Traditionally the divide between the Superstitious and the Scientific is defined by the former claiming inherent or metaphysical knowledge of certain truths. The latter, 'restrained from the truth by the shackels of 'logic' ', ends up with a schizoid image. On the one hand, scientists are used to give credibility to claims ranging from those of charlatans to popular science writers. On the other hand, solid science is seen as boring, tedious, locked in logic and a bit of a party pooper.
When I talk about superstition I naturally include all religion, traditional, fringe and established. The huge social cred that established religion has gained is because of two key functions - (1) It serves a psychological need in the human psyche and (2) it was simply the fictional narrative that survived and consolidated from a pandora's box of ancient and fleeting myths of origin. If we reverse engineer the Jesus story there is a multitude of start narratives, one being as follows: A swarthy, charismatic, hippy was watching the sun set over the sea of Galilea with 12 of his mates when, in the meditation of the moment, a thought occured to him, "Hey guys! I've got a great idea for a con."
The reast is history...or, in the context of my argument, mystery.

The superstitious amongst us (whch accounts for most of us) seem to really believe that the Truth is simply handed via the Bible or the Mayans or voices from above. Science relies on the intrinsic connection between ignorance and wondering and its history is thus defined by a shedding of light on previous mysteries.

The bottom line is that in the search for Truth, only Science, in its widest reach, can give us the tools to move forward. This vitally includes understanding and describing the physical mechanisms behind seemingly metaphysical processes. We have to understand that a single proven miracle, not governed by any known or unknown laws of physics,  de facto destroys the entire edifice of science. Laws must apply universally when tested in the same Space-Time context.

Much of what is described by physicists as not following normal logic will inevitably be explained in terms of a new physical context. That is if we survive long enough as a species or....if the originators of the computer program within which we unknowingly exist don't turn us off.  The discovery of relativistic physics by Einstein, the revelations of the quantum realm and, recently, the confirmation of the existance of the Higgs Bosun are such moments in time.

The elusive yet attainable goal of modern physics is to unite all these phenomena into a single coherent structure and this is one of the key reasons for the huge investment in the Large Hadron Collider. That this project exists is evidence that, whilst a minority of people on Earth remain superstitious, the focussed and informed leaders of technological nations understand that this is worth funding to the tune of billions.

We live in a world where the superstitious claim the moral high ground that comes with Truth. Those who painstakingly seek and verify the Truth, are swept aside in the popular winds of democracy and religion.

Correctly, you will say that what I have written here is surface level and sees the world as black and white. I agree. It is but an early foray into this terrain and I welcome more complex responses and challenges. I know that your religious faith is complex, deeply meaningful and brings cameraderie and joy to your life. In addition, the work that you or others do in the name of your belief changes the world for the better. All this I respect and celebrate. Indeed it is this world that comprises much of the documentary film work I have done over 3 decades. Science too, has its share of conmen, investigator bias and fanciful PR. But this is the exception and Scientific Method is designed to detect and remove these deviations. In the world of superstition, they are encouraged and worshipped.

There is another however. When it comes to the Truth, getting as close to what is really happening and how and why things work, that is my interest. For me it is simple. We can reduce all phenomena to their constituent parts, yet, in doing so, we lose much of the magic that comes only in the complex arrangement of fundamental pieces. The Chess Game, the Romance Novel, all these attest to this reality. The noblest game of all is nothing more than 16 pieces and 64 squares. The most emotive novel, no more than x number of letters and words. So, in searching for understanding we must accept that life in its reality is much much greater than the sum of the parts. There are of course, many scientific disciplines that study this...chaos theory, complexity theory, genetics, etc, etc.

The challenge facing real scientists and all those seeking the Truth, has to be to open one's heart to the mystery and magic of the all and , without losing this magic, to revel in the knowledge that we are all part of a marvellous manifestation of the Laws that brought this universe and others into being in the first place. This is a truly exciting journey to be on.

It is the 21st Century. We live in a modern world. We are the only species that has the tools to control the process of our own evolution. This comes with a huge responsibility. The driving force is science, but, the medium must be a human striving for a better world and a viable short and long term future for our children.

Seemingly...god don't play dice..

I was woken this morning (somewhat less than my necessary 8hrs of sleep) by my excited partner, Ida who, barely crawling in the dense and chaotic Nairobi traffic, held her smartphone to the car radio and relayed the news that the HIGGS BOSUN (or strangely called 'The God Particle') had been 'discovered' at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Cern. I may as well have downed a cuppa greek coffee and plunged into icy waters at the same time, such was the wave of emotions coursing through me. But in an instant I saw the question in my Heads Up Display: So what!? What exactly is a Higgs Bosun anyway? How do I share this sense of awe with those close to me, those who understand the emotion of a sunset and the pain of the sudden death of a loved one. So here is my attempt to make something of all this, in a way that I can give some of the magic to those who either simply don't care or, in wondering, seek gods.
Here are some of the more compelling contributions from others which I share whilst I ponder my own understanding thereof.


'Once upon a time in a far away land, there were two rival families: Fermions and Bosons. Fermions were famous for their peculiar half spin dance. Electrons, protons and quarks were all Fermions.

The Bosons however were into full spinning though and despised half spin. Photons and Gluons were Bosons. It was rumored that Bosons had a long lost elder brother called Higgs Boson who had been missing for a long long time.

One day a wise old man came to the land of the feuding families. He told them they should stop quaerlling over half spin and full spin, since they all used to be the same, and that they all used to be massless.

The old man said that, in the beginning of time when the universe was created, everyone was born the same, but then they were immersed in a mysterious field called the higgs field making each of them different except for Photons who remained the same.

He said this mysterious field was made up of the Higgs Boson - the long lost Boson brother.

The families ofcourse refused to believe all this hogwash, and so the old man set about trying to prove his story and bring the Higgs Boson out of his hiding place.

To do this he asked for help from the scientists at CERN.

The family feud is coming to an end, at last'.

WHAT IS THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER and WHY IS IT IMPORTANT (it cost enough!)

Prof.Brian Cox's Rock Star explanation of the LHA...

AND.....


Fabiola Giannotti is the leader of the 3,000-strong group that works on the collider's five-storey Atlas detector.

Ian Sample wrote a little piece about her and her work at the LHC last year.


The appointment put her in the top ranks of a profession dominated by men. She came to physics from an education steeped in ancient Greek, philosophy and the history of art – she had also trained as a pianist at the Milan Conservatory.

But she ultimately chose physics to answer the big question of why things are as they are. "Physics is, unfortunately, often seen as a male subject; sterile and without charm or emotion," she told the Cern magazine. "But this is not true, because physics is art, aesthetics, beauty and symmetry."

AND....How about the HIGGS BOSUN? Check this out from the Guardian Media House Canteen.

This is all a bit like a game of rugby. The FERMIONS are the players, the mulchy sodden ground, the HIGGS FIELD and the ball is a BOSUN.

The small and fast players are the ones that are less held down by the mud. The big buggers have more mass and go slower. Every so often they collide with each other with a great outbursting of energy. At other times one passes a ball to another, or their momentum is visibly changed as they give away or take the ball. The ball is the agent of interaction. From far off we just see little dots running around and changing direction. The agent of change, the ball, is too small to see. But it has to be there. So it is with the microworld of everything we know. Energy amd mass are much the same thing. Concentrated energy shows as a particle, but can equally be transfered back to unfettered energy again as in nuclear explosions. These particles or bundles of energy exchange little rugby balls of particle-like energy which impart or detract momentum from the interacting particles. Ever thought that magnetism or gravity is spooky magic at a distance? Can't be. There has to be some kind of interaction that transfers the energy. And that is why I called this blog...God don't play dice...There really is an explanation for everything...the nature of science is such that our acknowledgment of our ignorance is rewarded by answers to our predictions....if we can persuade the politicians that they need to spend 59 billion dollars on a large tube under the ground whose sole mission is to find something we don't even know exists....(well, the opinion out there today is that we now know that it, or its twin, does exist.)

Kenya Shiny Blue

KENYA, SHINY BLUE

'The air which surrounds us, so intangible and so commonplace that it
seldom arrests our attention, is in reality a vast, unexplored ocean,
fraught with future possibilities.'
- Richard Ferris: How To Fly (1910) -

It might not be the tallest, but it certainly is the shiniest. The
Blue Glass I&M Building on Kenyatta Ave in central Nairobi, would seem
like an obvious target for disgruntled Al Shabaab operatives. But for
its proximity to the Central Mosque. The terror threat reaches us,
however, via a hastily pasted A4 size, hand-written sign at the
commanding front stairway. 'Please use back entrance on Muhindi
Mundini Street.'
I am familiar with the security guard at that entrance and as I pass
through the single door I smile and ask if I can be searched by her
for a change. “Tomorrow”, she replies, “on my day off”.

From the 13th Floor I have a virtual panoramic view of the city.
Across Kenyatta, the Ecobank (The Pan Africa Bank) building has 4
floors on us and a spike on top that always reminds me of the Twin
Towers. A little up the drag, the Lonrho Africa building, and to the
west the 2 towers of the conference centre. Then the world goes flat,
melting past the railway station and on into the Eastern areas of the
city, gently following the East African railroad that touches on the
Tsavo Elephant Park and dries up in the torrid humidity of coastal
Mombasa.

 I ventured into Nairobi's Eastleigh once in hot pursuit of a stolen
cell phone which I had GPS-tracked into a park. It was in the middle
of what appeared on Googlemaps to be a general confluence of highways
and labyrinths....In an instant I am immersed in that quest once
again.
I write down a dozen or so turn lefts and rights and head off to find
the phone (and its new owner).
Being dangerously exposed on a motorcyle is the normal cliché that
non-bikers use, but here is a totally different kind of exposure. A
police car inches past me in an impossible jam, separated from the
crowds by tinted obscurity. Weaving along, I am very obviously an
mzungu (whitey) in a whirling sea. What if I break down? Dare I pause
to check my directions? Intertwined in my fears is a realization that
I am not actually being noticed. Instead, I am noticing the energy of
activity, close and everywhere. A wiry, thin man is weldng a pile of
twisted metal on the pavement. Another slides sideways through the
melee with a bundle of pipes held high above his head. He is wearing a
turban of sorts and funny plastic sandles, his feet black as the soot
of the roadside coal being sold every few paces along.
Sreet food is fine as long as it is well cooked. But I decide against
local cred and just keep moving. I straddle the sandy hued grass in
the middle of the road till I am near my marked destination, then
jacknife through the cars, still safe. The pace is perilously slow.
Then I am out of the jungle and into the private world of Kenyan home
life. I feel as if there is new set of perils here, but still nobody
seems to care. A boy casually says, “Mzungu”. I ignore him and
concentrate on controlling my small piki-piki (125cc bike) in the soft
sand.  I stop in what seems to be an African village in the inner
city, but before I reach for my Nokia GPS I turn and go back to the
big blue building. Unable to invent any more dangers, I wonder what on
earth I would have done when I  found the new owner.

From the 13th floor couch I can see swathes of street. Dinky cars and
polite pedestrians move mechano-like from up here. Some of it is
true.. People here are simply so. Old fashioned...sort of Britain in
the 50s, an old worldliness. The rather commanding Nairobi Public
Library, which also flanks the mosque, is filled with quiet,
conscientious studiers. Education is the key to every future dream in
Kenya and is pursued sometimes in the strangest ways. A closer look at
the library shelves reveals hardly a book newer than 1978. On the
magazine racks I find an IT computer magazine from 1998.  Reading
Rudyard Kipling and science books about Cosmonauts has to be somewhat
responsible for the eerie sense of being locked into old England.

I zoom down into street view and am walking through the bright yellow
Simmers, 'enjoy a cold Tusker', street pub. What would probably be a
den of certain iniquities back home in SA, and certainly not in the
city centre, is, here, filled at any time of day with besuited, atache
carrying busnessmen. The odd tourist soaking in the real Africa lights
up a fag with his beer and risks instant arrest. Two blocks down,
straddling the centre island is a 4 metre square cage with a single
door and a sign saying – Public Smoking Area.
Sadly, this is one of the reasons I like Nairobi. On a Monday
afternoon the city fathers voted to ban smoking in public. On Tusday
morning the arrests commenced. By Friday the city was smoking in a
cage on Koinange Street and the sidewalks were butt free.

Towering over Simmers is a Smirnoff Ad, “The Night...Be There”.

This is a place of safe night life. The city winds down into the warm
aromas of competing coffee houses, Where a Dormans opens, a Java House
follows and many a Californian barista has here found reason to
return. In a pavement bar 3 men are in earnest discussion over a
laptop and...3 cokes. Not unusual here, but again, almost impossible
in South Africa. Well, the cokes maybe, but the laptop? Simply won't
stick around that long.

I came in early today to extend my visa skilling my woven way through
the traffic contradiction that is perennial Nairobi. Almost no
drainage, no sidewalks, peppered potholes make safaris of journeys ,
but the glue of chaos is how the drivers behave. Kenyans are hard
pressed to be aggressive and seldom resort to violence as a solution
to confrontation. Everything is negotiated, chances taken, the rule of
life. From the lowliest politician to the sharpest street operator to
the gas station attendant, when the inevitable attempt at overcharging
is discovered, it is simply let go with a smile and an “Oh, I must
have made a mistake”.
But on the streets, it's a free for all, the trick being to never
acknowledge the other drivers and simply put part of your own vehicle
into whatever small gap presents itself. It can take  Ida 2 hours for
the five miles to work and then, 2 hours back in the evening. This
morning the remnants of a rained out yesterday tightened the corkscrew
on the morning jam. A dusty bus with naked fowls tied  by their feet
and flaying on the windy roof shoved a path through the solid lanes to
mount the pedestrian walkway and as it thundered off, people forced
aside, it took with it a part of Ida's taxi. Her driver leapt out in
hot pursuit, leaving IDA and cab keyless in the middle of rushhour
traffic.

It's in this and the adjacent street view that the real Africa
evolves. And the street comes to us in a rich mix of ways. Need an
electrician? No problem. He's the guy in the blue work clothes. Green
is horticulture, and brown, general diversified. Cooks are clearly
marked in crisp white chef regalia which can cause some confusion if
your cook is also the Askari or gate opener. At somewhat ridiculously
low wages by any standards, middle class Kenyans often have several
servants, with newly urbanized Maasai cornering the gate-opening and
security detail.  Many a would be intruder has fled with an arrow
quivering in his behind.
Not that we hear too many such tales. In the five years of living in a
wooded winding suburb, some 3kms from an extensive slum (what we call
an informal settlement in SA), the only neighbourhood crime we have
heard of was the harrassment of a young girl by a group of rowdy
youths. A crisis   meeting was called in the face of this 'imminent
collapse of law and order'.
In the next suburb, we hear that police shot and killed a group of
thugs. They were reportedly en route to a heist when their getaway car
ran out of gas and they continued on foot, resplendent in hoodies and
AK47s.
What this all means is that, in the sublime African evening, melting
off into the coolth of the planet's most perfect climate, I can walk
our dog, up ad down the hills and dales and greet all I meet. Habari
Yako! Mzuri sana. I am well, thank you.

Tribal Politics.

Fairly early in our tenure here we had the first of what we now see as
'SUIs. Somewhat useful insights. The Innernews receptionist popped a
congenial head into Ida's office, “There's a Kikuyu at the door.”...
“Well”, let him in.”. ..“No, I can't”...Why?”...”He's a Kikuyu, can't
be trusted.”

Five years later, I am glaring into the sharp morning sun diffused
through an uneven spread of altocumulus clouds. Hanging over the
precipices of Nairobi's most desireable hotel their pulsating light
diminishes the lone. besuited, pacing girl on the deck, smoking. A few
years back, I was at arrivals for the first aircraft to disembark at
the new King Shaka International Airport in my home city, Durban. The
virgin glass opened to spill out a carpet of Emirates stewardesses.
Their clones glide in and out of the Tribe Hotel, Nairobi, daily. My
thoughts wane to the incongruities around an Israeli owned hotel being
home to gliding middle Emirates ladies. Another SUI.
Ida's at a Chief of Staff meeting. I, here for breakfast and today's
carpemomenta. Breakfast offerings include sushi. But neither the
coffee nor the sushi is as good as can be got in Nairobi. For
unbelievable or unbeatable (much the same) sushi, the place is
Phoenicean. It was just down the road from us when we first arrived in
Kenya and we warmed to this cosy garden sushi hideaway intertwined
with Lebanese fare and open fires.  Now it has joined the mall sprawl
and spans several floors of the upgraded Junction Centre, Ngong Road.

The Israelis define style and purpose in this town, like a baby, in
and out of sizes, almost before they fit. The Chinese are invisible in
a different way. One day they were simply here and the life of a power
plug adaptor shrunk to about a week. I hear that there is an emerging
market for expensive, quality built, German appliances in Changhai.
Here, buy cheap, buy thrice.

In an obtuse office in a ubiquitous corridor in a shapeless building
near the Potomac River, Washington DC, is a pin-striped, well gymed
intelligence officer. Amongst her daily duties are to brief and
debrief the office next door. A silver and grey sign, smallish, says,
“Innernews”. Today's briefing was less than 10 minutes and easily
summarized: “How's the Kenya office doing  with the new man?”
The 'New Man' is Jonathon Scott-Gration, the Obama administration's
Kenyan ambassadour, replacing Rannenburger, whose time here will be
remembered for his dancing with the locals and giving a friendly ear
to all and sundry. The New Man's reputation arrived a day or so before
his person, enough to make the timid tremble, especially if you are a
media organization necessitating editorial independence. In the
conflictory days of George W Bush, this meant endless meetings with US
government funders over the niceties of having condom machines in the
office and not displaying large USAID banners at official events. The
sign on the Nairobi Blue Building head office of Innernews is burgundy
and grey and somewhat lyrical. The media centre has a large red spot
on the floor. This is the Write Spot to be and quite a shot from the
Potomac. And with the troubles in nearby Somalia, it is probably beter
to have an ex military man as Ambassadour than a songster.

Despite their immutable invisibility the Chinese invasion is already
over.  It greets many comuters in the shape and size of Kenya's first
'Super Highway', built by one of the '532 largest civils in the
world', or so the banners proclaim.  Where once there was a stolid
roundabout, jammed and impassable, now there is a sweeping flyover
pulling traffic in and out of the same congested city centre as
before.  Leaving Nairobi and heading out towards Thika and Mount Kenya
you can be  excused for the urge to clear the cobwebs from your tired
Toyota as you hit the first of the foot high speed bumps on the first
blind bend of the super highway. Down the drag, Africa is busy
reclaiming Chinese territory, with impromptu taxi stops, informal
traders and herds of goats encroaching on the multi-lanes. In the
middle of a newly tarred stretch heading with no mean portent to
Cairo, a stubborn rock sticks out of the middle lane, neatly
macadamized in place
None of this utter chaos exists in Israeli conceived malls and hotels.
They are a world beyond and have spawned a fever of emulation in the
new Nairobi.
It is Easter weekend and the many malls are open for the long haul.
Driving from home to Junction   we count the potholes in the road and
divide the total by the distance. A hole every 3 metres is the
average. In the rainy season roads become rivers with nowhere to go,
but this has seemingly no effect on drivers, other than spreading the
chaos that leaks through the jam like sludgy superglue. It is Easter
Sunday and 99.9% of Kenyans are in church so we reach the Kitchen shop
with minimal emotional trauma. Here we have superb synchronicity. I am
fascinated by all the heat resistant silicon and Ida, a displaced
Julia Childs. A bag full of goodies and we head off to our respective
interests. Mine, tools and lighting. Ida, shoes, clothes, fragrance.
Cliches, it is said, exist because that's exactly what they are –
generally applicable. I, for one, feel pretty good about being a boy
in an adult toy shop. A 12v led lamp catches my attention. By this
evening it will have been dismantled and united with the remnants of a
broken incandescent lamp, mounted into the ceiling and wired invisibly
to a deep cycle battery, connected invisibly to invisible solar panels
on the roof. I am
fulfilled, relevant, modern and useful and tomorrow,  5 minutes after
the rain starts, we will have light in the daily powerdown. 5 minutes
is the time it takes for the rain to short out the exposed substations
and trigger a harmony of generators. There is no word for
'maintenance' in kiSwahili and
interestingly no real concept thereof either. In East Africa, us
humans know our place in the scheme of things. We are gently
manipulated by the influences of the past, our ancestors and a range
of inanimate objects, like walls, buses, traffic jams and leaders in
various shades of corrupt indifference. Bernard Shaw mused on this,
writing that 'Reasonable men adjust their ways to the realities and
forces of Nature around them, unreasonable men alter Nature to suit
themselves. All progress is thus driven by unreasonable men'.

For a year and a half builders have been toiling on a sporadic mansion
next door to us. I watched as a 12 foot wall rose between us, at a
clear angle of no less than 5 degrees from the vertical. Glad for our
renewed privacy I planned a sloping outdoor movie screen, an idea that
the next door owner clearly didn't share as he commanded the wall to
be rubbished and rebuilt. I politely asked the building foreman what
had happened and he replied, “That wall....it decided to be a bad
wall.”
Whether or not version 2 will have a better disposition is in the
hands of the, shall we say, wall gods to whom I am praying for our
rapidly renewed solitude.

All you need to be in heaven here is a traffic plan. Mine is in the
form of 2 wheels and spending a lot of time at home. Here, most days I
feel I am in the Rwandan jungle, despite being only 5 miles from the
City Centre. Until we were mugged (for being really stupid) Ida would
run to work in an hour which beats driving for two. Now she locks the
car doors and intones our Mantra, 'Thank God for the BBC, thank god
for the BBC, thank god for the bbc.....'
We have mapped Nairobi into epicentres of delightful Eurocentricity.
This is the international NGO capital of Africa, with a continual
flood of expats and the coffee is good, especially when languishing in
Israeli created cafe society.

The conflagration of neighbouring Somalia has also spawned a network
of eateries, mostly in back alleys and unmarked corridors. I like
unmarked corridors and the disappearing act they afford, but was
initially confused at the lack of service received when I was
frequently the only breakfast customer on the ranch.
This was all cleared up at a dinner party after I expressed my
puzzlement. The Somali pirates have wads of US dollars that need
'cleaning' and what better way than invisble restaurants that don't
need food.
The laundered funds in turn fuel the huge rash of property development
in Nairobi and also explain why it is difficult to identify the Al
Qaeda within.

Ultimately Kenya, like most of Africa, I never find boring. Anything
can happen and usually does in the daily comute between centres of
negative entropy.  Car accidents are almost always settled on the spot
with an exchange of offers and money while traffic police use cell
phones as coms radios.

My singular achivement in Kenya has been to limit my incoming cell
calls to only one person, Ida.
I receive great comfort from always knowing who is on the other end of
my familiar ring, even if it is merely traffic progess updates.

Tomorrow we will try out a new plan. The rains are upon us and Ida's
16 hour work day will include the 4 hours in the car. So, I drive
while she emails. Broadband here is cheap and fast, so, we turn jam
horror into an i-opportunity and head off into a traffic negotiated
anonymity.

In the all blue building, my eyes tilt full up from street to blue
sky, now with the first clumps of strato-cumulus mustering for the
afternoon downpour.
A potbellied airplane banks lazily overhead for Wilson Airport. I feel
a deeply etched  happiness as I stretch myself into the honed and
focused space of an aircraft on final approach.
Back in the dusty backveld of KwaZulu-Natal, I have been languidly
learning to fly and this is the only thing I really miss about SA home
these days. In the air I am playing in a technologically predictable
mix of faith and adventure. If I do all the right things my chances of
survival are great, without ever losing the thrill of the maybe. What
lies between me and the ground is skill, pure skill that becomes
instinctual. Here there is little room for post-modernity. 'Anything
goes' normally means 'everything gone'. But most of all, it is where
nobody can find me. I am truly up there on my own. For a little while
I can truly disappear. I travel a lot these days on commercial flights
and never cease to be invigorated. I am tied to a chair flying at 500
miles per hour and cloud 9 is below me. But flying the small flying
machines, what they call light sports planes, is the real thing. It is
a time blast back to the brothers Wright, just with a more reliable
overcoat.  As I watch the airplane drop down behind the conference
centre towers, I wonder if I would have been as unafraid of dying in a
plane in 1905 as I seem to be now. Yesterday (as I write this) a
fellow flier crashed on takeoff after a well attended fly-in,  and in
the ensuing fire, was critically injured, his wife losing her life. A
few days before, I had dreamt I was at the funeral of a friend who met
a similar fate.. That my dream and reality conversed, holds no import
for me other than the unhappy coincidence of inevitable statistics,
hopes and fears.  Yet I am still left wondering what the real chances
are of this happening to me.

One day I will simply take off and disappear off the radar, or maybe
just grow old and regret not having reached for the sky. Maybe I will
watch the rains here in East Africa. But for now, I leave the view
from the tall blue building and retun to my anonymous corner in the
media centre.  Tomorrow another world awaits me and another aeroplane.
Back in SA, my dear 91 year old mum suffered a minor stroke over her
morning toast and it is again time for my other life to awaken.....for
a while.

Post script:
Rob Mirtle succumbed to his burns from the plane crash a few days
later. In the ensuing week, in my other home town, three more aircraft
plunged into the earth, and two more people lost their lives. As I
write this from 37000ft above the ground, I smile disarmingly at the
air hostess, “An orange juice, a Pilsener beer, Pinotage red wine for
the meal and two small Amarula liquers.”

April/May 2012
Written on flight SA185 at 30 thousand feet.

The Apple falls far from the Valley...

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

Here, there and everywhere

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!

"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.

As if it were the only mountain, magnificent, melancholic. In Africa we can be everywhere and nowhere.
Unless you once had a farm. Then it's home.

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 aggression, 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 occasionally 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 existence. 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."

Nuff Sed!