Journal Entries
Holliers
Posted Nov 12, 1999
Me and my wife are off to Thailand (Phuket) for a week, starting tomorrow. A long way to go to do precisely nothing, but there you are. Apart from doing nothing, we are hoping to do some diving and snorkelling (why don't they call this activity fish-spotting? 
). Baby is being taken care of by his grandparents. He is sleeping well at night now, so hopefully he shouldn't be too much trouble. Hopefully we won't miss him too much 
. A write-up will follow, I promise....
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Latest reply: Nov 12, 1999
Cork Jazz Festival
Posted Oct 22, 1999
I'm back again from Turkey, but by the looks of things it's not the last time I will be there. I am due to go out again in a few weeks.
There was another small tremor when I was there. It happened at 02.12 am, and it was over almost before I realised it was an earthquake 
.What an interesting life I lead these days.
Anyway, it's Jazz Fest time, and we will be trying to make the most of the weekend. Many of the city centre hotels have been dramatically refurbished, so the midday sessions (my favourite) will be in more opulent surroundings than usual.
A full report to follow...
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Latest reply: Oct 22, 1999
Turkey
Posted Oct 19, 1999
I'm off to Istanbul again for two days (two days!!) to finish off the work I was doing over there in August. Hopefully this time the ground will stay reasonably stable, as it is quite difficult, apparently, to make further H2G2 submissions when one is dead.
Please leave a message at the tone......
Beeeeeeeeep.
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Latest reply: Oct 19, 1999
Hold that thought....
Posted Oct 12, 1999
You know, we all think that light speed is really really fast, and to us it is - 186,000 miles per second. However from a universal point of view it is horrendously slow. I mean disgracefully slow. To reach the nearest star, it takes light about 4 years. All the stars we see in the sky with the naked eye are within a 2,000 light-year radius, which might seem a lot to us, but is actually like our next door neighbours in universal terms.
Also, they call our region of space the "Local Bubble" - all it is is a little bubble in the sea of froth that is the Milky Way. Makes you think.
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Latest reply: Oct 12, 1999
Time and other inconsequential matters
Posted Oct 11, 1999
This is one of these things that I have been thinking about in the past few days (I come up with these thoughts every so often) :-
Say a guy from the Seventies finds out how to travel through time and appears right now, in the months just shy of the Year 2000. What would he think?
You see, I think his initial impressions would be that very little has, in fact, changed. On the surface, they had pretty much the same back then as we have now. The changes that have occurred in the last 30 years are changes in intensity or style, rather than earth-shattering future shocks. Get on a train, they had trains back then. Drive a car, fly a plane, ditto. The same goes for listening to pop music, watching television, living in suburbia, going to school, washing, shaving, computers, credit cards, microwave ovens, you name it. The only changes are in style (cars and washing machines look different now, and our hair length has reduced significantly), and intensity (it's the same, except there are more of them - airplanes and computers for instance).
So this talk about life changing at a faster and faster rate with each year is just guff. It's a clever illusion designed to get us to buy more things. In fact, I believe that the OPPOSITE has happened. The rate of innovation in modern day living has actually SLOWED DOWN!
That said, some lifestyle changes have taken place due to the introduction of new technology. Such changes include CD-ROMs, the Internet, the um, er, surely there must be something else....
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Latest reply: Oct 11, 1999
Woodpigeon
Researcher U30129
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