[silent saturday] what lurks

[early evening overture] kiss and don't tell

You know, they're not too bad after all and that Paul Stanley - wow:

[saturday country quiz] bumper edition

We haven't had a country quiz for a long while. Try these:

1. In the north is the driest place on Earth, the Atacama Desert, the Mapuche played a major part in its history, politically unstable, Nixon sent operatives in there, people suffered under the Caravan of Death, one of the widest income disparities in the world.

2. At one stage some 17,000 sq mi (44,030 sq km), after unification it became greatly reduced, it's a sacerdotal-elective-monarchical state, used to have a Quartermaster General and Master of the Horse and has the oldest active continuous diplomatic service in the world, dating back to at least AD 325.

3. Not now a country in its own right, it began with the establishment of Deira, 547AD though being more appropriate as the year of establishment, when Bernicia was brought in it became a kingdom, in 627AD, the King became a Christian through Paulinus.

4. Was there ever a country so abused by all? One of the world's oldest civilizations, it once included Mount Ararat, conquered by Greeks, Romans, Persians, Byzantines, Mongols, Arabs, Ottoman Turks, and Russians, there ahve been pogroms aplenty.

5. First inhabited by aborigines of Malayan descent, an island state, in 1999 its feisty neighbour conducted submarine warfare exercises and missile tests near the island, it joined the World Trade Organization in Jan. 2002.

6. Sitting on a fault line, most of the people live in the 7% of the island that is made up of fertile coastland, the Kalmar Union altered its sovereignty in 1397, it had the first female head of state and is known for the beauty of its women whose surnames end in dottir.

7. Dependent on the river running up its centre, one of the most famous nations on earth, the red land was always vital, it has the Khamaseen wind which blows from the south in spring, bringing sand and dust.

Answers

Chile, Vatican City, Northumbria [Northumberland scores you zero points], Armenia, Taiwan, Iceland, Egypt

[promiscuity] results in lower fertility

Apparently, Austrian males are the worst. Get over there, girls, if you want some disease.

Oh yes - like this one very much. Vox reports that Promiscuous women are less fit:

Less fit by the standards of natural selection, anyhow:

The following table shows the average number of children women have birthed by the number of male sexual partners they have had since the age of 18*. Like men, women who have had only one partner are the most fecund.

Whereas monogamous women who have only had one lifetime partner averages 2.29 children, the average US woman with nine partners averages 1.46 children.

Read it all.

Multiple partners say so much about the person doing it. Impaired social and emotional development, inability to take responsibility - it goes on.

Just to finish, I couldn't go past this headline:

Megan Fox Would Rather Kiss Girls

I don't know this Megan Fox from Eve but I can't fault her reasoning - I'd rather kiss girls too. By the way, any idea how I came across that news item? I was googling a certain group with a view to putting up a youtube for someone. Trouble is, I don't like the music. I'll try Iggy Pop.

[drink wine] and stay happier longer

A number of bloggers have covered this one about teetotallers being more stressed out than drinkers. As a Christian, my attitude is this, 1 Timothy 5:23:

Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.

If it's good enough for Timothy, if Jesus turned water into wine and He drank it at the Last Supper, then it's good enough for me. Plus, the efficacy of wine is just not disputed. All that cancer talk is more than offset by the benefits. No argument from this blog.

[protection] how nanny should we get

Hope it's like this, this year

It might be very difficult to get you interested in this one because 1. it's about sport 2. it's about a sport which not many are interested in.

The issue though transcends any particular country and game and if it had been gridiron or gaelic football, it wouldn't matter. Actually, it's about the Australian game and the second last round of the home and away season. Basically, a player gave an almighty hip and shoulder bump to another and produced an injury. I'm not sure. Maybe he didn't produce an injury but could have.

Either way, he was reported and had to front the tribunal, where he was suspended, which meant, as a star, in missing the crucial last game of the season, the side would go in undermanned. Guess what? They lost. Hence the angst and ire over the rule.

What it comes down to is that the Australian game, traditionally, was always a very physical game, with no padding and so there were injuries. In the nanny state and matriarchal upbringing of kids these days, the authorities determined that the players required protection and so to bump another player high, even if a total accident, is illegal and carries a penalty.

In the outcry over the making of the game into a girly or sissy sport, something, by the way, that if enough people were angry about, would affect gate takings and the AFL would have to look at it - in this, the AFL supremo, Andrew Demetriou, said:

''The fact of the matter is that the rule was considered two years ago and it was on the basis of medical experts and we've made absolutely no apologies for protecting the head because we don't want head injuries,'' Demetriou told Fairfax radio. ''People can bang on about the game's lost the bump … it's complete nonsense. We've had, in two years on our medical survey, the lowest neck and head injuries we've ever had and if that's the by-product of this, so be it.''

I like Andrew Demetriou and a political tract he wrote some years back was good, solid common sense. I don't know how he's been in his job downunder. Also, that team which has now been knocked out of the playoffs [finals] was the one which took the flag from my team last year and yet the principle must transcend this.

Like the gladiatorial contests of old, people want biffo, they want head-to-head contests up and down the ground, champion on champion, they want grunt and solid clashes. Sure they want skill as well but a bit of biffo never hurt anyone [much]. This is the rugby player in me speaking.

On the other hand - head injuries are another thing, as you know. I hope the debate doesn't split down gender lines, with mothers on one side and the lads on the other. Personally, I'm nearly in the middle on this, though more to the male side.

[round the world attempt] thirteen years old

The Beeb is coming out with very interesting things just now. I swear I'm not short of material but this dilemma is quite a puzzler.

A Dutch court has put a 13-year-old girl under state care for two years, stalling her bid to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world. The decision by three Utrecht judges means Laura Dekker's parents, who support her plans, temporarily lose the right to make decisions about her.

A child psychologist will now assess her capacity to undertake the voyage. Miss Dekker says she is happy with the ruling, but she will try to convince the authorities to let her set sail.

We have all the elements here - man against nature, youth striving ever upwards, initiative, the pioneer spirit, wicked state interfering and a pretty girl.

Physically, could she?

Thirteen - possible. Looking at the body, she's capable of much the same as I was at that age and I was never physically weak. I could handle a Sabot at 11 and a Moth at 13, handle them enough to sail them in a race or on a long journey around the bay.

She was born on a boat and has sailed all her life. She's a bit physically weaker than me at that age and yet she'd probably be tougher and very determined. If she had support crew the whole way, as did Ellen Macarthur, if her boat had systems designed for her physical ability and to allow her to sleep, if she does take the two years, then why not, physically?

The dangers of such a journey

Dekker had planned to start her trip in September and to take two years to circumnavigate the world on an eight-metre boat named Guppy.

This is an ultra-small boat in seagoing terms, even for an experienced adult and that's a major worry for a start. It's also a huge boat for a little girl, no matter if she's a world champion dinghy sailor or whatever.

I'd also ask if you would check out this post again - just click to the middle of the videos - and get a feel for what it's like. It is hell out there and the question is not whether the kid can handle the boat - I think she could - but whether she can handle freak conditions.

When crews of seasoned adults, big, beefy men, have trouble with them, when I, not to put too fine a point on it, have trouble handling nature out there, then it's daunting for a kid, no matter how closeby they are in support craft and via radio.

Please check out that video and see what I mean.

Verdict? Possible but only with extreme support. Why do it? Well, why do anything? I can understand that completely. Two years loss of study? Perhaps but she's young and not 10 - she's 13. I'm sure when she comes back, she'd be allowed to catch up. Knowing her determination, she'd probably succeed too.

She said it herself - she hasn't had a normal upbringing, she's clearly self-reliant and as a sailor, if I were the parent and my wife, also a sailor, agreed, perhaps that's the clinching issue.

Actually, one more thing is the clinching issue - what role would authorities, i.e. taxpayers, have when she gets into trouble? Any rescue attempt is measured in tens of thousands of euros and her own crew could not help her in extreme conditions.

Custody

This is frightening. What role does the state have in protecting the child? She's not being sexually abused [it seems], she's not being bullied, she seems quite even-tempered. We don't know and she accepted the state ruling so quickly. She'd like to try again, she said. That's the kid in her talking.

Did the state have the moral right and obligation to stop her? She wanted to beat the 17 year old boy with the record. 17 year old boys, I can attest, are a different kettle of fish to 13 year old girls. At 17, I was sailing something like this.

Look, all right, the kid is too young but not by a lot and she is a good sailor. But custody for two years? That's pretty draconian. And do the parents have any right to judge the fitness of the girl to do the voyage?

This looks line ball, doesn't it?

[change] and the fleeting connections we make

Via the Beeb is this sad story.

When you Google St Kilda, it brings up Melbourne, Australia although, after this news story, the British original might see a revival. The Beeb tells a tale of decline and final abandonment:

People had lived on St Kilda, the westernmost islands of the Outer Hebrides, since prehistoric times. In the 19th Century, tourists began to visit the archipelago and the St Kildans - known as the Hiortaich - became more dependent on the outside world.

In the 1850s, 42 of the islanders emigrated to Australia, half of them dying on the way. The winter of 1929 was particularly hard on the island and some of the remaining inhabitants died, many having already left.

The remaining 36 islanders wrote to the government asking to be taken off so they could lead new lives on the mainland. The island was abandoned the following year.

I'd think it would take a Scot a lot to abandon his homeland [not that these were exactly Scots] but when you think it through - very little peat, a rock covered lightly in grass, what could they do? What was their industry, apart from fishing?

I'm imagining living there on that rocky place in the ocean and am thinking that if they had their families and enough food to subsist, it might be worth continuing. Could they not have had potted gardens inside the houses they built with roofs which opened to the light? In summer it would have been sufficient - I've been to Iceland and there was enough summer light and heat.

Could they not have grazed stock, each household creating its own protected grass paddies, to be covered in winter? In Russia, in my early days there, there was a big to-do in summer of killing a cow, cutting it up and freezing the parts and also bottling berries, as well as veges and fruits. There were places you could get the jars and the metal seals and the rotating sealing device was mechanical and quite easy to use.

By the end of summer, everything was stored and ready and in autumn, the stock was brought into its own sheds, double stone walled. I can't help thinking that if the Russians could do it, the St Kildans could too. Maybe it was just too severe and too hard on available grain to keep the cattle there. Could they not have been put on an ark at the end of summer and taken south, to the borders area?

I suspect that when the tourists started coming in though that the islanders started that comparison thing of their own poor lot against the greener grass and that hastened the shift off the island. What the tourists might have brought is know-how in animal husbandry and crop growing. Why not?



It seems sad to me that things end like this. On that theme, Thud, Over the Water, also laments but his tale is about the British Pub [sorry to steal his pic below]. He writes:

With so many distractions available today it is easy to forget that a pub was for hundreds of years the centre of life (church too perhaps) for so many communities.

It's a snowballing effect over here. As numbers stop going, the pint gets dearer, more stop going, the smoking ban comes in and so on, you have to go further to a watering hole and the costs becomes prohibitive for more than once or twice a week.

Perhaps they will come back one day, these pubs but I suspect it will be more like the American diner replicas and the beer will be chemical lager. Revivalist movements are good but how authentic can they be? I hope he can start something over there.



Rocky islands are one thing and pubs another. People are something else again and why they drift away is a combination of non-proximity, disagreement, pressure of work and lifestyle and so on. Sometimes, a very strong minded person digs in and there it is.

I've lived in three separate countries for long enough to not only make friends but to have family there. As time has gone on, they were of the opinion that such things would always be but as I gained experience, I saw that people you had to leave behind, while making a great deal of effort to keep in touch for a while, slowly reduced that contact and I admit - so did I.

My ex-gf and I were never going to part, we swore that to each other but in the back of my mind, I saw it as two planets on different orbits which had, for a while, coincided. I wanted it not to be so but it was. It's now as if we loop back within range of one another every so often and that's pleasant but there's also a gulf there.

Plus we age and coming into a time when we need certainty, we find only uncertainty and fleeting connections. I don't wish it to be so but often it's out of my hands. I'm happy to continue and never see disagreements as final. Others may disagree.

They say you can never go back. Perhaps so. I believe one can and it can be more rewarding second time round.

[late evening listening] not even the chair

The trouble with Neil Diamond is that someone like me can't present any of his songs. It started out with Solitary Man but that would have led to false speculation, then Cherry Cherry but that might have caused trouble in certain quarters. Next was Red, Red Wine but I don't want you getting the wrong idea. Holly Holy seems to be about some girl. You'll Be a Woman Soon would be just great to run on this blog, wouldn't it?

Ho hum, which Neil Diamond song to use? I Am, I Said? Just listened to it now and it has its own problems as a statement. Hmmmm - a nice, non-controversial song, please Neil?



Oh, to hell with non-controversial. Now reader/listener - this one is not about me, not about my current toothache and muscle spasms, not about any desire on my part whatsoever - it's just a Neil Diamond song and a good one too:

[romance] dying art in films

Everyone to his or her own, natch, yet methinks the quality of romance in films has drastically fallen away in recent years. Mind you, with the new kick-butt female, it would hardly be safe to go anywhere near her and good luck to her in her future celibacy but for normal moviegoers, well there needs to be some sort of love interest in it.

The action genre, my favourite and any other non-mushy genres are obviously not based on saccharine sweet swathes of dialogue and yet to cut it out altogether seems a nod to our new society where so many men and women now live apart, divorced or never married and where the procreative act alone, with no delayed gratification, is the order of the day.

Olga Kurylenko's Camille was a case in point. She had her butt saved, she was given advice which later helped, she twice gave him a car ride which saved his butt and was there any warmth from either of them? Not a bit of it. The third Bourne had all the makings - there they were in the haircutting scene, she'd already admitted it had been difficult for her in Paris and what does he do? Just looks at her stupidly.

Ghost is obviously the benchmark and Demi "can't wait to get my gear off" Moore doesn't do a bad job but it's a bit saccharine for mine. I prefer it when they're an unlikely pair and they come together through grudging admiration for one another. This is romance of the first water:



It's so romantic when they have their falling out, if you remember and as he storms out, he turns and snaps: "And another thing - I faked every orgasm!" Well, it was better than the final scene of Wars of the Roses, anyway. But for true romance, you can't beat this delicate scene when John Connor and Kate Brewster meet again in the back of a pet van, after ten years :