Time Trial - Penultimate Stage 2011 Tour de France

There have been some late nights over the past three weeks sitting up watching TV coverage of the event as the cyclists torture themselves through the 2011 Tour de France.







The last three stages in the Alps have been tremendous, with some heart stopping moments, including some awesome descents, a few crashes and miscues, and some great climbing.


Final stage in the mountains finished at Alpe d'Huez after that monumental climb - 21 hairpin bends to hell!! At that moment a young Frenchman won the stage [ Pierre Rolland] bolting away with Contador vanquished after publicly stating he wanted to win there. Andy Schleck seemed absolutely spent at the finish. And Cadel Evans the hope of Australia finishing not very far behind the stage winner, and looking not spent. Evans was 57 secs behind Andy Schleck in the GC [ General Classification], the new Yellow Jersey wearer.


Many thought it might be be over for Evans again, relegated to a placegetter in the Tour.

What a time trial though. Even bunny hopped a few of the road speed bumps [ isn't that what all mountain bike riders do anyway?], and was immensely smooth all through the ride. Seven seconds behind Tony Martin the time trial stage winner, and a comfortable two minute plus margin over both Schlek brothers - and Cadel is now in the Maillot Jeune as winner - elect for the final stage into Paris.!

The first Australian to win a grand Tour - the Tour de France. Cycling's Everest, probably the most prestigious individual sporting win in the world. Blows away major tennis and golf events, world chess titles, Olympic gold medals and whatever else. WOW! WHAT A WIN!

As an individual event winner, at least matches that Australian win in the America's Cup in 1983, which really was a team and machine win. What a win!

He still has to finish the stage on Sunday, but it is traditional that a clear winner of the Tour is given a gentleman's ride to the finish. Do not forget to watch though.........the sprint up the Champs Elysee is a great sight to watch. Mark Cavendish to win??

[ photo copyright the Australian ]

Watch the follow up summaries coming too........the first on tv on Monday night.

The Truth - or Is It??

The truth can be confronting, it can also set you free.

Speculation in the media often canvasses ideas about whether truth is being promulgated. 'Spin reigns', is the cynical view these days among the masses.

Maybe rightly so.

Too many junk media releases to promote the deliverer [aka a politician, media mogul etc], not to promote the information. We almost always suspect politicians are not telling the truth. That seems a bit sad.

Look at events in the UK at the moment.......truth has been a casuality of the events unfolding over the phone hacking scandal. Probably more to come too.

In Australia, with all sides of politics debating.......or promoting, various options over carbon reductions and carbon pricing, what is the truth?

In science maybe there is no absolute truth.......and with climate change the science while clearer, is almost likely to be always an unknown [with some probability limits], especially as data about past climate change events is found, and debated scientifically. Scientists accept this theorem about truth and facts - they can change, and then our views are adjusted, or not, depending on the arguments advanced.

Over historical time, many in the scientific community have had ridicule heaped upon them over theories........later shown to be the now accepted idea. Continental drift, planets including earth around the sun .......there are many in this category.

The op ed piece in todays's Australian newspaper is on truth.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/the-real-truth-is-that-there-is-no-hidden-agenda-behind-the-story/story-e6frg6zo-1226096370394

And it comes back to one issue - not everyone has a hidden agenda, even among politicians. The writer makes the point strongly that often there is no hidden agenda or spin. Even politicians may believe that the course of action proposed, the legislation etc is actually the best option.

A well written piece, a bit on the philisophical, even strongly intellectual view, but a view worth revisiting.

We seem sometimes to forgot that people of all persusions may actually believe in issues they are advocating.

Red Trumpet Vine - Pyrostegia venusta

You know it is a good dry season if this plant is in its vibrant flowering glory.

And it is......

The plant is often used as a screen vine on fences and most of the year it is just a green plant. But when it flowers it is spectacular! It seems to flower best in a dry season that has at least some decent cool nights below 20C.

Masses of reddish-orange flowers in large clusters against a dark green foliage makes for a great ostentatious display. Really offers a major statement.

The photos are from a site just around the corner from our house along their fence. Just a short 15m or so. But it is by no means the only one around the area, nor the largest, although it is in a cul de sac, and may not be the most obvious display seen.

I noticed a long fenceline - maybe 30m - the whole front fenceline - on a house block along Bagot Road, a site seen by many thousands of commuters travelling to and from work each day. It is a mass of flowers also. A great feature.


The bright flowers also seem to survive for a few weeks so it is not just a short burst of flowering. The botanical name is Pyrostegia venusta - definitely worth considering for a screen vine in the tropics and sub tropics.

Bikes - the Motorbike Types

It is July, and there is a lot of talk and viewing of bikes.........the pedalling kind.

But lets not forget one of the legendary bikes - Harley Davidson. If you talk of motorbikes, then this is a name most everyone will know, along with maybe Triumph, Norton and the current crop of names being used in motorcycle racing.

Like many large corporations, Harley Davidson has another side, a past set of glory. A fantastic collection of motorbikes that is rarely seen.

No, I do not have any entry passes, and the site is not normally open. I can however, give you a link to a site where there are some great photos of some unusual and legendary motorbikes.

Go here - http://news.cnet.com/2300-10797_3-10008534.html?tag=nl.e703

Test ride by having a look.

Carbon Pricing or Carbon Fibres?

Mayhem on all fronts.


Australia gets a carbon price and the Tour de France has more nasty crashes.


Opposite poles one might think.







However, the editorial comment by Paul Kelly is a useful commentary, and the cartoon excellent.


I have no doubt that carbon pricing and not carbon fibre frames will be the lead news item this week in Australia.


Read more here -http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/carbon-plan/alp-green-values-triumph-in-julias-finest-political-fix/story-fn99tjf2-1226091907108

Its Official - Tour de France a Sleep Hazard

Following on from my previous post, there is an article in the Australian Financial Review of Friday 8 July on the effect the TDF is having on sleeplessness in Australia.

A tv audience now over 200 000, means a lot of people getting to bed in the early am, and being short of sleep at work, the next day. Not to mention interfering with their own exercise regimes.

Watch out.......still two weeks to go and we have not seen much yet in terms of interesting stages in the mountains.

Vive le tour!

Late Night Biking - from France

It is that time of the year again.

Late evenings, early mornings, tranquil views of the French countryside while about 200 bike riders tear around the dales and glens of France. THE Tour de France.

We now get full tv coverage for most of the day's racing, and it is online as well, as streaming video, for the full day's event.

Must be the greatest tourist coverage available for France - three weeks of cover for many of the regions of France. There are some fantastic scenes, and I am sure it has generated many, many visitors to France over the years.

So far........ Alberto Contador seems to have a dose of bad luck, and his bike throw yesterday was a bit of a classic dummy spit. Cadel Evans has had some good luck, with a well deserved stage win, and Mark Cavendish also won a sprint finish yesterday. Thor Hushovd continues along successfully wearing the GC leader's yellow jersey.

Early days in the event, with much more to come.

The TDF has become a huge event world wide. Even if vaguely interested in cycling, it is almost worth watching as a travelogue, on its own. If interested in cycling.........then at least some viewing is essential.

However, in Australia, that means getting to bed very early in the am, not conducive to a decent days work next day. Nothing beats time-shifting to watch it when you can!

Bike Helmets Reduce Injuries - Latest Research

It seems as if a long argument finally has a solution - wearing a bike helmet does actually reduce injuries for bike riders.

Rarely has an issue evoked as much debate.........with staunch advocates for both wearing and not wearing a helmet.

I have split a helmet in half after an accident caused by a dog hitting the bike at around 50km/hr, after which my head hit the ground first- and not suffered head injuries so I am more pro use than not. I am sure a helmet saved my skull.........and as a family there was rarely much debate by the kids over wearing a helmet while biking after that incident.

Most serious bike riders seem pro helmet use, with more support for not using one in the itinerant bike riding group I think.

However.........read more here:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/23/3251272.htm

And...... wear a bike helmet while riding.......it might just save your head.

Darwin - What a Ripper of a Dry Season 2011 - So Far

The past two weeks have seen some great cool dry season weather here in Darwin.

As I write this at 9pm at night it is 17C and cooling rapidly. Cool enough for a light fleece or jumper even. Many nights, or rather early mornings have been around 13 -15C over the past two weeks. Up to 28C, if lucky, in the day, but with a few around 25C max. Lots of sunshine too......eleven hours approximately every day.

Truly a magnificent dry season so far, and it seems with more to come this week........predictions of a similar pattern this week, with 16 - 17c nights.

Last year the dry season did not ever get started, and this year has been truly different and a great dry season so far. They say if it gets cool early in the dry.......it will continue the same way.

Even the swimming pools are very cool - 21C water temperature earlier today on the sign outside the local pool......that is COOL!!

Roll on 2011 dry season!!!!

International Surfing Day - June 20, 2011

International Surfing Day — 20th June 2011

June 20, 2011 marks the 7th annual International Surfing Day (ISD), a day where surfers and surf enthusiasts alike from across the globe join together to celebrate this world-renowned sport. Since its founding, ISD has grown into over 200 separate events in 25 different countries with an emphasis on giving back to the world's oceans and beaches that provide us humans with such awe-inspiring experiences.

It's not just humans that can ride the waves though, hang ten and take a look at ARKive's top surfers!

Perfect 10 for Fantastic Maneuvering

Gentoo penguins may have a funny walk on land, but when they are in the water, there is nothing funny about this amazing talent. Using their feet for powerful propulsion, gentoos can dive an impressive 170m deep in pursuit of prey.

Perfect 10 for Waves Caught

The most common of dolphin species, the short-beaked common dolphin can be found swimming in packs of 10, and sometimes even up to 500 individuals! They are highly active mammals, often leaping out of the water (known as breaching), and slapping their flippers on the water's surface (called lobtailing).

Dolphins are known to use surf as a way to travel on long journeys, and also for sport.

Article continues: http://blog.arkive.org/2011/06/international-surfing-day/

GONE - to Volvo Heaven

We have had a venerable Volvo 142S in our driveway for a long time. Has served our family well - many trips to and from Sydney as well as the NSW snowfields, across some pretty awful roads at times in the 1970s and early 80s, then as a second car for around town use.
Has not moved for some considerable time.

One son was going to work on it - and renovate it, but left and is now overseas.

Have been under some pressure to move it for quite a while.

It has now left the building driveway, and gone to the Volvo heaven!!

A bit sad really.............

It's COLD in Darwin!!

Darwin is COLD this morning......a minimum of 14.4C with a low humidity, means an effective temperature of around 9C.

Inland, effective temperatures were closer to 5-7C, with one reading of 4C meaning an effective temperature of -1C..........thats cold!.

And you thought Darwin was never cold! In Alice Springs, quite a few nights in a row below freezing.

Many users of fleece jackets today.......at least for a while, as day temperatues of 30C are expected later.

And there are at least a few more days of similar weather still to come according to the Met Bureau.

Toooooooooo cold for frogs to go swimming.

The Future of Australian Politics - I Wish!!

This is a great op ed piece on the ABC web site.

Probably need to have connections to Australia to follow the story........but it reads well. Not only that, there seems to be a lot of support judging from the comments.

DEFINITELY worth a read!

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2738702.html

COOL Weather

Yes, it can get cool in Darwin. Most people never believe that to be true, but this week has seen quite a few cool nights - with last night a minimum of 17C. Likely to be even cooler over the weekend!

And...........there is a wind chill factor too. Cool weather usually means low humidity, often with east or south east winds from across the continent. So the apparent temperature is often 3-5 degrees C less than the measured temperature. A temperature effectively of around 13C this morning.

Most homes are designed to be open to breezes, so interior areas can cool quickly, and many have tiled floors. They get COLD on the usual bare feet when moving around the house, and there is a breeze blowing.

It is all relative...........but definitely cool for Darwin. Even daily maximum temperatures are below 30C. Cool nights are considered excellent for mango flowering........maybe a good crop this year.

Should even have another week of similar weather, driven by a slow moving, large high pressure system in southern Australia.

Cool but enjoyable........even a bit cool for swimming!

Aeroplanes Are Coming

Two types actually, live military ones and dead big ones.

First the live military aircraft.

We are about to be subjected to a month or more of serious military aircraft flying out of Darwin. The cream of the RAAF, FA-18s, will be here for an exercise, with lots of flying out of the Darwin airport. And NOISE.

We live about 2km directly N of the end of the main runway and in the dry season do get more aircraft noise, albeit at a modest level, due to SE wind patterns during the dry season.

A short while ago............yes, the RAAF arrived! Very noisy. But it is in short bursts and a necessary evil to provide pilot training and exercises. Trouble is, this now replaces the jets of the Singapore Air Force, who also use Darwin for training purposes several times a year.

Oh well.............usually not at night, so you still get to have a good night's sleep.

The second stanza is somewhat intriguing.

Alice Springs has just received approval as only the first site outside of the USA as an "aeroplane wreckers yard" for large aircraft. It is a significant industry in itself and today they announced that Alice Springs has approval for a 100ha site - potentially holding up to several hundred aircraft, as an aircraft graveyard, adjacent to the airport site [really part of it].

Desert areas are generally preferred for these sites and Alice Springs obviously meets the criteria..........even if last year was much wetter than just about any previous year on record!

It is expected to be quite an industry development. More here-
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/26/3227852.htm

But let's wait and see when the first aircraft arrives.

The Times They Are A'Changing

Or are they??

It is Bob Dylan's 70th Birthday today.

The voice is a bit more gravely, but he still performs. Most recently at the 2011 Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival here in Australia.

For the 65th birthday he kicked butt and released a fantastic new CD. A top seller, even.

And although some of the great tunes are over 40 years old...........they still are relevant, and make you think when you listen to the lyrics.

Yes..............I am a Dylan fan!!

Is Democracy Overrated??

Always an interesting conundrum. And to add another cliche - absolute power corrupts absolutely. Where is the productive mid point?

The comments below come from a recent newsletter from a writer on financial affairs, while writing and visiting China. It is quite true, based on my own observations during a working period on a project in China, over about 5 years. It also matches the some reflections on China by some friends who visited last year - they were impressed!

Corruption and guang xi were rife when I worked there , but things functioned.

Read it and reflect.

The article below is reflecting on the US, but would apply across many western countries. The issues around renewable energy are similar - the Chinese are rapidly embracing this option, while we all seem to be just stuffing around. Are western societies all getting too fat and lazy, just like a big fat cane toad ?

-----------------------------------

Americans must be the most gullible simpletons in the world. They will believe anything. No fantasy is too absurd. No lie is too ridiculous. Much of what they now take for granted an earlier generation would have taken for preposterous, outrageous, and criminal.

According to presidential candidate Donald Trump they are prepared to believe that China is to blame for their financial problems... No kidding. When asked what he'd do to fix the US economy, 'The Donald' says he'd 'get tough with China.'

What dastardly thing are the Chinese doing? What devious, underhanded act are they committing?
Ah ha! An act of commerce! They're delivering quality products to America at discount prices! Trump says he'll slap a 25% tariff on Chinese-made goods.

How exactly this would be better for Americans he didn't explain. Says our old friend Grover Norquist:
"Tariffs are not paid by the Chinese. They're paid by Americans who buy things made by the Chinese."

Americans are barely able to keep up with their expenses already; raising prices wouldn't do them any favor that we can see.

But in the US, crackpot ideas are as common as democrats.

In the '90s, Americans thought they could get rich by buying companies that weren't earning any money. Then, they thought they could get rich by buying a house. When that went bad, they whined for bailouts and handouts. And now they think the feds are helping them by printing more money.

Honestly, you can't make this stuff up!

But their delusions don't stop there. They also believe that for the last 10 years the world's only super-power has been at war with 372 Muslim extremists. And that somehow we'll be safer if we let TSA agents grope our grandmothers and pat down our toddlers.

And how about this? It is obvious to the whole world that US Commander- in-Chief Obama ordered a hit squad to disappear Osama bin Laden; but in the USA, people think the SEALs were conducting a heroic military operation. And they dumped his body in the ocean because they didn't want to offend the Muslim brotherhood.

You have to like people who would believe something like that. They're loveable half-wits...earnest morons with the skeptical intelligence of a puppy.

Nor does it bother them that their national financial plan is a calamity. Everyone who has thought about it for more than a second realizes that the secret to gaining wealth is to make money...save it...and invest it in new and more productive business opportunities.

And yet, the government's financial strategy for 4 decades has been to encourage consumer spending and borrowing, a program that is sure to lead to poverty.

This strategy did not boost real economic growth in the US. But it did wonders for China. We are now on a plane, en route to Shanghai from Beijing. China is supposed to be a poor country. But there is no evidence of it so far.

Instead, there are automobiles, highways, skyscrapers - as far as the eye can see. Factories by the thousands. Warehouses. Docks and freight yards. Plants. Mills. Apartment blocks that New York would be proud of. Office towers that Baltimore would envy. Trains. Loading platforms. Bridges. Storage yards. Assembly units. Round buildings. Square buildings. Rectangles. Ovals. Low rise. High rise. The scale of activity is breathtaking. And we haven't reached Shanghai yet.

Is there any description of China that doesn't end in 'st'? It has the biggest, newest, most daring and innovative buildings. It has the fastest trains...the most roads and cars. The richest. The poorest. It has everything.

It has people too... Smart, hardworking people. Instead of borrowing to boost their standards of living, the Chinese save their money in order to reduce their standard of living...boost the next generation's.

The Chinese have already pulled off a miracle. It has only been 32 years since Deng Xiaoping opened up China to making money. In that time, the nation has gone from a third world dump to the world's 2nd largest economy...whose growth rate continues to be shocking.

What's their secret? China is a zombie-free zone. The 'safety net' is thin here. There is plenty of corruption and inside dealing, no doubt. But people work hard...save their money...and expect to live by their own efforts.

But the Chinese have gotten a lot of help from America. The feds encouraged Americans to buy things they didn't need with money they didn't have. The Chinese merely took the orders...and the money. Now they have the biggest stash of dollars in the world, while the US has the biggest, stinkiest pile of debt the world has ever seen.

And more thoughts...

We have just had our best airport and hotel experiences ever. Arriving at our hotel - the China World Hotel in Beijing - the staff again met us at the entrance. They greeted us by name and showed us directly to our rooms. There was no waiting to check-in. There were no lines. There were no incompetent or surly flunkeys.

Then, we drove to the huge Beijing airport - the largest in the world. There, uniformed airline employees met us at the curb...took our luggage...and whisked us through the check-in security process. The whole thing took only minutes, with almost no waiting at any step. It was a pleasure.

*** "You haven't seen the real China," one of our Dear Readers who has lived in China for many years explained. "You're just looking at the top cities. It would be like going to the US and only visiting New York and San Francisco. You wouldn't have a very good idea of what the country is like.
"If you go out to some of these second and third tier cities, you get another picture all together. They're pretty grim. And poor. And there are still millions of people who earn almost nothing.

"These poor people keep coming to the cities to find work. The government knows it has to keep the economy growing so that these people don't become a problem. But so far, I've been very impressed. The people running the country may be communists, but they're not stupid. And to tell you the truth, this is a much better system than we have in America.

"I don't know why the US would want to push democracy on the whole world. And I don't know why Hillary Clinton would want to lecture China about human rights either. China isn't intentionally killing people. China doesn't have troops in other countries. China is minding its own business...and building its economy - just like America used to do.

"And not having a democracy is really a good thing. A benign dictatorship can make the kind of changes you need to make. That's what they do here. They can do things that require huge capital investments but only pay off far in the future. They can do things that are unpopular, because they don't have to stand for election every 4 years.

"That's why the US is such a mess. We're digging ourselves a deeper and deeper hole each year. But nobody can stop it. Because every member of Congress has to face the voters. And the people who vote are also the people who benefit from government spending - especially teachers and retirees. So you can't fix the problem. It just gets worse and worse until it falls apart.

"Democracy is very overrated."

[written by Bill Bonner writing for DR Newsletter - copyright acknowledged]

Standing Tall Helps Exude Power

Posture can affect how powerful you feel--and how powerful you are
By Adam D. Galinsky and Li Huang Tuesday, January 4, 2011 in Scientific American

“The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense that Energy is the fundamental concept in physics . . . The laws of social dynamics are laws which can only be stated in terms of power.” -- Bertrand Russell

Three-quarters of a century ago, Bertrand Russell asserted that power is the driving force behind much of social behavior. Consistent with Russell’s theoretical musings, there has been an explosion of empirical research in the past decade – in social psychology, sociology, economics, and political science – demonstrating that power governs the many important social relationships that make up our political, business and family lives. Indeed, the dynamics of power even regulates the interactions of pre-school children. Power appears to be the central animating force of social life.

Given power’s primacy in social life, it is not surprising that one’s position in a social hierarchy transforms people in fundamental ways. Simply placing a person in a powerful or powerless role immediately alters their thoughts and behavior. The powerful tend to see the forest whereas the powerless focus on the trees. The powerful are optimistic, take bold actions and embrace risky ideas while the powerless are psychologically conservative. As Lara Tiedens of Stanford University points out, this complementarity of behavior leads to an efficient division of labor and smooth social relationships. Because it provides survival advantages to groups, hierarchy is the most prominent form of social organization. As a result, the human mind has evolved to be incredibly sensitive to one's own place in a social hierarchy.

Given the wide range of behaviors and cognition that power pulls into its sphere of influence, a fundamental question is how do people acquire power: what are its sources and bases? Many people answer “money, fame, or an important role in one’s social group.” Indeed, each of these may give you asymmetric control over valued resources, which is the very definition of power.
But, are there other sources of power, other ways to both feel powerful and signal power to others?

In fact, there are many paths to increase one’s sense of power.

The most obvious method is to have actual control over valued resources. But, power is also housed in our memories – simply recalling a time in which one had power has the exact same psychological and behavioral effects as giving people actual resource control. As memories of past power dance in our heads, we feel more powerful and act as if we are in charge in the present. However, although reliving powerful experiences can make one feel powerful, it doesn’t signal power to others.

As it turns out, there is a simple method to both transform people psychologically and signal power to others: altering your body posture.

Across species, body posture is often the primary representation of power. From fish to reptiles to lower mammals to human’s closest evolutionary cousins, non-human primates, power is expressed and inferred through expansive postures, large body size, or even the mere perception of large body size through expansive postures.

The link from expansive postures to feeling and acting in a powerful way was elegantly demonstrated in a recent publication in Psychological Science. Dana Carney and Andy Yap from Columbia University and Amy Cuddy from Harvard University found that open, expansive postures (widespread limbs and enlargement of occupied space by spreading out one’s body), compared with closed, constricted postures (limbs touching the torso and minimization of occupied space by collapsing the body inward), increased feelings of power and an appetite for risk.

To measure the appetite for risk, these researchers gave participants $2 and told them they could keep this money or roll a die and risk losing the $2 for a payout of $4 (a risky but rational bet since the odds of winning were 50/50). Participants who had been placed in the expansive posture reported feeling significantly more “powerful” and “in charge” and were also 45% more likely to roll the die.

More impressively, expansive postures also altered the participants’ hormone levels.

Using salivary samples, Carney and colleagues found that expansive postures led individuals to experience elevated testosterone (T) and decreased cortisol (C). This neuroendocrine profile of High T and Low C has been consistently linked to such outcomes as disease resistance and leadership abilities. Although past research has found that occupying a powerful role leads to expansive postures, Carney et al.’s paper is the first to investigate the reciprocal relationship – the causal effect of posture on the mental experience of power.

Along with Deborah Gruenfeld and Lucia Guillory from Stanford University, we have further established the primacy of posture. In our studies, also appearing in Psychological Science, we empirically demonstrated that not only does expansive posture predict power-related behavior, but it might actually be the closest correlate of these behaviors. Across three studies, we found that when individuals were placed in high- or low-power roles while adopting an expansive or constricted posture, only posture affected the implicit activation of power, the taking of action, and the tendency to see the forest instead of the trees.

Together, these recent discoveries bolster the notion that power is grounded in the body. Not only does power change the body, but altering one’s postures changes one’s power, or at least the psychological experience of it.

These recent findings further suggest that if you want to predict how people will act in any given moment, it may make sense to look to their posture instead of their role or title.

The battle between powerful roles and powerful postures is humorlessly depicted in a cartoon on the cover of the December 5, 2005 issue of The New Yorker. President George W. Bush is slouching. The then vice president, Richard B. Cheney, has both arms expansively extended across the back of a sofa, his legs sprawled across a coffee table. The president has more power vested in him by the Constitution, but the cartoon suggests what scientific research has found: that a person’s posture is often more indicative of actual influence than their position in a hierarchy.
-------------------------

Are you standing tall?

Are your teenagers standing tall?

Some good hints here to help others improve self esteem.

Even snakes and frogs that are close to the ground try to stand tall to intimidate predators.

Oh, What a Drop!!

Oh what a drop!............Best red wine opened in this household so far in 2011. Outshines a bottle of 1999 Leasingham Bin 61 from a month or two back.

It had lots of Gold Medals, not that these always count from smaller Shows / Exhibitions, but with a Gold at Sydney Royal Easter Show, well...........that is a little different, with some serious competition usually.

Yes, a great bottle of Orlando St Hugo Cabernet Sauvignon, 2001 from Coonawarra, a very well respected terroir in South Australia. Very good drinking to complement a good steak and salad.

Best of all......with careful buying a few years ago and some cellaring –

it cost $27 a bottle..........and..............and...........and ........there are several more.

Current readily available releases [2006 and 2007] of the same wine are round $50 a bottle.

Great Weather for Orchid Flowering

The household orchids are flowering very well.

We had the white flowered native orchid last week, in a one day spectacular flowering, now a lot of others are in flower........and quite a few of the Dendrobiums are in bud........two weeks maybe before they flower.

They look great!!

Cane Toads - Yuk!!

Until recently we have seemingly been free of cane toads around the suburb of Rapid Creek.

Yes, the very ocassional one seen on a deserted street at night near a light post, or in a yard also near light - and rapidly despatched to the nether world. And I think that has been a common approach around the suburb.

However, over the past few weeks it seems they may be now on the move into Rapid Creek. A very dead one was seen along the bike way, near the Beachfront Hotel. We do have a tidal creek near this area, and I have looked extensively over several years, expecting to see them frequently along the bikeway path [close to the creek], a route regularly used to exercise the dog, mostly of an evening when they would be active..........yet none have been seen there, with the exception of the dead one.

But there has been the odd one seen on the streets near the creek, and a few dead ones that have been run over. More seen this wet season than previously. We even had a large one in our driveway last night............and quickly despatched with a shovel and into the compost bin!!

The drier weather over the past few weeks may mean they are moving in search of water, with house yards the obvious desirable place.

Watch....... search........... and destroy these horrible creatures. Remember that famous quote - "eternal vigilance is the price of freedom" [attributed to Wendell Phillips circa 1852].

[photo - attributed to Dept ERM Queensland]

Orchid Flowers for Easter

Cultivating tropical orchids can be fun. The vast array of Vanda, Dendrobium, Cattelya and related species with thousands of colourful varieties are truly spectacular. And we can grow them outdoors quite easily. I have quite a few in the yard, and enjoy their colourful and at times fantastic, flower displays.

And of late, flowering of most plants has been fairly regular, with a good sized flower stem.

Locally in the NT, we have a fair range of native orchids, but none have the tremendous flowers that are more common with the bred varieties.

Our relatively common local orchid does have one feature though that makes it special.......the whole plant on a tree flowers at once in a single monster burst of white flowers for a single day.

And Easter Sunday morning was the day. Is there significance in that, one might ask, on the Christian Feast of the Resurrection?

As soon as the back door of the house opened, the fragrance was superb [ and not all orchids have a fragrance], with all of the plants around the yard a mass of white flowers. The fragrance permeated around the yard, particularly noticeable in the windless early morning; by around midday it had virtually disappeared.

Flowering is not, as far as I can tell, day length or temperature driven.........but they do flower quite a few times each year..............and ALWAYS together! This time a few regular doses of fertiliser given when the other orchids receive their fertiliser spray might have paid off.

Flowering was fantastic. Ho hum............but just a single day each time.

The Dry Season 2011

How quickly the season changes in the tropics.

Less than a week ago [16th April] we had a cyclone off the NW coast of WA heading for Timor, and wet overcast conditions in Darwin that were typically monsoonal, and regular almost daily rain.

And then a large high pressure system moved across temperate Australia.........and with that the dry season has kicked in.

Nights this week have been dry and cool, with the last few below 20C. That is the magic figure for a "cool" night in Darwin [ it is all relative]. Yes, we may get a few more showers, a storm even, over the next few weeks. But......a fantastic start to the dry season. Many people are planning camping over Easter, a trip that was not probably even on the agenda last week, and plenty more are planning a fishing trip.

You can feel a bit invigorated, after about four and a half months of very regular, just about daily rain, including a cyclone.

The Blueberry - Good for You

Blueberries are incredible plants. They can grow wild practically anywhere in the northeastern United States and Canada, and are now grown commercially across temperate Australia and New Zealand. They are VERY tasty.

To go along with the plant's hardiness and the berry's deliciousness, blueberries offer great health benefits. Blueberries can have a positive effect on aging, metabolism, and inhibiting the development of fat cells.

The berry is great for the heart and cardio system due to its high polyphenol antioxidant content. These antioxidants can also be found in a variety of other fruits such as blackberries, raspberries, and grapes.

According to recent studies, blueberries could play a large role in reducing the epidemic of obesity.

Blueberry polyphenols play a role in adipocyte differentiation, and an adipocyte is an animal tissue cell specialized for the synthesis and storage of fat.

Plant polyphenols are known to resist the development of fat cells. They actively break down fat compounds and lipids. The idea is to see if these plant polyphenols could be translated into fighting fat cells in animals, i.e. humans.

So far, work has shown that feeding blueberries to mice can reduce fat cells.

So............maybe eat more blueberries if wishing to reduce your fat cells.

Cute Animals

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder they say.

One group has recently compiled a list of the cutest 500 animals.

What is your view?

Could not see the good old green tree frog.......it is always cute.

Must be some generous benefactor spending money on the project!!

There are some predictable entries, near the top [ think domestic pets], and a few wierd ones too.

Check it out here: http://www.livescience.com/13524-500-cutest-animals-list.html

Are You Canadian?

What an indictment of Canada!

The article below absolutely slams democracy in Canada.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/canada-watches-its-democracy-erode/story-e6frg6ux-1226030310248

Definitely worth a read and could be a mirror to a similar range of issues across many other westen democracies.

Get Active

Always easier to say than do, to be active.

Yet there continues to be more and more evidence to suggest serious, regular, hard physical activity is good for you, right from an early age.

The following is a snippet from a larger article on physical activity. It does not even consider the mental effects that a good endorphin kick gives you though.

Most regular exercisers do appreciate the mental benefit of a good hard workout. It seems that kicking off the sit and look at a screen syndrome IS important especially for children. And habits established in youth tend to persist as an adult.

What do your children do?

---------------------------------------------

The researchers found that vigorous activity like running, jogging, and playing sports are associated with thicker bones.

The top 25 percent of individuals involved with vigorous physical activity had bones that were seven square millimeters greater than the bottom 25 percent.

However, the top and bottom percentiles of those who engage in light physical activity such as walking showed no difference in bone thickness. The point to take away from this study is that it is important, from an early age, to engage in vigorous physical activity in order to prevent bone problems later in life.

Children should be encouraged to run around and play sports.

Habits such as sitting around, watching TV, and playing video games should be discouraged, because it does young bodies a disservice when they get older. It is a child's natural instinct to run around.

At the early stages of our lives, we all have (or feel we have) much more energy, and that energy should be released. However, for adults, it is important to choose the correct vigorous physical activity so that it does not interfere with other health issues. For example, adults with bad knees can take long distance bike rides rather than jogs. Or people with bad backs can go swimming at a neighborhood fitness center or in their backyard pools.

Maintaining a vigorous workout throughout our lives will help prevent osteoporosis. On the other hand, walking, while still a healthy activity, has little effect on bone health.

Link to published article: http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/jc.2010-2550v1

Batteries New and Old

Over the past 4 months it has been very wet and rainy.

Maybe that has put too much fungal matter in my brain..............but whatever, there have been two total stuff -ups over batteries.

First was a long saga over the remote control for a stereo unit in the bedroom. It died, and that was a pain as we often listen to the radio before going to sleep at night. Getting out of bed to turn it off was a real pain in the bottom. And the remote did not seem able to be revived, even with changed batteries. A new unit was difficult to find or purchase, but then saw www.replacementremotes.com so thought it might be possible to get another.

Then thought, maybe should test again............lo and behold, new batteries and it works!!!

What silly twit I have been. This process went for for about a year.

Part two involves a kitchen wall clock, the one we all seem to have on the wall, the analog one children learnt to tell the time from and so on. It has had indigestion, especially in wet weather, and would not work. As soon as the humidity went up, it went down, then started again in drier conditions. A battery change seemed to have little effect.

So bought a new one, alhough was not a well liked option [ that is a critical issue for an every day wall clock]. Anyway, retested the old one with a NEW battery...........and it has not missed a beat since, about a month ago and with some very humid weather around. The recently purchased clock went back to the store.

Moral of the stories - make sure the batteries are fully charged and new.

Rebel Idealism

It is hard to imagine life in a civil war. Us in western democracies take freedom for granted, but the following piece [ from The Australian online] is a well crafted op ed piece that we all need to read.

--------------------------------------
Rebels live and die by Western ideals
David Burchell

From: The Australian
March 21, 2011 12:00AM
7 comments

A FEW years ago Mohamed Mustafa Nabbous, citizen of the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, was that most familiar figure of our era: the ingenious, small-scale internet service provider, running a modern small business by his wits using a motley assemblage of computer hardware, improvising solutions as he went.

Judging by his social-media photos from that time, young Mohamed must have been quite a Jack the Lad. Still today, if you ply the foreign oceans of old internet forums, you can follow his progress through the dangerous shoals of digital communication in a country where, until very recently, all information was supposed to emanate from a single source.

At some point along this voyage young Mohamed - or Mo to his friends - hit on a simple, brilliant thought: while wires and wireless hubs are always vulnerable to sabotage or failure, the satellite, cycling above the clouds in the pure space, soars above all such terrestrial restrictions. And so began Nabbous's particular life-project, the independent satellite TV station Libya Alhurra - which he ran out of a noisy, improvised office in that whitewashed Libyan coastal city, where the bright breezes of the Mediterranean vie with the blank white heat from the southern desert.

Ever since February 17, Nabbous's hand-held videos have appeared (most uncredited) on broadcasts from CNN, al Jazeera, and occasionally even the BBC. Last Saturday, when Muammar Gaddafi's forces first entered the western precincts of Benghazi, and shells were plummeting into its neighbourhoods, it was young Nabbous - striding around the city with his portable video camera - who first and most effectively disproved the mad colonel's fantastical claims about a ceasefire.
Ever the citizen of the world, Nabbous had a good line in reality-TV chatter ("I'm probably crazy to be filming this," he would exuberantly say, as Benghazi's bombed power plant exploded around him); while his slightly melodramatic exclamations ("Oh my God, Oh my God!") betrayed the distinctive demeanour of the internet geek.

In one house in Benghazi's western precincts two young children, one four years old and the other five months, were hospitalised by shell-fragments: Nabbous discovered the bloodied pillows they had been nestling on, and presented them to us with forensic care. Where, he asked, was the ceasefire here? Where was the Western intervention, which so many people across the city, however naively, assumed would begin immediately after the UN passed Resolution 1973?
And through the magic of the satellite, Nabbous's queries sped across the world in an instant, even as the French, British and Canadian fighter-bombers were loading up with fuel and munitions - only for them to arrive just a little too late.

Some time on Saturday morning, however, Nabbous's video camera suddenly died, and on Libya Alhurra his previous broadcasts - the endless concrete walls pitted with shell-fragments, the familiar burnt-out cars, the jumbled shoes and faces of onlookers as the hand-held camera dips and soars along its crazy journey - went into permanent loop.

At some point in his progress he had been hit in the head by a sniper's bullet: he died a few hours later in Benghazi's pitifully understaffed hospital, with his young pregnant wife by his side. He was 28 years old.

Of all the features of our interaction with the non-Western world today, surely none is more stultifying than that curious blend of moral arrogance and moral defensiveness with which we greet even a simple, unadorned plea for help. There is something troublingly luxuriant in the long-winded debate we have carried out in recent weeks over whether it can ever be right for us to interfere in the affairs of a non-Western country - even as the citizens of Libya were begging for our help, the Arab League had authorised it, and commentators across the region were pleading to be rid of the awful embarrassment of Gaddafi's interminable reign.

It is hard to avoid the sense that we have come to enjoy this kind of agonising, in roughly the same way that the ancient philosophers used to enjoy the bracing experience of physical privation - and in a broadly similar manner as we seem to enjoy sympathising with distant victims of natural disasters, so long as the elements present them to us as one heart-rending spectacle after another, and in an orderly sequence.

By contrast with our own complicated blend of pleasure and discomfiture, there is genuine tragedy in the plight of the present opposition movements across north Africa and the Middle East - both in their naive hope in the power of pure spontaneity, and in their awed discovery of the capacity of the semi-organised political movement, in polities designed to avoid all traces both of spontaneity and opposition.

In Egypt today, as the young oppositionists are rapidly becoming aware, spontaneity and idealism are already being trumped by the pragmatic merits of the disciplined party organisation - so that, as Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris predicted on Al Mihwah TV the other week, the main beneficiaries of June's hastily contrived general elections may turn out to be the rump of Hosni Mubarak's old NDP and the Muslim Brothers - and a new rough beast might be shambling towards Cairo to be born.

By the same token, for all their courage and sheer exuberance, Libya's rebels have so far counted too much on the power of human optimism, and too little on the dull mechanics of military discipline - so that, as one Egyptian participant sadly noted the other day, they seem to have fashioned an army with a superb capacity to defend itself, but a complete inability ever to attack.

Yet, for all their flaws and inadequacies, we have to say this of the young heroes of Benghazi: that they actually believe in the ideals to which we generally only pay lip-service. Nor do they seek to mingle their liberating irony towards the absurd pronouncements of their pantomime President with our own disabling irony towards the affairs of the world in general.

We should be grateful for passionate souls such as Nabbous, who, in all their innocence of spirit, actually perform in their life's drama the acts of moral decision most of us only prattle on about.

[see it all here - http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/rebels-live-and-die-by-western-ideals/story-e6frg6zo-1226025034644]

Eggs Benedict for Breakfast - at Home!

With a three month long [ absolutely true - first started on 11 December and has not gone off shore since] rainy monsoon we need cheering up. Something to beat the rain, which has been on all but a few days.

Why not a great breakfast to lift the spirits?

Eggs Benedict are a bit of a favorite for breakfast, but getting the Hollandaise sauce just right is a tricky issue. Consistency and lack of lumps being issues that are a bit difficult to deal with in the usual double saucepan version of making the sauce. That alone puts one off preparing it.

Voila!........we have a new kitchen device - a Thermomix and it does the job excellently, at a setting of 90C, just below boiling, in 8 minutes.

We have a new Scanpan egg poacher too, and today was the day for a double hit.

A great Hollandaise sauce, eggs a little soft and runny in the centre, on toasted Turkish bread [ preferred to the traditional muffin]. YUMMY!!!

It will be tried again........for sure.