The Importance Of Getting Drunk

A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffolo and when a herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole because the general speed and health of the whole keeps improving by the regular culling of the weakest members.

In much the same way, the human brain can operate only as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, we all know, kills off brain cells but naturally it attacks the slowest and weakest cells first. In this way, regular consumption of alcohol eliminates the weaker cells, constantly making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. The result of this in-depth epidemiological study, verify and validate the casual link between all-weekend parties and the achievment of excellence in all disiplines. It also explains why, after a few short years of leaving university, getting married, having kids and more responsibilities in life, most workers cannot keep up with the performance of the new graduates. Only those that stick to the strict regime of voracious alcohol consumption can maintain the intellectual levels that they achieved in their years at university.

If you feel that you are losing your competitive edge, do not sit and shudder at home – get out there and get back into the pub.

Courtesy of The Ducks and Drakes Club of London.
(Cockney rhyming slang for ``the shakes´´)

Sand Dunes On The Rhine River

Just to the south of us here where the Rhine River has rather a wide flood valley there are massive sand dunes. Surprised ? I sure as hell was considering that everything else that is visible as far as the eye can see is lush verdent green pastures, agricultural fields, state forestry and buildings.

It is really bizzare but apparently the Rhine Valley was some 4,000 metres deep 150 mil years ago and the mighty river has slowly filled its flood plains and valley floor with river washed gravels and sands.

Today they are visible as these massive waves of dunes that has one expecting to see Peter O’Toole, as Lawrence of Arabia, pissed to the eyeballs on schnapps and cider, charging down them on his trusty Arabian steed, bedouin headress flying in the breeze, sword brandished aloft.

( *** Diary note: Apple Harvest 2006, must procure one horse, one sword, one Arabian Nights costume, large goat skin water bag for cider...hmmmm.........)

Searching For Heidi Part 2

The ferry ride was great and was certainly closer to a ship than a ferry. It was 2 decks high with 1st and 2nd class lounges, bars and a restaurant.



The houses that we passed on the lakes edge were nothing short of mini castles with their turreted boathouses and luxury launches and yachts tethered below them. We reached Luzern and were picked up by minibus and transported to the Palace Luzern.



Once again we were all given very nice junior suites with lake and city views. We had a bit of time to ourselves before our tour of the property with the Managing Director Mr. Andrea Jorger. Once again it was a true hotel of the grand palace era with huge chandelliers and massive marmotte pillars through the main lobby and lounges. We had canapes and very good pinot grigio in the lounge before heading to Jaspers restaurant which holds 16 gualt millau points. Classic but contemporary in its distinctive design, the Jasper embraces the finest furnishings and flavours.

"Their young chef Françoise Wicki (GaultMillau “Swiss Discovery of the Year 2001”) has already won critical acclaim for her culinary expertise. She possesses an intuitive feel for refined product combinations."

We had a 3 course meal interspersed with wonderful home made breads and olive oil for dipping. The entree was sauteed scallops with glazed celery and a herb pesto. The main was a Double veal rib chop (deboned)with rosemary potatoes, kenya beans and boletus and for desert an elder creme brulee with granita and pastry. Her remarkable use of herbs and spices create dishes that simply sparkled with surprise. The wines were also very good and we had a 2003 Sauvignon Blanc by Rosenauer from Luzern and a 2002 Blauburgunder also from Rosenauer. We then retired to the lobby bar with its classical English ambience for a snifter or 3 of Swiss William Pear schnapps and some more calvados. As it was Saturday night my colleague Adrian and I then took a long leisurely stroll through the old city of Luzern, through its winding cobbled lanes with its bars and clubs and hyper youths. An excellent little outing. Headed back to the Luzern casino to its night club for a quick beer before retiring at around 2.00am for a few hours sleep before the Sunday outing.

After a mammoth buffet breakfast we left our luggage with the concierge to be forwarded to Arth Goldau rail station where we would meet our train to Berne later in the day. We strolled around the lake with our courtesy hotel backpacks filled with picnic lunch to the ferry terminal and then sailed to Vitznau where we took the funicular Rigi train to the top of Mt Rigi. It was about 35 minutes to the top but the views to all points of the compass were sensational. We sat on the grass with our picnic lunches and took in the breath taking panorama. Nice lunch with sandwiches, fruit, chocolate, cheeses and salad.



We then took a different train line back down the mountain to Arth Goldau via Klösterli. There we took a regional express to Berne before changing trains again and heading back to Frankfurt via Mannheim. All in all a delightful 3 days but I have to say that it was a fairly strenuous and demanding little jaunt, probably due in the main to a complete over indulgence both gastronomical and visual.

Searching For Heidi Part 1

Just back from a weeks holidays which was mainly spent in Darmstadt working on the garden. Last Friday I left with 4 work colleagues for a 3 day trip to Switzerland on a hotel familiarisation and returned late last night. We caught the ICE high speed express service to Interlaken on Friday morning and after a train change in Berne we zoomed off down through the alps along the side of Lake Thun, arriving in Interlaken about 5pm.

We were met at the station by Beate Makowsky the Sales Manager from The Victoria Jungfrau Grand Hotel and taken to the hotel. It is a Grand Hotel in the true tradition of palaces of its era and boasts a lot of art deco and magnificent ballrooms overhung with fabulous crystal chandeliers. It was the height of Victorian society and fashion to stay at these types of hotel by the aristocracy in turn of the century europe. They have just finished building a state of the art spa onto the rear of the hotel which also has a new wing of 12 suites. We were each given a stunning new suite of about 60 square meters, with Bang & Olufsen TV and stereo, big balconies with recliners and views to the peak of the Jungfrau, and bathroom big enough to accomodate a normal lounge room in marmotte marble and glass. Very modern and wonderfully comfortable with a full lounge sitting area and writing desk. Normally 900 swiss francs per night. For James and friends, free !!!! Gotta love that word.



We were given enough time to enjoy their new spa complex for 1.5 hrs and then we met in the lobby for a tour of the hotel and its facilities.

At the end of the tour we were taken to the cellar for glasses of Laurent Perrier vintage champagne and hors dourves. This was followed by a four course dinner in La Terrasse, an elegant restaurant with exquisite French cuisine and piano entertainment and running 16 gualt millau points. Courses included Salmon tatare with bretzeli,caviar and herb salad followed by a soup of Fennel cuppuccino with saffron blossoms. The main course was a saddle of veal with star anise and chilli jus on risotto and topped with horns of plenty mushrooms. The final round was a tasting of plums dome three ways as a plum crumble, plum mousse and plum sorbet inside a delicate wafer bowl. Dinner was served with a variety of Swiss white and red wines which included Eppesses La Braise d'Enfer 2004 and a Pinot Noir Luzifer 2003. After dinner we were taken to the lobby bar where we were given our choice of after dinner drinks. I had a couple of glasses of a truly lush 1981 Vintage Calvados by Christian Drouin. My, my but the gods were smiling and so was I. As we were so full to the gills we took a walk around the streets of Interlaken, looked in the shops and stopped at a bar for a couple of beers before returning to the hotel for a short but well earned sleep.



We were up again by 7am for breakfast and departed at 08.30am to the rail station where we caught the scenic train over the mountain passes to Bergenstock. The scenery was truly awesome and the lakes were so clear and the water blue from the glacial melt. We were met again by the hotel pickup service and driven the 15 km's to the Burgenstock Park Hotel



The hotel is perched on the edge of 1000m high enscarpment overlooking the lake to Luzern in the east. We had a full tour of the property before taking lunch in their traditional swiss restaurant the Taverna. Lunch for me was a traditional Bouillon mit Fladle which is a clear consomme with fine shreds of pancake followed by a Rosti with bar-b-que pork fillet and herb butter. After lunch we walked the trail out east on the Felsenweg path for a scenic 2km forty-minute clifftop walk to Europe’s fastest outdoor elevator which makes the 100-metre trip up to the mountain station of the Bürgenstock (1,114 m above sea level) in just 55 seconds. It is a mindblowing ascent in a glass fronted elevator which rides in a steel cross member tower. The lift rises at 3.42 meters a second for the last 123 meters of the ascent. It was built by the Schindler company and I couldn't help but remark, " Ahh, so this must be Schindlers Lift!"



At the top we walked around the various lookouts, watched an aircraft flying by at head height towing a glider, observed a huge Zepplin cruising around the lake 500 meters below and took in the unfettered view of a miriad of yachts, launches and ferries plying the lake below. We had coffee at the restaurant before returning via the lift and by foot to the hotel where we then took the funicular rail or zahnrad bahn (tooth wheel train) to the lake below to catch the ferry to Luzern.

Local Market

They had there big annual town market festival on the weekend just past here in Darmstadt. Lots of stalls with all the usual hand made hobby arts as well as a lot of baubels and trinkets.

The food stands offered a wide array of traditional German foods in the form of huge bratwursts and pudding type sausages as well as the endless arrays of continental bakery produce.

The big carousel was a real Magic Roundabout type of affair with the organ pipe music blaring out so loud that most of the kiddies were only screaming because they couldn’t hear themselves anymore and thought they had gone permenantly deaf. ( ``Hey Mum!, Hey Dad!, I’m not screaming with laughter and joy this really hurts you idiots and I’m getting really dizzy as well !!!)

They had the buskers out and about and most of them seem to have a piano accordion strapped on. Some of the gypsy traditional stuff is O.K. but the rest sounds like Happy Hammond Hour at the Sunset Hills Home for the Musically Bereft.

In And Around Darmstadt

Looks as if I am destined to get back on a push bike as that seems to be the most common transport around the place. A lot of the bikes have little trailers attached to carry the shopping and even the kids. Mind you with the vast amount of cobble stone streets around here something with a bit of suspension would not go astray. The stones are bumpy enough in some sections to loosen your fillings.

Darmstadt is an interesting town in that it is recognised as the seat of sciences and arts in Germany. The university here is massive and very much given over to sciences. I had a walk around the main campus when I first arrived here and was amazed at the construction of the chemistry centre. The entire building has a steel girder exo-skelton that frames each level and upright. It is designed so as any massive explosions from within shall not damage the integrity of the building as a whole. Guess they must be tinkering with some fairly serious concoctions within.

The other major science item here is the European Space Operations Centre. The centre controls most of the sattelites that are launched by European countries for telecommunications and weather etc. one of its main control links globally is Perth in W.A..

Here’s one for any of you that have computers. The next time your Microsoft software hangs itself and crashes the appropriate comment is, ``Gone With The Windows``.

A Tale Of Murder, Madness And The Oxford English Dictionary

I must briefly touch on a minor point of review as I have so many books that I feel I would like to share. I know that some months ago I mentioned Simon Winchesters novel, “The Surgeon Of Crowthorne”, a tale of murder, madness and The Oxford English Dictionary. The forerunner of his highly acclaimed, “The Map That Changed The World”. It is quite a remarkable story in as much as any book about the writing and compilation of a dictionary could be. The characters involved are both bizarre individuals and the events that lead to their quarter of a century long collaboration are profoundly strange. The two men worked tirelessly towards the same goal without ever meeting each other face to face until almost the time of their deaths. One man Dr James Murray, erudite and pious, a scholar in Oxford endowed with the task of compiling every English word and their illustrative quotations, the other Dr. W.C. Minor a retired, multi-millionaire, American army surgeon turned homicidal maniac, locked away in an institution for the criminally insane. His madness believed to have come from witnessing and working amidst the gruesome and bloody battlefields of the American Civil War. Confined to his prison in Crowthorne, Berkshire and despite his obviously declining mental stability, (e.g.: at one point he surgically slices off his own penis to stop the imaginary phantoms that plague him nightly from abusing him sexually any further), Minor remained stoically dedicated to rooting out hundreds of thousands of examples of words for inclusion in the great book to come. Together they laid the foundations for what still stands today as the most comprehensive collection of words and phrases ever assembled for any language, anywhere in the world. It is as sad as it is funny as it is bewildering in its enormity. The scale of the task versus the span of a human life and the race to achieve the virtually impossible within that remarkably small time span, all make for a tale worthy of telling. Winchester has again triumphed in crafting a story from subject matter that to my mind would be so very difficult to accurately and comprehensively describe and has succeeded admirably. Like his tale of the geological map-making, the enormity of the task belies comprehension. He picks his subject matter with an acute eye for the obscure bordering on the surreal. I have included some small excerpts verbatim from the book for you to facilitate your own conclusions.

“The Surgeon Of Crowthorne” by Simon Winchester.

Popular myth has it that one of the most remarkable conversations in modern history took place on a cool and misty late autumn afternoon in 1896, in the small village of Crowthorne in Berkshire.

One of the parties to the colloquy was the formidable Dr James Murray, the then editor of what was later to be called the Oxford English Dictionary. On the day in question he had travelled fifty miles by train from Oxford to meet an enigmatic figure named Dr W.C. Minor who was among the most prolific of the thousands of volunteer contributors whose labours lay at the core of the Dictionary’s creation.

For nearly twenty years beforehand these two men had corresponded regularly about the finer points of English lexicography. But they had never met. Minor seemed never willing or able to leave his home at Crowthorne, never willing to come to Oxford. He was unable to offer any kind of explanation, or do more than offer his regrets.

Murray, who himself was rarely free from the burdens of his work at the Scriptorium in Oxford, had none the less long dearly wished to see and to thank his mysterious and intriguing helper. And particularly so by the late 1890’s, with the dictionary now well on its way to being half completed: official honours were being showered down upon its creators, and Murray wanted to make sure that all those involved - even men so apparently bashful as Minor – were recognised for the valuable work they had done. He decided he would pay a visit; and the myth that came to surround that visit goes something like this.

Once he had made up his mind to go, he telegraphed his intentions, adding that he would find it most convenient to take a train that arrived at Crowthorne Station – then actually known as Wellington College Station, since it served the famous boys’ school sited in the village – just after two on a certain Wednesday in November. Minor sent a wire by return to say that he was indeed expected and would be made most welcome. On the journey from Oxford the weather was fine; the trains were on time; the auguries, in short, were good.

At the railway station a polished landau and a liveried coachman were waiting, and with James Murray aboard they clip-clopped back through he lanes of rural Berkshire. After twenty minutes or so the carriage turned into a long drive lined with tall poplars, drawing up eventually outside a huge and rather forbidding redbrick mansion. A solemn servant showed the lexicographer upstairs, and into a book lined study, where behind an immense mahogany desk stood a man of undoubted importance. Murray bowed gravely, and launched into the brief speech of greeting that he had so long rehearsed:
‘A very good afternoon to you sir. I am Dr James Murray of the London Philological Society, and editor of the New English Dictionary. It is indeed an honour and a pleasure to at long last make your acquaintance – for you must be , kind sir, my most assiduous helpmeet, Dr W.C. Minor?’
There was a brief pause, an air of momentary mutual embarrassment. A clock ticked loudly. There were muffled footsteps in the hall. A distant clank of keys. And then the man behind the desk cleared his throat, and he spoke.
‘I regret, kind sir, that I am not. It is not at all as you suppose. I am in fact the Superintendent of the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Dr Minor is most certainly here. But he is an inmate. He has been a patient here for more than twenty years. He is our longest-staying resident.’

The official government files relating to this case are secret, and they have been locked away for more than a century. But I have recently been allowed to see them. What follows is the strange, tragic and spiritually uplifting story that they reveal.

With regards the Oxford English Dictionary as a work of art.

“The lonely drudgery of lexicography, the terrible undertow of words against which men like Murray and Minor had so ably struggled and stood, now had at last its great reward. Twelve mighty volumes; 414,825 words defined; 1,827,306 illustrative quotations used, to which Minor alone had contributed scores of thousands.
The total length of type – all handset, for the books were done by letterpress, still discernable in the delicately impressed feel of the inked-on paper – is 178 miles, the distance between London and Manchester. Discounting every punctuation mark and every space – which any printer knows occupies just as much time to set as does a single letter – there are no fewer than 227,779,589 letters and numbers.”

“This has been a story of an American soldier whose involvement in the making of the world’s greatest dictionary was singular, astonishing, memorable and laudable – and yet at the same time wretchedly sad.”

One must also not forget that the circumstances that placed Minor in the position from where he was able to contribute all his time and energy to the making of the OED began with his horrible and unforgivable commission of a murder. The murder of George Merrit left his wife Eliza and their six children in the direst of poverty in a gloomy Victorian era London.

It is a difficult book to bring into perspective other than to read it in its entirety. One other piece of information that was truly quirky was that the wife of the man whom Minor murdered was to become one of his most frequent visitors at the prison during his incarceration. He was eventually shipped home to America and placed permanently in a Washington asylum where he eventually died and not that long after the passing of James Murray. A great read and one that left me feeling more than a little amazed.

The latest version of the OED is available on CD-Rom for ₤178 or approx AUD$485. Given the time invested in its production and having read this book I would consider it the bargain of the century.

Paddling Over Mountains

Here are some science notes I found on a recent trip. I found the information attractive as it squashed flat my own concepts of the seven seas and the way the world truly is. The article comes from a German scientist with a PhD in Physics named Horst Güntheroth but I have abbreviated it somewhat and changed some of the descriptive elements to make it easier to read. I wouldn’t want to bore you all to tears. He writes:

"Gravity commands the entire universe, brings the cosmos under control, keeps planets circling the sun and shapes gigantic galaxies. Gravity is an elementary property of mass. All mass exercises an attraction and the greater the mass, the stronger the attraction. Yet the gravity of our earth is not equally strong in all directions. The reason for this is that the rocks deep within the planet’s core are unevenly distributed. More mass has accumulated in one place, less in another. Such anomalies make their presence felt on the ocean, for instance.

In areas where the gravitational pull is powerful, there are dips in the surface of the ocean, whilst in places where the pull is less pronounced, hills rise up out of the sea. To the south of India, for instance, there is a hollow in the ocean surface 360 feet deep and close to Papua New Guinea the sea swells 260 feet skyward. A ship sailing from such a hill into such a velley would pass through a difference in elevation of 620 feet.

As for objects further away from the planets surface such as aircraft high up above 10,000 mtrs the gravitational forces are not as strong. The pull of the earth diminishes the further away you travel from its surface, another side effect which causes this reduction is that effect of gravitational force is lost in the up and down pressure fluctuations in the atmosphere enveloping our planet. As a result when gravity wains down below, the difference in the altitude of the aircraft is at most 2 or 3 cm – at any rate, too little for anyone to notice."

Cool, heh ! If you were paddling your canoe across the ocean in the wrong direction you would have to be wondering what was giving as you to tried to paddle up a 620 feet hill. What a mongrel ! It would make for a tough days fishing expedition. It would be like trying to paddle over the Rialto Towers in Melbourne or Sydney‘s Centrepoint.

Darmstadt Philharmonic Orchestra With Wolfgang Seeliger

Last weekend I went to see the Darmstadt Philharmonic, conducted by Wolfgang Seeliger, performing Handel’s Firework Music. As Alfred and Margarite shouted me last year, it was my turn to reciprocate the gesture.

Set on the Woog lake like last years concert when they performed Handel’s Water Music, the orchestra was positioned on a large pontoon off shore from the island where everyone was seated. It was a splendid evening considering that for the three evenings prior to the Saturday night we had had some fairly heavy downpours during the night. The weather held up magnificently and the opening prelude was accompanied by a glorious crimson and rose pink sunset in the background. Colours shifting through the red spectrum band as gently and smoothly as the strains of music wafting on the breeze across the unruffled inky blackness of the Woog‘s water. All so very serene and tranquil.

They had a Berlin dance troupe in attendance that specialises in 17th century ballroom choreography. The dancers were all dressed in period costume and they performed a variety of dances to each of the symphonies movements. The orchestra was positioned on either side of the pontoon with the central area being left clear for the dancers.

The Cinderella era would give a better mental perspective of the costuming. The wowdered pigs gobbed in beity....I mean....the powdered wigs bobbed in gaiety. Bum cack, bum cack you’ve slopped your dripper....I mean....come back, come back you’ve dropped your slipper. Symphony music is just so-so serious after all...ahem.

In the last movement they really cut loose with the fireworks which were positioned on the far side of The Woog on the 10m diving board and around its base. The diving tower became a curtain shower of gold and silver whilst the skies over head boomed and cracked amidst the flowering blooms of iridescent psychedelia that fanned out across the whole reserve. As with last year they had many stalls serving food, champagne and beer which we availed ourselves of in civilised moderation. (Aghast, I never thought I would ever utter those two words in the same sentence!) All told it was a very nice evening and the overall performance was outstanding by both musicians and dancers alike.

Introducing The Amazing Fibonacci

Now for a bit of math that some of you will no doubt have seen but once again I have only come across it for the first time recently and I found it quite intriguing.

If you take the number 135, take the first digit to the power of 1, the square of the second and the cube of the third you get the same number again.

135 = 11 + 32 + 53 = 135
the next one in this type of sequence is
175 = 11 + 72 + 53 = 175

a slightly different variation on this theme is

136 = 13 + 33 + 63 = 244
now repeat the process and you get the number you first thought of
244 = 23 + 43 + 43 = 136

The mathematician Fibonacci had imagined a pair of rabbits which produced two off-spring every month, off-spring which began to breed at exactly the same rate one month after birth and asked how many pairs of rabbits would there be after one year. The answer is 144 but the number of pairs of rabbits each month was the most famous sequence of numbers in mathematics: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144. You could always work out the next number in the sequence by adding up the previous two. After 40 months there would be 102,334,105 pairs. That’s some kind of infestation. Just some thing to play with and think about.

Monty Python At The Pfungstadter Brewery

We had another birthday a few weeks back as Bettina’s father Alfred celebrated his. We travelled down to Heppenheim on the Sunday where we enjoyed a flute or two of champagne for brunch before heading out to a local Greek restaurant for a slap up lunch with dips, platters of Greek style bbq meats and salads. I recount all told there were 18 of us. Great lunch that we walked off afterwards with a hike to the top of one of the local hills through the surrounding vineyards.

At the top is a 17th century stone tower, which affords stunning views sweeping back along the length of the Odenwald and out to the west and the Rhine River. Quite a hot day as well which saw us being extremely glad to flop into well-shaded deck chairs under the spreading boughs of the ancient plum tree in Alfred’s backyard on our return.

Fruit is so abundant at this time of the year and amidst the odd cooling ale I found time to wander aimlessly in and around the yard sampling cherries, plums and wild strawberries from the garden.

We ended up leaving in the late afternoon to travel back to Darmstadt and the Pfungstadter brewery open day, which was being held just north of town. They had several bands playing on different sound stages and there were a few close calls with calamity, stepping our way through the human minefield of pissed and legless locals each armed with large glasses of foaming pilsner.

A local town brass band stationed near the entry point was playing the theme from Monty Pythons Flying Circus, which was a source of great amusement to Thomas who is a first class fan of the show. It was a welcoming fanfare that left us both in hysterics and the ensuing laughter was hard to suppress for the rest of the afternoon. All in all a great day.

Smart Mice And A Peeved Cat

We have been getting quite a few mice arriving since the weather warmed up. We have a neat little wire cage trap with a spring loaded door which catches them but doesn’t hurt them. We then release the little suckers in the bushes up the road. A couple of the fatter ones looked extremely familiar on the 4th and 5th catch and we suspect that they were the same mice come back again.

Cunningly we marked their tails with Tippex white out to track them if they came back. Five mice in a couple of days and now not a single one since the Tippex program began. I reckon the little blighters are a good deal smarter than we give them credit for. Cheeky little mongrels are probably waiting for the Tippex to wear off before coming back.

Despite numerous attempts to capture them with various types of cheese, salami, and raisins we discovered in the end that as soon as we put freshly shelled walnuts in the cage they turned up one after the other. Looks like we have discovered the ultimate mouse bait.

The cat from next door, Ganja, had a spitzen Maus in its mouth the other day which is quite a rare type of field mouse that we get here. They have a long and very pointy snout which has a nose resembling a miniature red cherry on the end. Really cute. Quite the Walt Disney door-mouse doppelganger. Thomas had quite a time getting the mouse away from Ganja but eventually succeeded. Needless to say we were instantly relegated to the bad books by Ganja who failed for three days running to make her customary morning and nightly house inspections. Really had her own nose well out of joint. Normally she will be on the prowl anytime there is something fishy smelling on the cook but even a tuna salad wafting on the breeze from the garden table failed to break her out of her snoot. C’est la Guerre !!

Bound To Save Ya!

My mate Thomas has decided that what Australia really needs is some form of Saint Bernard rescue service for stranded outback travellers. He thinks that kangaroos should have solar panels fitted to thier backs to run a mini fridge in the front pouch with a cold six pack, sattelite phone and GPS. Any body out there want to invest in a start up company? We may even get the jump on any competition if we move quick. We might even get some sponsorhip from Carlton United. What about , “Bound To Save Ya !” as a name.

Here Comes Mr Bush - May Day

May Day here in Germany is traditionally a day for union organised protests and as a result I found the central rail station in Frankfurt absolutely crawling with police in full riot gear. Every rail platform had at least a dozen officers and on the main concourses there were scores more.

Even though I was somewhat taken aback at such a high level of police presence it was nothing compared to the George Bush visit. As his plane had to land in Frankfurt before he transfered to Berlin there were thousands of protesters here aside of the tens of thousands awaiting him in Berlin. They had to cancel rail srvices as well as redirect airport traffic. Total chaos in all areas of public transport. It took me over an hour and a half longer to get home that day. Thanks George for messing up everyones lives here.

Why can't you fly into the airforce base in Ramstein and helicopter to your next destination rather than closing down the city for us average Joes? Most inconsiderate Mr President!!

He didn’t seem to achieve much for his visit either with the exception of getting a lot of people drowned in water cannons and similar traffic chaos in Berlin. The man should stay home and munch pretzels.

There's Kangaroos In My German Neighbourhood

Just up the street from where I live in East Darmstadt is the local animal sanctuary / mini zoo. It is called the Vivarium. They recently had the addition of 8 Bennett’s kangaroos (känguru here) delivered there direct from Oz. The headline in the local paper on that weekend read, ``Australien fängt in Osten Darmstadts an´´, the translation reads, Australia comes to East Darmstadt. Needless to say I have kept the banner for my, ``Learning By Drinking´´, folder. Funky headline for the binder. The kangaroos have been a big hit as most Germans are fascinated with all things Oz, especially these hippity hoppers which I call, Große Maus or Big Mouse. It gets me a laugh.

Well I think I should wind this up and get some other bits finished around here. Domestics ...ho hum ! If the weather improves a little this afternoon I shall go for a bicycle ride with Bettina out into the Lichtwiese Wald (wood) which adjoins our neighbourhood. The local river here has its source deep within the wood from a quelle or spring. So the Darmstadt Quell is the object of our outing. We can check out the local fishponds and see if the anglers are having any luck. Over here fishing is very strictly controlled by licencing. Not only do you require a licence but you must also be a fee-paying member of an angling club so as to gain access to those lakes and sections of rivers which are set-aside for that sole purpose. There is a small restaurant / cafe there as well which is a good place to procure the essential afternoon caffeine hit. With only a week to go before I resume working again I will have to try and get as many things done as possible in the remaining time left to me. I hope that this finds you all happy, bright and enjoying a certain zest for life.

Pajero's, Rioja And Barbie Dolls

There really is not a lot else to tell at the moment with the exception of some light hearted silly bits. In Spain they had to change the name of the Mitsubishi Pajero as the word Pajero translates in spanish into Wanker. Minor recall required there.

I have been discovering the joys of Spanish wine in the form of Rioja (ree-oak-a) which has about four main styles that are aquired by blending a variety of shiraz, cabernet and grenache grapes and fermenting them in a mixture of french and american oak. It seems that 1994 and 1997 were the best vintages of the more recent years and the cost of these is not entirely prohibitive at around 7 euros a bottle. A really good drop for the Summer barbie season ahead.

Speaking of barbies I believe that Mattell have recently released the most expensive Barbie doll ever.
Divorce Barbie comes complete with Ken’s car, Ken’s House and Ken’s bank account.

Over heard recently at a Muslim strip show...........Show us your face!!!

Thought of the month:The true definition of a pessimist is an experienced optomist.

Wine Talks Everybody Knows That

I will cover a little of my latest book which is Blackberry Wine by Joanne Harris. I will give you the opening paragraph from the book so that you may get an idea of the style and a taste for the things to be enjoyed within it.

``WINE TALKS; EVERYONE KNOWS THAT. LOOK AROUND YOU. ASK the oracle at the street corner; the uninvited guest at the wedding feast; the holy fool. It talks. It ventriloquizes. It has a million voices. It unleashes the tongue, teasing out secrets you never meant to tell, secrets you never even knew. It shouts, rants, whispers. It speaks of great things, splendid plans, tragic loves and terrible betrayals. It screams with laughter. It chuckles softly to itself. It weeps in front of its own reflection. It opens up Summers long past and memories best forgotten. Every bottle a whiff of other times, other places; every one, from the commonest Liebfraumilch to the imperious 1945 Veuve Clicquot, a humble miracle. Everyday magic, Joe called it. The transformation of base matter into the stuff of dreams. Layman’s alchemy.´´

So it begins and leads you into a wonderful tale which is split between the time of a man’s youth in 1977, as he spends his holidays in the dying coal mining town of Nether Edge and his adult life set in 1999, which has become ever more complex and fraught with the angst, of living up to a reputation as a successful writer. The story interweaves the narratives from both periods and it introduces us to an old retired coal miner named Joe who believes in everyday magic and lives a life that centres around his garden full of exotic fruits and vegetables. The true stars of this story are the product of Joe´s special talents, as he weaves his so called,``everyday magic´´ and makes strange and unusual wines from the plants that he grows. It is nice also to have the story return to the idylic little french village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes where ``Chocolat´´ was based and with a few of the original characters from that tale making a very welcome re-appearance.

As with her first book ``Chocolat´´ she has managed once again to capture smells, scents and perfumes and to deliver an overall literary bouquet that you can palpably taste in your mouth as you read. I can not recommend both books highly enough. I have been given for my birthday a copy of, ``Five Quarters Of The Orange´´, which is the third in this series of books. It sits on the bedside table even as I write this, begging me to turn off the laptop and give it the attention which I am sure it deserves. Doubtless, there are more late nights on the way. All of the books I have read so far by Harris are hard books to put down once you begin and they will certainly remain in memory as great moments in your literary life. I have noted that there appear to be 2 earlier books preceding these but I will have to wait until I can find a bookstore stocking them before I will now more about them.

Not So Amazing Amazon

I picked up on a nice little news item the other day which lays to rest a great deal of misinformation that has been bandied about over the years. It is from a former CSIRO scientist Professor Paul Jarvis and in the main discusses why life support doesn’t grow on trees. People have long claimed that the Amazon rainforest generates approx 20% of the oxygen that we breath and can therefore be rightly called , “the lungs of the Earth”. Tropical rainforests cover about 7% of the Earth’s surface. The Amazon makes up nearly half of all rainforest land, about 6 million square kilometres, just a little smaller than Australia. This area however is being reduced by about 5% annually according to Professor Jarvis. (I’ve got to say here that the idea of clear felling the rainforest from an area the size of Australia in 20 years is pretty worrying.)

It is true that living plants do release oxygen. When they die however, their decay uses up as much oxygen as they generated when living. So the Amazon rainforest is about neutral with regard to making oxygen. Instead, most of the oxygen that we breath comes from tiny plants called phytoplankton in the ocean. Indeed the oceans make up about 70% of the surface area of our planet, so it really should be called Planet Water , not Planet Earth. The Amazon rainforest has many fine qualities (e.g.: rainforests account for about 90% of the biodiversity of living species and as such are a hugely valuable resource to be protected and treasured) but the making of surplus oxygen for us to breath is not one of them.

However there's new protection afoot for some of the richest rainforests on Earth, thanks to a new agreement between Peru and the United States. The agreement, called a "debt-for-nature swap," was signed in Washington, D.C. this year. The deal commits the Peruvian government to provide local currency funding for Peruvian conservation groups, giving them the money they need for critical conservation work in 10 rainforest areas covering more than 27.5 million acres -- an area the size of Virginia or Cuba. These areas are really the heart of the western Amazon. They're the most pristine, the richest in terms of the species they contain.

Under the agreement, $5.5 million of Peru's debt to the United States is cancelled, saving the Peruvian government about $14 million in future payments. They instead will pay $10 million in local currency into a trust fund in Peru that will benefit conservation. The U.S. funding is authorized by the Tropical Forest Conservation Act of 1998, which encouraged the reduction of foreign debt in exchange for a financial commitment to forest conservation.

Saving Peruvian rainforests is a major challenge for conservationists. In Peru there are some 20,000 species of vascular plants and nearly 1,800 species of birds, many of them found nowhere else. Their habitats are threatened by destructive logging, agricultural clear-cutting, mining and exploration for oil and gas. Peruvian conservationists will use their new funding for a wide variety of conservation work, including establishing and maintaining protected areas and reserves, conservation training, research, and supporting the livelihoods of indigenous people in the forests. Well that’s my little bit on the topic of conservation bit and it will have to take the place of a book review this month. Too little time and to many fish to fry.

Sauce For The Goose Is Not Always Sauce For The Gander

My historical note this month concerns some other background pieces that my mate Thomas has been relating to me over the past few weeks. It concerns the nature of the edicts that Hitler laid down in his preparations for the true Aryan race, his great and unwavering, except when it suited him, national socialist idealogy.

Now maybe I am somewhat poorly educated in WWII history but it turns out that Adolf himself was a Catholic Jew and when your setting out to exterminate all Jews then this has to become more than a slightly sticky wicket. Joseph Goebells his chief minister of propoganda was not only of jewish decent and upbringing but worse still was deformed with a club foot. Both his religion and his deformity would have on either count been sufficient to have him permanently removed from existence were it not for his brilliance as a speech writer and antagonist of the allied troops on the radio airwaves.

Another high ranking member of the Nazi party that managed to allude persecution was Rheinhardt Heidrich, better known as ``The Henchman of Prague`` and one of Heinrich Himmler`s right hand strong arm men in the upper echelons of the SS. Heidrich like Goebells was a Jew but this was conveniently over looked by Hitler due to the fact that he was 6ft 3in tall, had ashen blond hair, the big Nordic muscular build from several centuries of inbreeding with Vikings and the like and the most piercing blue eyes that Hitler had ever encountered. He was the true embodiment of Hitlers Aryan super being. The 1939 version of a calender pin-up boy on Adolf‘s bedroom wall. Also noteable was the fact that both Hitler and Goebells were both dark haired, brown eyed and vertically challenged. These features embodied in themselves were enough to send many other souls to Auswitsch and eventual extermination.

Once again history proves that what is sauce for the goose is not necessarily sauce for the gander. It brings to light another little said fact that the exactness of historical truth is only that which the government of your time and country has allowed to be taught in the class rooms of your time. Enough said !

Geology Like Never Before

On the literary side of the things I have recently been reading a book that I have found to be absolutely fascinating. ``The Map That Changed The World´´ by Simon Winchester. The story of William Smith and his creation of the very first geological map depicting the delineations of the strata of England,Wales and Scotland. The story it tells is of vast importance historically, as his tireless and dilegent work of a lifetime, in due course, gave birth to the science of Geology. Upturning the fundamental religious beliefs of an entire nation and later the world was no mean feat in the early 1800´s. No doubt my years spent working in minerals exploration have given me a hightened sense of interest in my appraisal of the book but I would think that anyone interested in the cause and effect of such ground breaking thinking and genius could not help but to be amazed and intrigued. There can be no better way to say it than to quote from Simon Winchester´s book directly.

I quote verbatim a section discussing the first realisation by Smith that a map was the thing he most needed to produce, to prove to society his findings and their true worth to science. The author Simon Winchester speaking as himself states,
``I find myself tempted to exclaim, as Thomas Huxley cried out on first reading Darwin: How very stupid not to have thought of that before ! That William Smith was first to do so was a measure of the man´s extraordinary achievement: to see what others could have seen but never did, to set down on paper what others might have suspected, but never felt confident enough to declare.´´

Another quote that gives a sense of the book is in relation to the gathering of data for the map itself.
``It was a work of genius, and at the same time a lonely and potentially soul-destroying project. It was the work of one man, with one idea, bent upon the all-encompassing mission of making a geological map of England and Wales. It was unimaginably difficult, physically as well as intellectually. It required tens of thousands of miles of solitary travel, the close study of more than 50,000 square miles of territory that extended from the tip of Devon to the borders of Scotland, from the Wesh marshes to the coast of Kent. The task required patience, stoicism, the hide of an elephant, the strength of a thousand and the stamina of an ox. It required a certain kind of vision, an uncanny ability to imagine a world possessed of an additional fourth dimension, a dimension that lurked beneath the purely visible surface phenomena of the length, breadth, and height of the countryside, and that, because it had never been seen, all customary cartography ignored. To see such a hidden dimension, to imagine and extrapolate it from the little evidence that could be found, required almost a magician´s mind – as geologists who are good at this sort of thing know only too well today.´´

It really is a cracking good tale of human endeavour against the odds. A bloody ripper !! I do hope you will give it a look. Another of Simon Winchesters books that I have not yet read but am now enthused to do so is ``The Surgeon Of Crowthorne´´, which was also an international best seller as I am sure this shall prove to be as well. Many thanks to Margaret for the wonderful present and to Graeme for all those years of patiently teaching me so much about geology and the world beneath my feet.