An unusually good morning

In my view I have a generally pleasant and easy life but every now and again, one day is better than most and today is such a day.

I woke up a bit before nine after a good night's sleep and sat down to do the the day's updates on my Immigration Watch blog -- which is my custom for that time of the day. Instead of having to look for interesting news in that field, however, I found two press releases in my inbox which I liked so I posted them without further ado.

I then went in to the long-departed Mr Stone's Corner for a haircut from my usual barber. I was in the chair within 10 minutes of arriving and had a good chat with the barber while he was civilizing my appearance. I have been going to him for years now so I was in familiar territory, which I like.

I then went to the Cafe down the road for a bacon and egg breakfast as they always do a good one. While I was sitting there waiting for it to arrive, my brother Christopher walked past. I waved and he came and sat down for a chat. We talked a bit about the latest follies of the global Warmists and about family matters too, of course. I am pretty conservative but Chris could be described as "so far right he is almost out of sight". He is a very pleasant person, however, with lots of friends. I was pleased to hear that his business is doing well, despite the economic doldrums.

I then went over the road to see Paul Brandon, the local bootmaker, a lovely man. I had a very small clock that needed new batteries and he does clock and watch batteries. He showed me that the clock in fact took AAA batteries so did not need his services. He was of course perfectly pleasant about it.

I then took a stroll through a nearby bookstore and saw a book that would be good for a preschooler. I bought it to give to Suzy's baby at some future time.

When I got home the council roadgang were still fixing up the guttering and footpath in my street and the foreman came over to check how their work had affected my ability to get my big Humber in and out of my garage. It was courteous of him to ask. I assured him that access was now better than ever and he told me that they would bring over some special concrete tomorrow to fix up a small part of my driveway that adjoined the work in the street. It was an appreciated courtesy.

So after that start, I am looking forward to the rest of the day.

Zelenka

I imagine that there must be a few people who come by this blog who share my love of Baroque music. So for them some news: I have just discovered the music of Zelenka, a Czech contemporary of Bach whom Bach thought highly of. I am listening to one of his Kyrie Eleisons as I write this. It is marvellous. What a wonder that the Baroque period is still yielding up forgotten treasures for us! I have also just heard on the radio one of his oratorios: "Penitents at the tomb of the Redeemer". It grabbed me immediately.

Those Chinese ladies strike again

The Han make a big impression wherever they go and the Chinese ladies are certainly doing their bit. In both Australia and the USA they tend to snap up Caucasian men (particularly the taller ones) and thus leave the Caucasian women rather high and dry.

The latest example in my life of that was last Sunday, when Davey and Olivia had a combined engagement-party/baby shower. Olivia is pregant and both parents are happy about it. Olivia is a 3rd year psych student and Davey is a spare parts interpreter. Davey and Joe were great mates during their childhoods but are not so close these days as Joe's great patience has led him into academe whereas Davey's tendency to lack of patience has led him away from such pursuits.

But both have felt the Asian influence. Joey's Sam is half Han and Olivia is wholly so. Her father is a restaurateur, unsurprisingly.

And the party included a LOT of Olivia's friends and relatives: Stylish Chinese ladies to a woman, all very fashionably dressed. And that means sexy these days. So I had to be cautious where I looked. I did not talk to any of them but I admired them from afar.

As usual at family gatherings, I spent most of my time talking to 3 people: Joe, Paul and Ken. This time I spent quite a lot of time talking to Joe. As we are both academics, we mostly discussed academic matters. It seems that, like me, Joe is fast at doing academic things. At that rate the prospects for him getting lots of publications are good. Like father, like son.

I don't think anybody in the family takes it amiss when I don't talk to them a lot, though. They know me of old and would probably be amazed if I was any different. I help various family members out financially from time to time and in all of human history putting your money where your mouth is has always been a pretty good proof of goodwill.

Paul and Suzy have both been slimming in recent months and I think Paul has overdone it a bit. He was as skinny as a rake on Sunday. Still, he has bad bones so taking the weight off them is probably a very good move. I tried to talk Paul's Suzy out of taking any more weight off. She always looks good regardless.

We had the do at Oxley's on the river and, somewhat to my surprise, the food was very good. Their shish kebabs were outstanding.

Suzy Rohde nee Johnson (Lady fun) was there looking very pregnant and she has sent me a lot of good pics from the occasion so I am putting up some below:

The happy couple



The 3 brothers



Jenny and Nanna



The gorgeous Von was there with her very smart but very quiet Dutchman

Fathers' day

I always look forward to Fathers' day as Jenny always gives me a very nice lunch on that day. And she did again today, with lots of fresh bread rolls, various cheeses, cold meats, avocado etc.

It was a little sad today, however. Joe's girlfriend Sam gets upset on Fathers' day because it brings to mind her own late father, whom she greatly misses. So Joe arrived a little late after spending some time with her to comfort her. She was invited to come to the do at Jenny's place but was too upset to come.

So there were just Jenny and I, Anne, Nanna and Joe present. We had the do on Jenny's back deck, which is a very pleasant environment.

A Grumble about Glyndebourne

Glyndebourne is of course the pinnacle of the opera experience in England and I myself went down to Glyndebourne once -- in 1977 accompanied by the beauteous Susan Brooks and wearing a suit kindly lent to me by the quietly affable Hyman Katz of Baker st. I go to opera/ballet for the music, however. Opera libretti are usually absurd and I cheerfully accept that.

Anne and I have recently finished watching the three DVDs of Giulio Cesare which she bought at Glynebourne while she was there recently. Handel's music is of course superb and the singers and orchestra did full justice to it. But the staging was somewhere between absurd and obnoxious. I suppose it was inevitable but Glynedbourne has fallen victim to the cancerous modern conceit that the producer of a show has every liberty to show his HIS creativity in how he presents the play/opera. And he usually shows how creative he is NOT.

The clot concerned in this case seemed to think that having airships and steamships in the background of an opera set in ancient Egypt was somehow clever -- not to mention the revolvers, rifles, sunglasses, cocktail dresses and pith helmets. Why is deliberate anachronism clever? I have no idea.

And particularly in Act 3 a lot of the arias were sung with the actors lying on the ground. How is that for moronic choreography? Most of the live audience would have been able to see nothing at such times.

Glyndebourne is of course known for Mozart performances and Mozart operas are mostly in the opera buffa genre. And such operas can perfectly well be staged in modern settings. I think Glyndebourne should either stick to Mozart or avoid anachronisms. That does not seem to me to be a particularly hard choice.

As for me, I now play the DVDs with the video off. The staging is just a distraction from Handel's marvellous music. And Cleopatra's long triumphant aria towards the end of Act 3 is particularly superb (Track 19 if you have the DVD).

A small bouquet for the wallopers

There are a lot of goons and drongoes in the Queensland police "service" but there are some decent people too

Last night I was pulled up for a breath test and the lady cop with the test kit took one look at me, smiled, said "I think you're OK", and waved me through without testing.

I was stone cold sober, neatly dressed and had Anne with me so I suppose we just looked like an elderly couple out for the night -- which we were. So the lady cop got it right and behaved to a higher standard than duty required. I congratulate her.

A couple of months ago another lady cop stopped and helped me change a tyre, as I was in fact having a spot of bother with it. And she was most pleasant too.

If only all police were of that quality!

A birthday and a graduation

Joe recently had a birthday and not long after graduated from the University of Queensland with First Class Honours in Mathematics. I could not be more pleased. Having a son who is tall, good-looking, nice natured and brilliant is hard to beat! And his only artificial euphoriant is computer games. Though I believe he does have a weakness for iced coffee also.

At his request, his birthday dinner was low key, with just myself, Jenny, Nanna, Anne, Joe himself and his old friend from school -- Andy -- invited. Jenny managed to seat us all in her living room and cooked us egg-rolled pork with rice and Kim Chee -- a dish of Korean origin which is a great favourite in the family. Samantha had an open-book exam to do that night so could not come. Andy is a most personable young man. He is Han Chinese and was dux of the school when Joe was there. I hear that he is quite tough, too, which rather surprised me. I didn't associate that with charm and politeness. After dinner more family members were invited over for the cutting of the cake and coffee afterwards: Suzy, Paul and Von with respective partners.

The graduation ceremony was for the Science Faculty only and about half the graduands would have been of Han origin. The Arts faculty graduation would be where you would see a majority of Anglo-Celts. When Joe stepped forward to be handed his degree, it was something of a notable break. After a parade of small Chinese, there was this 6' tall blond getting a degree! There were apparently quite a few bright sparks in the Maths Dept., as you might expect. One of Joe's fellow students there was awarded student of the year for the entire faculty! So Joe has been keeping august company. He has already started work on his Ph.D. programme.

We had a VERY small celebratory dinner for him on the night of his graduation: Joe, Sam, Jenny, Anne and myself. There was a special reason for keeping that dinner small. I opened a 16-year-old bottle of Grange to have with dinner -- at a cost of $600 for one 26 oz. bottle. I suppose that there might have been better uses for $600 but how often does one have a son graduate with First Class Honours in Mathematics? Jenny made us some excellent steak with Bearnaise sauce to go with the wine. Grange goes best with French cuisine.

Joe tells me that academic publications in mathematics are dominated by the Han, regardless of which country they may be writing from. The most recent recipients of the Fields medal included Terry Tao, an Australian-born Chinese, partly for work in PDEs, which is Joe's interest. And journals actually published in China are important sources of advancement in mathematical thinking too, apparently. With Chinese friends, a Chinese supervisor and a half-Chinese girlfriend, however, Joe is already in the right company for that. But he is seriously thinking of learning Mandarin as a long-term project. In the meantime, his very pleasant Chinese supervisor will be there to alert him to any developments in Chinese journals that he may need to know about.

A wedding and a birthday

My gorgeous stepdaughter Suzie was married a little while ago but I have just got hold of a DVD of wedding pictures with n pictures on it. Joe has done a fair bit of statistics so he will understand my usage of "n". So how does one choose from n pictures? Arbitrarily. I reproduce just two above. The old geezer lurking under the panama is I and below that is a picture of the happy couple. See my blog note of Feb 9th for more details

This week was my birthday week. Jill invited Anne and me over for lunch on Sunday 12th. and produced an excellent roast dinner. True to my British heritage, I always appreciate a roast. The dessert was Pavolva, however, a great Australian specialty and favourite.

On Wednesday Anne came over and cooked me some of my favourite foods -- including cabbage. Liking cabbage is about as humble a taste as one can have but Anne does it very well. And she brought over a big dish of apple crumble, another of my favourites. I am afraid that there was very little left in that dish by the time I got to bed.

As a birthday present, Anne gave me a 3 DVD set of Handel's Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) which recorded a live Glyndebourne performance and which she had bought at the Glyndebourne shop while she was there. I had already emailed her about how wonderful the Glyndebourne performance of that opera was so I was delighted to have it. It is great to hear the richly deserved applause after the spectacular bits -- such as the long aria towards the end of Act 3. I have so far managed only to listen to it (several times). Seeing it as well as hearing it could well be a bit overwhelming for me.

Joe was also over on Wednesday to work on a project we are doing. I have converted my old Windows computer back to a DOS computer, with the aim of making it a museum for the old DOS software -- particularly games -- that we used to play around with back in the pre-Windows era. I had forgotten a lot about how to set up a DOS machine but I finally got everything running.

And yesterday, Friday, Jenny made the "kids" (now all in their 20s and 30s) and I (plus relevant partners) that prince of Indian dishes: A Dhansak -- complete with Parsee pillau, green chutney and an excellent raita. It was a great party, with the kids and I swapping memories of the days when I was helping to bring them up. There was much hilarity between us back then and it was probably nearly as hilarious remembering it all. I had completely forgotten some of the jokes I played on them back then but they remembered heaps!

A good toon

The cartoon below sums up one reason why I usually avoid fancy restaurants and eat ethnic instead. I like waiters just to take my order promptly and answer questions if asked. Waiters who want to talk and talk just give me the pip. I imagine that chatty waiters suit some people but they don't suit me. I would much rather talk to the person I came there with.

Sunday lunch

Jill gave a small party of us lunch yesterday. Present at her place were: Jill, Lewis, myself, Anne, Henningham, Helen, Jenny, Joe and Sam. Jenny, Joe, myself, Anne and Sam Humbered out to River Hills. Jill likes my verb "Humbered". But when you have a 1963 Humber Super Snipe Series IV, you do such things.





A snipe is a waterbird and it always amuses me the way the English name lots of things after waterbirds: boats, cars, locomotives. Who has not heard of the Mallard and Bittern steam trains? How can a steam locomotive be like a duck? Search me!

The lunch was on Jill's large patio, surrounded by garden. Jill's garden has grown up tall and lush so it was a very pleasant setting. Jill made us some tagliatelle with seafood, which everybody liked. And pavlova for dessert -- one of Australia's few notable contributions to cuisine.

Henningham was in his best jovial form so it was a very relaxed occasion.

As part of the festivities we did a small play that I wrote especially for the occasion. Henningham is an amateur thespian so he got the part of the old man. I got a round of applause for writing it and it does seem to have amused those present. It was rightly noted that the play was very cynical, however. You can read it here or here

The Geneva Bible

A great pleasure! I have just received my copy of the recently reprinted Geneva Bible, the translation that the Pilgrim Fathers mainly used. The Geneva Bible was the popular version in the English-speaking world until the "official" King James Bible gradually supplanted it.

I bought my copy via World Net Daily and it cost me rather a lot, which may seem rather mad since I already have many Bibles, including three recensions of the Greek New Testament (i.e. in the original Greek) and some excellent modern translations. But it is exciting to read the words of the Bible just as they were read by the great English Protestant reformers who changed the world and whose reforms are the basis of our entire modern civilization.

Because it was so popular in its day, the Geneva Bible underwent many printings, not all of which were identical. The version I have is a reproduction of a 1599 printing. The King James Bible, of course, was first printed in 1611.

I tend to judge Bible translations by their translation of the first few verses of the Gospel of John. John 1:1 is much used by afficianados of the originally pagan Trinity doctrine to justify their nonsensical dogma. So I was most pleased to see that the Geneva translators gave in their footnote a much better sense of the original Greek than we usually see. The Geneva Bible was renowned in its day for its many informative footnotes and they are still a useful resource. The explanatory footnote for John 1:1 reads: "The son of God is of one, and the selfsame eternity or everlastingness, and of one and the selfsame essence or nature, with the father". That puts the sense of the original much more clearly than the literal translation of the original text itself. The underlying idea in the Greek original -- that the Logos was of divine essence -- is clearly there in the Geneva footnote.

If I were to express the meaning of the original Greek in a purely Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, I would translate it as "And of god-stuff was the word". (See also my many previous exegetical comments on John 1:1 -- e.g. here and here)

So the Geneva Bible did allow the people of the 16th century to get close to the original meaning of the New Testament. And the transformative power of doing that was evident then and continues to this day. Those now ancient words still have enormous power to move the minds of men. The many clergy of the "mainstream" churches who think they have a better or more "modern" message to preach from their pulpits are just self-defeating fools. There is no substitute for the original Gospel.

Hair washing and a moment of enlightenment

Where I grew up in tropical Australia, very few people had what the rest of the world call a bath. For us, to "have a bath" meant to take a shower. What other people called a bath, we called a "plunge" and many houses had no such thing. And in hot weather (which it almost always was), taking a shower at both morning and evening was common. And the shower head was large and positioned right overhead for maximum cooling and cleaning.

Since I have moved to more Southern parts, however, I have always been disgruntled to find that, instead of being overhead, the shower rose is fitted so that it shoots water at you from roughly eye level or not much higher.

So when I had a shower recess put up in my bathroom recently (I previously had just a shower over the bath -- which posed hazards of slipping and falling over), I instructed the plumber to put the shower head high up and overhead -- which he did.

I was pointing out this achievement to Anne when she said she didn't like it. It meant that she would always get her hair wet. So I finally got it. Those pesky low-down showers are for the convenience of women. I imagine that most men are like me and don't mind getting their hair wet. I don't feel properly bathed unless I have washed my hair, in fact. But I can see that long hair and expensive hairdos might require protection at times.

Death

My sister Jack (Jacqueline Margaret Ray aka Ward) died this morning of the family illness -- breast cancer. Her death was expected and her female companion was with her until the end.

She was only 2 years younger than me but we were not close. I had seen her only once in the last quarter century -- at my brother's wedding.

She leaves no children.

Another poetry night

I arranged one of my occasional poetry nights for my son Joe on Saturday night. There were 7 of us: Joe and Samantha, Anne and myself, Jill and Lewis and Joe's mother Jenny.

It was great to see how well Lewis has recovered from his stroke. He got up and down my front stairs all by himself and seemed as mentally alert as ever.

Haggis was on the menu for the dinner but Jenny can't eat haggis because of her gluten allergy so she got French (lamb) cutlets. As lamb is now dearer than lobster in Brisbane, some of the others present may have envied her. The haggis was however praised as usual. Anne had haggis a couple of times in Scotland during her recent trip and she said that the haggis I buy is better than what they sell in Scotland.

I ran the after dinner poetry a little differently this time. Instead of whole poems, I just printed out short excerpts of a lot of favourite poems and had us all recite them together. I thought that that would embed them in Joe's mind a little better. I also then got him to read out the first verse himself. My reasoning is that reading a poem once is not the main pleasure of it. It is KNOWING the poem that pleases most.

If any of my Indian tenants were nearby they must have wondered at these strange chants emanating from my dining room. They probably put it down to a worship service for some god. In India there are all sorts of gods, of course. We even tried to sing some of the poems for which we knew tunes but the result was pretty discordant. That would have added to the weirdness to any Indian listeners, I imagine. The poem we had most success in singing together was, rather strangely, the Eton boating song.

We had a big range among the poets -- from Chaucer to G.M. Hopkins -- but we had two poems each from Blake and Tennyson.

Zur Judenfrage and religious identity

I originally wrote the post below for my DISSECTING LEFTISM blog but I think it has a place here too. "Zur Judenfrage" is German for "About the Jewish Question" and is an expression used by both Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler so there was an element of historical awareness in the title I chose. It was actually a bit of a tease. Most people seeing the title would have expected something antisemitic in what I wrote -- but, as you will see, they would have been disappointed

Most Jews must be heartily sick of being forever singled out for discussion and scrutiny but it seems that it was ever so and ever will be. And in my utter folly, I am once again going to voice a few thoughts on one of the most hotly contested topics among Jews: Who is a Jew?

My present thoughts arise from the "wise" British judges who recently decided that Jews are a race. Since there are Jews of all races -- including black ones -- that is arrant nonsense. Yet it is also partly true -- in that various genetic studies have shown that many Jews do still have in them some Middle Eastern genes. So for Jews as a whole it is true that Israel is their ancestral home as well as their religious home.

Nonetheless, it seems clear that Jews are a religion, not a race. And the test of that, it seems to me, is that Jews do accept converts. Try converting yourself into another race: It can't be done.

But many Jews are atheists or something close to it, so how can Jewry be a religion? The easy answer to that from an Orthodox viewpoint (with which I am broadly sympathetic) is that being Jewish is not a matter of belief but of practice. A Jew is someone who follows Jewish law (halacha). What you believe is very secondary. Deeds speak louder than words. Christianity is belief based but Judaism is practice based.

But there is also a much simpler answer: MOST religion is hereditary. And those who inherit it are often not zealous practitioners of it. My late father, for instance, always put his religion down on official forms as "C of E" ("Church of England") and had no hesitation in doing so. He in fact seemed rather proud of it. Yet in all the time I knew him, he never once set foot inside an Anglican church.

So why cannot Jews be the same? Even if you are not religious, you can still have a religious identity.

Because I am an atheist, I never bothered with getting my son Christened but I considered that a knowledge of Christianity was an important element of his cultural heritage so I sent him to a Catholic school -- in the view that Catholics still had enough cultural self-confidence to teach the Christian basics. And they did. And my son greatly enjoyed his religion lessons -- as I hoped he would.

When he was aged 9 however, he said that he wanted to become a Catholic, which of course I was delighted to arrange. So he was baptised and subsequently had his confirmation lessons and was confirmed. These days many years later his beliefs seem to be as skeptical as mine -- which I also expected -- so what motivated his desire to become a Catholic? He wanted to have a religious identity. There was no pressure on him but he was greatly impressed by some very faith-filled people in the church and he wanted to identify with that. And I imagine that he still puts himself down on forms as "Catholic".

So a religious identity can be quite a significant thing for many people, not only Jews. It is a part of belonging -- and that is a very basic human need. Jews in a way are lucky there. No matter what their beliefs are, they still know that there is always one place where they belong, if they ever want to acknowledge it.

Once or twice a year I still attend my local Presbyterian church (at Easter etc.) and I certainly feel that I belong there. I feel at home with all aspects of it. My mother was a Presbyterian of sorts so that was where I was sent as a kid for Sunday School -- and that has stayed with me even though I no longer believe. So, again, one can have and value a religious identity even if one's beliefs have very little to do with it.

And the lady in my life -- Anne -- is only very vaguely religious but her background religion is Presbyterian and there are many habits of mind she has which I know well from my own family, and with which I am therefore very much at ease. Sometimes when she speaks, I hear my mother and my aunties speaking too. She has a Presbyterian mind, or a Presbyterian way of thinking -- perhaps Presbyterian assumptions. I think that in a similar way, most Jews probably have a Jewish mind too. Attitudes and habits of thought may in fact be the most important parts of a religious heritasge.

I am sure that everything I have said above will be mumbo jumbo to most Leftists but, if so, that is their loss.

The "Blitz"

Pictured above are a couple of "Blitz" trucks in mint condition. There were a number of variations of them. You see above, for instance, that they came in both 6-wheel and 4-wheel versions. They were made in Canada by both Ford and Chevrolet during WWII as part of the huge Canadian contribution to the war effort. Male Canadians and Britons in those days were men, not the whining mice that most seem to have become under Leftist influence in the postwar era.

My interest in the "Blitz" stems from the fact that my father used to use one in his work as a timber feller ("lumberjack" in North American parlance). Once you have felled a huge forest tree, you have got to get it out of the bush somehow -- either to a rail siding or a road where you can load it onto a truck.

Unlike his father, my father did not use a bullock-team to "snig" (drag) the log along a bush track to its destination. He used a Blitz. A Blitz was originally designed to negotiate the often difficult terrain leading up to battlefields and it therefore had both 4WD and a double-reduction gearbox. It was slow but tough and versatile and could go almost anywhere -- which made it ideal for forest work after the war. And it was immensely popular after the war. They were all over the place in country areas. They were often used as tow-trucks. The picture below is an indication of how many there were before they all eventually wore out.



What I would like to know is how they originated. They were apparently designed in Britain but look like no other British vehicle. My suspicion is that the design was a copy of an Opel Blitz of the period. Opel is/was the German tentacle of GM. So I suspect that the British just copied a successful German design. I have however not been able to find a picture of the Opel Blitz of that period.

The name "Blitz" certainly suggests a German origin. "Blitz" is the German word for lightning. On the other hand, maybe the name is simply ironical: Whatever else the Blitz was, it was certainly not fast.

There must be a million collectors of military vehicles worldwide and a Blitz in good condition would certainly be most prized in such circles so I hope at least one collector reads this and is able to give me the history behind the "Blitz".

Update:
Wikipedia now has an article that tells you all about the Blitz. And I have now found a pic of Germany's Opel Blitz, a much more conventional vehicle

The traveller returns

The traveller returns

Anne got back from OS on Sunday so we had a small celebration on Monday night featuring a bottle of Moet etc. She got to see lots of places, mostly in Britain and Ireland but also in France. She went over to France on the Eurostar and found it very cramped.



It amused me when she told me that the Parisians she met were friendly. Everyone else says otherwise. But Anne is herself exceptionally friendly so it just shows that if you you yourself are friendly, most other people will be friendly too. In other words, Anne's experience in Paris was a reflection of how she is rather than how Parisians generally are.

She did get down to Glyndebourne, and up to the RSC at Stratford, both of which she loved, of course. The opera she went to at Covent garden was some modern rubbish, however. She found the Louvre very crowded and that detracted from her time there. She also got up to Orkney and saw Scapa Flow, which I somewhat envy. Much history there.



And the people on Orkney were friendly too, of course. And she met some friendly people on her way to Glyndebourne as well! That must be as unusual as finding friendly people in Paris.

She also took afternoon tea at the Ritz, which she had to book long before she left Australia. Even with five sittings, it is enormously popular, despite the price. It is so dear that I shouted her and her sister, June. June went over about half-way through Anne's trip to keep her company at Glyndebourne etc. And they both loved the experience of what is probably the world's most famous afternoon tea.

Dinner and a thesis

Jenny very kindly made me a dinner of Tonkatsu last night. It went very well with Hoisin sauce, Japanese ginger and steamed rice. Having a Chinese sauce with Japanese food is a bit odd but I have always liked that combination.

Joe gave me a copy of his honours thesis, which he hands in very soon. It is in mathematics so it is all Greek to me (literally!) but the general layout and English expression in it seemed very good. I am in no doubt that he will get a First. And UQ is a "sandstone" University so that means something.

Below is a page from his thesis. If you can make anything out of it you are better than I am!

A birthday and an email

Yesterday was Jenny's birthday so I took her to a good Indian restaurant at Mt Gravatt that we both like. Jenny updated me on all the family gossip and I was rather surprised that there is another pregnancy in the family -- a Chinese girl. Anyway the baby is much welcomed by the couple concerned so that is the main thing. I gave Jenny a cheque for her birthday and arranged to send Suzy a cheque so that she can have her confinement in a private hospital.

I am also going to put up here an email that I like from a distinguished French scientist. I get emails passed on to me at times and this one was not addressed to me so I am not going to put it on any of my science blogs but I just had to post it somewhere. The writer is a leading expert on the relationships between disease and climate and the "THIS!" that he is commenting on is a quite ignorant article on that topic which recently appeared in "The Times" of London. The "Times" article is no longer accessible but there are some large excerpts from it here. It rather hilariously claimed that global warming would cause huge amounts of illness, just as cholera once did. The email seems to me very French, particularly the last sentence:

I have just returned from Singapore. I am nauseated!

13 hours flight was expected, but one hour starting 0545h waiting for Customs Officers to stop arguing about something (will they strike?), another hour waiting for the back-up of baggages they caused (no baggage-handlers anywhere to be seen), and two hours getting home because of transport strike.

And now THIS!

The main article is a rehash of a similar load of garbage unloaded in 1996, plus (identical wording) other writings of the past, including, I suspect, IPCC. Same drivers too.

They have cherry picked without remorse.

What the hell can we do? I am flabbergasted that this can go on, and on, and on.

I have huge response to my article in Malaria Journal:

http://www.malariajournal.com/content/7/S1/S3

Yet these peddlers of garbage quote a 1998 model by two activists whose work is ridiculed by those of us who work in this field.

I explode!

Mothers' day and swimming pools

I usually go over to Jenny's place on Mothers' day for lunch but today was a bit different. Jenny put on a BBQ using her new BBQ area. And the food was good of course. The twins were there plus Paul and his Suzy and Von had her Simon. Russell was off sick, which some of us attributed to swine flu! Joe, I and Nanna made up the party. I am sure Jenny was pleased to have all 4 of her children present.

Twinny Suzy's pregnancy was much discussed. Dec. 16 is the due date but she already has scans. Fortunately she is not having twins. Being herself a twin, descended from a long line of twins, it was a peril. She is quite a small person so it would have been hard for her if she had twins. I already notice a change in her. She seems more level-headed or something.

Paul expressed great enjoyment of the computer shop memoirs that I put up recently (April 27 below) so I promised him that I would also put up a small account I wrote at the time time when I tried to buy an above-ground swimming pool for my house at Faversham St. -- a pool that Paul remembers favourably and which is where Joe fell in twice when he was a toddler. On both occasions I had my eye glued on Joe so I fished him out within seconds and he came to no harm.

My purchasing expedition:

Most pool shops at the time were located not far from one-another -- on the Southside where a lot of new housing construction was taking place. And being long experienced with shopping in Australia (and hence VERY cynical), I took my Yellow Pages (business directory) with me on my expedition.

I was not bargain-hunting and I was not looking for anything unusual: An ideal customer, one would think. What I wanted was an 18' circular pool (pools still seem to be sized in feet) but the first shop I walked into said that they only stocked the 15' size. I left them to it.

The second pool shop I walked into was staffed by a woman who said her husband was away that day and she could not give me any prices. I left her to it as well.

The third pool shop I walked into had one salesperson there and a queue of about eight people lined up to buy chlorine etc. I figured that it would take around half an hour before I even got to state what I wanted so I left that lot to it as well.

The fourth shop I walked into did sell the size I wanted, served me promptly, had one installed out the back to show me what it looked like and could arrange installation next week. I therefore presented my Bankcard and they were promptly $2,000 richer. $2,000 in those days (about 20 years ago) would be equivalent to around $4,000 now.

But what about those other three shops that had seen the same $2,000 walk in the door and promptly walk out again? When businesses spend millions on advertising to get a customer through the door, what can they possibly have been thinking of to be (apparently) completely unconcerned about a "big ticket" buyer walking in and then promptly walking out again? Why was only one out of four firms able to show basic competence at what they were doing?

I am sorry to say it but I think it's just Australia -- as my computer shop memoirs also tend to show

Guilio Cesare

Wow! It's unusual that I put up on this blog anything from the media but some excerpts I found recently from Handel's opera Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) really bowled me over. The excerpts are no longer online but see the whole opera below:



If the embed does not work, click here

The excerpts were from early in the opera as Cleopatra commenced her entrapment of Caesar

Sheer soaring genius! Anne is going to Glyndebourne this year so I hope it is Giulio Cesare that she sees.

Having a counter tenor depict one of the greatest military geniuses of the ancient world is terminally weird but it works -- thanks mainly to Handel's music, I think