Life is grand

A bunch of lads from the TSSG have created a world-first GPS powered tour-guide for the Culloden battlefield in Scotland. What really impresses me about the project is how the technology will enable people to roam the battlefield without seeing a single sign-post, information plaque or unsightly direction marker. We have all been to historical areas and seen bright green plastic information posts next to 1000 year old sites. This information system does away with that and leaves no mark on historical sites while providing information and insight into what the person is seeing.

Good work lads and I look forward to visiting Culloden the next time I am up in Scotland, birthplace of my forefathers.

I agree with Jon that we have visited far worse man-made constructions on our landscapes than wind turbines. Roads are often scars, especially during the building phase and only ever achieve some beauty when as a set of switchbacks on a rugged mountain cliff or as they cross straight through a barren plain or over flat bog land. Housing estates are the monotonous, unimaginative droppings of real-estate investors. Mills and mines of all kinds ruin the land they are on and that surround them, soot and dumps covering once lush, wild lands. Rich land owners dump monstrous monuments to their egos in verdant fields. Governments erect concrete blocks to house cables and water pumps without a thought for the landscape around them.

Compared to solar farms or nuclear power stations wind turbines are the aesthetic choice. Only a solar heating farm can compare in magnificence but the blazing wonder of these solar plants wane as the harsh glare creeps in.

Wind turbines though can be elegant and beautiful. Tall, slender giants quietly gliding over the ground generating clean energy in tune with nature’s forces. En masse they create a hypnotic effect and on their own you’ll often crane your neck to see a bit more as far off a tip of a blade crests a hill. Out at sea they seem like sentries and are in sympathy with the sail boats that move past.

There is a small one on my way to work each morning and on calm days I miss the sinuous curve of its blades bringing energy to earth.

Don’t forget Battlestar Galactica Season 4 starts on Sky One tonight at 9pm. I for one will be switching off the phone, closing the laptop and settling down for a good 1 hour and 30 minutes of Starbuck, Adama, Colonel Tigh and those dastardly Cylons.

Funnily enough we have a 10am 5 minute stand-up meeting each morning. They work well though.

A staple of science fiction has been vat-grown meat. In the future the thought of eating meat harvested from a once-living animal repels many.

And it would appear it may no longer be far future but soon a reality.

The scenes from London over the weekend were disturbing. Watching portesters hurl themselves at the Olympic torch as riot police aggresively brought them down left me confused and worried. Is sport political? I’m not sure it always is but I am coming round to the thought that something as massive and staged as the Olympic games is political. It shows a level of support for a country that cannot be denied. The organisation of the Olympic games is an engagement with every facet of the host country; from the sports bodies to the economic system and right up to the top of government.

They wouldn’t have held the Olympic games in apartheid South Africa. They didn’t even let one off Rugby games happen during those days.

Sir Steve Redgrave was interiewed in London and he said that the boycotting of the Berlin games many years ago did absolutely nothing. Maybe they didn’t but these protests of the Beijing 2008 Olympic games certainly are higlighting the situation in Tibet to many people who were only vaguely aware of the trouble. To see riot police bringing people down on the streets of London is a powerful statement.

What a shame. The bolts binding Ben’s boots to his skis have sheered and destroyed any hope of him completing his speed attempt on the North Pole. Hopefully the pack ice will still be there for his next attempt.

While watching the Dick to the Dawk video (”featuring” Richard Dawkins) I spotted the above symbol on his cap and nearly snorted tea out my nose. What a brilliant symbol. So well known from the millions of Christian car-bumpers it adorns and yet with two ticks as feet it is flipped into an atheistic symbol.

May 6 will bring to an end the office of An Taoiseach for Bertie Ahern.

As a foreigner in Ireland I think it is a shame it has come to this. Compared to the governance I am used to in my home country of South Africa I have to say Bertie was rather good. It seems as though Bertie has helped bring about change for the better in Ireland, and not just the Republic but the whole island. Whether he was simply in the right place at the right time or through skill and hard-work has brought about these changes is no matter for now.

One aspect that I think the developed, western world does not fully appreciate is the entrenched political process that survives individuals. While the investigation into his affairs has been dragged out, all Irish should be aware that without even an official letter, Bertie is resigning. In other parts of the world men in similar positions remain in office for far worse crimes and the political process is powerless to remove them; apartheid government in South Africa, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. It is not a free-pass for western politicians to dally in mild crimes but it is something for the western public to be thankful of.

One final thought; I am puzzled as to why Bertie thought he could hang on without the support of the people. Why not come clean? Why all these half-truths that spent the patience of the people and resulted in this? Bertie could have made a full accounting of his affairs at the beginning of this trial and laid his fate at the hands of a more forgiving public who may just have passed it off as the middling corruption of yet another politician and let him get on with his job till his term was up. Instead he squandered good-will and put himself up against a brick-wall. A shame.

A 7-year-old first-grader showed up at school Monday with two loaded handguns

Apparently he found them at his uncle’s house and thought they were toys. I’m pretty sure there are laws that make it the responsibility of the gun owner to keep them in a safe place, out of the reach of the innocent.