h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi all. Over here we're having a great and glorious heatwave. It's been 36 degrees or so according to the weather bureau, and it's quite humid. Great excuse for lying on your back all day and doing nothing. Really, it's not possible to do much in such weather. But yesterday I did work a bit, filled lots of nursery bags and planted over a hundred tree seeds. Today I was really tired!

Evening Walter,Bran, Case & Sal,
Glad to hear you had good Christmas/New Year breaks Walter and Bran, even if you were working hard too. And you're both right, this is the real start of the millennium, I was just thinking that this morning driving to work. So cheers, all round.
All those images of summer and sunshine, cricket, champagne, shorts, planting seeds, lying around doing nothing! While Sal and I are braving mud, snow, frost, tax returns and budgets.

Walter, I would call Jeremy Paxman a notoriety, if the word can be used in that way, rather than a celebrity. He is very well known but with no glamour attached. I haven't read his book, but I think I could guess at the tone of it. He is famous for his extreme bluntness in interviewing regardless of the interviewee (victim) and for not hiding his opinions (disgust, contempt, shock) at the answers given on the quiz show he hosts. I am astonished at how many books you have got through in a week, Walter but what a mixture, whales and Latin, Cooke and Paxman.

I am planning a fortnight in Spain in February, at Nerja on the Mediterranean coast - maybe I should put together a reading list for the deck chair under the palm tree on the terrace overlooking the Playa El Chorrillo. Or maybe I'll just lie in the sunshine and listen to the palm leaves and the sea on the pebbles. .

Back to reality - I am just back from a village hall meeting. Almost every parish council in England has been planting trees to mark the millennium, tonight I found out where the Christmas tree that mysteriously appeared outside the hall came from. It was donated by the parish council. Who cut it down from the "green" in front of the pub.
But its ungrateful to send them up because with unprecedented generosity they have given us, unasked (though hinted at), a grant to pay the whole costs of the feasibility study we need to decide whether we can revamp our hall or need to rebuild it. This is the first sign of real support we've had in our efforts to make sure we still have a hall in five years time and it made such a difference. People were actually enthusiastic at tonight's meeting.

Well its late and I have a Jeremy Paxmanlike interrogation on budgets to go through with the boss tomorrow,
So goodnight all,
Wz.

Evening everyone

Looks as though we're back to normal again. Nice to see everybody's back. Glad you all had a good Christmas and New Year.

D'you remember I was worried about not having any birds in my garden for ages? Well, when we had the snow the black birds and robins came back. Now the snow's gone, they've stayed around. I still haven't seen any other birds though. I envy you all your bird visitors - well, everybody. If you want to evict your starlings Wazungu, send them to me. Can't you stop them getting in your loft? Speaking of 2-metre jackdaw nests, when my brother bought an old farm house about 10 years ago, they found a rat's nest in the cupboard under the kitchen sink that filled the whole cupboard.

I'm finding h2g2 access extremely variable. Sometimes I can't get in at all and sometimes once I get in, nothing will load so I leave again.

It's good that you're persisting with the BSE enquiry. I wonder if they hope you might just give up if they ignore you. It's a pretty poor show on the part of the government and the various departments they like to pass their bucks to.

I've seen that policy about the sub-eds checking for most recent versions too. I think some of them do and some of them don't. I wonder if a few have bitten off more than they can chew and just haven't got time to do the thing properly. It must take a lot of their time and they're all volunteers - probably most have full time jobs and social lives as well.

Sounds as though you've read everything you could lay your hands on Walter. Jeremy Paxman is one of my favourites. He presents Newsnight and he's the 'quiz master' (if that's what you call it) on University Challenge. When he gets a politician to dissect on Newsnight, he's absolutely merciless. He has them under his microscope and pins them down so they can't wriggle. If he asks them a question and they answer some other question (the one they wish he'd asked instead) he just keeps repeating the question until they're embarrassed into answering and it's quite clear that they're trying to avoid giving a straight answer. He's the antidote to spin. Brilliant.

Bran, it doesn't seem right that you get paid for that job. You enjoy it too much! Bruny Island sounds like a wonderful place.

It's hard to imagine, as I sit here, with the wind howling outside and my fingers almost too cold to type, that Walter, Bran and Case are all enjoying lovely summer weather and it's almost too hot for Case to work. Only a few more months to wait before summer's back. The days have started getting longer again (which means your days have started getting shorter). Hey, that's cheered me up. Thank you for letting us have our sun back

Speak to you all later.
Sal

Evening everyone,
Sal I suppose I could try and block the starlings way into the loft but it means rooting around under the eaves round the water tank in the dark. And I KNOW there's a dead rat up there somewhere. I don't what to even think about finding an old rat's nest.

I'm glad you have some birds back, I haven't seen the redwings around again, I don't think there's much for them in the fields here. Did you see that the RSPB seems to be concluding that changing farming practises have caused the most damage to bird populations?

At least we had plenty of sun this weekend, even if it never melted the frost on the road on Sunday. Saturday was a beautiful day. I went on a bus trip to the Albert Docks in Liverpool. A friend of mine's neighbour has an old bus and took us to Merseyside on it. The sky was deep blue, the Mersey sparkling, the Liver building very impressive in the sunshine and it wasn't too cold for picnicing by the converted warehouses by the dock. We had a great time, mostly spent in the Maritime Museum. Sausage rolls and hard boils eggs by the dock is not quite champagne and cricket, but it was fun. And the days are definitely getting longer , the earth is tipping our way again.

Speaking of long days, I've been up long enough in this one and its back to more budgets tomorrow, so 'til then,
Wz

PS please read boiled for boils in the above. I DO NOT picnic on boils.

Hi everyone,

Glad to hear Waz that you have sighted blue skies and some sunshine. That is something you shared with the residents of Western Sydney yesterday, who were blessed with a maximimum temperature of 46 degrees, or something like 115 in the old money.

Waz, don't worry about typos. What struck me as noteworthy is that some people would picnic in the middle of Winter. Me and the beloved firmly believe that this shows there is still real hope for the civilised world as we know and love it (we sometimes picnic IN the house, rugs, baskets, fold-up table and chairs and all). Boiled eggs or boils, it makes no odds, it is the underlying conceptual loveliness of a Winter picnic that strikes a chord with us kindred picnic spirits.

I need to make a correction. When gloating about my holiday reading list I did not intend to convey the impression that I had read 'Medieval Latin' in the sense that most people would 'read' a book: I have absorbed but a few pages out of several hundred, but my excuse is that while declensions and conjugations are mildly interesting they are not, when all is said and done, quite the sort of reading that suits the lazy, hazy days of summer. Anyway, since then books read include "From Construction to Destruction: An Authentic History of the Colne Valley and Halstead Railway" (written by my cousin, incidentally) and "The Wall-paintings of Willingham".

We took down the Christmas tree on Sunday, never mind the twelve days etc. It was a lovely tree, perhaps the best yet, and it had a distinctive, strong smell, and looked a treat decorated as it was under the guiding hand of the beloved's sure sense of elegance. Christmas gone, to join all those other Christmasses past. Take care y'all.

Walter.

Morning Walter, Bran, Evening Sal and 'Night(?) Case,
46 degrees! Thats overdoing it isn't it? Its very minus here tonight, frost everywhere but an amazing clear sky to go with it. Orion is out, striding the sky in all his glory.

I have never truly picnicked indoors Walter. When you've moved in to a new house and all you have is the floor, a couple of teachests and a few plastic plates it doesn't really count as picnicking, wrong atmosphere. My classiest picnic last year was one my brother organised. It was the complete works, a warm summer evening, folding chairs, rugs, basket, wine and cold chicken on the banks of a very picturesque river in Yorkshire, complete with willow tree, flock of sheep and ruined priory on the opposite bank. The unclassiest was a couple of sandwiches eaten leaning on the car at a motorway service station in the middle of nowhere, but still better than eating indoors at a motorway service station. Nice to know you're a fellow picnicker, but what led to a picnic indoors?

BTW its mildly reassuring to know you didn't read Medieval Latin cover to cover. As for Christmas trees, although I put mine out of sight of visitors on the twelth day I only got round to undecorating and putting away this Sunday. I have an artificial tree because I love getting the same tree out year after year. I was looking at my mother's tree at New Year and she still has glass balls on it that I remember choosing with my sister around about 1970. These are Christmasses not gone but temporarily out of sight, waiting their time again,
Wz

Hi everyone,

Ho hum, another fine, warm summer's day. Where else would anyone rather be in summer than in Tasmania?

Yes Waz, 46 degrees is overdoing it and as the Marauding one noted the other day, even 36 is too hot for comfort. My ideal temperature is around the 25 mark, or a bit warmer if there is a beach nearby, but once the mercury nudges 30 and up we are speaking seriously hot.

Me and the beloved are picnic fanatics and our style is straight out of Rat and Mole in "Wind in the Willows". While a stream or a river is not essential, it is highly desirable and the beloved says five-star picnics necessarily include the babbling of water. So, canvas chairs (which are usually seldom used), wooden picnic table, rugs, blankets, wicker basket, always proper china, cutlery and glassware, absolutlely no plastics or acrylics. Tablecloth and napkins, too. We take a book each, and often the kite. The indoors picnics? Well, when we have planned a picnic and the weather has been too inclement the beloved is nothing daunted and indeed, says one of the advantages of an indoor al fresco is that you can play Mozart on a good quality stereo, which almost but not quite compensates for the lack of burbling and babbling water sounds (the beloved says babbling, I say burbling). That picnic your brother organised sounds enchanting, especially that sheep safely grazed alongside a ruined priory. Which priory was it, I have this sense that I have been there, or is Yorkshire full of such idyllic arcadian spots?

We are not really barbecue enthusiasts, which is terribly un-Australian and anti-social I guess, but neither of us are red meat eaters, and red meat cooking and eating tends generally to be the whole point of a barby, and fish and chicken cooked on a barby can be an inexact science, plus we much prefer picnic-type foods anyway. Are barbecues big in England - over here, they assume shrine-like icon status, rather like two-stroke lawnmowers and Hills Hoist clothes lines. Everyone swears that wood fuelled barbies are the bestest truest bluest, but almost everyone actually uses gas bottles rather than suffer the inconvenience of uncertain and extremely fluctuating heat levels, billowing smoke and finding suitable wood.

How oddly coincidental about you Christmas decoration balls. About twenty years ago, when my sister came here for a visit, we bought a box of six christmas balls that we both thought special: we took three each. Now, every Christmas, we come together across twelve thousand miles as we put those balls on our respective trees, and they have become very precious family treasures. You are quite right, these are Christmasses past awaiting their time to return.

Take care y'all,

Walter

Good evening all,
-6 C last night, not so cold tonight and they say we're in for more snow.
You like kite flying too Walter! I don't have a kite but I've bought them for my brother and brother in law so there's one around when the time, company and place is right. They are small stunt kites with very long streaming tails.
The priory was Kirkam Priory, by the River Derwent, just a small place for Yorkshire which does seem to have more than its share of such places. It doesn't even feature on their tourist info sites. The sheep were on our side of the river. There was a flock of about thirty when we sat down but a tractor arrived with a trailer full of thirty more newly shorn sheep. They were let into the field where they lined up, all looking towards the sheep already there on the far side. Those sheep drew up ranks, they did a bit of "who do you think you're looking at?" and then both sides started to advance very purposefully and at speed (for sheep). We thought we were in for a ringside view of woolly warfare. But when the two front lines were about to clash they stopped still, broke ranks and everyone ran around greeting everyone else, tails all awaggling. Then they settled down to safely grazing. Question - are sheep short sighted do you think? Charging into battle only to find themselves confronting their nearest and dearest? BTW I forgot to mention there were tadpoles in the river and ducks too.

I understand your indoor picnics now but you can't be choosy about the weather here, you just have to get on and picnic or you wouldn't picnic much! Particularly on Scottish islands. Having said that I admit to having had a fair few car picnics. (And also in the bird hide at Forvie Sands, hoping one of the serious birdwatchers hung with telescopes, binoculars, and notebooks wouldn't come in to find us with our picnic all spread out along the window ledges, steaming the windows up with the flasks.) I like the sound of your picnics, I don't think ours are quite up to your 5 star standard as regards crockery and napkins.

I thought BBQs were essential part of social life in Oz. They do happen here, but its not bigtime, usually small family ones that can be arranged on the day, should the day be sunny. We've tried a couple at village fetes but it means arranging tents, just in case. I can't see the fuel making much difference to the cheap beefburgers and hotdogs that get cooked. We certainly wouldn't risk chicken at a fete. The local inhabitants find enough to beef about without our serving up a dose of food poisoning. My parents, courtesy of my brother, have an old milk crate supported on some stray bricks which can, and has been, used as a barbecue. Don't think they'd want to invite the neighbours round to that though.

I like the idea of shared Christmas decorations.

Sal, the redwings are still around and have moved into the further away field so perhaps there is some food for them there after all. I was able to watch them properly yesterday and saw fieldfares with them. Even better, a yellowhammer landed in the tree behind the shed with a couple of squabbling sparrows. I haven't seen, or more to the point heard a yellowhammer here for quite a few years. Which is a pity because apart from greenfinches its about the only bird song I'm really sure of identifying. No bramblings though.
til later,
Wz

Evening all

It feels colder tonight than it did last night. I think my central heating is on the blink. What a nuisance!

I noticed I simulposted my last message with you Waz. Didn't see it till a couple of days later.

I heard 2 interesting things on Robert Winston's "The Human Body" yesterday that I thought might interest you while you're talking about BBQ's. He was talking about why bodies age and how 'free radicals' (sound political don't they - but apparently it's just spare oxygen molecules or the like) attack our dna and so on, and that causes us to get old and wrinkly. He said one thing that slows down the action of free radicals (by taking up the spare oxygen, I think) is red wine and one thing that makes it worse is meat cooked on barbeques (that release more free radicals into our bodies). So I'm just having a medicinal glass of red wine.

There was an item on the news about Tasmania too. They said that sea horses were in danger of extinction world-wide but round the coasts of Tasmania, efforts are being made to conserve the sweet little things.

Did you hear that the free vote in the House of Commons was overwhelmingly in favour of an outright ban on fox hunting? It'll probably get snaggled up in the Lords though and if those unelected people interfere as predicted, it'll be 2002 before the ban comes into effect - and then only if Labour get in again. I see Gandalf was over at the foxhunting article within minutes of the announcement of the result, to have a little gloat. Don't blame him. Just hope he's not a bit premature.

Those sheep you described sounded almost human - the mods and rockers.

Glad you still have the company of the redwings. I also haven't seen a yellowhammer for years and I have to admit I wouldn't recognise it's song. I'd have to get my RSPB video out and have a search through. My garden continues to be visited daily by robins and black birds. Did I mention they like my dogs' food? I don't normally feed them but now everything is frozen solid I'm feeding them every day and pouring boiling water into the frozen bird bath. I'm having to see off the cats as well. They seem to be all too alert to the increase in bird numbers in my garden.

I'm almost frozen solid myself in this corner with the radiators refusing to throw out any heat. I'll speak to you later, when I'm a bit warmer.

Sal

Hi Everyone

Not intending to add another gloat to Walter's regarding our weather, but another hot one today, about 29 celcius at the moment ... came home and the pansies and violas had wilted - a quick water and I hope that they are on track again.

I hope that this weather keeps up as in two and a half weeks I am embalking (sp?) on a three night walk to a peak called Frenchman's Cap - about 1450 metres (not all that high really), but in an area that can be very wet. There is a flood plain that the track goes through, called the Loddon Plains, which has been nicknamed the "Sodden Loddons" due to at times hip-deep quagmires. If the weather has been dry, it is possible to get through without even getting the boots dirty. However .... in the event of rain, one must be prepared, and above all else make sure that one doesn't bring a foot up without the footwear - leaving a boot behind in a quagmire would be a very bad thing. The Cap is quartzite, and so looks as if it has snow on it all year round. I'll keep you all informed as to progress after the event.

Well spotted about the Tassie seahorse thing Sal. They are actaully being bred as far as I remember in a commercial sense (some Asian delicacy I imagine), but also with release back into the ocean. As I recall, it was fairly new.

The BIG NEWS for me is that my scholarship extension has been approved!!! Yeehaaw! So, I now have until the end of September to finish The Tome. About 55,000 words thus far (and 1050 or so footnotes Walter), with about 35,000 still expected. So, by the end of the year ..... (I can't say it - if I think that far ahead I come over all dizzy). Anyhooo, all is going well on that front.

Well ... time for a cool drink and a bit of basking in the heat. Best wishes everyone, and remember to rug up Sal and Waz.

Cheerio
Bran the Terribly Relieved.

P.S. I have had a lot of difficulty getting on the site lately - this is the first time I have managed to get on for a while. I opened up at one attempt and none of my forum posts or articles were listed. Most strange.

Hello again. I'm also having trouble, not so much with h2g2 as with the internet in general. But if I persist I get in.

About fox hunting: what methods are people going to use to control foxes when hunting is prohibited? Traps? That's not very humane. Poison? That is ecologically ruinous.

We are having an extreme heatwave now. It hasn't rained in months, temperatures reach the high thirties with great regularity, I'm waking up in clammy sweats in the middle of the night - very unusual. Do you guys buy this global warming business?

In South Africa, among the Afrikaners, barbecues are also almost a compulsory religious rite. I don't like barbecues because I know that burnt beef isn't very healthy.

Human rights interests, anyone? Over here in Africa they just shot and killed DRC president Laurent Desiré Kabila. What do folks overseas think when they read things like that?

Also in South Africa there's a cholera epidemic. Over ten thousand people are infected now, many have died. This is a result of poor sanitation facilities. Many communities don't have toilets or running water supplies. They do all their stuff in nearby rivers and streams. The authorities say they don't have the money to improve infrastructure. They gave some communities supplies of bleach. But when the supplies ran out they did not give any more, they didn't have money - they said the people should buy their own. But the people also don't have money. They show pictures of people getting water from and bathing in rivers known to be heavily infected - the people say they know that they can get sick, but that is the only water they have access to. The epidemic started in KwaZulu-Natal and is now spreading to Gauteng - the Johannesburg/Witwatersrand/Pretoria area of old.

The heat wave is also affecting people. Some communities with limited water supplies are suffering immensely. On the TV they showed pictures of long lines of kids waiting all day long to use a single water pump, in the blazing sun, to get water for their families. Other people who suffered include elderly people who had to stand in line for many hours in the heat and sun to get their pensions. Afterwards many of them had to walk long distances back to their homes.

Spare a thought for us less fortunates, why don't you!

I mean, we humans just have to get our act together, don't we?

Afternoon All

It snowed this morning but now it's turning to rain. The birds are brave little souls and just get on with it. The snow in my garden is covered in bird prints.

That sounded suspiciously like a gloat to me Bran

Hope you manage to keep your boots on if the Loddon turns sodden. Remember that house I mentioned where my brother found a rats' nest filling the whole cupboard. Same location but outside the house, there was an enormous heap of pig manure. My brother felt he had to climb it (don't ask why - I can't imagine) and had his wellies sucked off. I hope you really enjoy the climb and the view will be spectacular.

Those sea horses get used in Chinese medicine I think. I didn't know they ate them (as food as well as medicine) too. I've somehow acquired the impression from tv programmes about endangered creatures, that some of the people who eat or use them, believe that the animal is somehow more potent or better in some way, precisely because it's rare. If I haven't misunderstood that aspect of the problem, it makes it all the more worrying.

Pleased to hear you got your extension. That doesn't mean you can relax though

I've found access to h2g2 continues to be inconsistent, Case. I'm not having many probs with the rest of the internet though.

Re fox hunting - you might like to have a look at the fox hunting threads at "The h2g2 Writing Workshop" and "Ask h2g2". It seems a shame to clutter Wazungu's nice relaxing waterhole up with arguments repeated at length elsewhere. But just briefly: the whole hunting thing in Britain rests on the assumption that we have a big fox problem that needs to be controlled. We don't have a big fox problem, in fact fox hunts have to maintain suitable areas for foxes to breed otherwise they'd find none to hunt. The vast majority of foxes are killed on the roads and by disease. A tiny proportion are killed by the hunts. If we had the plague of foxes they try to kid us on that we have, then fox hunting would be a very inefficient way to control them. And so on. But do go and have a look at those threads if you're interested.

I buy the global warming business. It seems likely. There are a lot of different aspects to it - it's very complicate. It's the sort of thing I imagine you, in particular, Case, would like to get your teeth into. The global climate is one of those complex, chaotic systems, so by the time they've finished messing about analysing all the data, it'll probably be too late to do anything about it. Seems to me they'd better get cracking now, before it's too late.

Human rights and wrongs can't fail to interest us, can they? The information we've had about the shooting of Laurent Kabila has been confusing. First they denied that he was hit, then they denied that he was dead but said he was wounded, now we know he's dead. It's worrying. I'm guessing that desperate people do terrible things when they feel powerless. I don't know the facts and I'm not trying to excuse that sort of behaviour, but it's hard to understand it when you've never been in that position. It must be terrifying for people who live in an atmosphere where life can be taken with great ease and little thought.

The news about the cholera epidemic is upsetting. It's interesting that they are having that Hindu religious gathering at the Ganges in India - the biggest gathering of humans anywhere on earth. You'd think cholera would be a big problem there too but it doesn't seem to be. They find the cholera bacteriophages in the water of the Ganges and that seems to protect the people quite well. You would think if there are none in the waters of South African rivers, the authorities would make an effort to introduce them. I expect I oversimplify and it's more difficult than that.

It would be nice if we humans could, as you say, get our act together.

Sal

Afternoon folks

Just a quick one re global warming. There was a brief item on the news this morning. I can't remember the name of the committee but it's an intergovernmental group of scientists who are looking into the causes of global climate change, and who were involved in the Kyoto (sp) meeting. They've done some more analysis and now say it's worse than previously thought. Global warming is happening more quickly than anticipated and they're more sure than ever that the main causes are human generated pollution. They expect a sea rise of one metre and an average global temperature increase of 6 degrees C in the near future. Poorer and low-lying countries will bear the brunt of the disaster. Well, you could pretty well count on that being the case, couldn't you? If the richest parts on the world were going to be the main victims, there'd be no hesitation in taking measures - however draconian - to turn the tide.

Speak to you later.

Sal

The way it seems to me, EVERYBODY is going to be affected by global warming, including the "First World". I would like to know what draconian measures they are going to take once the problems start.

How would one go about finding and introducing anti-Cholera bacteriophages into water supplies?

Evening everyone,
This is just a short post, my brain is too budget muddled to deal with fox hunting, human rights and global warming tonight though I will say that; personally I wouldn't join a fox hunt; I am interested in human rights but didn't see the news story you mentioned Case as I've been avoiding watching much news lately; and I buy the global warming theory and can't understand the "First world's" blindness on this issue.

Sal I hope your heating is back and I wanted to say that having read your post I took your medical advice and had some red wine myself on Saturday. Very nice too. And thinking of all the good it was doing added so much to the enjoyment .
I didn't see the redwings yesterday, they may have moved on but tonight I saw a badger. My best view of one yet. He was trotting down the pavement so I saw his black v striped face, then as we drew level he turned and waddled in the direction we were going so I drove alongside for a few yards ( not knowing if he might veer into the road) admiring his stripes and his pink feet until he turned into a hole in the hedge.

Bran, I'm glad you got the extension. I think my brother has voluntarily committed himself to finishing his thesis next month, which is odd because he's usually relatively sane. Regarding the Sodden Loddons - having made sure you still have your footwear on on stepping out of the quagmire, don't sit down and put your leg in the air to pull up your socks. Not without checking the boot isn't full of water anyway. Unless you like being the day's entertainment.
Until tomorrow, when, as I'm not working, I may have a few functioning brain cells back,
Wz