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

I really like the water cycle. The evaporation from the ocean, precipitation onto land, rivers running to the sea, and the back up again.

Bread making. Particularly the rising of the dough.

PP

I like seeing the growth of plants - all sorts of plants, from annuals to the longest living trees. But what really got me overawed were the survivors of last year's hard cold and long winter breaking out into their spring growth from underground. That I believe is true magic

Yeah and I like my compost bin. Makes me not worry about being wasteful about food and stuff.

Its funny how we don't think in this way a lot of the time.

I spent some time in the rain forest in South America. The soil is incredibly thin..hence if you chop down rain forest the whole thing degenenerates very quickly and vast amounts of stuff need to be added for agriculture.

The soil is thin because of the heat and moisture in the forest. Decomposition is speeded up incredibly and the trees are sucking it back up almost immediately.

i stupidly took some leather shoes. They were nearly rotted after a month.

I have long appreciated the ways that the core of my professional world work. Through my career I have seen the transitions from vacuum tubes (valves to the UK) through transistors to integrated circuits to the most sub-microscopic of multilayer and atomically small components. And yet they all flow along the principles of common physics and trigonometry, all constants of our known universe at the moment. Wrap your mind around such basic things, a world of artistic flow and beauty in and of themselves, and it all becomes so ... so ...

It does not matter if it is all aimed at the inner workings of a PC, satellite communications, navigation aids to land someone in a winter storm in the Antarctic, or simple radio things to converse at 5 or 5,000 miles distance, ... All things that I have dealt with and repaired, all have a certain 'beauty' to them

May and the first two weeks of June. I love that burgeoning bright green lushness.

Conversely I also like a good Autumn, if it's crisp and sunny.

Analysing stuff. I like going from things being confusing and muddled up in my brain to being separated out so I can see how they work together and affect each other.

Cleaning. I like taking my house from tip to clean and tidy. I love the smell of dettol in the morning.

B

The spin cycle . . .




when I'm sitting on my washer.

Walking up a hill. Paradoxically, I always experience a slight sense of disappointment when I reach the top. (Bear in mind when reading this that in 2010 I climbed all 214 Wainwrights... That's a lot of disappointment right there. Masochist, me.)

The process of achieving a really, really high altitude while paragliding. When you find something that turns out to be a really good thermal, all other concerns disappear, and everything in the world becomes focussed on finding and circling in the strongest part of the lift. Eventually, you either reach the top of the thermal, or at my level more likely simply lose it. At that point, your concentration shifts... and you become aware, as if for the first time, that you are now suspended in a cloth seat by a bunch of millimeter-thick kevlar cords from a large hanky, and are now five thousand feet above sea level and can no longer make out individual people on the ground. At which point, the word eek may escape your lips, possibly not for the first time...

Mountain building, earthquakes and volcanoes...

Combustion, explosions and detonations. Also very

Teamwork- the whole *greater than the sum of its parts* thing. Specifically what you Brits call *Outside Broadcasts* and we call *Mobiles*. A seamless, faultless, entertaining broadcast produced by a group of friends.

Amazonian Rain Forests...

Apparently there are patches of fertile 'Dark Erath', created by human intervention. Archeologists have discovered that it used to be far more densely populated than it now is.

That reminded me, Ntm

WWII, Rain Forests around Singapore...

Many years ago I was told that airfields being built changed weather patterns.

I like the xiphoid process. It's kinda near where you nuzzle, between the .

Brownian motion - love watching those clouds in my coffee (monkey boy can provide a YouTube link if he likes )

Yoghurt making - boiling then cooling milk to a very specific temperature range then adding a gobbet of last time's yoghurt and... hey presto (or after 8 hours or so) you have new yoghurt. And like the pease pudding of the song, you will always have some yoghurt that is ancient.

Steam engines. Just love those babies when they get going.

I've already used that one for other purposes, Sho.

I know

The peace process, I think it is worth a try.

The way an h2g2 thread (insert appropriate verb)
until it (insert appropriate verb).

I hate fiilling in forms.
Does not process.


~jwf~

drifts

Godwins








Hitler