I played around with these ideas and came up with 2 graphics of what Life can be. Then, I stuck them together and there it was! A bit of magic that came out of a patch of sunshine and a mug of tea!

Attached find my drawings....carefully re-rendered on the netbook. They look surprizingly like the story of the expanding universe...Also the magical moment of the Obama mug, bought as some kind of sypathetic magic and to celebrate my girlfriend's birthday in Washington DC.

Crime doesn't pay (me)

2010-02-09T00:52:00.000-08:00

GADGET OF THE WEEK!
In case you are not interested in my serious blog below on Crime in SA and Kenya, here is something to tickle all you aggressive technophiles...

The Lightwave LW-ETV-01 is a very portable TV tuner that plugs into just about anything. You can convert a VGA computer output to Composite Video and visa versa. You can take an RF aerial feed and output it as VGA or Video. This means that all you need for a carry along TV is a computer monitor and aerial! I am using it to convert my video out from our DVD player to a VGA into my PC Screen...Works like a bomb! Also processes the audio.

Now for the serious stuff!

OH NO! Not another blog about crime!!!! ARRGHH!!!

This time I have spent some energy doing good research so I cannot be accused of being another raving uninformed moaner.
I have decided to research and write again on the topic as I am now sick and tired of trying to explain to (1) South Africans that Nairobi is not a dangerous place to be and (2) to Kenyans and especially expats that South Africa IS a dengerous place to be.

I also hope to make it very clear that Crime has no intrinsic relationship to either Poverty or Ethnicity.

Finally I hope to prove that my statement that SA is 1000% more dangerous than Kenya is WRONG! (Sure enough, it is wrong!)

HERE GOES!

I have this little screen that pops up on my laptop whenever there is a news update from the South African Press Association.
This morning my eye caught the headline: Crime in SA not linked to poverty.

Ah! I thought, this is just what i was looking for. Yesterday the local Nairobi Security Firm KK came around to check our panic remotes. Having not switched on the alarm in months and living in what is for all purposes a crime free envronment in Nairobi, we had also lost the remotes. Whilst searching I had a chat with the technician. He was fascinated to hear from me about how safe I found Nairobi compared to South Africa. I has a similar conversation a fortnight ago, with an Italian expat friend who was equally aghast at my claims of Nairobi being safe. No, she said, but we have been warned by our United Nations friends not to go out after dark and to drive with an escort at night.
So, what is the truth? Is Nairobi and Kenya safe? or am I imagining things? Am I wrong to tell people that South Africa is 1000% more dangerous than Kenya?
Are my partner and I being reckless by going running in the evening?

Personal experience is one way to measure the truth. We live in a wooded suburb called Westlands. A new survey shows that this is the area with the highest crime rate, higher than many poorer suburbs.
We have been here 3 years, much of the time my partner has lived alone in a fairly large home in a street with no lamps. We have a resident helper but he is not always at the house and does not perform askari or security duties. When we first arrived we asked him what kind of crime was common in the area. he said he was unable to answer as he knew of no crime in the 2 years he had been on the property.
Despite leaving bicycles and washing and garden furniture out unlocked we have never lost anything. This is a virtual impossibility in South Africa.

Most evenings, my partner takes her laptop, bag and cellphone and in full sight, walks 4 block across the centre of downtown to get her car. In 3 years she has never even exerienced an aggressive moment.
She has had a cell phone snatched from the open car window in a busy intersection, but this is a far cry from the 4 times it happened in about a year in SA.

But really, these are all anecdotal. I was telling such stories at a hotel dinner one evening. An English traveller said that I was exagerating as she had walked from her hotel in Johannesburg to the market down the road and had not been robbed.
Lucky girl, I thought.

So, to quell the confusion let's look at the numbers.

After I read the report that shows how SA crime is not linked at all to poverty, I decided to have a look at all the crime reports on the news website called News 24. (http://www.news24.com/Tags/Topics/crime).

I looked ath a summary of crime reports from the beginning of this year, particularly February 2010. As I read I bemame fascinate and horrified at the story I was presented with and decided to cpy and paste the various reports to a word document. After an hour I relaized that I was almost ujable to copy them as fast as the new reports were coming in!
Here are some of the stats:
I copied over 210 stories on crime.
130 of these were about homicide, murder, rape, violent assault,violent hijackings, ritual killings, witchcraft murders or police violence.
9 were fraud related.
4 dealt with a single story of a drunk taximan who loaded 49 kids into a 16 seater.
3 were about illegal drug plantations.
3 described student unrest
9 were about fraud
18 told the ongoing story of the SA minister of Safety and Security's wife who has been arrested for international drug smuggling.
47 were assorted crime reports.

Best of lot are:

At least 10 of the violent murder cases are linked to policemen, many of who were on duty at the time. The shooting of an Egyptian Trader in Jhb was allegedly by a squad car policeman on duty who robbed him of R150! (KES1500).
4 million Rands worth of jewelry stolen from University in Cape Town design department. Clearly an inside job as no loacks were forced. One person has failed the Lie Detector test.
The majority of items that were killed for are cell phones and in one case, a bed.

Particularly disturbing were several cases of pure cruelty. A 10 yr old girl was hung by her neck and then the stool under her kicked out during a house robbery.
A young girl was forced off the road, made to draw all the money from her ATM account and then thrown off a high motorway bridge. She fell more than 200 feet, landed in soft river sand and survived.
A male shopper was approached at lunch time in the car park of a major upmarket mall. He was forced into his car at gunpoint, taken to the bush, beaten and left for dead.
3 old age pensioners have been brutally murdered and raped in their retirement homes.
3 boys have been charged with rape of a 4 year old toddler. They are 5, 6 and 7 years old.
One of South Africa's premiere casinos, Sun City, is robbed by 5 men with guns who drive in, take the money and drive out.
Did I mention the teachers selling ephedrine and the pastor who raped a woman who came to him for marital advice...after asking the husband to leave the room?

But hold on! I'm still telling stories. Let's see the hard figures. I have compared 2008 stats from the SA and Kenyan police records. Whilst we all know that there is a tendency for negative stats to be massaged, the incredible disparity between SA and Kenya more than absorbs any significant inaccuracies.
See for yourself.

2008 Crime Stats.

Note: the restaurant attacks are since January 2010 and only include RASA (Restaurant Assoc. os SA) members)

The populations of KE and SA are 38.5 million and 48.5 million resp.
Based on the above figures the chances of being involved in a serious and violent crime in the 2 countries are as follows:
KE: 1 in 15000
SA: 1 in 500

There you have it: It is 30 times safer in Kenya than SA. That is 3000%. I was wrong! I have been telling people it is 1000%!

Are you convinced? Still want to go to SA for that luxury holiday? Think twice before you leave wonderful, friendly, peaceful, slightly chaotic Kenya.

=========================

Some useful links and references:

- http://www.news24.com/Tags/Topics/crime (SA crime reports)
- http://www.news24.com/Content/SouthAfrica/News/1059/be9f0c947b20474c810049df9e8fe27b/08-02-2010-01-01/Crime_not_linked_to_poverty (original report on Crime and Poverty - see summary below.)
- http://www.osac.gov/Reports/report.cfm?contentID=81370 (USA advisory for travellors which I find accurate)
- http://www.unwire.org/unwire/20011129/22199_story.asp (2001 New York Times article on Crime in Nairobi)

The last link shows how the crime situation in Kenya has been totally reversed. However, the reputation of Nairobi as being crime ridden continues with little effort to commend the Kenyan authorities for their success in this regard. the major guide books including The Lonely Planet continue to call Nairobi 'Nairobbery'. This is an indictment on their credibility.

Quote from New York Times Thursday November 29, 2001

"U.N. Study Shows Nairobi Is A Hotbed Of Crime

A U.N. Center for Human Settlements study released yesterday in Nairobi reveals that more than one-third of the city's residents were forcefully robbed in the course of the last year, half of residents regularly hear gunfire and the use of guns and knives is widespread. In addition, many crimes go unreported, and 98 percent of Nairobi residents polled said they believe the police system is corrupt.

The United Nations had already noted the precarious security conditions in the city in January, when it downgraded Nairobi's security status from B to C, ranking it more dangerous than Bogota or Beirut. Authors of the study concluded that Nairobi is as dangerous as Johannesburg, South Africa, where violence is a regular occurrence. The study says many criminals in Nairobi, lulled by an atmosphere of impunity, are no longer afraid of being caught or punished.

The situation has apparently become so serious that the local authorities have called on the United Nations to help combat the crime problem. Even if the face of such dramatic statistics, however, many Kenyan officials are reluctant to face up to the serious degree of crime and corruption in Nairobi. "I don't think that is a very serious problem," police spokesman Peter Kimanthi said of corruption. "We have some officers who may be thinking of actually taking bribes, but that is a small minority. The police are doing very well" (Marc Lacey, New York Times, Nov. 29)."

=============

The final quote is from the report that got my attention in the first place:

Crime not linked to poverty
2010-02-08 13:01 News24.com

Johannesburg - High levels of violent crime were not linked to poverty levels in municipalities across the country, a SA Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) study has found.

In a statement on Monday, the SAIRR said Eastern Cape municipalities had the highest murder rate, 54 murders per 100 000 people, and a poverty rate of 62%.

Limpopo municipalities, however, recorded the lowest murder rate but also had a poverty rate of 62%.

The findings form part of a local government study which assessed 80 indicators from each of the 52 metropolitan and district municipalities.

Revenge of the New York Ants

2010-02-02T09:38:00.000-08:00

This week Nairobi took over from New York as my favourite city.

After attending a lively debate on the role of Science in the modern world, I decided that Africa is without doubt the land of innovation.

We were introduced to a young man who had made a wind generator entirely out cardboard and old car parts and is now making a good living charging the village cell phones.

But the best was yet to come! This week a veteran South African inventor designed and built the prototype antproof cat feeder. Mr Colin (CD) Jackson, of Durban claimed in his global facebook launch that 'soon I will be mass producing these - no household can be without one!'

In a response more typical of someone from Silicon Valley, New York innovations and design maestro, Nigel Scott-Williams, poured a chilled bottle of Chateau Lafite 1787 on Mr Jackson's enthusiasm with his comment, "Don't you guys in SA know how to TRAIN ants? (both to behave and where not to walk). We have Ant schools."
Undaunted, it is believed that Mr Jackson has forwarded his prototype to be included at the prestigious Architectural Digest Home Design Show, opening March 10th, New York City.
A Google Earth image taken on the day the device arrived in New York has appeared on Flickr.
The writer of this blog is in no way responsible for this underhand exposing of Mr Jackson and will personally apologise to him in New York, when I launch my spectacular quadra-vision eyeglasses - 'The ultimate accessory for the man with foresight.'

The Rusinga Run

2010-01-26T08:50:00.000-08:00

East Africa is full of amazingly accessible and safe nooks and crannies to get lost in....and have an adventure at the same time.........here's but one..

My return flight to South Africa was booked last Saturday the 24th January. I clean forgot about it. Clearly there's something about Kenya that is controlling where I want to be.

How do I explain the ever present feeling of relaxation I have here. How can I let the doubters feel the incredible sense of personal safety? How do I communicate the warm and constant welcomes we get from ordinary folk every day here?

On the 1st January 2010, my partner, Ida, and I headed 450km inland to Lake Victoria. Ida had previously spent a few days at the Rusinga Island Lodge and while there ran around the island. She was keen to share this experience with me (and I was keen to see the Rusinga Airstrip which I had flown into in my simulated life.)

I filmed some of the moments of our journey there and then some of Ida's repeat half marathon. Needless to say, the cameraman also ran the distance!

21km exactly....Kirsty, the lodge manager, wants to initiate a Rusinga Island Triathlon....

Here are some tasty images from Rusinga.

SLIDELUCK POTSHOW...Here 'n Gone...Oh NO!

2010-01-18T10:23:00.000-08:00

Direct from Wikipedia:

"In the summer of 2000, Casey Kelbaugh invited about fifty of his friends, all engaged in various creative endeavors, for a combination slideshow and potluck in his backyard on Seattle's Capitol Hill. Kelbaugh received positive feedback from his friends about the opportunity to share artwork and food in a relaxed and spirited setting, and began to hold repeat events under the name Slideluck Potshow. Over the course of the next three years, Kelbaugh produced twenty shows all over Seattle in galleries, backyards, and artists' lofts. In the fall of 2003, Kelbaugh relocated to New York and shortly thereafter teamed up with Alys Kenny. Together, they produced the first New York show in Kelbaugh's East Village apartment. The turnout far exceeded expectations and it was clear that there was an immediate demand for egalitarian, community-building gatherings such as SLPS. Kelbaugh and Kenny began producing three shows a year, all over Manhattan, and the popularity grew. Within four years, attendance had grown from 120 per event to 1200. In 2006, SLPS began getting requests to bring this model to other communities outside of New York and Seattle. The first show of this kind took place in Washington, DC. Soon after, there were shows in Los Angeles, Columbus, San Francisco, Portland, OR, Chicago, Anne Arbor, Detroit, and elsewhere [2]. In the Spring of 2007, Kelbaugh and Kenny traveled to Europe to launch in London, Madrid, Milan, Copenhagen, Berlin and later Seville.
The following year, they returned to launch in Rome, Barcelona, and Stockholm. In the Spring of 2008, SLPS launched in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Venezuela, Panama and Mexico. Slideluck Potshow is currently developing shows across the Middle East, Europe, Asia, North and South America."

Direct from my Cranium...

It had to have started somewhere and it had to have been exactly like our own homespun movie and pasta group. So what turned Slideluckpotshow into a global phenomenon?
Could it be that having started in Seattle and, fuelled by a let's do it attitude, it really kicked off once the creator, advertizing and multimedia fundi, Casey Kelbaugh, moved to New York? Can it really work anywhere? Judging by last Saturday night, I think so!
10 years down the line and over 50 cities worldwide, with a wiki page of its own and well talked about in all the right publications, SlideLuck PotShow is now in Nairobi. On Saturday, the 16th January 2010 it opened with a glitsy coming together at the even glitsier Tribe Hotel. The Tribe is so well positioned (physically and classwise) that it can afford to hide behind a shopping mall in close proximity to the local United Nations and US embassy enclave. The closest I can get to the feeling I had in this monument to the New World in Africa is to say that it has all the pretentious grandeur of Sun City in South Africa and is seemingly filled with folk who successfully pursue illusions for happiness.

What better an illusory experience than a larger than life slide show next to a bluer than reality pool under a controlled environment so utterly manmade that clearly even the chance of rain had been officially negated. That said, the space decidedly worked in favour of SLPS. The word had clearly spread to the not often seen downtown artistes and creative conversationalists of Nairobi who arrived like relief flights in Port au Prince to strut their auras and earrings on the narrow pass between blue pool and the earlier arrivees.

92% of the submissions were from local artists and given the 48 hours from close of entry it is clear that the vetting process continued long into the nights leading up to the inevitable last minute techno-hitches. But it was the succesful informality of the idea behind the event that made the hiccups and delays totally part of the weave and simply allowed more drinks to flow and connections made.

The deal is that if you bring a dish (make it creative!) the small $5 entry is waived. The hotel (bless them for their vision) made up the food balance and .... well, made up on the drinks prices with a beer, wine and orange juice coming in at $10.

What clearly makes this recipe work is the potluck part. Not that anyone apart from South Africans and Americans seem to know the term. However, in a kind of you-don't-know-what-you-are-going-to-get but at least 'you will be seen by anyone who is anyone in town', it works and attracts all the right folk and more visual material than can be used.

I am sure that they have never failed to fill the standard 90 minute visual program - 45 per half with the first half of the evening for food and people.

The Nairobi offerings came in a supremely mixed dish. From frivilous fashion to hard core photojournalism with grim reminders of our neighbours in Mogadishu and recent Post Election Violence (Boniface Mwangi).
The fashionista strutted their bodies and wares with images of maasai children on Cessna wings balanced by starkly familiar East African landscapes.
That young, emerging photographers could share a grand platform with internationally acclaimed photo-heroes like Mo Amin is the secret of SLPS's future. The exposure is heavyweight enough for the big shots yet accessible to the little uns.

Pure graphic work was splashed over the big screen and a Maasai blood drinking ritual made comediesqe. But it was the powerful narratives from South African Photographer xxxx that hit the hardest - a reminder of what us expat South Africans have left behind. The power of this photo-essay on child abduction and abuse recalled for me how relatively benign and crime free Nairobi is.

In the car going home we gave a ride to a mother and daughter from Italy who quizzed us on our feelings about the city and safety. They had been told not to venture out as Nairobi was too dangerous. On the way home our new friend, with a keen eye, commented on the sight of unattended roadside craft and flower-selling venues, clearly left in safety.

Passing through the Westlands night life we were tumbled back into reality with an almost impossible attempt to negotiate a traffic jam on a 4 way stop. Several taxis had simply stopped in the middle waiting for business and with ' no giving way' being the norm here it was like a Champs de Lise special. I popped out the car to photograph such a phenomenon. A security guard ran up and admonished me to which I told him that I had every right in the world to take photos. He then asked what I was going to give him. I pointed at some very smart cars full of local revellers and suggested he rather beg off the wealthy. Clearly he knew that was a non-starter. I had barely finished confusing him when an angry driver asked my why I was taking photographs.
"Because", I replied, " I am a photographer, "What are you?"

That was the first and only moment of real aggression I have experienced in 3 years in Kenya.

Losing myself in the luck of a not so potless slideshow was well worth braving Nairobi by night. We will return...next time bearing more than food!

SLIDELUCKPOTSHOW

2010-01-13T07:08:00.000-08:00

It happened! After my carrying on extensively to mostly deaf ears about the new video being STILL IMAGES in a multimedia package (ala www.mediastorm.org) I am ampped (thrilled in SA surfer lingo) to discover that the New York originated SLIDELUCKPOTSHOW is arriving in the throbbing arty capital of East Africa, NAIROBI! Yippeeee!

Talk about chance - Ida (that's my girlfee) and I happened by PURE CHANCE to do some late shopping at a pretty understated mall in Muthaiga suburb, Nairobi, last weekend (Remember the Muthaiga club in Óut of Africa'). There, hidden amongst Cheap safari offers and second hand Toyotas was a small notice that caught ida's eye......Sat 16th...cook and bring...watch and meet! The inaugural SLIDELUCKPOTSHOWing event for Nairobi.

Just what my lamenting creative juices need! new ideas, new glistening images and lekka (SA slang for nice) food.

No more to tell - get it from their website: http://www.network.slideluckpotshow.com/. NOW!

Also have a peek at http://www.mediastorm.org/. This is where it is all happening, trust me!

Warm My Tootsies..

2009-12-01T01:06:00.000-08:00

First it was the Greenies. Then the politicians joined in to massage their support base and mostly illusory personal intellectual egos. Then the scientists caught on and questioned the rationality. A much loved and much banned politically variant South African magazine called Frontline published a article by it's generator, one Denis Beckett, trashing the notion of global warming as yet another hippie scare plot. If anything, we were well on our way to another big freeze!
That was 1985. Two years later global CO2 levels went over the scientifically safe limit of 350ppm CO2. (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies - April 2008).
3 years earlier, in 1982, a little known freelance journalist by the name of Helen Zille had written the following in the same Frontline publication.

"The Appropriate Technology group at the University of Cape
Town, with a membership ranging from students to pensioners,
engineers to sociologists, are as busy as ever looking for ways to leave
this corner of the earth more capable of supporting life than they found it. They
are concerned with finding simple practical ways of giving the people living in
poverty-stricken rural areas “a leg up rather than a hand out,” to enable them
to regain a sense of purpose and control over their own lives and the fate of
their communities."

Read the full article here

For non-SA readers, Helen Zille is now the leader of the opposition in South Africa and the mayor of the most successfully run city in the land. She was elected 'World Mayor of the Year 2008'. Ms Zille faces continual charges of promoting environmental issues et al as a vote-catching ruse.

I continue....

It is now November 2009 and CO2 levels are at 384.11 as measured by the Mauna Loa Observatory (NOAA).
But what exactly does it mean to have CO2 levels 'over the safe limit'?

350ppm means parts of Carbon dioxide per million molecular parts of the atmosphere.
At levels higher than this a runaway condition sets in where the Earth is unable to shed as much heat as it gains. How does this happen? We are all familiar with greenhouses or those plastic tunnels that allow crops or flowers to grow in climates normally unsuitable. The sunlight can pass through the glass or plastic and then warms up the ground and plants. The resulting heat energy cannot escape through the glass and so the temperature of the environment rises. The increase in CO2 and other 'greenhouse gases' in the atmosphere is turning the world into one big over efficient greenhouse.

With the World Conference on Climate Change at Copenhagen just around the corner, many people from diverse interest groups are now talking about related issues. How do we adapt our now familiar and comfortable lifestyles in the developed world to encompass this 'imminent' danger of climate change? How do we dovetail global socio-military politics with the apparent threat facing all humanity?
As usual, that built in survival mechanism called 'Fear' that we all have is triggered only when we are directly faced with the 'Fearful'.
For most people on the planet the effects of global warming remain in the theoretical. Turn the aircon up some more, 'oh my gosh! it does seem to be raining more than normal!'.

For those whose lives are lived close to the edge and will increasingly bear the brunt of tidal waves, rising sea levels and desertification, the idea of worrying about more than just daily survival is not high on the list.
Do we, as a species, have to literally bump our heads hard before we do something? What will it take? New York under 2 feet of water? Holland to disappear? Will even that globalize our group survival instinct? I fear not.

Traditionally there has always been a massive divide between the white coated scientists and the 'I am not interested' public. This is clearly both the fault of those in the ivory towers of blue sky science and those who wilfully choose ignorance. My conviction is that now is the time for us who have knowledge of the science behind this crisis to look inside ourselves and find the empathy that needs to drive proper scientific and social discourse so we can never look back and say, "Why did we not do something before it was too late?"

How many of us have any idea what is meant by a 'Carbon footprint'?
When I watch an airliner streak overhead I am left with an acute sense of the irrelevance and reletive insignificance of my actions compared to one hour's emissions from an Airbus.
Well, don't kid yourself. Every year, the average modern urban dweller (That's us!) produces a metric tonne of CO2. If we are thinking gases, then that is a 1000kgs (2200lbs) of 'air' which if contained, would fill a cube 8 metres by 8 metres by 8 metres.

The following short video clips are from a global multimedia exhibition that seeks to give us a real idea of what this looks like. As I write large 8x8x8m cubes are being placed in key public spaces in the lead up to Copenhagen. Using light, sound and sheer size this UN sponsored exhibition, called 'CO2 CUBES - VISUALIZE A TONNE OF CHANGE' is hoping to make an emotional dent on the many key opinion and decision makers who will determine the planet's future later this month.

I picked up on this exhibition from a routine UN press briefing I receive daily. It puts into words a question that I have had for a while. How do I make a real difference? Well, here is a group of artists who are literally magnifying their creative vision in a big enough way to reach a global audience. I can also do this. So can you.
Each of us has a talent that we play with in the real world. Do you build things? Are you a do-it-yourselfer? Do you spend all your available time downloading erotica? Are you a singer, dancer, poet or conman? Well, no matter what, it can be done in a more environmentally friendly way. It really isn't that hard.
But why on earth should I do this? I actually don't give a shit about whether the planet is warmer in 300 years time. Or, as my friend, Frank Harris, says, I come from Iceland, we need all the heat we can get!

The first and easiest thing to do is to just help the world accept that this is actually happening. Trust the great majority of scientists out there. They know what they are looking at and even if some of the details are inaccurate, the big picture is not. We need to take energy and environmental issues away from the realm of weirdos and white coats. It must be trendy and FUN! Tell jokes about it, learn to look disapprovingly at people who consume excessively. Tell the teller at the super that you don't want packets because they mess up your world. Make a statement - use a bright pink shoppingbag with 'Save the Planet - Make Love not Gas!' written on it.

Spread the word and be part of those who will get an invite to the greatest party ever held on the planet - when we finally get our CO2 back to 1980s levels!

And if you lose heart, just imagine that 8x8x8 cube that is yours every month to fill, along with a few billion other people.......

Next Blog>>>I will work out exactly what a 'Carbon footprint' is and discuss fun ways to reduce ours.

Back in the air...life.alt.2alpha

2009-11-13T02:10:00.000-08:00

Message just come thru from Kasaba mechanic. I had almost forgotten that in 2 alpha I was headin' back to Durbs, committed to home by New Year. Daxi is ready to go! (Are you Ready? No...Naidu).
So 2 alpha will take the next flight out from Wilson and head back to the Bay asap!
What a wonderful respite I have had in Nairobi in the past few weeks. Managed to get a few mini-adventures under the belt, not least of which was a long imagined stroll along the crest of the Ngong Hills. From the beginning of the walk taken from the south end near the Leaky homestead one looks down on a sunbaked lake linked by a single dirt track to the main road south. Seeing this from the height of the Ngongs put another idea in my head. Get hold of a float plane and 'do' the lakes of Kenya. I will email the idea to alpha 5.

Flight log 091113(10h30Z/13h30local)
Dash 8 flying out at 14h30 to Arusha. That's it! Can get some nice aerials of Kili if the cloud is off.

Flight log 091112 12h30Z/15h30L

It's always about Kili. The first time was like seeing a dream. It was Kathmandu and Marrakesh all rolled into one. Flying high is like time travelling - you can glimpse a place that you can never go to. But Kili..that's real, I can, if I want to, climb to the top and stand there on the heights and be the lord of the Universe.

One day the pilot circled low and tight so we could see down the caldera.
I remember mostly the shock I felt at how little white there is on the top these days. Whether it's global warming or lack of moisture does not seem as relevant as the sadness I felt at the certain disappearance of this vast incongruity so near to the equator. When the first explorers reported seeing snow in the tropics they were labelled as liars. Now the evidence is leaving us.
After the Anglo-Boer war had ground to a sickening halt, my late grandfather and cousin headed up this way for an adventurous 2 years. They lived and worked on an Apple farm owned by my Grandfather's cousins, a fmaily by name Pohl, and of German extract. Sympathies for the Boer cause had been high from the German empire under Kaiser Wilhelm during the 3 year war and here in Tanganyika the lads found many friends and many adventures. Oupa told us many a time of how they had trekked with 2 Askaris (guards) to climb Kilimanjaro. His cousin warned him about the spiders and advised him to stay armed. True enough they were visited by an arachnid or 2 the size of a large rat and rapidly dispelled of them with their revolvers. At night they would sleep up a tree with a roaring fire beneath for the lion and leapards.
This was all my old history in Arusha. Now it was a rambling and chaotic African metropolis that still had the feel of a one horse town.
The next flight out is only tomorrow. I have some time to explore so I acquired a bicycle and headed out of town with my camera.

One shot only!

2009-11-11T07:46:00.000-08:00

There's this airstrip angled at a crazy 12 degrees. One side is a 2000ft canyon and the other a solid wall of rock. To land there you fly up a perilous gorge at exactly 9500ft AGL and then when a hug chunk of the cliff face appears on your right to have been carved out, you hit a right and line up with the top of the cliff.

If you are a mamba pilot you'll maintain a steady 9400ft and 95kts as you crest the cliff edge and then dropping gently down to 9200, you hit the deck and hurl your props into full reverse thrust and stop just short of the end of the runway. That's if you are a mamba pilot.

Yeti Air wasn't so mamba a year or two ago and hit the security fence on finals. 17 tourists perished.
Welcome to the Hillary-Tensing airfield in Lukla, Nepal.

If you survive the arrival, you can then head up the Khumbu Gorge on a leisurely stroll up to the Everest Basecamp....but that's another story.

Tonight at 17h00 Zulu time, we fly in 2 Twin Otters to Lukla. May the crazy gods be with us!
Meantime...check these movies out!

Flight Log RTW091111

Vic and I left Lambidada (VNLD) at 7h00 local time heading for Lukla (VNLK). Vic experienced some problems pre-takeoff, so I circled for some 20 minutes before we finally got airborn. Overall our coms and systems are working well. The extensive time spent on getting up to speed with the multiple parallel systems we need to operate in the virtual space has paid off as we are now able to rapidly troubleshoot any problems as they arise.

I prepped Vic with the correct approach and landing procedures for Lukla and he did a textbook landing, hitting the deck on the threshold and coming to a stop before the runway end.
Very impressive and shows that he has years of experience of real world aviation to draw on.

After some yak tea we found a gap in the rapid turnaround of Twotters (De Havilland Twin Otters) and headed back off down the valley to the closest field to Lambidada, really just to see some other part of the area. I found it hiding in the lee of a hill and making the drop in approach quite technical. Vic ended up landing back in Lambidada, lost but not abandoned!.

Few some hours it seems, we battled with sporadic technical and coms problems till I finally joined Vic back at Lambidada ad we decided to call it a day after one more half hour flight.
I thought it would be a great idea to head south, leave the great mountains behind and see the fotthills of the Himalayas which kind of melt into northern India.
The xxxx airforce base is exactly 30minutes by Pilatus form Lambidada and we headed off in great spirits. So great were my spirits that I clipped my left wheel on the ridge on take-off. An almighty thud alerted me to the mishap, but the PC12 just kept climbing so I figured all was well.
From the handling once I was up to speed I realized that I had damaged the left UC which now was unretracted, along with the nose wheel. I planned for a cautious and slow landing at xxxAB and good thing too, as the affected wheels just collapsed on landing leaving me with a well dug in nose and blocking the right side of the runway. Vic, needless to say made another textbook landing and slowly taxied past my nose down wreck waving like he was bloody Douglas Bader!
There and then we agreed to continue this journey of aviation delight and head on around the world, hopefully soon finding ourselves in controlled airspace to test our flying and coms mettle.

It's your carb, Uncle!

2009-11-11T04:27:00.000-08:00

Hector Carbuncle could be the ugliest man on the planet. But, he's a friend of mine, an old friend and probably irreplaceable. Without him in my life I would be half a person, unable to look at myself in the mirror and say, 'Gosh you're a gorgeous creature!'

Hector is his real name, Carbuncle, thank heavens, not. The latter sort of grew onto him as an epithet to his continual and haughty opinions on everything from global politics to motorcycle maintenance. I can't recall the exact moment that set it it off, but there is always an echo of it when I struggle to kickstart my now, aging Chinese motorbike. He's there over my shoulder saying in his irritatingly self-righteous manner, "It's the carb, uncle, the carb!"

Stripping and cleaning a motorcyle carburettor is a good afternoon's work. You have to half strip the bike to get at it then make sure that all the teeny wheeny springs and jets don't sproing away forever.
Then there's the actual setting of the float valve and this requires some delicacy and a search for my feeler gauge set. So I put it off till tomorrow and tomorrow never comes. Everytime I try to kick life into my Jialing, there's Hector, haranguing me.

In addition to being a pain in the ass, Hector is also acutely unreliable. If his name hadn't been Carbuncle it certainly would have been Herpes. He keeps popping up at the most inopportune times and has to be treated with the utmost respect, especially in public. I always intend to keep him in check at such times, but mostly don't manage, regretting my lack of self control later.

I should have stopped the friendship years ago. What can a man like him have to offer? If he was a competent mechanic or perhaps a bit better at networking computers..maybe he would be worth tagging along.

But there is simply nothing there. He doesn't even drive, coming to think of it. In the last few years he has always arrived and left on foot, once or twice on a bicycle. Always rushing off on some adventure or other, as if ugly people have the right to fun.

I do get a tad jealous when I imagine him out there, alone, taking on a swollen river in a bright yellow canoe. Or simply getting on his pedal bike and heading off into the night. Once, after a bit of an absence, he casually mentioned having attended the Argus Cycle Race in Cape Town. "Ah! So that's why I haven't seen you....How did you do?"
"I didn't race. I watched from a deckchair in Simonstown."
"Oh...so what else did you do in the weeks you've been gone?"
"Well, most the time was spent getting down there. I rode my bicycle . Took me a few weeks."

The sod! That's what he does. Takes my dreams, and does them. Tells nobody and then let's it slip much later.
I suppose that's why I can't get rid of him. He's a part of me. Makes me feel guilty about who I am. Tells me in no uncertain terms that while I am feeling good about looking good he's doin' what I should be doin' to really feel good.

So, H. Carbuncle has made it to my blog pages. Probably because he has turned up in my life again, ranting at me in his own endearing way. "You stupid son-of-a-bitch! You are just so flipping arrogant! If I count the number of times you tell me that you are off on such and such an adventure and then it never happens....well, put this in your hat. My entire life is a non-stop exciting adventure and I quite frankly don't know why I waste my time even talking to you.

A thought flashed through my mind, "Because, you idiot, I am the only person who gives you and your ridiculous lifestyle any attention. Nobody else even notices. I am at least JEALOUS!" I pause and the words form on my lips, "You just let me know what little adventure you are planning and I will join you.....WATCH THIS SPACE EXE!"

Sex, Excrement and Beautiful Women

2009-11-10T00:28:00.000-08:00

BREAKING BLOGNEWS!

Local Klu Klux Klan threatens to sue the author of this blog for libel! Watch this space for the full story...all the gory details!

Having been thrown off the KKK mailing list I now am able to spend more time with the beautiful people on Heeealth Kicker....read all about it!

Previously I mentioned a subscription I took out purely by chance. Every day I receive an update from Health Kicker. I have hundreds of them sprinkled all over my unopened inbox. My bi-weekly email purge usually happens over a plate of oats (see blog on this) and a mug of unsweetened tea. The conscious reduction in sugar somes from a nagging thought in my head that maybe my diet is a little skewed towards the easy stuff, the tasty stuff, the BAD stuff, the refined carbos!
So, it was with some interest that I scanned the first of the Healthkicker updates about to be tossed into eternity.

Leader Article: 'What is Normal Eating?'

Having spent some time getting to understand how the human body metabolizes the food we eat and separating myths from half truths I filled up my tea mug and settled down for an interesting read. Now, remember that most my fellow subscriptants on this site are sub 30ish and non Bridge and Tunnel folk from Manhatten. This alone gives a slant on what is said. As I read the comments I have a picture in my head of the author and sometimes it makes for real good television.
This is how it works......
The originator of Health Kicker wakes up in the morning after a night of perfect sex and strawberries with a perfect stranger who is perfectly gone by breakfast and then she has a perfectly indulgent cold shower in a translucent rooftop shower cubicle overlooking the Hudson River.
Over brekkies she scours her fave lifestyle sites for anything health trend related and by the time her croussante is barely cripple she has the first hook for her own blog.
In her own very zippy and accessible style she shares her daily collection of tales with her salivating awaiting following by adding the words, 'Well, what do you think?'

We all think something and we all like the idea of our comments and name being read by sub 30 somethings in New York, so we add our bit and feel great.
What a recipe for a successful blog! Do the math and work out how many girl hours you command with a daily site like this and you understand, once again, the power of the internet to carve a singularly successful yet virtual cash kitten.

So, the original article by Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S. which appeared in http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/08/26/what-is-normal-eating/ was reprinted by twikletoes who runs health kicker and got the attention of a whole lot of health kicker psychophants like me who, instead of getting on with the day, decided to add it in turn to their own blogs.......

But what really interests me is the personae and their comments.

Meet HisKeiki, sub30s Hawaaian lass whose homepage is preempted with a 10ft wide banner headline proclaiming: 'I want to be the one you want && Love. I'm lost without you."
She writes: 'i've never thought about eatin "normal", lol. I eat what I want when I want, but I do try to incorporate healthy things and always drink enough water.'

If you look at her svelte 20 something body you can understand how there in Alabama or wherever she lives there really is no need to think about what you eat.

Close on her heels we meet Orlando!
Orlando's profile pic is a BIG Close Up of a human eye. This is a real live manhattanner who strangely only seems to have confidence in the physical appearance of his right eyeball and then prevents anyone but for his close and chosen ones, eyeballing his website by hiding it behind elaborate passwords.

Despite this reclusive and depressive existance his comment on normal eating shows that he really does have something useful to contribute.

My confused question is simply this: "In a subworld populated by beautiful young women what is Orlando looking for? Is he hoping to meet someone? Is this a desparate cry for help from the oppression of the megacity? God only knows.

I am reminded once again of my good and old friend, Hector Carbuncle, whose sole comment on eating the last time I saw him was, "Well of course you agree that the Atkins Diet doesn't work!"
Thankfully I don't hear from him too much since he got involved with the local chapter of the KKK, fondly hiding under the pseudonym of ZEN and The Art of not so subtle racism. It appears from my thinning inbox that I have been banned from Hector's mailing list, thereby liberating 3 hours a day from answering his one line insanities. The challenge now is to rid myself of the health kickers. That, I am afraid will be more difficult. They are, after all, a lot more sexy that Hector and the KKK.

The problem, of course, is that very sexiness and the desparate need that we all seem to have to be desired and looked at by the attractive sex. Meet 'Secret Diary', who clearly has no need of any personal physical appearance crisis but apparently is consumed by it.

SD is my personal favourite. In fact I feel I know her deeply and intimately, such is the need for people to share their innermost secrets of the Internet. Maybe this is the REAL BEST DIET! Share your weightloss program with the entire world and the effect should be Weight Watchers exponential!

There is of course a sadness to all this and the awareness of how privileged we are to be living in Africa, where real issues are there to be dealt with. When there is no food to had and ultra thin bodies are related to dreadful pandemics, there is no more room for the indulgent cries of fattened first worlders.

Somewhere here there is a lesson to be learnt...or maybe just a universal truth about us humans. What do you think? Comment!

Meantime....

Wisdom from the kitchen:
Gran - I read somewhere that in Nairobi the women don't work.
Me: Yes, they do.
Gran: Not in the house, I mean. Who does your ironing?
Me: A man....yes, when it comes to house help (or as they still say in Kenya...house boys) it is mostly men. The question is what are the women doing?
Gran: It comes from long time ago when the men went hunting and the women looked after the children. They worked out the other day, there was an article in the paper, we have so many million or billion blacks in the country and the average zulu produces so many children. In 10 years how many zulus are there going to be? They said that they must learn to use the land they have been given. So many farms have been given to them and they are all lying fallow. They have just put lots of donkeys and cattle on them them. Here and there some of the women have started growing cabbages but they do not plant for the market. they are not a vegetable eating nation. They eat cabbages, madumbis (wild potatos) and African potatoes. They don't plant peanuts and wheat. One old farmer stayed behind and showed them but it didn't help. Some of the Africans sublet those farms to white farmers who then farm for them.
Phew!

Blithering Idiots! Flying Fandangos!

2009-11-05T00:56:00.000-08:00

Let it be known to all aviators and flying men alike, that on this 4th day of the month of November in the year 2009, Victor Hugo and Andre Smith did join the ranks of a select group of airmen by overflying the highest point on Planet Earth, Mount Everest.
What makes this achievement even more commendable is that Aviator Hugo completed his first flight training session in the legendary Pilatus PC12 while taxiing for takeoff at Tribhuvan Airport, Kathmandu, before departing for Everest.
If this is not a heroic achievement, then what is?

Well, if that weren't enough, his trial by fire came at the holding position on runway 2, VNKT (Kathmandu) where he literally drove up the rear of the leading Pilatus, who then spent the next hour patching the damage and trying to reconnect to the IVAO network.
Meantime, another global aviation madman who just so happened to be passing overhead at 33000ft on a "Wonders of The World Tour', saw Vic's ZA call sign and swooped down for a quick cuppa tea and a chat. Clearly he was missing home! Kathmandu is after all quite a distance from suburban Pretoria and with the Currie Cup now well and over, Malcolm X clearly had nothing else to do but sit glued to his flickering PC screen and fly around the world....on autopilot.

By this time Smith was up and running again with a superglued bum and, being of a heroic disposition, bent time to set their departure for just before daybreak....

Sunrise over the Himalayas is a sight to behold and if it wasn't for Hugo's continual and nervous chatter over the coms, Smith may well have taken some better photos. But, a promise is a promise and he had to ensure that Hugo was well clear of the trees that had previously interrupted their training flights.

By this time the world seemed to have woken up to their endeavour and there were no less than 4 other planes buzzing behind us. Victor was so excited now that I feared he would lose control in his exthusiasm to make new, foreign friends. But, such is the nature of this ethereal world: we pass by each other like ships in the night, seldom much more than a blip on the TCAS.

By the time we reached Choma Lungma (The Mother Goddess of the World using the 1960s colonial spelling), the mountain morning was in full swing and with great veracity Hugo identified the mountain, 'by its characteristic shaped spike'. Smith quetly confirmed the identification by looking for the highest piece of rock.

In a rare interview with Smith we can share in the actual moment of flying into aviation history:

"All in all we probably spent a tad more time circling the summit than the 15 minutes that Hillary and Tensing spent on that auspicious May day of 1953.

We did a few left banks mostly because Victor has a good view out his left window and then in crystal clear weather, headed off over the Khumba iceflow down the Khumbu valley that is so well trodden by decades of Everest worshippers and these days.....adventure tourists.

A curious silence accompanies a plane descending fast from 29000 ft down into the coolth of a rift in the earth. The Khumbu Valley leads down to one of the most challenging landing scenarios for any pilot...Lukla Airstrip.

Lukla was the inspiration of SIr Edmund Hillary as a way of facilitating local development and better access for future expeditions to Everest. If you can survive the landing, then get past the dreaded Nepalese nipper-squitters and finally trudge up the Khumbu valley to Base Camp, you are regarded as being at least mentally prepared for ...... climbing Everest? No, for the first view of the great lady, for it is that which will change your life forever.

We, kind of cheated, to tell the truth, as, in the pressurized comfort of the rather spiffing Pilatus, one experiences nothing of the real challenges of the mountain. The mind devastating lack of oxygen, the 100mph winds that pluck you off treacherous precipices and the knowledge that before she was conquered, Everest had killed 14 climbers, was blissfully far from our splendid sense of achievement.

One such person who crossed this barrier was 37 year old Maurice Wilson, who decided that the best way to scale Everest was to crash land his plane onto the mountain near the peak and then, after a short trot to the top, to climb down.

Clearly the 1930s British Aviation Authorities knew more about altitude acclimatization than Maurice did and prompty impounded his aircraft.
However, in true bush pilot style, he found another way and......well....the rest is history....or should I say mystery!

This remarkable chap is, I now see, the purpose of our flight to Everest. WIthout having imagined and set out on this expedition of our own, my mind would never have turned to the history of Everest Aviators and in turn I would never have 'discovered' Maurice. In return for this, this madcap, larger than life adventurer, gives us a message from his chilly grave on the mountain....just go fo it! The worst that can happen is that you die and that is going to happen anyway....rather doing something BIG and EXCITING than eating a cheese burger in front of the TV.
Maurice simply ignored the authorities, painted 'Ever Wrest' on the side of his second hand Gypsy Moth biplane and flew out of England for India. He knew nothing about mountaineering and even less about flying but, against all odds managed to fly all the way unaided. When he got to the middle East he was banned from any of the refuelling stops enroute, so he simply packed a couple of spare jerry cans in his front seat and flew all the way to India with zero spare miles. In fact, the story goes that he actually glided in when he got there!

Banned from Everest, he headed off up to the mountain, disguised as a buddhist monk and making friends wherever he stopped. He had no mountain gear and no experience of ice or snow climbing but a huge confidence in his ability to overcome.

After several attempts on climbing, he finally headed off on the 31st May 1934 into his personal oblivion, writing in his diary: 'Off again. Gorgeous day!'

His body was found a year later at 22700ft lying next to his ripped up tent, just below the North Col of Everest.

Wilson had said that he was inspired by the 1924 British expedition and the then upcoming Houston Flight over Everest. This remarkable effort is well documented no least in the annals of advertizing. For some time after this heroic flight in open biplanes, any aircraft advert worth its salt referred to the Houston flight.

Flying higher than any before. a British aviator, Lord Clydesdale, as he was known, was chief pilot on this first flight over Mount Everest in 1933. His official title was Air Commodore Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 14th Duke of Hamilton and 11th Duke of Brandon, KT, GCVO, AFC, PC, DL, FRCSE, FRGS, (3 February 1903 – 30 March 1973). The other chap was Flight Lieutenant D.F McIintyre.
The extremity endured by the crews of these aeroplanes was instrumental to the introduction of pressurised cabins in modern aircraft, it also was the first detailed and scientific survey of the Himalaya region, and resulted in the birth of Scottish Aviation Ltd (now part of BAE Systems).

In recognition of his role in the expedition, he was decorated with the Air Force Cross in 1935. As a pioneering early aviator he was regarded in much the same heroic way as the astronauts a generation later.

So, little did we know, as we fired up our laptops and skype driven coms, that we were about to share in the experience of some of the most eccentric, amazing, crazy adventurers of all time!

Heading down past Lukla we finally located and found another impossible airstrip, Lambidada, in the foothills of the Himalayas. I got down after an initial aborted attempt which saw me soar over the edge of a 2000ft cliff after coming in too fast.

Victor, guided by my near miss, did a near perfect touchdown. After the manditory photoshoot, we both limped off to bed in our tattered mountain tents....whoops!...where exactly are we?!!?

Finally we would like to thank our sponsors, the wonderful group of dedicated pilots and Virtual engineers who make up Hugo Aviation, here seen posing with Chief Construction Engineer, Petrus' extended family outside Victor's new cardboard and string Flight Simulator enclosure. Believe me...you have no idea how true this one is!

And to the dedicated PIC programmers and neuro-psychologists at Smith's NeuroNav Systems, a BIG THANKS for getting us there.....and back in 2 pieces!

May 31st 2001. Smith, frustrated at having to continually ask directions of strangers, conceives of the idea of starting a virtual navigation business!

The Weight of the Con

2009-11-03T21:56:00.000-08:00

It's highway robbery! And it's in your local shopping mall.
I was shocked yesterday to see a blatant con being played out at Musgrave Centre. In the foyer there is a space reserved for beauty pagents, perfume promotions and toyland demos. But now a large sign caught my eye. "Free Health Check" and another proclaiming "Lose weight in 12 weeks!".
I love these health checks. They are designed to persuade people to join some gym or other and I always do them. They can never find anything wrong with me, but always manage to still end with the line stating that I will clearly benefit from their gym contract. When I say that pedestrians don't need gyms and that I use a bicycle for transport or that I do yoga the stock answer is often quite extraordinary. It ranges from gyms being crime free to obscure muscles that I don't use.
But today's free offer wasn't about a gym. In fact these guys have no facilities at all, only a scale.
Their free health check involved telling you something you already know. That you are overweight. Then, for only R350 they offer to weigh you every week for 12 weeks and at the end of that time the person who lost the most weight gets a cash prize. If you gain weight you pay them a R15 fine!
WOW!! The people were lining up. Mothers bringing their children, wives pushing their husbands to the counter, all the while the slimy man behind the desk was dispensing meaningless platitudes about how well it all worked. He even had a live version of the before and after poster. A confused and non-speaking young man who matched the 'after' poster guy was hanging around as eveidence. And guess what? Even better...if you are not already on a programme 'we' can advise you and recommend some diet products. Guess whose products they are?
I am continually amazed at the mass ignorance of people. So much is written about the dangers and uselessness of rapid weight loss and yet they are prepared to give their cash to an arbitrary stranger selling nothing but the dream of being thin. There was no mention of any expertise on their staff. They proferred dietry advice, "Avoid too much meat and eat vegetables." was the best he could come up with, completely ignoring the multifaceted and complex nature of metabolic variations in people.
I considered for a moment giving R350 to this jerk and then just not eating for 12 weeks. That would lose a shit load of weight, but considering how thin I already am, I realized that all it would take is for a fatty to figure out the same ploy and I will have a miserable and dangerous 12 weeks for nothing!
Should I go back and challenge them? Should I embarrass them in front of their doting masses? Should I object to the Centre? Or should I just leave these ignorant philistines to happily throw away their health and wealth on the pitifulness of free enterprize and the human condition.....

IN THIS WEEK'S WISDOM FROM THE KITCHEN! Money (f)or the BOX!

In the old radio days when 'Life with Dexter' and 'The Goon Show' competed to see which one could distract me more from my Anchovie toast, there was a game show called 'Money Or The Box!"
Well, it is still alive and well in Gran's kitchen.
Having decided though rigorous and double blind studies that the only thing that guarantees regular and soft bowel happiness is daily cooked oats, I am engaged in a repeated morning conversation with Granny.
Gran: "If you want porridge, half fill the small pot with water and put the stove onto 6, then take the Jungle Oats out the cupboard and add it to the pot as soon as it is boiling."
Me: "There is still some Bokomo Quick Oats. Shall we use that rather?"
Gran: "No, it is not as good. They use the dregs of the oats. Just look at it and you can see it is all small pieces"
Well, this morning I looked at it. Then I made several little piles of oats and presented it to Granny to confirm her statement. Not too surprizingly she came up with a sure fire decision as to which was the better oats...and she was totally wrong. I must admit, I put the cheaper oats into a more classy saucer.
"There you are," I said, "You can't tell the difference! And what's more, the instructions on the quick oats say to cook for 4 minutes and the Jungle Oats says 2 minutes!?"
Gran looked at me like I was mad and replied: "It's not the oats, it's the box! Can't you see that it is easier to use a box than a packet!"
Me: "But then why don't you just pour cheaper oats into a nice glass bottle?"
Gran: "What! That means I have to get another container."
Me: "So, it's actually not the oats, it's the packaging you like."
Gran: "Yes, I like the green box".

(copious laughter in background from advertizing executives)

Mumbo Jumbo Homeo Kapomo

2009-11-03T01:07:00.000-08:00

Now here's a story.

A blog or 2 ago I wandered around the idea of what it means to be a healer. I considered, purely on statistical bases, the chance of Joe Average being 'cured' of hiser malady by visiting hiser friendly local homeopath.
I recall talking abut the 1 in 3 rule that applies to medical treatments. 1/3 of ailments are psychosomatic and hence can be treated with anything from mumbo-jumbo to placebos. 1/3 will simple disappear if left alone, so can be ostensibly treated with anything from mumbo jumbo to placebos. The remaining 1/3 requires a proper medico-scientific intervention to be addressed. It is in the last third where the life and death dramas of modern western medical science play out there greatest successes and failures. It is arguably in the other 2/3 where our western doctors have lost the plot. In the rush to provide health care to the rich and health care to the masses we make the mistakes of either too little attention and time on each patient or too much money made from a single encounter.
I tried to make an appointment with a 'good' cardiologist for my 88 year old mum today. The first half hour slot I could get is on the 22nd Dec 2009. That is 6 weeks time. Between now and then every hour of every working day there is taken by someone in dire need of expertise in respect of their ticker. Quite a thought...makes me put on my running shoes earlier than normal today. (That is the next blog!)
Back to the alternatives....I needed to drop off a parcel with an old acquaintance this morning, a gentle Peace activist who now works as a healer, dispensing happiness and useless pills. Well, the pills may be strictly speaking useless but clearly something is bringing the customers back and back again.
One of the key things about homeopathy is that back story. On your first appointment you have a minimum of 1 and a half hours during which the practitioner takes copious notes from an in depth conversation about who you are, where you are from and what makes you who you are. As apposed to the normal western medical experience, each patient is seen as a total individual and is treated as such. This extends to the actual remedies being different for different people for similar ailments.
So, by applying the 1 third rule, it is easy to see how homeopaths and other traditional healers can get it right most 2/3s of the time. That, in any book is a good cure rate.
However, the danger is when the practitioner loses sight of this basic rule and develops a Christ-like healing complex and starts to imagine that sHe can cure all....or at least dispense in all cases. The best example of these are homeopathic vets who are extremely adept at healing pet owners.
Clever homeopaths cross refer with allopathic doctors. The best combine both in one practice.
Even better would be a solid allopathic doctor who did the same as the homeopaths but threw away the little potions and pills.
In many medical training institutes there are doctors and professors who understand this, and try to stress the need to treat patients in their context. This becomes increasingly difficult where healthcare is regarded as a human right and the vast rural realities are overburdened and under resourced.
The risk of being a stressed functionary or medical technician is one of actually having a lower cure rate than the traditional healers, because to get the same 2/3 success rate science needs to get their 1/3 right all the time....unless they can learn how to operate equally well in the first third....the human touch part.
Of course, pandemics like TB and HIV/AIds slew these success rates heavily and have effectively demonized the traditional healers, who now are way out of their depth when it comes to treating the underlying challenges of a immune compromised person.

My conversation with my homeopath friend went from conscription and anti-racism to the notions of healing in our society. The aha! moment which gives rise to this blog came when I said, pointing to the rows and rows of prepared pills in hand labelled bottles, "Well, I have strong personal doubts about the biochemical efficacy of those pills, but an increasing understanding of the role they play in allowing you to be a healer..."
He answered unhesitatingly, "Oh yes, you are quite right, I understand that very well, you are right."

Once again, by engaging and questioning I have moved from a place of strong rejection of a form of human behaviour to an embracing once again of it. And the best thing of all is that it is so logical...no suspension of disbelief needed, unless you are the patient.

Right now I am going to run down to the local book shop and buy the most scientific technical book I can find. My left brain needs stimulation.

Jesus calls, Mahmoud calls, Thor and Wotan call!

2009-11-01T02:52:00.000-08:00

Jesu Christu, in tuo spirito, may the thunder summon all brave men to take to the sea to rape and pillage in my name! May the infidels succumb and other flavoured delights! May Joseph Smith find more missing books in a Wisconsin trailer park...

Hurray! I have finally found a cause worthy of PRF (Personal Religious Fervour).

Watch...and be converted!

Seldom Seen Smith

2009-10-30T01:11:00.000-07:00

I have a frazzled and strangely bent friend from times long ago, who one day succumbed to a curious mix of anarchism and auto-didacticism and took an IT job at Woolworths. Now, all copious and OCD emails are sprinkled with stars and stripes. e.g. "What the ***--- can we do about this --**--** manage**nt!"

He has learnt the art of corporate survival. Stay under the radar 'cause if you don't, the radar will get ya!

So, it was with some trepidation and lead-lined underware that I delved into a mail marked Seldom Seen. At the end of it all I understood the reason for its lengthy tome. For somewhere deeply concealed in the bowels of its copious text were the words "Seld*m S**n -*i*-"

After the briefest of exposures I hit the OFF BUTTON and found shelter in a coffee shop called Incognito.
Whilst there I wandered back to a old and crusty book that was once given to me by an aged mentor from days long gone. The book is called, "Delightful Journey' and is the account of the rafting trip down the Colorado and Green rivers by one Barry Goldwater and buddies. This was done in the days before the river was damned up and as a last experience of the fading wilderness....1940.

Barry Goldwater later turned his considerable life views to politics and is mostly responsible for the resurrection of the American Conservative Movement which eventually saw Ronnie Reagan as President.
However, there are some things about him that have caught my attention:
I quote....
'Some of Goldwater's statements in the 1990s aggravated many social conservatives. He endorsed Democrat Karan English in an Arizona congressional race, urged Republicans to lay off Bill Clinton over the Whitewater scandal, and criticized the military's ban on homosexuals: "Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar."[39] He also said, "You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight."[40] A few years before his death he went so far as to address the right wing, "Do not associate my name with anything you do. You are extremists, and you've hurt the Republican party much more than the Democrats have."'
and...
When Sandra Day O'Connor was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1981, some Religious Right leaders suspected she might be too moderate on abortion and other social concerns. Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell told the news media that "every good Christian should be concerned." Replied Goldwater, "Every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwell's ass."

That same year Senator Goldwater complained at length that :
""There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.' " (1909-1998) US Senator (R-Arizona) Source: Congressional Record, September 16, 1981.

So, what is the connections between Goldwater and SS Smith?

A spurious one at best, but both have left a legacy. Barry was only the 70th person to have hauled his rubber raft into the Colorado River, but today that legend lives on.
Each year only 1600 people are allowed to raft the river. Everything that goes in must come out, down to the ashes from the fires which can only be made on a metal base plate.
Now, I wonder what Barry and SSS would have chatted about if they met one day on a winding highway and desert scattered with rockin' beer cans?

(personally....I like desert highways and hate litterbugs)

Science Challenged

2009-10-29T02:09:00.000-07:00

First, a little reminder of the Hows and Whys of Scientific Method......

From the BBC website>

"WHO recommends against homeopathic treatments for HIV, TB, malaria, influenza, infant diarrhoea
The WHO has warned that people with conditions such as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria should not rely on homeopathic treatments, the BBC reports. The agency was responding to a June letter (full text available here), in which researchers from the Voice of Young Science Network called on the agency "to condemn the promotion of homeopathy for treating TB, infant diarrhoea, influenza, malaria and HIV."
The group, which is part of the Sense About Science organization that advocates for "evidence-based" care, has conveyed the WHO's views in a letter to health ministers, according to the BBC (8/20).

According to a Sense About Science release, the organizations received comments from five WHO officials, which "clearly express WHO's position" (8/21). Mario Raviglione, director of the Stop TB department at the WHO, said, "Our evidence-based WHO TB treatment/management guidelines, as well as the International Standards of Tuberculosis Care do not recommend use of homeopathy." In addition, a spokesman for the WHO department of child and adolescent health and development said of treating diarrhoea in children: "We have found no evidence to date that homeopathy would bring any benefit," the BBC writes (8/20). The release includes additional comments from the associate director of WHO's global malaria program, the HIV/AIDS department interim director and others (8/21).

Robert Hagan, a researcher in biomolecular science at the University of St. Andrews and a member of Voice of Young Science Network, said, "We need governments around the world to recognise the dangers of promoting homeopathy for life-threatening illnesses. We hope that by raising awareness of the WHO's position on homeopathy we will be supporting those people who are taking a stand against these potentially disastrous practices," BBC writes (8/20).

[24 Aug 2009 08:27]
===============

And whilst on the subject of Rule no X (that's a good idea!)....being, 'Scientific Method gives us the best shot at finding the Truth'

Just as a reminder that we continue to live in ancient times as far as many of our modern day pseudo-scientific practices show us. All of us probably have a friend who is an alternative healer or homeopath. I certainly do and if I pause to think about them they are all nice gentle and caring people who no doubt believe implicitly that their healing works. I have yet to hear a single homeopath claim or admit that the successes they see are no more than what is expected from a combination of placebo effect (1/3 of cases), and 'leave it alone and it will self heal', (1/3 of cases). This 1 third rule is, I hear, taught in medical school and leaves a crucial 33% that if untreated according to proper medical intervention will or may kill the patient. Now, add to this mix an unfriendly doctor, an uncaring and overstressed health care system and a lack of social support and it is easy to see how the odds can actually be slewed in the direction of alternative practice being more successful at making people feel better.

So, if what you are suffering from is not likely to kill you or does not need your being anaethesized for it, then visiting your local foot massager or electrode prodder may well result in your feeling a heck of a lot better more of the time. After all, what do most people say about homeopaths...."They really show they care about the patient, They hold your hand and listen to who you are." In this way, they can well be healers.

Resurrecting my Advice Columnist...(literally)

(Lack of) Wisdom from the kitchen>>>>

I have been wont to include an insert of the gems of domestic wisdom which normally sprout forth from my mother whilst dicing carrots in the kitchen. Well they seem to have started again as she regains strength from her 4 month post hospital recovery.

But....there is a narrow dividing line between her random wisdom and just getting something plain wrong.
This morning when she discovered that her water tablets had changed colour she blurted out, "I hope they are NOT GIVING ME GENERICS!"
I explained that even if they were, there was no significant pharmacological difference. "Oh no", she replied, "They are cheaper so they must we worse".
"The doctor told me that I must not take generics!", to which I replied something about her having a vivid imagination.
After betting (and not being accepted) my entire financial worth, I hauled out the trusty netbook and googled a few references, confident that the local pharmacy was not handing out counterfeit drugs.
It turns out that whilst the formutaion remains essentially identical with generics, there is a caveat: In older patients sometimes a colour change can result in the meds not being taken which has the same effect as not taking at all....in these cases it is better to stick to the same shape, size and colour.

As for the tale about the doctor. This reminds me of a fascinating area of neurological real estate called the Prefrontal cortex, or the cogitative and Storytelling part of our brain.
This rather inventive lump of grey matter sits in the front and sides of our heads and is one of the later evolved parts that sort of define us as human. In between firing up when we improvize on our Fender Stratocaster, it has an ongoing argument with a far older piece of brain, the Amygdala, which sits deep in the evolutionary depths of our psyche. This is what gives us those sudden rushes of emotion and fear that warn us of danger and give us the energy to fight or flee. But in the sensible society that we now live in, it is not always appropriate to thump your boss on the nose when he yells at you even though every molecule in your body seems to be crying for justice.
The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is the guy that says, hold on, lets think about this, maybe it is a better idea to take a breath and find another way of handling the boss's outburst. the medial prefrontal, on the other hand is the creative, the imaginative storyteller. It is this part sitting up front that fills in the gap, so to speak, when we are telling a tale constructed from fragments of memory.
Thus, when my mother has some recall of things being said about generic medicine, she weaves a story around these spuriously recalled facts and literally fills in the gaps with nonsense, like what the doctor said. The important thing is that the Prefrontal plays a trick on us here and makes us believe that these fillers are in fact as true as the rest. So, mum, based on a few bits of recollection, pieces together a story that she really believes in.

Religion, I suspect, is a bit like this, but in a way inverted. The bible stories fill the heads of receptive believers and the good ole prefrontal fills in the gaps with all the evidence needed. Just look around you and everywhere is proof of the work of God.
So, when we suspect that religious people are suspending disbelief in key areas, we have to understand that the story that they are often seeing is one of non-fiction in its entirety.

I too, therefore must be filling in the gaps...where though is what I have to ask.

Look, think, look again.

2009-10-26T05:32:00.000-07:00

Here's a hypothetical situation. One which allows me to explore a question that is buzzing around my head.
First I need a dialogue. Let's have 2 persons, A & B.
If A is fanatical about anything it is to adherence to scientific method.
If A is intolerant of anything it is towards willful ignorance on the part of other human beings.
If A is angry about anything it is the damage that lack of the former and the presence of the latter causes.

A and B are engaged in a debate. B is devoted, entirely devoted, to a belief that any opinion, no matter how substantiated or researched has equal status to any opposing opinion. As long as it is an opinion being expressed there is no matter whether it be right or wrong, factually accurate or wildly imaginative. Now, in the post modern world that we live in this is all old hat. We understand that Truth itself is dubious at best and vacillates from one perceptive being to the next.
But, B does not fit into this world. For him, all is black or white, no cloudy shades of grey.
So it was that B, relaxxxxxxed next to a fire one early summer evening, beer in hand and crinkly feet raised up in defiance, gave the throw away line, "Well, A, you will surely agree that blacks are less intelligent than whites. All you have to do is to look around you."
It turns out from his own admission that this was no mere throwaway line. It was carefully thrust into the party space to see how A would react. And react he did. Vehemently first demanding an explanation as to how on earth B could make so outrageous a claim. The only validation A got was to the tune of "Well, it's obvious isn't it?".

Well, thought A, he does have a point. But this is a political hot potato. So A returned the favour and tested his reaction by emailing B's personal mailing list with a query re B's 'observation that blacks are less intelligent than whites." The rapidity and seriousness of B's response told A that this was an opinion which did in fact matter.....

Loath to abandon a challenge that encompassed both his personal fanaticism and pet hate, A decided to investigate this 'opinion' a little deeper. Is it possible that B's observation has some merit? If so, what does this mean?
In about as fast as A had formulated the question, the answer came. The link between an observed phenomenon and the conclusion made from it holds a wealth of information about the intelligence that made that leap. In B's case, it pointed very strongly to a rather absent intelligence.
How could he not see it? How could he not know that when 2 things happen to occur in synchronicity that the one does not necessarily cause the other?
B had observed black people and simultaneously observed what, from his cultural POV was unintelligent behaviour. Clearly, a lack of intelligence cannot cause skin to turn brown so it must be the other way. Yes?
Actually no, my friend. There is no necessary causal link at all. Well, there must be something that links being black in South Africa and being seen as unintelligent.

Like all good scientific journeys this one starts with a definition.

Oxford Dictionary:

INTELLIGENT

General mental ability due to the integrative and adaptive functions of the brain that permit complex, unstereotyped, purposive responses to novel or changing situations, involving discrimination, generalization, learning, concept formation, inference, mental manipulation of memories, images, words and abstract symbols, eduction of relations and correlates, reasoning, and problem solving.

RIght, so we are dealing with understanding and adapting to a changing and complex environment. Not mere ability to process data, not just being able to learn or recall facts. This is a creative descriptor that achieves its best definition in the observed actions of others.
So, where do we derive our intelligence from? Is it innate? Can it be learnt? Is it culturally determined? Does one size fit all?

To continue on this journey I have to go back in time, several million years to a time when homo-sapiens was becoming the big guy in town, mostly as a result of his bigger brain and hence greater intelligence and ability to adapt to the changing world. One day he picked up a stone and it became a tool and in a flash of centuries we shot through the age of discovery, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Age and now...the post information Age. All this happened in a remarkably short time in the scale of human evolution, definitely not long enough for our brains to change or evolve much from that which gave our ancestors the edge.

The brain that you and I are born with evolved tens of thousands of years before the different races were defined by evolution, resulting in a multitude of racially differentiated humans all with a very similar brain that had the same potential to develop.

In every young child there are a few crucial times when their brain is set up for later life. A 3 year old has a brain that has many more brain cells than an adult brain. The stimulation and attention that the young brain gets, directly determines which brain cells grow and which die. If you don't use them, you lose them.
Thus the love and richness of the child's early years actually shape the physical structure and ability of their brain. We all know how easy it is for a child to learn new languages when young and how hard it is when we are old.
Fortunately for those of us who did not learn to play the violin or speak Spanish at 4 years old, there is another brain growth spurt at about 10 years. At 18 there is another and it all tails off by the mid twenties. During these crucial times, the external influences are so powerful as to be able to suppress or increase the genetic potential inherited from parents. Studies of twins clearly show that different environments make different people of identical twins, down to actual physical differences.

Thus, it is easy to see that South Africa is a place where many, many young people were deprived of a good education and grew up away from the love and attention that we take for granted. Apartheid and poverty are both directly responsible for this and the result is that many black people have grown up to be less intelligent (in terms of the Western definition), directly as a result of being denied the same rich environment that was available to the privileged South Africans. They were then continually faced with their inferiority being reinforced at every turn. This has been shown to actually further change the structure of the brain, making people less confident, less intelligent and less competitive.

To summarize:
Individual intelligence is not something we are born with. We learn it and education and our upbringing teaches us this.
Anybody has the brain potential to be intelligent. In SA many black people have been denied the chance to develop their potential.
Increasingly we will see less differences in mental ability between young black people and those from other race groups, because the differences are learnt, not inbuilt at birth.
Simple.

Any comments?

Don't chat at airports!

2009-10-10T05:43:00.000-07:00

'Some fact, some fiction, some copyright, some left, depends on how much tea I've had'

Flight Log Friday the 9th October 2009.

Kigoma, Tanzania

I have now wallowed in Central East Africa for over 2 years. I landed in Kigoma on the 1st August 2007 and, totally delighted by the languid mix of Lake, centuries old lack of real economic development and abject cleanliness, I hunkered down for a few weeks till my dollars ran dry. And run dry they did, while I wallowed in the ultimate lakeside pool with a view at Kigoma Kambas.

By early September, Ida had then been in Nairobi fo r 10 months and home cooking and the cats beckoned, so I took the Great North Road back up to Kenya.Whilst finding suitable storage hangering for Daxi proved a challenge, the characters I met in the process made it all worth while. I also absorbed a huge amount of local history. After all, it was near here that Henry Stanley met David Livingstone in 1871 and the immortal line "Dr Livingstone, I presume" was uttered.
Kigoma is the poorest region in Tanzania, with a per capita annual income of US$ 210, and the population growth rate is the country's highest..Except for rapid population growth, some aspects of village life in Kigoma have changed little.
Being close to the Rwanda/Burundi area it has also inherited up to half a million refugees many of whom have remained. Walking around the town, however, belies this particular history. The Rwandan genocide may have devastated the lives of many many lakeside people but today, it is no more than a distant memory. In Rwanda, life is better than ever and an uncanny sense of peace and prosperity reigns. There are lots of reminders though in the way of concrete memorials that dot the main cities and towns but healing in the minds and hearts of the people has taken a strong path in the receding years. Much of the last 2 years can be seen in my changingplugs.com website and the rest on this blog.

I got back to Kigoma with 2 days to liberate Daxi and do all the necessary paperwork. Not being akin to bribery (the norm here too) things take a lot of South African charm to get done.
But finally I was up and away, heading for the much talked of Kasaba Bay, about an hour and a half's flight down the other side of Lake Tanganyika....or so I thought. Sitting at the airport having a last cuppa Tanzan tea I got into a chat with a delightful septuagenarian, one Peter Hazelhurst.
It turns out he flew as a navigator in DC3s based at Mwanza in the 50s. With a cheeky grin coming from having survived life's adventures by the skin of his teeth, Peter recounted how the goonybird had in fact saved his life. "The plane stalled and we would have crashed but for sliding off the side of a mountain and regaining enough airspeed to get aloft again."
But the tales of flight didn't end there. It turns out, after my 4th cup of tea, that Peter did the first wingsuit jumps in South Africa in 1958. This was reported in the Sunday Times of 9 February 1958. He was 21 years old at the time and had only 33 normal parachute jumps. Today you are required to have 500 jumps before being allowed to try out a wingsuit. He kept this extreme experiment secret. In 1955 a French man by the name of Leo Valentin died in front of 10 000 spectators while demonstrating his wingsuit in the UK. A humble Peter Hazelhurst did not want to subject another crowd to the possibility of the same fate.

Peter told me he did three jumps over Grand Central from 5 000ft AGL and that on his 3rd and most successful jump he managed 15 seconds of fl ying time before opening his parachute. In 1958 he told the Sunday Times in an interview that he had a hard time controlling the suit made from canvas, but he could make small turns by shifting his weight around inside the suit. After the article in the Sunday Times, he told us that CAA stopped this nonsense as the CAA saw it as far too dangerous an activity.

One thing led to the next and I only got airborne by 15h30 local time, and believing that I had enough daylight for a 1 and a half hour flight I headed off, totally inspired by Peter and singing softly to myself.."Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and ....."

Climbing to 11000ft was slower than expected and by the time I was still 20 min from Kasaba Bay the sun was already searing orange through my right side window. I immediately opted for a precuationary landing which in itself would be in low light. As I descended in a too rapid slip turn I wondered how on earth I had managed to get myself in this precarious situation. Not once on the entire trip had I faced this level of flying risk, and through my own laxness!

But the flying gods were with me and I found, almost glowing in the dusk a piece of sloping but clear dusty terrain and with a wobble of the wheels and my heart, I got her down, for a night in the tin can, in the bush.

FLight Log 10th October 2009

Up at daybreak to check for obstructions and any damage and to ensure I could use the cool morning air for a minimal ground run liftoff.
As it happened, I had landed on a slope, which though precarious for last night, could be used to my advantage on my departure.
A thorough system check revealed that no damage seemed to have been sustained the previous night. With some considerable finesse, if that can be said of turning a 2 ton tail dragger, I manoevered Daxi to face the short downhill slope into the morning darkness. I strolled ahead looking for anthills and other latter day landmines and waited for the dawn. Oh, for a cup of tea now, but I had not expected to be camping in the bush so...another reminder of what to pack next time.

Then, sun up to give me sharp shadows to navigate my liftoff, I slowly throttled up and with the stick fully back I trundled down the hill. It seemed almost instantaneous, the takeoff, almost taking me by surprize. But the real surprize came when I tried to lift the gear and flaps. Nothing happened! There was only one alternative now - head for Kasaba Bay with what I had under me...a DC3 in full landing trim with a mystery fault. I was reminded of Amelia Earhart's last fateful flight where only on the shaky black and white film of her takeoff do we see the aerial wire being ripped off from the belly of the plane. Did my new problem happen on departure? I would never know. Now I needed to nurse Daxi southwards at 80knots with the engines overworked.
I could not afford to subject the plane to such continuous stress, but needed to keep going, so I used my time to recheck all systems. Finally I after resetting the electrical fuses I managed to breathe new life into the undercarriage and with an almighty heave and shudder, the copious wheels lifted up into her belly, shortly followed by the welcome squeel of flaps up.
Was it home James now....surely my trials were over. I gradually dropped to 2000ft above the water which itself is 2700ft above sea level. Gliding happily now over Lake Tanganyika I suddenly was filled with a feeling of being well between the heavens and the deep. This after all is the deepest fresh water reserve on the planet (almost 1.5 km deep) and holds some 1 sixth of all the fresh water on Earth.
I radioed in and got permission to land on RW24. This was the safer approach, being from the water side. The other side was rising ground and I was not keen to risk a fault creeping up on me.
Coming in with full flaps and slowly I nursed Daxi towards the well defined but short airstrip. The wheels going down seemed a little different this morning, but I was now quite tired and anxious to get back to terra firma.
It was wise to have made a really slow and low approach. The wheels had only partly emerged and when I landed they held me for just long enough to slow down to 20kts then collapsed back up into the plane's belly. I ground to a sickening halt, surprizingly smoothly if I may say so myself.
Now I just had the embarrasment of climbing out of a rather low DC3 and greeting the tourists who were now clearly going to reassess their confidence in flight!

Tomorrow is another day. I guess I am doomed to be a lake dweller fo another few months.......unless Insurair has an agent and large bank account here!

Marx was right.....

2009-09-24T03:21:00.000-07:00

All good science starts with a story.

Yesterday, I left Woolworths in Musgrave Centre, via the main upstairs entrance and past the well-dressed but pervasive security man, who smiles lugubriously at you while simultaneously sweeping you with his shfty eyes for hidden Woolies goods. I heard a light and lilting song and turned to see a well-turned out and sprightly middle aged lady leaving with me.

"Wow! That's great! you're singing...", I said, smiling broadly.
"Well", she replied, hardly missing a note, "there's so many problems out there that this is what I do about it."
"One heck of a lot better than moaning or leaving", I remarked, still grinning.
"It doesn't help much tho' as nobody listens..."
"I am!...and I can assure you that now I will start to sing and that will make other people sing!" was my immediate response.
"That's wonderful...you obviously have Jesus in your life!"
"No!", I say, grinning even wider, "I sing without Jesus."
"But", and now she has stopped singing...."But, you do believe in Jesus?"
"No" say I, grinning as wide as possible now.
"Why NOT!!"...her tone is now direct and somewhat accusatory...we have both stopped in our tracks in the middle of Musgrave Centre.
"Because", say I, "people keep telling me that Jesus is alive but try as I might I cannot find him anywhere...".
"Oh he IS alive! I talk to him all the time!"

At this point I looked around in case any of my friends could see me talking to a looney and then strolled off, singing softly to myself.

I have been left with a real feeling that there must be some kind of path for people to follow that is not just damn stupid, like Christianity and the rest of the bunch. Something that can cater for people who are too scared to have the word 'átheist' or 'bright' attached to their CV, preferring some kind of more normal 'ism'.

Well, a little research in Adams Book Store comes uip with a viable altrernative. It's not quite a religion, but it is a perfectly respectable label to have if you keep having to answer the question: 'What church do you belong to?'
What we need for intelligent folk living in the 21st century is a belief system/philosophy that needs no gods, miracles or blind faith and is happy to change its dogma in the light of new scientific evidence....enter...Buddhism!

Quote from Dalai Llama:

'Älthough modern science and the Buddhist tradition grew out of quite different historical, cultural, and intellectual circumstances, I have found that they have a great deal in common. By some accounts, both traditions are motivated by an urge to relieve the hardships of life. Both are suspicious of notions of absolutes , whether these imply the existance of a transcendent creator or an unchanging entity such as a soul, preferring to account for the emergence of life in the world in terms of the natural laws of cause and effect. Both traditions take an empirical approach to knowledge.'

Says Alan Wallace, Buddhist scholar and veteran participant in Scientific dialogue with the Dalai Llama, 'Four themes are common to Buddhism at its best: rationality, empiricism, skepticism and pragmatism.'

Indeed the Dalai Llama is adamant the Buddhism has to yield to rational argument and empiricism. He often says that if there is empirical evidence that contradicts something in Buddhism, 'Into the garbage!'

And then there is Jose Cabezon, dept of Religion and Science, Uni California (Santa Barbara).
He writes, 'Buddhism subscribes to the view that there are natural laws that govern the development of both persons and the world....Buddhism (is a) non-theistic tradition, with no creator god and no need for explanations that go beyond that of science, there being no need for miracle or faith.'...'Buddhists stand to profit by gaining access to new facts concerning the material world - facts that have lain outside traditional Buddhist speculation due to technological limitations.'

The real cherry on the top of this option is that, like Christianity (and it's strange bedfellows), Buddhism also addresses the core challenge of ...DYING!

At i'ts most fundamental, Christians are simply told, 'Don't worry, you don't actually die. You just go into another room where you will sit forever at a long table with Jesus, Bishop Tutu and 12 hippies'.

Buddhism instead, gives you an actual tool, that if used correctly really removes the trauma and pain of death and allows one to easily cross over from the living world to the dead one (however you may see it). This is meditation, which if practiced over many years can not only give you great health and well being while alive but also ultimately put you in control of your own dying process.

Now, that's the one for me!!!!!

2009-09-21T09:33:00.000-07:00

Some thoughts on why I work with a Black Consciousness Organization .....

The clip I have chosen highlights for me why I am so comfortable working with an intelligent, thinking, compassionate and, most of all, secular organization. So often us brights or atheists are subjected to the presumption from the lecturn that everyone wants to pray. On Saturday 19th September 09, The Steve Biko Award ceremony was held in Durban.
Prof Msamane (prof of African literature at UKZNPMB) showed respect to the many people of cloth at the event in a most encompassing yet non-arrogant way. A lesson is here to be learnt for all who presume metaphysical superiority. He then continues to underscore many more aspects of what makes a progressive and democratic organization - the need to look forward and change with the changing times ... and the importance of the old guard not clinging onto office. Most important is that speeches can be made with good language, soft tones, nuance and humour.

Here or there, what's the DIFF?

2009-08-09T23:53:00.000-07:00

Gosh, it's good to be back in Durban,

By the way, today is Women's Day! So I am publishing some images of a typical South African scenario - 'A day in the life of Empowerment Films and it's all-male cast....Hold on! there were 2 girls > Production & Line producer (never worked out what that is!))

The great thing about travel is coming home. After sorting out my space in some familial corner of Musgrave rd I dust off my Chinese motorcycle and head off down memory lane to get back into what makes this such a wonderful city,

First stop, as always, is to head downtown and find a new lunch place. There are so many and so varied that it seems that I will never run out of new culinary experiences. So I can be choosy. My favourite is somwhere cosy but on the pavement, so I can smell the sound of the city. Carol, the ubiquitously charming waitress asks me if I am bringing my work to lunch. I don't even hesitate in booting up XP as I reply to her that maybe I am bringing my lunch to work. She, continuing to open my cold beer, remarks that it's ok as long as I enjoy my work as much as my lunch. I say that it certainly will determine whether I come back or not. She swings her ample hips and leaves saying all in one movement, "No, that depends on the service."

I chose well today. I write easily when people are passing close to me. If I look over the street I see a tall glass building reflected in a short glass building. Me, the street, the people, my laptop and big business all flowing together like the Umgeni River in flood. I feel instantly powerful and free at the same time.

I wore a suit today, despite the cool and being on a motorcycle. I just wanted to be anonymous, melt into the city norm. It works. Despite being the only whitey around I hardly get a glance. Except from Carol, whose charming and slightly flirtatious attention draws me from this letter.

What the heck, I'll finish it over supper. I know I will end up at some all night coffee bar till the early hours so I'd better keep some laptop battery for later.

Bag over shoulder, I head off down an arbitrary side road to explore and delight my memories. I am in Indian town and the scent of agarabathi time travels me back to my youth as a point road devotee. Narrow Indian stores that disappear off the street and crowded alleys with smiling hands vying for my attention. Deep inside one such labyrynth, a warm pat on the back and 'Haven't seen you for a while, where have you been'.
I Ieave 20 minutes later with a well bargained traditional cloth in my bag and the smile that comes from a free cup of tea.

It must have been longer than 20 minutes because it's sun-disappearing time and my fingers are itching for the laptop again.

A short ride through chaotic but unaggressive traffic and I am in eclectic heaven. From my suburban pavement table I am within easy reach of a selection of 24 hour amenities. A Checkers (Must get milk and tea), a 24 hr electronics and car spares shop, a tyre shop, a coffee and cake emporium and a book and magic shop.
Across the road, one of those swish new ultra elevated malls beckons me but I am not in the mood for movies, diet icecream or Michael Jackson DVDs, so I grab a book from the unattended book store table and read over a steak and garlic fries.

As the night air hits, the boys arrive in their trendy gear and fast cars. Subaru is the taste of the moment. Fortunately dashboard fur is out out out. The car lot transforms into Saturday Night Fever with the boys lolling and looking and the girls have an unconvincing go at not being looked at.
No fights....not like the old days of the Cuban Hat.

How to remember my memories. How to keep this moment alive. I opt for recording it, so once again, it's coffee and laptop.

It's seems like Carol followed me here. Maybe just the same flirtatious innocence as she asks me what my name is and how can she help me.
No, I'm fine, just fine...if not a little confused. I thought for a moment this was Durban. How weird? I'm in Nairobi.

I finally get going at 2am. As I ride off I make a small deviation in the road. A dashing young Indian man in a Gucci suit is propositioning a lithe goddess in the middle of the road. Who am I to interrupt.

Up the road and into the the suburban darkness. I notice wryly that the corner where the flower sellers sell is devoid of humans. Just bunches and bunches of bright African flowers left unattended for tomorrow's sales.

The DIFF, by the way, is the Durban International FIlm Festival and somehow, within 24 hrs of arriving back in Durban I was roped in by one half Greek - half Irishman to be the unofficial photographer of Mike Lee's new documentary, 'State of Emergency'. Mike Lee, I suspect is Mike Moore's biggest fan and like his possible hero has one great skill: convincing people to sign release forms. After being persuaded to do the somewhat fractuous interviewer bit with the inventor and doyen of film festivals in Durban, Roz Sarkin, I left the joint without signing.

Lesson: Never sign release forms. Rather sleep with the director. You end up with more rights that way and open yourself up to less abuse.

Coffee for Kofi

2009-07-09T05:16:00.001-07:00

Letter from Nairobi (1)

Every so often a single event reminds me of why I like this city so much. Negotiating the 5pm traffic 'jahm' on Kenyatta Ave in downtown Nairobi I saw, out of the corner of my eye a wretched man, hobbling between the cars on one wooden stick and a half a metal crutch. His body was twisted and his face had the look of havng been on the edge forever. Most the lane darters have things to sell, huge plastic maps of the world, bunches of cell chargers, crazy cloth dolls and multitools. This guy just thrust his hand into my face and locked his eyes on me. "Sorry, I have no coins", I said in a knee jerk response. He tilted his head, half smiled, half grimaced and said, "Karibu! (welcome)....tomorrow is another day....". Then off he shuffled.
By the next intersection I had caught up with him and found 30 shillings. He half smiled, half grimaced and said, "Thank you, brother."

I have spent a load of energy chirping about the crimelessness of Nairobi. Well, it is changing. It's not going to give SA a run for its money in a hurry but talk these days is of whether the Kenyan military should cruise into neighbouring Somalia and moer the local hard core Islamic Youth militia, fondly known as Al-Shahaab. This motley but volatile crew of Ishmaelites are the radical resurgance of the defeated Islamic Courts Union who came off second best against Ethiopean helicopters from late 2006 onwards. Now that the Ethiopeans and the odd US special forces boytjie have apparently gone home for the summer vacs the tablecloth boys are having a field day and the 'good' guys, the TFG (Transitional Federal Gov.) are now in control of a piece of Mogadishu about the size of Pinetown or lower Putney.

Every columnist in Sunday's Nation raged on about the pros and cons, the ifs and buts and capabilities of the local army boys in KE. The checkcloth lads replied that they will use suicide attacks to blow up the 'tall glass buildings in Nairobi'. Now this is hectic as my girlfriend's new office is in the tallest glass building in town and I am yet to see someone stick his head under our car when we park downstairs.
My fave quote is from columnist Mutua Mathiu: "When the village madman stands on your fence and insults your wife you can do 2 things. One, you can quite resonably explain to everyone what they already know, that he is mad. Or you can wait for him at the village path in the dark with your rungu and take out his kneecap. You will be surprized at how in future, his madness will exclude disrespect to your lady wife.

Gitau Warigi ('Sunday View' Column) has another plan, possibly a little more sensible. He clearly has read all about Vietnam and Afghanistan and suggests that we should rather turn off the financial taps to the bad okes and hope that they all simply get bored and hungry and go home. Personally I ain't betting on either plan. What is clear (from the rest of Sunday's news) is that Aks are flooding into Kenya and being used to pay for petrol and koshering out whoever happens to be filling up at the same time...and if the cops aren't getting shot at they're shooting at each other...all very confusing.

As if this isn't enough, Kofi Annan, got up this morning and decided he had had enough of the Kenyan leaders humming and harring about how to set up their own Criminal Tribunal to try the post election violence baddies. He's had this large envelope full of names next to his bed for a year now and as I write it is being opened by, no doubt, some keen prosecutors in the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

I am sure that there will be a lot of sleepless politicians tonight, but judging from the letters to the paper, far more happy citizens.....quote from letters page, Nation 2nd July 09:

"I am one of the millions of kenyans suffering due to immence curruption in all dpartments in kenya. Mr Kofi, please help us turn the page by scraping impunity and making it LAW for all from president to goat thief.please,please,please."

In October 2006, soon after arriving in Kenya I wrote a blog about the disappearing Flamingoes of Lake Nakuru (see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5405468.stm).
Well, it seems that the normal has happened....nothing. So I thought I would say no more but just give you lot a glimpse of how things looked at Lake Naivasha last week. According to current predictions my trip to Naivasha in 20 year's time will be like a week without without underpants and beer - crusty and dry. Lake Kamnarok, once home to the second biggest population of crocs in Africa is now dry...fully dry and going nowhere. The Baringo townspeople, who have been resisting all efforts to quell their decimation of the forests for charcoal, now have no water for the their moo cows.

Now, all this ultimately doesn't affect me as there are lots of other lakes on the planet and I don't have cows....and anyway I have discovered the coffee bars of downtown Nairobi. These are ultra cool especially in the blue after 5 cocktail evenings. Close your eyes and draw in the fresh Dormans roast and you are in some exotic laid back Euro city ... or maybe Guatamala, but with the taste of Ethiopean heaven.....

Whatever happened to the 3 Monkeys Coffee bar in Durban? Maybe 50 or so years after democracy we will see the rise of the SA coffee culture spurred on by the threat of Khoisan sucide bombers from Leshoto.

On the arts scene, alive and verrrry well, as usual here in buzzing Nairobes, we are building up to the opening of the Internews Male Circumcision photo exhibition at the French Cultural Centre next month. To get a taste of the mood we hit the current photo exi - Eat your heart out Durban! Nairobi rocks!

Click to see short video

That's it...and remember, anything can happen and it usually does.

Next time...Indian Town and Crushed Sugar Cane Juice!

Under siege....

2009-06-17T13:08:00.000-07:00

I often use this space to comment on the high level of crime in South Africa and indeed a few days ago I mentioned a taxi hijacking in Nairobi which made the newspaper and where the incumbents were merely relieved of their cell phones. I then said that no doubt in my home suburb in Durban, there would have been at least one highjacking and several muggings, robberies and a rape or 5. Well, the reality is even worse!
Quoted from the local crime report...this is just one street!

From: Tim Brauteseth <dsa@saol.com>
Date: Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 1:37 PM
Subject: Re: Incidents in Dale Road last week
To: Lesley Jessop <Lesley@wayneselectrical.co.za

>, Peter Rutsch <rutschp@gmail.com>, Graham McCallum <glmccallum@vodamail.co.za>

Hi Lesley, Peter,

I have just returned from a meeting with Sup. Van Zyl and can give you the following info. Can you please forward this your areas?

The incident occurred early this morning when Michael's father went outside to open his gate which leads onto a walkway beteen Archer & Dale. He was letting his dog out for a walk.

As he opened the gate, the two black males were outside and used this opportunity to attack. He was stabbed in the neck and then dragged into the house.

It was at this point that Michael confronted them and was attacked and stabbed several times. The house was ransacked and then the attackers fled. The only item missing was a cellphone.

Michael's father managed to raise the alarm at 63 Archer Crescent and the SAPS and Ambulance were called.

Sup Van Zyl also attended the scene shortly thereafter and has advised that the forensic, crime intelligence and housebreaking units are already involved in the matter.

It was clear in my visit to the SAPS that the police members are angry about this incident and are doing everything in their power to apprehend the perpetrators.

Sup Van Zyl was close to tears when he described Michael and his career. He was proud that Michael had recently completed his LLB degree and was in the second year of his LLM.

The two attackers are described as being between 17 - 25, of slender build. Due to quick work and sharing of resources, one of them has already been identified. He is 18 - 19 but appears to be only 16 years old - he has a very young face. The identified attacker is known to the police and he is currently the target of a manhunt.

There is also a strong suspicion that the same men are the ones involved in a spate of recent attacks in the area.

Residents are warned to be extra vigilant when leaving and entering their properties. The SAPS believe that when the gate opened the men saw an old, frail man and took their opportunity. It is vital to protect against this.

Sup Van Zyl has undertaken to increase patrols in the area and get his reservists patrolling the area on foot.

Regards,

Tim

----- Original Message -----

From: Lesley Jessop

To: Peter Rutsch ; Jackie Psannis ; Nadine Foord

Cc: GL Mccallum ; Johann van den Berg ; Tim Brauteseth

Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 10:23 AM

Subject: FW: Incidents in Dale Road last week

Hi Peter

I have passed this onto my community but please could you advice why we are not receiving any security correspondence from your area. It is vitally important that the entire community is informed of anything that happens.

Thanks

Lesley

From: Lesley Jessop
Sent: 17 June 2009 10:20 AM
Subject: Incidents in Dale Road last week

Dear Residents

Please see below regarding incidents last week in Dale Road.

Thanks

Lesley

Hi Lesley,

As you seem to be keeping track of incidents: I am not sure if you are aware of the two that occurred in Dale Road last week. Sharon, a friend of mine had a young black male enter her kitchen one morning, with a knife in hand and threatened her daughter to keep quiet. He stole her bag from the kitchen. Then a few days later they had a smash and grab during the night. Two males threw a brick through the kitchen window and stole her laptop. They suspect the same guy.
This madness has to stop!

Brisbane in style

2009-06-15T09:44:00.000-07:00

Well, as it happened, the real world and the virtual collided. Simply not enough time to take a gentle 200kt flight over the Pacific. So I hung around till I got a cheap ticket on Quantas and flew in a vintage 747-200 to Brisbane. Now, I have an Aunt and Uncle in this equatorial Aussie town, so I will catch up with them for a day or two and then regroup for the 300 odd Nm flight up the Gold Coast to the Great Barrier Reef and Rockhampton.
Looking at the classic Jumbo Jet shape as a passenger gives little idea of how much has changed with this most classic of big iron aircraft in the 30 odd years they have been around. What was a dense array of analogue instruments is now a neat and colouful digital display that somehow removes us from actually how complex aircraft systems really are. Both are well represented in the flight sim world but for me, there is no substitute for the old steam driven stuff. The RFP 747-200 is easily the finest example of a pc based sim getting as real as can be. Whilst it is not possible to create a total immersion with just your laptop this product certainly has a suspension of disbelief rate higher than most others.
Back to the blurry world of simreality.....took off from New Caledonia at 20h30 and after a well deserved 2 and a half hour sleep we touched down at Brisbane International.
Well, it was not all sleep as I had an hour long chat to a girl in the seat next to me. A Chinese-Australian, she told me how Australia is fast becoming the place of choice for many people from the Far East to settle.

Travel gives one a novel perspective and I cannot help wondering how this compares to the Chinese 'invasion' of Africa that we are experiencing in our part of the world. Such is chance, that as a result of who I sat next to on the plane I will be seeing Brisbane with entirely different eyes.....and will eat out tomorrow night at the best Eastern restaurant in the city! That's if I can find the hurredly scribbled mobile number for Wan Lee.

Will all passengers for Rockhampton....

2009-06-07T06:40:00.000-07:00

First....WISDOM from the KITCHEN!

Says Gran with a rather deadly looking kitchen knife in her hand....
"The Indians are killing each other wholesale - as soon as they get cross with their lovers they kill them. Then they commit hurry curry. I far prefer the plain dried peaches for my stewed fruit. The apricots are very sour. (Well, say I, just take the apricots out). No, that's not necessary. I cook it all and the sour taste goes away."

The image above comes from a magnificent and inspiring web adventure site...a must for all aviators and/or anyone with itchy feet!

See www.smilingflier.com

I came across this site whilst researching the route for the virtual flying adventure I conceived of in my previous blog. It is indeed exciting to have stumbled upon like minded fellow travelling wilberries and I am hoping they are happy for me to use some of their images to promote their and my (virtual cousin!) adventures!

Well, route planning is now complete and all systems are set to go.
Before I leave, I shall once again explore the reasons for such an apparently time consuming exercise. The entire route is approx. 3400Nm. That equals 6500 km. At an average flying speed of 200kts it will take 17 hours in the air. That is 17 hours of my time, my laptop time and my broadband time. What on earth can justify this?
Well, unless I turn into Superman or that Peter Speed lookalike who owns Virgin Air, I am unlikely to ever visit places like Rockhampton, Australia or Kudang in Indos. But....at my fingertips I have the greatest information resource in the history of mankind, the Internet, and I realized long ago that, combined with a definite mission, this enables me to have a very close experience of things that otherwise are out of physical reach.

Every decent game has a set of rules and these are mine:
1) At all times the aircraft is flown to real world safety and procedural norms.
2) Real weather conditions are to be dowloaded and used.
3) Where ATC is available on the IVAO network it must be used.
4) It is not strictly required to fly IVAO where no ATC is available as the MSFS option provides a reasonable traffic and ATC model. However all hours must be logged.
5) En route photos must be taken and archived as proof of the journey. These are to be integrated into the Google derived narrative of the journey.
6) Additional benefit and kudos are gained by having close encounters with the real world. For example, encouraging other virtual fliers to join me or making contact with real people or organizations en route.
7) As far as possible real world times are to be observed. However, if the scenery flown over is particularly impressive then it can be justified to shift time zone but retain real weather.
8) The ultimate aim of this venture is to add to my experience as a virtual/real aviator, increase my knowledge of the world and its people and push myself towards more real life travel and adventure.
9) All virtual time must be balanced out by outdoors physical experience of some sort, lest I become a laptop potato. The trouble is this leaves very little time for work.

The aircraft I am using is a Pilatus PC-12, the only single engined plane to be rated for trans-oceanic flight. I have built up this aircraft specifically to my own requirements with 2 onboard radar systems (Forward looking ground and TCAS traffic radar). Having spent some time in the right seat of a real world PC-12 I have come to respect this immensely safe and reliable plane.

Another reminder to check out http://www.smilingflyer.com/

It is a real world story of a bunch of aviator-adventurers who did what I am doing in the virtual world. Now why didn't I know about them when they were recruiting a filmmaker!! It is also the first example of how merely getting an idea and running with it attracts all sorts of exciting possibilities! Let's see where this one goes (Just got to make sure I stay alive and healthy!).

Here is the first leg:
1) Depart Ils Des Pines AP (New Caledonia) and head west over the Atlantic Ocean for the Eastern Australian city of Rockhampton.
2) I know little of Rockhampton except that its airport was voted Australia's top AP in 2007 and approx 66000 passengers pass through it annually. By the time I leave Rockhampton, I will know a lot more and maybe, even know some people there!

MAPS:
1) World Route Map.
2) Departure Location
3) Destination Location

Once I am in the air on this leg my intention is to spend some of my flying time (in between checks) reading up more about Flight Planning over long distances (esp over sea).
Wikipedia has a marvelous resource on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_planning

Enough now....time to file a plan and head off into the sunset!

Log: 090607 - 16h45 - depart NWWE

Had to delay my departure by 15 minutes as some oke in an Embraer jet flew in (from the wrong direction), no landing lights and no communicating of his intentions. He (or she) then disappeared (maybe for a loo break) then just as I was lining up on runway 1o there he appeared at the other end of the runway, about to take off! Being a man of reason, I communicated my intention to vacate, got no reply and off he took. What a rude little person! But what the heck, there was a bright moon and half an hour into my trip I was greeted with the first glimmers of a Pacific Ocean sunrise. The reason that it is in front of me is because I diverted back to New Caledonia after a radio call came in requesting pilots to help in the Canary Islands as a new ATC guy was doing his exams. What the hell, let's suspend reality for a while and help out.
ps. note the natty little TCAS radar on the left. A nice added bit of realism is that you have to keep a watch on the traffic otherwise a midair collision is quite possible, especially when in uncontrolled airspace.

and the Latter Day Saints..

2009-06-02T02:13:00.000-07:00

Last time I thanked Beverley for inspiring me to get off my thin ass and blog. Today, I must thank Cheryl King for her parting volley and insight that has inspired a whole new direction in my life. This mail came at the very end of a long debate about the merits of superstition V a naturalistic universe. To quote:

=======
Dear Budgie

This is far too wordy too wade through, I don’t have time at work for chain letters or people who (it appears at a first quick glance/skim through) like to think their own intellectualism compares with Einstein.

All the best as you try to convince people to line up with your great faith in whatever…..

Cheryl
==========

What a good idea! I had not thought of that! Start my own religion...
First I need a management team, some saints. Well, last night, one of the new recruits came to me in a dream. He looked remarkably like David Basckin, the well known Durban stand up comedian and coffee aficionado.

Thus spake he: "Verily I say unto you, mere sleeping intellectual charlatan. Dwell not in the fleeting illusion of the moment. For as each second comes so surely does it come to pass, leaving little or no time to ponder upon the nature of the firmament. Take instead upon your time, the graven image of an LG Wide Screen TV, for herein lies the Truth, the frontal Truth, the sideways Truth and a 3 year all risks warranty. And so it shall pass, that the time it shall take to take in all that HDTV can offer shall be no less or more than one day being 1 sixth of the time taken in the creation of All. And in as much as thou shalt dwell in the presence of this one day, be content in that which is written to be 'living in the moment.'"

"Phew, St. David of the coffee machine, can I have that in simple language"
"Sure thing," he replied.

If you really want to live your life, then treat it as a series of days, each one containing everything that you wish for or strive for in Life. If you live from moment to moment, there is no time between expectation and history, but in a day there are many hours which, if well spent can allow us to live our lives one fruitful and bountious day at a time. Imagine that the day's possibilities fill the image on an LG Widescreen TV before you. Get up, get out and DON' TALK...DO! Live your life each day!

I am now going to go on a mini adventure to the Pavilion Mall to meet people, buy batteries and tapes and get some fresh air, for tomorrow it's off to the land of the Zulus!

There is however, space for my regular, Wisdom from the Kitchen!

Mum: Zuma says he's going to give electricity to everybody and now Eskom says they are putting up the price by 75%! It went up 30% last month and I am now paying R300! If they double it I will be paying R500. Pay is the name of the game at the moment.
Our South African marmalade's not bad at all.

(Ed: Zuma: new S African president. Eskom: Electricity Utility Company. Currency: $1 = R10)

On a sad and serious note:

The murder of Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation's few providers of late-term abortions despite decades of protests and attacks, brings into sharp focus the recent online debate I have engaged in over the danger of the fundamentalist religious right and the tacit support given to their lunacy by seemingly more innocuous incarnations of religiosity.

There was no immediate word of the motive Tiller's assailant. But the doctor's violent death was the latest in a string of shootings and bombings over two decades directed against abortion clinics, doctors and staff.

Long a focus of national anti-abortion groups, including a summer-long protest in 1991, Tiller was shot in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church, Stolz said. Tiller's attorney, Dan Monnat, said Tiller's wife, Jeanne, was in the choir at the time.

President Barack Obama said he was "shocked and outraged" by the murder. "However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence," he said.

Whilst many prolife organizations have condemned the murder, the voice of the American Taliban is loud and clear still and it is not difficult to see how this can fuel the fire of murder and mayhem.

Where the hell is New Caledonia?

2009-05-31T14:36:00.000-07:00

What follows is a curious mix of fact and fiction, real and fantastical. The images are some mine, some others', some photoshopped, some cropped and blurred. But all represent a fleeting memory that exists somewhere in my neural pathways.....so, thanks to anyone whose original neurons have found a home here.....if you are unhappy with my particular version of creative commons then I am glad to photoshop the originals till it looks like something totally different. Now, that's ART(ful) dodging.

The link between the left and right brain of us humans is the Corpus Callosum.
This thick network of 200 million nerve fibres transmits neuron signals between the logical, analytical left and the intuitive, creative and expressive right. For a wide range of individual reasons, we each tend to have a predominant side which strongly influences the way we see and interact with the world and how, in turn, the world sees us.

Partly as a result of my close experience of my girlfriend's brothers' recent major left brain stroke (see http://musemed.blogspot.com) I have become strongly interested in this field.

Pschological tests show me that I am about 60-40% right brain dominant, which seems to concur with my conscious experience of life. Knowing this and understanding that balance in all things is beneficial, I am increasingly aware of the need to actively balance my left/right brain activities.
========
My Assessment results: You possess an interesting balance of hemispheric and sensory characteristics, with a slight right-brain dominance and a slight preference for visual processing.
Since neither of these is completely centered, you lack the indecision and second-guessing associated with other patterns. You have a distinct preference for creativity and intuition with seemingly sufficient verbal skills to be able to translate in any meaningful way to yourself and others.
You tend to see things in "wholes" without surrendering the ability to attend to details. You can give them sufficient notice to be able to utitlize and incorporate them as part of an overall pattern.
In the same way, while you are active and process information simultaneously, you demonstrate a capacity for sequencing as well as reflection which allows for some "inner dialogue."
All in all, you are likely to be quite content with yourself and your style although at times it will not necessarily be appreciated by others. You have sufficient confidence to not second-guess yourself, but rather to use your critical faculties in a way that enhances, rather than limits, your creativity.
You can learn in either mode although far more efficiently within the visual mode. It is likely that in listening to conversations or lecture materials you simultaneously translate into pictures which enhance and elaborate on the meaning.
It is most likely that you will gravitate towards those endeavors which are predominantly visual but include some logic or structuring. You may either work particularly hard at cultivating your auditory skills or risk "missing out" on being able to efficiently process what you learn. Your own intuitive skills will at times interfere with your capacity to listen to others, which is something else you may need to take into account.
========

For some years I have been a devotee of computer based flight simulation. It has provided me with an intellectual and fun hobby that requires a lot of left brain focus and analytical acuity. The navigation and procedures involved in aviation are set in stone and leave little room for 'creative' divergence.
On the other hand, aviation only exists because man had a dream of 'breaking the surly bonds of earth'. The Wright brothers were both dreamers and technicians and this is as true as ever for almost all those of us who pursue the pleasure of flight in some way.

In March 2001, I set off from Johannesburg International Airport on a round the world virtual flight; across Africa, to Europe, then via Istanbul across the Caspian sea to Asia. I landed in and subsequently left Kabul the day after the US invasion began, flying by night across the Kyber Pass to what is now the no man's land between Afganistann and Pakistan. India, Nepal, Mt Everset, the Middle East and then the Holy Land were my fantasy destinations for several years and by early 2009 I had only reached Lake Malawi, en route back to S Africa.
See http://madgodcomix.netfirms.com/Bigglesworth.htm

What took so much time? Each place I visited, I googled and poured over images of the people and places nearby. I read copiously about the history of the region and on some occasions actually made friends with people who I contacted over the internet.
Sometimes, my dream world and reality coincided when I had an opportunity to visit my ethereal world in reality. It was always strange arriving in a city that I 'had already been to', knowing the sights and sounds and often the local geography well.

On a recent visit to Washington DC, I took a week off to do a cycle trip up the Potomac River, a journey I had already made many times virtually.
Sometimes I have found myself in conversation with other travellers, comparing travel tales and I talk so intimately about a remote place on the planet that they cannot believe that I have not actually been there.
As time goes by I am sure that in my own brain the divide between real and virtual will blur. What a boon for old age!!

Over the years the software for flight simming has meteorically improved and so has the virtual aviation world. This is a computer network (several actually) which allows simming enthusiasts to fly together online, co-ordinated in a hyper real simulation of modern Air Traffic Control.
Here, fear of failure is a very real emotion and it is indeed a place where many real world pilots and ATC folk keep their skills honed.

The level of simulation software is also at an extraordinary high level, with the 2 main competing packages having different strengths. Microsoft's FLight Simulator is well established in the online community with a high level of navigational integrity and scope and excellent airplane and scenery models.

X-plane, however, is the leader by far, if the actual flight accuracy and experience is judged. Created entirely by one man, an aeronautical engineer who wanted to hone his IFR (Instrument flying) skills, X-plane has the singular credibility of being rated by the FAA (Federal Aviation Authority of USA) as being accurate enough to be used to gain additional hours towards real life licences. This software is the same engine used to power many high grade commercial simulators used in commercial training environments. Tests have shown a max 10% deviation in the flying model on almost any flying craft correctly simulated.
I have decided to share some of this L-R brain world with you on my blog. So come with me as I shrink this fantastical planet called Earth....from the comfort of my laptop. Who knows maybe you will be drawn into this wonderful world of armchair adventure too. If so, mail me on budgiesmith@gmail.com and I'll get you up to speed.

Saturday 30th May 2009. Online Day in New Caledonia.
"Where the heck is New Caledonia?", I asked.
An hour later, having logged onto IVAO (International Virtual Aviation Org.), I was flying towards an island paradise called Ils Des Pines. (The Island of Pines). Situated to the East of Australia, New Caledonia is a group of tropical islands owned by France, relatively unpopulated and a popular holiday destination for those in the know. On the globe it is the sprinkling of islands sitting on top of the curly blue ridge in the ocean to the east of Aus.

I landed at Aeroporte Ils Des Pines and took the long forest drive to the main town on the east coast.
The Ils Des Pines is nicknamed 'The Closest Island to Paradise' and is especially famous for diving.

En route I stopped at some local attractions, the most magical of which was the Grotto de la Reine Horthense, which engulfed me like a glossy postcard.

The main drag from the airport cut through the tropical forestland like a scythe, taking me into the main town.

The first thing that struck me was how similar it is to the town of my birth, Durban. Palms and Flamboyant trees abound and like Natal in the 60s, the roads are wide and unbusy.

It seems that the locals are quite overwhelmed by all the splendour around them and have, over the years, built quite a number of quaint eglises (churches), that are both reminiscent of a time long gone and also well attended on Sundays.

Not being a religious man, however, my road took me to another place of worship, the lagoon or Bale St Josephs.
Suddenly I was back in Madagascar... or was it Zanzibar or Mombasa...I sat for for some time gazing at the irridescent blue ocean wondering whether this was a dream.....or real...

Next blogtime: I fly from New Caledonia towards Indos and the famed Jade Lake in the hidden crater of Mt Rinjani, revered as the home of the gods and by us less religious, as the world's 4th best tourist destination.

If you want to join me on this journey, join my Twitter group.

Where's Willy & all that Jazz..

2009-05-27T01:27:00.000-07:00

OK Beverley! I plead guily. I'm a lazy good for nothing diverted attention follower of sideways inconsequences of note who has neglected his blog and his 3 faithful readers.

Actually, it only dawned on me today the real meaning of the announcement of the findings of the first stage of the work on the 'new' German fossil, fondly called 'Ida'.
(my girlfriend is delighted!)

The carefully timed nu & traditional media hype around Ida is, I believe, a positive development. The Scientific front (for the Liberation of the Human Mind) is at last understanding that to compete for the hearts and minds of orrinerry folk we need to think like Hollywood and Obama. The risk is that the allure of fame and money will obscure their commitment to due scientific peer review and the possibility of not catching the ball they have so adeptly thrown.

My take on Ida is:

If this is indeed what it certainly seems to be...then this week has heralded one of the greatest scientific discoveries ever. It is also a secure nail in the creationist (anti-evolutionist) coffin. However, in true form, these pathetic apologists are still flaying around in their strait jackets digging up lame arguments about the irrelevance of Ida. Once again, a little common sense and a good reading of their arguments reveals how weak they are.
As people passionate about the method of modern Science, we are, as always, totally subject to the ongoing march of new evidence and retain uitmost respect for the gradual but inevitable process that hones our understanding of where the Truth lies.
Once again, I reaffirm my dismay and active opposition to the dogma of the devotees of 2000 year old mysticism.

That said, allow me to give some opera notes for this meg-edition of dontalkdo.

1) A brief history of my recent trip to Nairobi, our impressive guests and my early return to SA where I am readjusting to a crime and violence ridden society.
2) Why I am in love with Nairobi.
3) Why I am not in love with God(s), including the complete history of our recent Science V The Fundamentalists email debate.
4) Why Music and Art are keys to unlocking our natural abundance, including the Angel's exhibition.
5) Introducing my new online introduction to Evolution and all that follows...

(1) I am in love!

They asked me, "Where is your home?" and I replied, "South Africa, my heart, my head and home!.....but, I have met and fallen in love with a beautiful woman called, Kenya."

So it was that I returned to the land of rumbling roads and red Masai, where the mountains rise cool from the torrid rift valley.

Downtown Nairobi gripped me again in her chaotic camaraderie with the evening escapes to old Indian town for crushed sugar juice and Jelabee.

One visitor melted into the next and we left the buildings for the jazz of the deep south and another creatively transcultural experience.

Visitor went and visitor came and hand in hand we made music and sang together on the crest of the Ngong Hills. Here, every child shepherd has a ring of bright bracelets strung and a smile for patient strangers. The Nairobi walking club kidnapped us for a photo session, amazed to hear that our friend, Steve has a house at the very southern tip of the Rift, in Ubumbo, South Africa.

All of which brings me to part (2)
Why I am in love with Nairobi.

Meanwhile, back in South Africa...

WOT!?

2009-04-03T02:52:00.000-07:00

A myth is a fixed way of looking at the world which cannot be destroyed because, looked at through the myth, all evidence supports the myth.
-Edward De Bono, consultant, writer, and speaker (1933- )

Think sideways, live creatively, eat vegetables.

Disclaimer: I, Andre J Smith, take no responsibility for any disastrous results, technical or emotional, that may occur as a result of your opening and/or reading/viewing any of the URLs presented in this blog.

...and remember to click on the images to enlarge.

STORY ONE - 'Wisdom from the Kitchen' (2)

My remarkable mother in her inimitable fashion once again puts the world into perspective.

Image: Joost van der Westhuizen, SA Rugby hero and role model allegedly exposed in sordid drug taking, rampant sex video - exotic dancer with hidden camera passes lie detector test.

There is no need to see the video, but if you must, be aware, it's horrible. The video is of excruciating cruelty. Its painful silences affect us all deeply. If we don't protect humans from this type of brutality, we become accomplices.

The alleged tumble to infamy of a national hero can take on Shakespearian heights and fuel a media frenzy. In a remarkable website called 'Prophesy.co.za' the Truth is revealed about the Joost affair.

In another blog from the Alpha Christian Community we read how Rugby competes with Religion for the passion of the faithful.
Joost, a 'committed Christian' and family man plays centre stage with the real baddy, Luke Watson (SA rugby player antihero) who exposed himself in quite a different way........hear Watson's point of view.

Mum (on Joost): "Now there's a young man who has ruined his life and he had so much going for him!"
Me: "Well, I really don't want to hear about him. There are far more important things happening, like the Dalai Llama."
Mum: "The Llama? What's interesting about him? He's just an old Chinaman.

Background: The Dalai Llama has been refused a visa by the South African government after apparent pressure from Chinese government, preventing him from attending a small Peace conference in the 50th anniversary year of the subjugation of Tibet by the Red Army.

The net result is that the issue and related Tibetan cause has been blown up in the press, thus creating far more awareness about the real bad deal that the Tibetans have courtesy of the Chinese government.

Mum then goes on to say... "Dirk's (butchery) has the the best honey. They have their own apiaries and don't add any Golden Syrup. They also have the best jams - gooseberry, strawberry, marmalade. Even their apricot jam is nice."

and a little later.....

Mum: "Somebody once told me that the more you burglar guard your home the more robberies you have and the less burglar guards, the fewer robberies. Look, for example at my friend Michele. Her home is so burglar guarded that it is now impossible to get in!"

Such is the human mind.
See the full story...read about the man who got onto the receiving end of his diving speargun and now no longer wants to spear fish!

In that vein...

Today's blog was inspired by Mr Fellows-Prynne...once again.

This time it was his inviting us to sign an online petition in response to a film purported to be of little puppies being skinned alive for their fur. (I have not watched it yet but in the interests of numedia, I will, during one of my 35 tea breaks today. Yes, Rod, I too have some difficulty deliberately exposing myself to images of abuse.)
However, both myself and my compatriot Clive Read, excused ourselves from the list on the grounds of (1) the credibility of a Net based petition and (2) The effectiveness of a Net based petition.

Here are the details. Decide for yourself:

Quote from email: 'There is no need to see the video, but if you must, be aware, it's horrible. The following video is of excruciating violence. Its painful silences affect us all deeply. If we don't protect animals from this type of brutality, we become accomplices. '
(ed: sounds a bit like those religious mails I keep getting telling me that if I don't send it on something terrible will happen to my children! Well, I have ALWAYS deleted them and my daughter is currently on the Dean's List of top academic performers and she does not drink, so there!)

My standpoint came from the last 3 weeks of reformatting and installing my laptop HDD after a blistering viral assault and finally abandoning a long standing email address for the huge amount of offers of Viagra, Rolexes and Penile extenders.

The rule is that if you spend enough time on Google you will have all the answers to all your questions. This also means (like me) that you will have accumulated a huge amount of downloaded programs to solve these little problems. In the last 10 days I have been reformatting my laptop and setting it up to play any kind of video or audio media that should come its way. The result is that I now have 18 media players, 6 format converters and 5 graphic manipulators. The marvellous thing is that all this is free and legal, the unmarvellous thing is that in spending so much time searching the NET you end up catching the tech equivalent of a 1000 flesh eating bacteria. And this is why I am recommending thet you throw away Microsoft Internet Explorer and start a new life with FIREFOX!!!!!!
SInce crossing over myself last week I have experienced a whole new world of delight. Most important is the radical decrease in infections as most viral designers use IE for their gateway. Secondly, you can configure FIREFOX to suit your individual needs with a host of free addons. I have a wonderful tool called WOT, which gives every site I consider opening an instant rating in terms of its reliability, safety, child friendliness etc. Using this I feel a lot more confident to run around the NET looking for those tasty free morsels of software

As an example of how much fun WOT can be, I googled the following 'Evil unchristian naked bodies' and came up with this website:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2358035.ece

Before I opened the site I WOTTED it and got the following rating:

Trustworthiness 100%
Vendor reliability 100%
Privacy 100%
Child Safety 100%

With that kind of recommendation what can go wrong!?

As quoted>>

From The Times Online
August 31, 2007
Vicars ban ‘un-Christian’ yoga for toddlers
Simon de Bruxelles

The children’s exercise class has been banned from two church halls because it is teaching yoga. The group has been turned away by vicars who described yoga as a sham and un-Christian.

Louise Woodcock, 41, who was looking for a new home for her Yum Yum Yoga class for toddlers was turned away by the Silver Street Baptist Church and St James’s Anglican Church in Taunton, Somerset.

Miss Woodcock says that the ban is ridiculous as the classes simply involve music and movement with no religious content. She said: “I couldn’t believe it when they suddenly said I couldn’t have the hall any more because yoga is against their Christian ethos. It’s crazy because we’re talking about kids pretending to be animals and doing exercise routines to rhymes.

Not so reverent Mr.Farrar defended the decision yesterday. He said: “We are a Christian organisation and when we let rooms to people we want them to understand that they must be fully in line with our Christian ethos.

“Clearly, yoga impinges on the spiritual life of people in a way which we as Christians don’t believe is the same as our ethos.

“If it was just a group of children singing nursery rhymes, there wouldn’t be a problem but she’s called it yoga and therefore there is a dividing line we’re not prepared to cross.”

The Rev Tim Jones, vicar of St James’s, said: “Any alternative philosophies or beliefs are offering a sham - and at St James’s Church we want people to have the real thing. Yoga has its roots in Hinduism, and attempts to use exercises and relaxation techniques to put a person into a calm frame of mind - in touch with some kind of impersonal spiritual reality.

The next test I did was to Google 'free illegal software with pictures of abused feminists'.

I got 6500 hits but none with any cautionary ratings....so I tried again and Googled 'download safe version of legal software'

Third on the list is www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/e_safe-download.html
described as "Safe and 100% Legal. Recommend hot songs to download. Try music before download ... MyWeb's Safe Surfin' software helps keep your kids safe on the Internet. ..."

How can I go wrong?
Well, not according to the WOT Meter!

I quote from the comments of previously affected users:
'This site is really dangerous! Viruses in very download! This site is well known for distributing Malware! Never trust people who say they are good!'
With that kind of warning I shut down my laptop, had a cold shower and joined the Catholic Church.
So, there you have it. NEVER trust what pops up on the NET. Always have a backstop and mine is FIREFOX and WOT!

With all these websites now open on my laptop it becomes a heck of a job finding the one I referenced 8 minutes ago....but a free FIREFOX Addon called FOX TAB solves this by turning your PC in an Apple MAC!

With a flick of the wrist your websites fly around the screen in a most sexy fashion making editing and selection fun and efficient.

Addendum:

My dear late Professor, Elizabeth Sneddon, lover of roses and all things feline, repeatedly said, "I despise all priests, in whatever shape or form they come. They have an arrogance and self-importance that is based on nothing and claims the universe".
I always rather liked that sentiment, if not thinking it a twee radical. However, after hearing the archbishop of atheism talk at the University of Cape Town earlier this week, I have decided that more action is needed on this front. (ArchTutu is on my exempt list b.t.w.)

Daniel Dennet is one of the so called '4 horsemen of the Apocolypse'. Richard Dawkins,Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris are the others with special mention going to Magicman James Randi. Between them they are spearheading an evolutionary movement to give back a voice to the fastest growing spiritual movement in the world, viz that of people who don't believe in anything. After centuries of playing the nice guys and having our patient and silent generosity of spirit abused and taken for granted, it is now time for the voice of Truth to be heard. I unhesitatingly say 'Truth' with the reservation that no man can have a monopoly on 'Truth' (or Beauty, for that matter).
Instead of waxing off about Dan Dennet I prefer to let him talk for himself. Here is a list of great and entertaining links.

But first let me share what Richard Dawkins had to say about Daniel:

In honour of Dan Dennett
by Richard Dawkins
Speech in honour of Dan Dennett, presenting him with the Richard Dawkins Award for 2007 at the Crystal City conference of the Atheist Alliance International

Watch the video of this presentation here

Dan Dennett is a year younger than me, almost to the day. But I must admit that I have grown to think of him as a sort of intellectual elder brother. Since the deaths of Bill Hamilton and John Maynard Smith, I have been rather short of intellectual heroes to consult on difficult questions. Thank goodness we still have Dan Dennett. A year or so ago, it seemed that it might be a close run thing. I remember the shock followed by deep gloom that was cast over a large group of people in a New York theatre, when we were informed that Dan had collapsed and was undergoing emergency surgery which seemed - or so we were informed - unlikely to succeed. Heroic surgery to save an intellectual hero, not just a national treasure but a world treasure, at least to the world of the mind.

Many of you will have read the stirring testimonial that he wrote while he was in recovery. Actually called 'Thank Goodness'. It was widely published all over the internet, and was read out to those gathered in San Diego for the Beyond Belief conference. In it Dan mentioned his religious friends who had prayed for his recovery. He was touched by their efforts on his behalf, and he chose to interpret their words as meaning that they had been thinking of him. But he added:

I am not joking when I say that I have had to forgive my friends who said that they were PRAYING for me. I have resisted the temptation to respond "Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?" I feel about this the same way I would feel if one of them said "I just paid a voodoo doctor to cast a spell for your health." What a gullible waste of money that could have been spent on more important projects! Don't expect me to be grateful, or even indifferent. I do appreciate the affection and generosity of spirit that motivated you, but wish you had found a more reasonable way of expressing it.

Dan considered the impulse he might have felt to say 'Thank God' for his recovery. He asked himself whether his near death experience had been some kind of epiphany. I find his response to this so stirring that I again want to read it out:

Yes, I did have an epiphany. I saw with greater clarity than ever before in my life that when I say "Thank goodness!" this is not merely a euphemism for "Thank God!" (We atheists don't believe that there is any God to thank.) I really do mean THANK GOODNESS! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today. It is a worthy recipient of the gratitude I feel today, and I want to celebrate that fact here and now.

To whom, then, do I owe a debt of gratitude? To the cardiologist who has kept me alive and ticking for years, and who swiftly and confidently rejected the original diagnosis of nothing worse than pneumonia. To the surgeons, neurologists, anesthesiologists, and the perfusionist, who kept my systems going for many hours under daunting circumstances. To the dozen or so physician assistants, and to nurses and physical therapists and x-ray technicians and a small army of phlebotomists so deft that you hardly know they are drawing your blood, and the people who brought the meals, kept my room clean, did the mountains of laundry generated by such a messy case, wheel-chaired me to x-ray, and so forth. These people came from Uganda, Kenya, Liberia, Haiti, the Philippines, Croatia, Russia, China, Korea, India - and the United States, of course - and I have never seen more impressive mutual respect, as they helped each other out and checked each other's work. But for all their teamwork, this local gang could not have done their jobs without the huge background of contributions from others. I remember with gratitude my late friend and Tufts colleague, physicist Allan Cormack, who shared the Nobel Prize for his invention of the c-t scanner. Allan - you have posthumously saved yet another life, but who's counting? The world is better for the work you did. Thank goodness. Then there is the whole system of medicine, both the science and the technology, without which the best-intentioned efforts of individuals would be roughly useless. So I am grateful to the editorial boards and referees, past and present, of Science, Nature, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, and all the other institutions of science and medicine that keep churning out improvements, detecting and correcting flaws.

I think you can see why Dan Dennett is my intellectual hero.

He is one of today's most distinguished philosophers, but among philosophers I would describe him as a scientist's philosopher. Many philosophers call themselves philosophers of science. But rather few of them take the trouble to learn much science, to immerse themselves in the scientific literature, to talk to working scientists and understand what makes them tick. One of the things that strikes me about reading Dan's books is how much science I learn from them. New science, new experimental results, fascinating scientific research, often still unpublished but which Dan knows about because he keeps his ear to the scientific ground and travels to visit laboratories, where is he always an honoured guest.

He is, indeed, a scientist as much as he is a philosopher, and he is also a superb explainer. Where other philosophers are mainly interested in showing off how clever they are to their colleagues, Dan really really wants to be understood. He seems to make no distinction between a book written for lay people and a book written for professional philosophers, and this is something I also aspire to when writing for professional scientists. Clarity is clarity, and it doesn't matter who you are writing for. There should be no need to write separate 'popular' books which dumb down the books that are written for professionals.

Dan thinks long and hard, not only about the philosophy itself but about the best way to explain it. He is a great coiner of phrases, an inventive deviser of metaphors, a vivid painter of mental images. 'Intuition pump' is one of his phrases, and it well describes exactly what he does when he is explaining something difficult to his readers. His celebrated lecture, 'Where am I?' is a tour de force of the explainer's art, combining comedy and high drama with the usual weapons of the lecturer. Notions like 'skyhook' and 'crane', the 'Cartesian theater', the 'Library of Mendel', 'Universal Acid', all these are superb intuition pumps, crafted to assist the reader to accompany him on an exciting mental adventure.

He is a leading thinker in a wide range of important philosophical topics, including philosophy of mind, the problem of free will, consciousness, evolution, and of course religion. Breaking the Spell is a pivotal contribution to the rather exhilarating revival which secularism is enjoying at the moment.

In all these fields, as I said, I look up to him as an intellectual hero. Elder brother may be, but also dynamic enfant terrible of the mind, and there is no paradox in the contrast. It is a huge pleasure and honour to me to present this award to Dan, and the fact that the award is in my name redoubles the pleasure and quadruples the honour.

LINKS to Daniel Dennet:
1) Daniel's Home Page
2) Daniel at TED 2006 - Scientific rebuttal to Rick Warren
3) Daniel Dennet Multimedia Links
4) Can we know our own minds?
5) What is consciousness?
6) Richard Dawkins website

PARTING NOTE. (F flat da capo)

A primary shool learner comes home and tells her mum that they learnt about the Exodus. 'What did they tell you?' asks mum.
'Well', replies the little girl, 'Moses had to leave Egypt very fast with all his people who were Jews. When they got to the Red Sea they were being chased by the Egyptian army. The Israeli army engineers quickly built a bridge across the sea and Moses and his friends escaped across it. When the Egyptians followed them over the bridge, the Israeli airforce bombed the bridge and they all drowned.'
'What!' said her mum, 'They told you that at school!'
'Not really' said the child, 'but if I told you what they really taught us you would never believe it.'

...and that was that. Cape Town, the wonderful city, her wonderful university and her wonderful airport.

New York! Nyawk!

2009-03-30T06:54:00.001-07:00

Heaven is my woman's love!!! That's been my position for the last decade or so. Now it's changed.
Heaven is my woman's love ..... in New York.

I don't understand why it took so long to realize that heaven needs a place as well as an emotion. That, of course is the problem with the notion of heaven held sacrosanct by a multitude of 21st century superstitious cults. I can buy into the concept of working towards a time of long term emotional bliss followed by the quiet bliss of death and happily call it 'Heaven on earth"; but to actually imagine that there may possibly be a 'place' somewhere out there and after the here and now is pushing it a bit, even in my book.

So keen are the high priests of the SM (Superstitious Movement) to ensure ongoing credibility for their Babelic towers of belief that they have on offer a million pound prize for anyone who manages in some way to contribute to the convergence of Science and Superstition. And, it seems that it does not take an awful lot to get it.
This year's winner of the Templeton Prize is Bernard D'Espagnat, 87, professor emeritus of theoretical physics at the University of Paris-Sud, well known for his work on quantum mechanics. D'Espagnat boasts an impressive scientific pedigree, having worked with Nobel laureates Louis de Broglie, Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr.
But what exactly earned him the $14 million dollars?
Well, briefly, Bernard expouses that through science we can glimpse some basic structures of reality, but much of it remains an infinite, eternal mystery.

In his own words: "There must exist, beyond mere appearances … a 'veiled reality' that science does not describe but only glimpses uncertainly. In turn, contrary to those who claim that matter is the only reality, the possibility that other means, including spirituality, may also provide a window on ultimate reality cannot be ruled out, even by cogent scientific arguments."

What lets him off the hook for me is that it is clearly not him that has made the spurious leap from 'not ruling out' spiritual interpretations of truth, to the existance of a hyperethereal god.
He did, however, accept the money......

Well, what has this all to do with New York?

Coming from an urban South Africa and getting on a big SAA jet bound north-west is somewhat like having been told on arrival in Dante's Inferno, that you are the wrong guy, go home!
Don't get me wrong - My much loved homeland is not Hell, in fact looking at the early winter face of Table Mountain as I type this confirms again that this land is clearly a prime candidate for a geographical heaven. Take away Cape Town, all the people and the discontented winter and paradise just sits there waiting to be populated with a real Democracy home grown from the fresh seeds of Ubuntu and creative thinking...

The view from the plane window on final approach to the JF Kennedy International is one of prosaic swamps and painted ocean. Neat suburbs which compete for order with the long line of waiting jets, clearly not wanting to leave.

And so I arrived in the new country, not unlike a few million immigrants before me, full of confidence and forgetful of what I had left behind and the first thing I found was what I thought I had left behind - I was the only white person in the terminal building, well, that is until Ida arrived. She did not notice that particular fact, probably having flown in from Nairobi, but I had come from SA, whose airports are full of whitees.
That particular observation had no further purpose so on the skytrain we jumped and off the skytrain and on the overland and into the subway and out at Grand Central Station.

From this point on you are in heaven. If I was asked what heaven is like when I was a weeny beeny 5 year old I would have had an easy answer - "Like getting locked up in the biggest toy shop in the world and nobody knows! All night you are fed free cookies and coolies and nobody shouts at you the next day. When you walk home the next day, nobody steals your new toys, because everyone you meet seems to have had their own night in toy shop time.

OK, I know you saying that I am blind to the poverty and suffering in the ghetto, the misery of the absolutely wealthy and the decadence of the society. Yes! It's all an illusion. Just like heaven, one big illusion, but, for ten days and ten nights, it worked for me. In fact it worked so well for me that I am back in Dante's South Africa and all I can see is friendly people, beautiful places and sunshine. Like a good massage, Paradise has a way of putting stars in your eyes....for a while.
This is the secret of travel. Coming and going between home and foreign soil, one hovers in the emotion of delight and positivity, of seeing new things in old places and realizing dreams. A sort of rapid turnaround reincarnation.

So, here I am, back in my own little March 2009 corner of heaven, Cape Town, gazing at a remarkable Newspaper photo. Remarkable, because in the same week, the SA government refused the Dalai Llama a visa on the grounds that his being at a small local Peace conference would draw unnecessary attention away from the 1020 Soccer World cup hype. It turns out that it was really as a result of pressure from the Chinese government who probably said something like, "If you let that terrorist in we will not sell you any more ultra cheap T-shirts made with child labour....or rescind the fortune cookies we gave to Jacobus 2Headman Zuma.
One conspiracy theory doing the rounds in my head is that the SA government has found an ingenious way of having it's vetkoek and eating it. By adhering to the diplomatic (and fascist) dictates of the Chinese not so socialists and refusing the Llama chap a visa they have rocketed the Tibet cause sky high locally and internationally and the Dalai's name is now fully household! Whether the cronies at Luthuli house (whoops!...loyal members of the ANC) actually thought this one out in advance I will leave to you....

'sno good!

2009-03-03T00:54:00.000-08:00

NEVER NeVER neVER NeVer nevEr never, EVER get blase about the snow. Never tire of forests or flying or fresh fish on a fire. Never forget the first time you did it, or the last time you saw it, or that you still dream of doing it. Never lose the lure of Life or Life will lose you too.

Do'know why, I am flying in the sky, above the weather....

2009-02-27T08:29:00.001-08:00

Seems like all the blogging paid off.
Got a comment on my 'Jerry and the Hatricks' blog from a good friend last week. "Seems like you have gone totally eccentric..."
well, lunacy pays off and out of the blue comes an offer to assist with a blog from the other side of the world........so, watch this spot.
today's update brought to you from seat 57C SAA flight UA5475 to Dakar and beyond.
The sad news is that the entire staff of the Microsoft division that has been heroically working on Microsoft Flightsim for almost 25 years has been given 48hrs notice......I wonder if I can find a copy of X-plane in Senegal?
Flying in and out of African aiports is always fun. Luggage on the runway and jostling with swathes of exotic people....
But, hold on! What's this? Yellow cabs and Springsteen?

Dakar was a one hour midnight stop, never left the plane - thorough US homeland security check for all flights headed to America.
Mourning the sad demise of my Microsoft demigods I left West Africa and crossed the fantastic Atlantic to find my self bicycleless in Washington.

Great story>>Got the same immigration guy as when I was here in August 08. We had almost the same converstion.

"So you're here for what?""The 53rd UN COmmission on the Status of Women"."You're some kinda praafessah?""Nope", say I, "Media, I am a film maker.""You do whaaat for Ameeerica?""I make films, doccumentary films.""For America?""No, Fiiiilllllllmmmmm maaaakerrrrr.""Oh! Filmmm makeeerrrr! Enjoy your stay in the US of A. Next please."

The first sighting of New York from a 20 seater Embraer Executive jet is along an endless white beach, and I have to find my way there sometime in the next 2 weeks, come snow or sunshine.

Looks like it will be snow tho'.

JFK. A little like Richards Bay airport, nothing as elaborate and splendid as the new Ortam, except fot the skytrain out which took us to the NY subway and a long walk from west 42nd to East 42nd st. Time Square, Grand Central Station, 5th Ave, The Chrysler building and here I am in my new 41st story office at the New York Helmsley Hotel.
Only problem so far: at 3am this morning, in 3 degrees C, I headed off to the local pharmacy/grocery store, CVS, to find a kettle, tea and oats porridge, dressed in Africanesque t-shirt and cotton pants. Shop wide open but no tellers.....only autotellers. Well, what can I say.

Other than, "Better get out to Central Park for my morning yoga before the blizzard hits!"

Clever, these meteorologists....

Kiss my ass!

2009-02-16T05:33:00.000-08:00

There are 2 great ways to view your day.
Focus closely on the key tasks and issues. Don't be distracted.
OR
Stretch your radar as wide as possible and see what comes in. Be continually distracted.

My 88 year old mum strolled to the magnificent view of the city from her apartment this morning, gazed over her kingdom and said to me, "Last year, the old Zulu king got married to another wife and wanted to build a palace in the middle of the golf course. The city said no. These bloody kings!"
I remember it well. I think it was in the April 1st edition of the Daily News.
It seems like in the nurtur/nature debate we are kind of born with right/left brain potential.

(Gran with her latest great grandson, James Dellis....can you believe that she has never dyed her hair!)

I recently subjected myself to a gruelling psychometric test designed to assess how Right/Left brain you are. You can do it yourself at
http://mindmedia.com/braintest.html
This was the result:
"Andre, you possess an interesting balance of hemispheric and sensory characteristics, with a slight right-brain dominance and a slight preference for visual processing.
Since neither of these is completely centered, you lack the indecision and second-guessing associated with other patterns. You have a distinct preference for creativity and intuition with seemingly sufficient verbal skills to be able to translate in any meaningful way to yourself and others.
You tend to see things in "wholes" without surrendering the ability to attend to details. You can give them sufficient notice to be able to utitlize and incorporate them as part of an overall pattern.
In the same way, while you are active and process information simultaneously, you demonstrate a capacity for sequencing as well as reflection which allows for some "inner dialogue."
All in all, you are likely to be quite content with yourself and your style although at times it will not necessarily be appreciated by others. You have sufficient confidence to not second-guess yourself, but rather to use your critical faculties in a way that enhances, rather than limits, your creativity.
You can learn in either mode although far more efficiently within the visual mode. It is likely that in listening to conversations or lecture materials you simultaneously translate into pictures which enhance and elaborate on the meaning.
It is most likely that you will gravitate towards those endeavors which are predominantly visual but include some logic or structuring. You may either work particularly hard at cultivating your auditory skills or risk "missing out" on being able to efficiently process what you learn. Your own intuitive skills will at times interfere with your capacity to listen to others, which is something else you may need to take into account."
Several things emerge from this for me. First, it is merely a confirmation of how I feel anyway. But more importantly it puts it into hard copy, words that I can read and ponder on. Then I can act upon those words. With this in mind, I was chatting to friends last night about Julia Cameron's 'Artist's Way' and, making a quick calculation, realized that it has been almost a decade since I had my first exposure to it and every aspect of that remarkable process still lives with me every day. We talked about the power of the montaging exercises we did and how I had reread my crusty journals from the time and delighted in seeing those aspirations and changes that took place in me being documented and subsequently realized.
So, with my eyes wide open I dived into a new week, starting with a further attempt to achieve my news year's resolution, the dreaded ghanda berundasana!

For the uninitiated, this is a rather interesting Yoga pose where you increasingly bend over backwards until you can kiss your ass.
Now this may seem like a trite little resolution, but a whole lot of other stuff hangs off it if I am to be successful. Most importantly, I have to be able to bend over backwards. This means a daily Yoga routine stretching all the ancillary muscles and squashing the gooey bits inside to eventually facilitate my berundasana attempt. I then fling myself over backwards and try to walk my arms through my legs. Naturally, I have to find a suitably evocative and spiritual space to do this, so I am duty bound to get out into a place of serenity each day. Then I must learn to focus only on my own body and soul and ignore the confused stares of passerbyers. It is further a great opportunity to use my bicycle to and from, so all in all, by breakfast time I am well ridden, well stretched, well squashed and well on my way to kissing my ass before the year's end.
While in this open radar frame of mind I took another journey back into recent documented history. I paged through images from Ida and my time in Hereford and Wales last year. Three pix drew my glee....one of a grave stone in a country churchyard (click on the images and read the engravings) and the other two, a tale of how an ancient church in Hereford has regained its lost parishioners by serving coffee and cake during services!

Have fun, both these are right/left brain teasers.
Back in Durban I have been on the trail for a new tree to plant for our dear compadrette, Albuquerque Patrice. Durban's very own tree and monkey lady, Jean Senogles, listened to how I described the following future moment: "Imagine 10 year's time. You, Ida, Patrice and I are standing on a craggy cliff, overlooking one of the last bits of pristine river valley within the urban precincts of Durban. Next to us is a well rooted tree, planted there at a time when many of us could only see patches of light through the dark clouds.

Jean strides off into the wet undergrowth and emerges triumphantly with a potted tree of note (e-sharp). "Perfect!" she says, "the forest cabbage tree...Msenge in zulu. This tree's sole evolutionary purpose...don't you love Darwin!...is to chase the light at the top of the forest canopy!".

Say no more!