Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.
Year: 2009
The end of a tough and arduous few days.
Just a quick note to say that ‘normal’ service will be resumed in the morning, local time here in Mexico.
Jimena struck San Carlos, where we are presently living, late afternoon on the 1st September. Electricity was restored a couple of hours ago. (I write these few words at 6.30 pm on Sunday, 6th.)
Jean and I are very tired!
Lots to report….
The pluses and minuses of skydiving.
This looks great. Cameraman is Paul Lewis.
And here’s that Paul Lewis again. Having a really, really lucky day!
Funny, there is a saying amongst us (amateur) pilots. Why would anyone want to throw themselves out of a perfectly serviceable aeroplane!
Exactly!
By Paul Handover
Where the capital city is called Edinburgh of the Seven Seas
My great buddy of 30 years, Dan, Californian born and bred, recently emailed me saying that he had spent a fascinating hour reading the website of Tristan da Cunha. Most British people will have some odd recollection about this very remote community living in the South Atlantic because the islands are part of the United Kingdom. TDCU 1ZZ is, in fact, the UK postcode for Tristan da Cunha.
This is not a place which has a habit of making main-stream news! Indeed, one could not imagine a more distant part of the planet. Well you won’t imagine a more distant place. Tristan da Cunha is the most remotely inhabited archipelago on Planet Earth. Indeed, only one island, Tristan, is inhabited and, according to the website there are just 264 British citizens there today.
Earlier it was mentioned that most British will have some vague recollection of Tristan. More likely, that will be those British who were born before, say, 1950.
Why?
Fourier approaches to the theory of volume holography.
Anyone who takes a doctorate with the above subject title has to have a well-functioning brain. I know John. He does.
John Lewis, as I have always known him until reading his Blog, and I met a good many years ago when we both were members of a private flying group that operated a Socata (French) TB20, G BPAS.
It was based at Exeter in Devon, SW England. Both of us were/are private pilots.
We flew together on many an occasion and it was clear from the start that John approached everything in life from, well in his own words, “…. motivated by an interest in what things are, how they work and how they are used.” Say no more!
Well, as luck would have it, the joys of social networking brought us back in touch recently and we had a jolly good chin-wag. With a bonus.
Technology is so much more than bits and bytes.
Recently had the opportunity to visit a factory belonging to Horst Engineering in the nearby town of Guaymas (pronounced whymas), Sonora, Mexico. The factor manager is an American, Andy Law, who, with his lovely wife, lives
across the road.
It is simply ages since I have seen a precision engineering factory at work. Not only was I impressed but it took me on a long trip down memory lane, with a couple of strands: engineering tools and the British defence industry.
But before the reminisces, a word about the calibre of the young Mexicans working for Andy. Unlike so many of the locals who one comes across, these bright, young men and women are committed, self-motivated, multi-lingual (Sp/Eng) citizens. It was a treat to observe them and hear Andy speak so highly of them. Mexico sorely needs up-coming generations of highly capable people.
Britain’s excessive use of CCTV cameras and the shocking waste of money.
Even before leaving England a year ago, this was a subject that made me feel uneasy, to say the least.
Anyway, a recent article in The Daily Telegraph pointed out just what a complete cock-up this ‘investment’ in cameras 
has been.
Britain has 1 per cent of the world’s population but around 20 per cent of its CCTV cameras! Scary.
And don’t even think about the implications of RFID – Radio Frequency Identification.
G’rrrr.
By Paul Handover
Intelligence at the core of humanism
A while ago a comment on Baseline Scenario jumped off the screen at me. I was intrigued because the author of this comment used words with power and insightfulness. That author was Patrice Ayme. It’s a nom de plume. [NB. Not it isn’t, see comments below] The sub-heading at the top of this Post is from his Blog. Here’s an extract from the About section of that Blog.
This is a site that tries to find out what is really happening, and what is not, what is right and what is wrong, on many important questions, and in all sorts of ways. In other words thinking is applied relentlessly, the way evolution made it, as the ultimate instrument of domination of anything in sight (be it domination of oneself, of one’s own ideas and emotions, or domination of the universe). Thinking evolved to predict effectively and ambitiously, not to cower in a corner, modest and dazed. Prometheus’ punishment was a regrettable misunderstanding: we did not steal fire from someone, we created our mastery of fire, and fire made us what we are, as we wished. Mastering fire was not a sin, the Greco-Romans were wrong on that one. Fire was part of what we have evolved to be; masters of the universe, for better or worse.
SoundCloud is just wonderful.
If you are into music, and who isn’t, do hot foot it over to SoundCloud. It’s just an amazing reminder of the power of the web.
Essentially, it makes posting music onto a web site or Blog as easy as, well as easy as this …
Just click on the play button and drift away!
Very, very cool!
By Paul Handover
Is the mobile telephone industry being honest?
A report released by the International EMF Collaborative last week has some disturbing information in it; that cell phones (mobile phones in Europe) are more likely than not to be a causative factor in some cancers, most notably brain cancers.
That information will not come as a surprise to anyone as rumours have been circulating for many years. What is 
worse (if brain cancer wasn’t bad enough) is a growing view that the cell phone industry may have been trying to skew the results in favour of the industry. If proven, that sort of corporate behaviour underlines the value of integrous living as the only way of creating a society fit for all.
The International EMF Collaborative claims that the Interphone study, which begun in 1999, was “intended to determine the risks of brain tumors, but its full publication has been held up for years. Components of this study published to date reveal what the authors call a ’systemic-skew’, greatly underestimating brain tumor risk.”
Know of young people using cell phones? Then read more and pass this Post on to them.
What a delight to come across people who care.
This is a personal story with a wider message. That great after-sales service matters and in these difficult times will make the difference between surviving and even growing, or failing.
I drive a 2005 5.7 litre Jeep. It was bought (second-hand) when I arrived in the US about a year ago, en route to 
Mexico.
Just recently the automatic transmission failed. There was no choice but to commit it to the local Mexican Jeep dealership for repair. This is a sophisticated transmission system and I was seriously worried that it was going to be a nightmare.
I didn’t account for the help from AASTRO in Tucson, where the Jeep had been serviced a couple of times.
Learning from Dogs 