Hugh's reading, pictures and stray thoughts for 2015

First things first: This wish to all



Hippo, hippo, hippo (etc.)



gnu



ear!

May all and only your good dreams come true in 2015.

And what do I want to put into this thread?

Notes on books read. Notes, please, not formal reviews. And that's why I don't intend to attach them as reviews to the work files (unless prodded, as @meredy did once in 2014). Also unattached pictures and thoughts that don't belong in any other thread.

Happy New Year, Hugh!

The gang is gathering in the pub. Several 2015 reading threads have been set up. I think I will go mix some punch. There is sure to be demand.

Happy reading!

And to you, Pete. Groo used to have a recipe for PGGBs so venomous they could only be served in mithril cups; maybe we should volunteer someone who knows the recipe to make some to go with the punch.

2014 statistics: Very simple: I haven't a clue. I read for fun, not as a challenge.

Starred!

Ah-ha! Found you, amidst all the wild life. Great photos.

You always make the year more enjoyable, Hugh. Looking forward to sharing this one with you.

Wishing you many happy hours of reading and photography. Your photos are amazing.

Happy new year!

Happy New Year to you too Hugh! I'm looking forward to reading your thread. My one resolution this year is to be here more often and stay caught up with the conversations.

Many thanks for the kind words, everybody.

Some fallout from the last few days, of books finished in the past week (up to and including this morning):

We didn't mean to go to sea by Arthur Ransome. Technically a re-read, as I dimly recall reading it in or just before my early teens. Totally immune to the suck fairy. But one thing struck me forcibly this time round that I missed the first time: would four children without any identification really have made it into the Netherlands (or anywhere else) that easily in about 1930? I could see it happening after 2002 with the EU, but not in the decades immediately before.

A Guide to Tolkien by David Day. Great reference book for hobbitomanes, but inclined to be repetitive if you read two or more related entries on the trot.

The Book of Steak. If there is a Bulwer-Lytton-type prize for b-awful, intrusive, unreadable typography, this book is a clear winner. The recipes might be quite good if you can find them among the MISPLACED BOLD CAPS, horrible FANCY fonts, bad GRAPHICS and more.

Currently reading: Mao by Jung Chang. Beautifully written, the more so considering English is her second language. But eeewwwww! What a character! A review of Empress Dowager Cixi suggested that Chinese biographies tend to advocacy and so become one-sided, which this certainly is. Do I believe that any human could be so totally devoid of anything resembling a redeeming feature? Probably not.

I'm fascinated to hear your thoughts on Jung Chang's Mao as it is lurking on my shelf, but it's such a huge tome I feel like I need to brace myself to even pick it up. Have you read her Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China? That's one I made it through last year.

Happy New Year, Hugh! I'm looking forward to more of your lovely photos this year, and hopefully some trip reports.

>9 Peace2:, >14 Peace2: Many thanks for the kind comment. Mao is rather a brick at over 650 pages + notes, citations and index, isn't it? Of her three books I've only read Dowager Empress Cixi and about 40 pages + odd skimmy bits of Mao. But I have Wild Swans out from the library. It's due back a week today, which suggests to me that a renewal called for.

>15 SylviaC: Thank you, Sylvia! The September trip to Kruger is already booked; somehow I doubt you'd want to hear about a week teaching in Pretoria in March. (Pssst! *whispers* should we let on to Pete that I'm about to start scanning some pictures I took in Ireland in 1982 (and plan to post 1 or 2 here).

>12 hfglen: your point on We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea is well made. Given tensions in the 30s, it seems very unlikely the children would have received such an easy welcome... or if they did, that they would have as easily been sent home.

>17 hfglen: *Whispers* Shhhh. Don't tell him. Spring it on him when he least expects it!

>17 hfglen: and >19 SylviaC:

I love a good secret. You can rely on my not telling him anything. He never listens to me anyway.

oh pictures! please!

Pictures are always wonderful.

>18 imyril: Interest aroused, I googled the history of British passports. Amazing to relate, the sainted Wikipedia has a relevant entry. It would appear that the children would have been entered as a matter of course on their father's passport, and so would not have had a problem leaving the Netherlands. Still don't buy their arrival, though, unless the sea below the lock was regarded as not-arrived-yet, and their father shepherded them through immigration when they tied up.

>23 hfglen: Hmmm. I think being children probably worked in their favour. Being Arthur Ransome children probably even more so ;)

Here's the first picture of the year. The choice was inspired by @johnthefireman 's post in the dream-home thread. Kenya's Rift Valley from a vantage point on the Rift wall near Kiserian (a few km south-west of Nairobi). With a bit of imagination you can see the west Valley wall in the distance. Taken September 2002.

>25 hfglen: I can't fault that picture. ;-)

I love it when one can see big geological features. I studied the Rift Valley from diagrams and maps in books but this is the first photograph I have seen of it. Thank you, Hugh.

>26 pgmcc: Einaaa!!

What say we ask @johnthefireman to post some pictures of the environment around his house (which, he says, is on the lip if the rift)?

ETA: DD makes the sensible suggestion that instead of heading for the ferry to France each time for your holiday, you should one day head for the airport. Emirates leaves Dublin in the evening, and gets to Durban the next afternoon (after a mercifully quick change in Dubai). We could fetch you from the airport here and show you the Lebombo Mountains, held by some to be the southernmost extension of the Rift. Time permitting, I'd be happy to add various other special bits of geology to such an outing.

>27 hfglen: That would be fantastic.

One of my magic moments in life was sitting on top of Dunaff Head (700 feet) (Inishowen Peninsula in Donegal) and visually tracking the line of an ancient fault that is the Highland Boundary Fault in Scotland and which cuts across the tip of Malin Head, forms the northern edge of the Urris Hills (1,800 feet) and runs across Donegal in a general NE to SW line. I could see the mountains in Scotland on either side of the fault which is the line occupied by Loch Ness and the other lochs in that line.

This fault predates the Atlantic and exists on the other side of the Atlantic as the Cabot Fault in Newfoundland.

June, 1976. Clear blue skies. No heat haze. Fantastic visibility.

Your photograph reminded me of that moment. Again, thank you!

I can see I'm late to the party already, but I'm looking forward to following your books and travel this year, Hugh. By the end of it I expect you'll have me searching for flights to southern Africa ...

>28 pgmcc: That sounds like a magical memory, Pete. I shall have to dig out some more geology pictures, if you're interested.

>29 Sakerfalcon: Plenty of direct flights from Heathrow to Cape Town and Johannesburg (3 or 4 every evening). Curiously, Emirates (changing at Dubai) is probably cheapest, allow 30kg free baggage and also fly daily to Durban.

Reading: Now halfway through Mao. Beautifully written, well researched, but the subject comes across as the ultimate a$$hole. Which makes for a long and hard read. Didn't know that he was surrounded by half-a-dozen competitors as inhuman as himself. And that Chiang Kai-shek was as much of a disaster area, but for different reasons. I think Wild Swans will wait for one or more palate-cleansing, easier reads.

>30 hfglen: Definitely interested.

A picture essay for Peter. This week's piece of geology needs at least 3 or 4 pictures to begin to explain (and not being a geologist, I'm struggling somewhat.



The story starts some 2023-million years ago, when the earth got smacked by a hunk of rock about 10 km across. The resultant mess is the second largest (one has recently been found near Sudbury, Canada, that's bigger but younger) and second oldest (there's one in Russia that's slightly older but smaller) meteorite crater on earth. The crater was about 300 km across, but the rim is now mostly eroded away. However the splash cone in the centre survives, and has recently been declared a World Heritage Site under the name of the Vredefort Dome. The dome itself is centred between Vredefort and Parys in the Free State. My first picture is in a disused quarry just across the Vaal River from Parys, and shows a rock called a Pseudotachylite. It was formed in a few minutes after the impact. The pink bits are the local basement granite, which was shattered by the impact, and the black stuff is miscellaneous debris forced at tremendous temperature and pressure into the cracks.



This land was flat until a few seconds before the impact. Ten minutes later it solidified into this shape. I find that amazing.



The fir-tree-like marks on this rock are called shatter cones. I'm told that the size of shatter cones is proportional to the force of the impact, and usually need magnification to be seen. This must have been one H. of a whack.

However, all was not harm. If you plot the Witwatersrand and Free State gold mines (or better, projections of where the reef would break the surface if it stretched that far) on a map, you get a rough ring ... 300 km in diameter, more-or-less centred on the Dome! Without the meteorite pushing the reefs safely under ground, the vast majority of the world's gold would long since have been washed into the sea. So here's the Apollo Reef, seen in the hills in the second picture. The concentration of gold is payable, but there isn't enough reef to be worth mining.



Tourist notes: Vredefort Dome is a great place to visit, because not many people do. I gather there's now a visitor centre near Vredefort; it wasn't there when I visited a few years ago. Then about the only visitors were the Botanical Society (the group I went with) and a couple of geology classes from nearby universities. There's plenty of accommodation in and near Parys (mostly used by locals fishing in or playing golf near the Vaal River), but I'd make for one of the many B&Bs in Potchefstroom, less than half an hour away -- if only because the town boasts a restaurant that does seriously good steaks.

PS: This site has some stunning satellite and other images of the structure, beautifully explained.

Hugh, thank you for that. Your explanation of some fairly exotic geology was excellent.

>33 pgmcc:

Plus one.

Your picture essay is absolutely fascinating. To think that an object hitting the Earth can cause such a huge transformation to the surface. After visiting the science centres in Sudbury last year, I've been reading up on the geology and history of the area. Most of the fertile farmland in the region is in the impact crater, and huge ore deposits are all around the edge.

Oh, how cool! My husband would love to visit there and see that. He likes crater impact areas.

Cindy, a visit is basically do-able. Probably the minimum-hassle route for you is, surprisingly, to fly Seattle - Dubai - Durban, which avoids the high levels of baggage theft in Johannesburg. I'd then fetch you from the airport and we could use timeshare points to stay a while at one of the Hartebeestpoort Dam resorts. That would allow day trips to Tswaing Crater (north-west of Pretoria, 200 000 years old, 1 km across) and Pilanesberg, which is the eroded stump of an ancient volcano. Then the Vredefort Dome and on to Kimberley (5 volcanic pipes, at least one of which is still being mined for diamonds -- giving the opportunity for some souvenir shopping if you're feeling plutocratic). Back to Durban via the spectacular geology of the Drakensberg. But if funds allow, one could extend the trip to northern Namibia to view the Hoba Meteorite, said to be the largest chunk of extraterrestrial iron on view anywhere.

Kimberley, the home of Kimberlite. That was our core case study on diamond formation.

>38 pgmcc: presumably the Big Hole, which now makes money from tourists. Not sure I actually have a picture of the hole itself, and have been exercising my mind as to what I can use instead ;)

>39 hfglen: The big hole was a shaft of Kimberlite that was mined out. I remember photographs of the shaft but that is from when I was at college, some 3, or 4, or is it 37 years ago.

I do love interesting geology, and impact craters are fascinating stuff. There's a geologist on Instagram who almost makes up for all the dross on the platform by only posting interesting rock images (some in situ, some under magnification) with explanations of what you're looking at. Great stuff!

>40 pgmcc: What makes it special is not only that it was a hill before the miners got to work, but that it was dug out by hand, mainly with pick and shovel, in lots of tiny claims. The picture at 1876 in the timeline of this site is the classic view of that stage in its history. Cullinan's big hole, on the other hand, was excavated by a single company using explosives.

Phew! Finished Mao: the unknown story at last! It doesn't lighten up much, except to note the opposition that coagulated in his last few months.

I now need something much lighter as an antidote and palate-cleanser.

>43 hfglen: Was it worth it? Should I move it up the list? Should I read it alongside some lighter books?

>44 Peace2: Yes, I think so. The writing is definitely worth 4 stars, but the subject should have been shot in his youth (though I doubt if that would have improved China's 20th-century chances all that much -- read the book to see why. Should you move it up the list? Only if you're interested enough to or if China lands in the news, or if you're planning to go there. Read it alongside some lighter books? Definitely yes. Lots and much lighter.

Hugh, that would be an amazing trip! Oh my! I guess I could make a savings jar for that, too. :)

>45 hfglen: I shall save it a while as I've just started Lion's Head, Four Happiness which is a biography of a fourth daughter born to a family living in Inner Mongolia just before the Cultural Revolution. I've only read the first chapter so far though.

>32 hfglen: - thanks for the virtual geological tour! Someday I'd love to come for the real thing. I remember seeing shatter cones like those (but I think smaller) at Sudbury many years ago on a mine tour.

Wonderful photos, and a very good explanation of the geology. I'd come along on the tour too ...

>47 Peace2: Wise decision.

>48 NorthernStar: >49 Sakerfalcon: We shall have to hire a minibus! ETA: Then we can bend the route to take in a classic birding site or 2 for @Sakerfalcon.

Yea! An Green Dragon field trip!

Hugh, I just had a look at the big hole. Fascinating what people will do, isn't it? Thanks for that :)

>52 nhlsecord: It is indeed amazing what people can be persuaded to do by a remote chance of profit ;)

This morning I listened to a BBC4 archive piece on how the designers of restaurant menus play mind games with customers. This had, as many pages on BBC web pages do, a collection of links to relates dites attached. I was amazed by the one that led me to the New York Public Library's collection of over 17 000 menus, all digitized, indexed and freely accessible. Now you can find out what the diners at, for example, Lüchows were offered and expected to pay in 1913. Among other gems of useless information.

Presently reading: London: the biography by Peter Ackroyd. A long, depressing look at the underside of the history of London. 450 pages down, 330 to go, roughly.

In the far-off days of childhood (must have been the late 50s) I was much taken but a very early Disney wildlife book, and thought it would be wonderful to see the apparently unique Meteor Crater, Arizona. Little did I or anyone else know that the Pretoria Salt Pan, no more than an hour and a half from where I grew up, was formed in precisely the same way. At the time it was thought to be volcanic, but in the 1990s some geologists managed to get a number of deep cores, and found only shattered local rock. So it's now in the care of the state museum service, as the crater formed by the impack of a 60-metre wide rock some 200 000 years ago. Here's a picture I took on a botanical tour in 1972:



I see one report on Tripadvisor mentions millions of mosquitoes. I hope the author of that one didn't catch anything from the gazillions of pepper-ticks that used to infest the place.

>56 hfglen: That looks much prettier than Meteor Crater in AZ which, as I recall, doesn't have any vegetation or a lake.

#57 by @Sakerfalcon> Indeed. Much prettier than the Arizona crater.

>54 hfglen: Can you give some examples of what they do to the menus? I love learning about that type of thing.

>59 Morphidae: Here's the programme, which runs for about half an hour.

This link dissects a fairly typical menu page, with the most expensive item prominently displayed top right and best buys (= least profit items) hidden at the foot of a column just below the middle (and half a dozen other tricks explained in the article). Anything boxed is probably extra-profitable, for example.

And here is a link to NY Public Library's menu collection.

When you've been through these, you'll know at least as much as I do on the subject. Hope that helps

Fascinating. Thanks for the links!

>61 Morphidae: *bows with a flourish* My pleasure!

Took time off from London: the biography to enjoy Footrot Flats 13, which is much easier going (and much shorter!). Gotta love that dog; which is a strange statement from a confirmed ailurophile and canophobe.

PS to #56, which was written in a scalded-cat hurry (ahead of a major thunderstorm, so I had to shut the modem down quickly):

Pretoria Salt Pan is the same place as Tswaing that I mentioned in #37. I think it makes a good counterpoint / completion to the Vredefort Dome. Here is what I consider the best description on the web.

Finished London: the biography at last. There are a few scattered pages of relief scattered amid the gloom of the last 200 pages or so. At least in theory, this book is arranged by theme rather than chronologically. Even within that, the material is chaotic. Which may be a representation of the nature of the city, but which aids neither enjoyment nor understanding.

Currently reading: Finger lickin' Fifteen, the first of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum stories I've encountered. Possibly counts as a book bullet, as I first heard of Stephanie here, but then on the other hand it's a library book. Pity I only got to it now, as I saw at least 3 other Stephanie Plums at the SPCA on Saturday, and didn't pick them up. Many thanks to whoever mentioned these -- they're exactly what I need right now.

>65 hfglen: I enjoyed the first five of her books, then became increasingly dissatisfied up through eleven, then quit. However, I think if I had read them here and there, and not tried to read them one after the other, I would have been able to enjoy them more.

>66 MrsLee: Thank you, Lee. I don't think it would be possible to read more than about half-a-dozen nose to tail, and that would take major preparation. So I shall look them out in the library and the SPCA, but fit plenty else between and (of necessity) take them out of order.

Also reading: Bridges: three thousand years of defying nature by one David J. Brown. The pictures are memorable, and the text certainly above average. But Lee, it raises a question that directs itself to you. Near the beginning there's a picture whose caption tells us it's "Sundial Bridge, Redding, Northern California, designed by Santiago Calatrava". A similar distance from the end is a picture of "Turtle Bay Bridge, ... Redding, California, The mast angles to the north and acts as a sundial ..." (looks like the same structure). So how does the sundial work, and is it as close to your home as I imagine?

>67 hfglen: I shall have to look for that Bridges book - my husband is a hydrotechnical engineer and works on bridges and other kinds of water crossings (culverts, etc.). Not so much the fancy stuff, but the hydraulic openings and such. He might really enjoy this book.

>68 tardis: It's a Mitchell Beazley production, and so a coffee-table number beautiful to behold; it should also be quite easy to find (at a price!). Whether a real engineer would like it as much as I do is open to question -- I have "very little brain" in such matters.

>67 hfglen: :) Very close to my home. It's about 35 miles north of here on the Sacramento River, in the heart of Redding, CA. It is a lovely huge thing. Modern and yet classic at the same time. It functions as a sundial only on midsummer's day. My in-laws go there to celebrate their anniversary, since they were married on June 21st. The bridge has glass blocks set into it and gives me the willies to walk across, but any bridge does that. A wonderful place for the community, the Turtle Bay Exploration Park has rotating exhibits ranging from birds reptiles and butterflies to dead people in various stages of preservation, meaning some with skin and some without, etc. On the other side is a lovely botanical garden. I have spent many a lovely day there.

>70 MrsLee: Thank you, Lee. I take it there must be studs in the garden to mark the hours?

Now reading: Mr Foote's other leg by Ian Kelly. Would a one-legged Georgian (time not place) actor be worth a biography in the 21st century? Really? The first chapter, at least, is eminently readable and full of promise.

Also reading: Four Ways to Forgiveness by the great Ursula K. Le Guin. Excellent as expected. Maybe one day I'll understand where the various bits of the Hainish universe are in relation to one another, and how they work.

I took this week's picture in Schenkenzell, Germany, with Better Half (that's Her in the picture) and the In-Laws in 1981. Sadly, the place doesn't seem to exist any more, but would you agree that the architect was channelling a Hobbit design when he did the entrance?

The Murder Stone aka A rule against murder by Louise Penny. Book bullet from @majkia (I think) -- it took a long time to travel halfway around the world! But a welcome one, no less. The Chief Inspector is an acquaintance I shall treasure, and will look for more of these books in the library. Thank you for the heads-up!

Finger lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich. Hilarious, wildly improbable fun. But I wouldn't have considered it for reading to aged mother, had I met Stephanie Plum while she was still with us. Another GD book bullet, but I'm not sure whom to thank for this one. Whoever it is, please accept my gratitude.

Not directly after (I'm still reading Mr. Foote's other leg), but finished Visions of Sugar Plums while waiting for the power failure. Hilarious, and well worth reading. Somewhat less schoolboy humour than Finger lickin' fifteen.

Talking of the Sally Gap, as @JannyWurts was on Peter's thread, here's a picture of the place taken in April 1982. I imagine the weather is fairly typical.



And here's Glendalough, taken an hour or so later:

Very nice, Hugh.

1982 is when I moved to Dublin. I believe the Summer of that year was the first time I visited Glendalough with my wife. I had been there in the 70s on a Geology field trip. I just took everything for granite.

Yes, the weather in the first picture is fairly typical.

>77 pgmcc: I see what you did there.

>76 hfglen: Would that be where they kept Rapunzel, and all the would be suitors who didn't hang on to her hair properly are buried at the base?

>78 MrsLee: Nice story! But the one they tell there concerns innocent, defenceless monks and bloodthirsty Viking raiders. Apparently when the raiders were spotted up the coast, the monks put a ladder against the wall and swarmed up to the lowest doorway, at 2nd ro 3rd floor level. The last one in pulled up the ladder behind him and they cowered there until the Vikings left. And the good faithful in the neighbourhood naturally wanted to be buried as close to the saints in the tower as they can get. Much less romantic.

No doubt Peter will correct the bits I got wrong.

Somehow omitted to mention Four ways to Forgiveness by Ursula Le Guin. As eminently readable and thought-provoking as any of her work.

And now the picture I've been wanting to show Peter for a couple of weeks. Slightly handicapped by the fact that I'm not very sure exactly where the outcrop I want to draw his attention to actually is. This is part of the Barberton Mountain Land, looking from Angle Station Mountain towards Swaziland. Somewhere in there is an outcrop of greenstone chert that has been dated as about 3500 million years old, making it second only to a patch in Greenland (any chance of a picture, @trisweather?) as the oldest visible sediment on the planet. There was an article in Scientific American, presumably backed up by a learned paper in Science, by Lynn Margulis in the late 60s -- early 70s showing pictures of fossils she'd found here. We, or our ancestors, have been around for a long time!

>81 hfglen:
Very nice, Hugh.

Thank you.

Finished Mr Foote's other leg. Samuel Foote (1720--1777) was an actor in Georgian London, which description manages to omit nearly all of what makes him memorable. He started making money by writing "red-top" pamphlets about a dramatic trial in Bristol, concerning a matter in which one of his uncles murdered another uncle in a row about an inheritance. He then developed a talent for mimcry, and taught by the same coach as trained David Garrick, made a career on the London stage. He invented stand-up comedy, matinee shows and more, notably some of the first ways of circumventing the Lord Chamberlain's Regulations (in force 1737--1968; older Dragoneers may remember seeing the remnants printed in British theatre programmes of the time, or hearing Flanders & Swann singing them). Foote was, apparently, somewhat mentally unstable to begin with, and injuries sustained in a riding accident in 1766 didn't improve matters. Neither did the fact that he had to have a leg amputated as a result of the same accident. The stomach-turning account of 18th-century surgery in general and this amputation in particular occupy more than a few pages. Foote survived, which was unusual, and used his disability in his last shows. But brain damage (or a tumour, suggests the author) caused him to lose rather the wrong set of inhibitions; he also suffered a series of minor strokes.

If you are interested in Georgian England or the history of the theatre, you'll like it.

>83 hfglen: It doesn't sound like something I need to search out and buy, but I really enjoyed reading your synopsis of it.

>83 hfglen: Oh, right between the eyes with that one, both because of subject matter and because I've enjoyed Ian Kelly's previous books on Antonin Careme and Beau Brummel.

>85 Marissa_Doyle: :D My work here is done! Though, I shall now have to look for the Carème and Brummel books at the library.

One good bullet deserves another. ;)

You may have missed @MrsLee with that one about Samuel Foote, but the stray bullet grazed me. I am being virtuous and not getting more books until I've read some of the ones I've got stacked up around me. But the biography of Beau Brummell is definitely going on the wish list...

>88 jillmwo: Ooh, an indirect bullet! (punches fist triumphantly into air).

Dead Cold aka A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny. many thanks to the Dragoneer who placed this author where I could see her. It was a worthy book bullet! But I'm glad I read this one in midsummer. The action takes place in rural Quebec between Christmas and New Year, and the scenes are so well described that one could be cold just reading them! I have to say that being outdoors at -30°C is simply beyond my imagination. Yet the logical part of my mind could agree with Ms Penny's description of that part of a Canadian winter.

>90 hfglen: I've been outside when it's that cold. Once it gets below a certain temperature (about -23C/-10F), you really don't feel the difference anymore. It's just $@#% freezing.

>91 Morphidae: My favourite tale of us Durbanites and cold concerns a lassie who was employed some years back as my technician. We had a visit one wintry day from a Cape Town bigwig who wanted information from a database, and only the lassie knew how to extract it. So he watched her typing, and eventually couldn't stand it any more. All he said was "Suvarna, it's 20°C (68F) in here. You do not need to wear woolly gloves while typing!"

The coldest I have experienced in natural surroundings is -15°C. Through my work I have been in warehouses where the temperature is -30°C. What I remember most about those occasions is the feeling of the hairs in my nostrils freezing. It is quite a refreshing experience as long as one does not have to spend too long in such an environment.

Bearing #92 in mind, it's hard to believe that 280-million years ago Africa was where Antarctica is now. (Incidentally, Peter, I take it you mean -15 not +15 in #93). But here is a glaciated pavement at Nooitgedacht west of Kimberley, where the rock was scraped flat by ice that long ago. There's another nearby at Driekopseiland, where San artists thousands of years ago used the flat rock for petroglyphs. That one was almost impossible to find in February 1983 when this picture was taken, but now it's close to the boundary of Mokala National Park.

That one was almost impossible to find in February 1983 when this picture was taken, but now it's close to the boundary of Mokala National Park.

How did they move it?

They didn't. They moved the reserve because of a land claim, then improved the local farm roads and associated signage.

ETA: ;-P

50s and 60s style by Polly Powell and Lucy Peel. Nice pictures, minimal text. A pleasant dose of nostalgia, but would be better if the items mentioned in the text also featured in the pictures; too often, they don't. Might also have been better at twice the length.

>92 hfglen:, >93 pgmcc: - it got up to -26°C here this afternoon when I went skiing. I usually wear a turtleneck, a sweater, and a windproof shell, and light snowpants over jeans or light pants. I wore a heavier sweater than usual and lined pants, and overheated a bit. Moving keeps you warm, as long as you're covered.

I have a much harder time dealing with heat, especially if I have to do anything.

Mind you , I wouldn't mind some summer weather for a week or two right now!

I visited my mother in Oxford House, Northern Manitoba, once, where it was likely -30. The days were brilliantly sunny and I didn't realize how cold it was, but people there made sure I was covered up. We walked up to the movie theatre (a small log cabin with a projector and a wood stove) one night, and during that walk my eyes seemed to stop working. Turns out my toque (down to my eyebrows) and my scarf (up to my bottom eyelashes) were connected with a screen of icicles over my eyes from my breath rising up!

A few years back I booked a Valentine's weekend for my husband and me in a newly renovated grand hotel in northern NH. The primary reason was for the dogsled rides. Turns out it was so cold (-34F) that the dogs weren't allowed outside. The gear oil in our Subaru froze as did the LCD in the radio. There was an Audi club event going on at the same time and we helped quite a few jump start their frozen cars before they took them out onto the lake for winter driving school. That was the coldest weather I've ever been in.

Place: a collection of South African ... compiled by Bridget Hilton-Barber and Pat Hopkins. Meh. Too many quotes filed under the wrong provinces, lots of hot air hiding some good ones. Not recommended, but it was the nearest source of the Herman Charles Bosman i posed on @MrsLee's thread.

Sultans in Splendour by Philip Mansel. If the last one was low-grade ore, this one is refined gold. All you ever wanted to know about the Middle East c. 1869--1945, from the point of view of the Ottoman, Persian and Afghan royal houses, illustrated with pictures from the royal family albums, generally taken by themselves. Fascinating, and eminently recommendable to history buffs.

This week I'm giving no identification for the picture. At least one Dragoneer (besides myself) should know exactly what's going on here and where the picture was taken, so I'll leave it for others to comment.

>103 hfglen:

It is a Karst landscape, i.e. a limestone pavement comprised of clints and grikes. I would suggest it is the Burren in County Clare and the picture shows the Aran Islands on the horizon. The photograph would be taken while looking west.

>104 pgmcc: The only bit I can add is "... taken in April 1982". Well spotted.

>105 hfglen: One could mention that it is the Atlantic Ocean one is looking at. :-)

First clue was the limestone pavement. Next was your comment that someone on this thread should know. Then it was 2+2=15.

>105 hfglen: My first visit to the Burren was Easter 1982. We visited the Aillwee Caves on Easter Monday, 12th April, 1982.

>107 pgmcc: Gonnakie! We must have just about fallen over each other! We celebrated Easter at Kilfenora (C of I) cathedral, and stayed the weekend at Ballyvaughan.

>104 pgmcc: It is a Karst landscape, i.e. a limestone pavement comprised of clints and grikes.

Dumbed down English, please?

>109 Morphidae: Peter will no doubt correct my errors (thank you in advance), but my simplistic understanding is roughly thus:

"Karst" is named after a place in former-Yugoslavia, where this formation was first described scientifically. It consists of thick horizontal limestone (Pete, help! Is it layered?) originally laid down in a sea and now on the surface of a landmass. We don't have any in southern Africa, but the Burren is one of the world's best-known examples. Clints and grykes are the areas that look like paving slabs and the cracks (which can be deep) between, giving this highly distinctive landscape. Now in the picture, you'll notice a striking absence of vegetation, although we all know that in Ireland, especially on the west coast, it rains for 15 minutes every quarter of an hour. But this limestone is very porous, and so the rainwater drains away as fast as it falls. Almost the only vegetation is what can grow in the cracks -- anything sticking its head up over the top gets blown away. And so the attraction to botanists is a list as long as your arm of rare plants that grow nowhere else in all the world, but only in these cracks. Other parts of the Burren do have thin soil that supports rough grass, which in turn supports sheep that give (after processing) Aran sweaters and the world's second-best lamb (after our own Karoo lamb, naturally).

Does that help?

>106 pgmcc:

With your math ability, I'm sure you would like the The Martian

>110 hfglen:
The range on landscapes on this big ball is just amazing.

>110 hfglen: It does help, thanks.

"it rains for 15 minutes every quarter of an hour"
Ha!

>110 hfglen: & >112 Morphidae:

As ever, Hugh is too humble. His explanation is perfect.

Hugh, in response to your query, It consists of thick horizontal limestone (Pete, help! Is it layered?) , yes. As you stated, limestone is deposited at the bottom of a sea. It is the result of the calciferous remains of tiny organisms falling to the sea bed and forming sediment. Over the millions of years of compression the sediment becomes rock and the bedding plains, i.e. the horizontal layers one finds in sedimentary rock, are formed. One thing about rocks is that they can form what are known as joints which tend to be perpendicular to the bedding plains. In limestone these joints form in two directions, horizontal to one another. In other rock types the joints will be formed at different angles. The hexagonal shape of the basalt at the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland is caused by the joints formed in the slowly cooling basalt.

Joints can be thought of as plains of weakness and they will be the plains along which rock will tend to break. In the case of limestone, the joints are plains of weakness that rainwater will start to flow into. The rain water, especially if it is slightly acidic, will start to dissolve the limestone along the joints eventually leading to the formation of grikes which are small chasms in the rock. Over the years the rain will widen the grikes. Given that limestone has two sets of joints at right angles to one another the grikes form a grid of squares and the square pieces of limestone between the grikes, called clints, look like paving stones, hence the term, limestone pavement.

Hugh is quite right about the assortment of plants in the grikes. While the grikes provide shelter from the wind for the plants, the clints act like storage heaters. The stone heats up in the sun during the summer and provides heat that keeps the grike microclimate suitable for plants that should be growing many hundreds of miles further south.

It is in limestone regions that the water flows on through the rock to form underground passageways that can be full of raging torrents of water during periods of heavy rainfall. The water will form caves and tunnels and it is these that potholers lover to explore. It is in such caves one finds stalactites and stalagmites. The Aillwee Caves is a network of such passageways that has been explored and opened to the public as a tourist attraction. Stalactites are formed by water rich in dissolved calcite falling from a cave ceiling. As the drop hangs waiting to fall some of the calcite comes out of solution and forms a residue on the ceiling. Over years this process leads to large stalactites forming. The stalagmites are formed by the drops falling on the floor and depositing some of their calcite forming a mound on the floor that grows to reach the ceiling. Eventually, if undisturbed, the stalactite growing from the ceiling will meet the stalagmite growing from the floor and a pillar will be formed. There is a simple phrase that helps people remember which grows from the ceiling and which from the floor. It is, "mites go up as tites come down".

One counter-intuitive feature of the Burren in County Clare is that during the winter livestock is moved uphill for grazing rather than downhill. This is due to the storage heater effect of the limestone that keeps the climate milder and keeps the grass growing further up the hill.

>108 hfglen: We stayed in Galway and celebrated Easter in Galway's RC cathedral.

As you say, we must have all but bumped into one another.

Some years later, when we were married and had two children, we spend a St. Patrick's Weekend with friends in Ballyvaughan.

The Burren is a beautiful part of the world, it is quite ancient and it can look so alien.

>111 suitable1: , so you too have joined the conspiracy.

>110 hfglen: >113 pgmcc: I love it when you guys talk like that!

>113 pgmcc: "mites go up as tites come down" The long form I learned went that "Stalactites hang on tight to the ceiling, and stalagmites might grow up to meet them; if they do they stick mighty tight".

Many thanks for the kind comments.

>116 SylviaC: Come join our table!

The Skies of Pern by Anne McCaffrey. I thought I'd read all the Pern books while I was still in Pretoria, which implies that I couldn't have read this one. Enjoyed at least as much as the others, which I think are due for a re-read. Two delicious quotes from this book:
"I do admit that today I learned something from a Green Dragon" (caps mine) and
"PUT MY DRAGON DOWN!" (caps original).

I would love to know what happened next, especially to the struggle with the Abominators, but as far as I can divine from the details on LT, this is the last one she wrote.

>119 hfglen: I'm not a huge Pern fan, but those quotes are priceless!

>119 hfglen: I read that one when it came out, but don't remember it very well. I would like to revisit the whole series soon, but doubt that I'll find the time.

>113 pgmcc:, >117 hfglen: - I learned that stalactites have a c for ceiling, and stalagmites have a g for ground.

I loved the original Pern books, but have found the later ones a bit spotty in quality, especially those co-written or written by her son Todd.

I learned that stalagmites form the letter M coming up from the floor, and a stalactite forms the letter T with the ceiling.

>122 NorthernStar: That's what I learned too.

The Burren will have to be added to the itinerary for any future visit I make to Ireland.

>124 Sakerfalcon: Wouldn't it be wonderful to have Peter as a guide for the geology? (Locals for the botany, birds and archaeology.) Which is not to disparage Peter in any way.

>125 hfglen: The botany and birds would not be my area of expertise so I would be hanging onto the words of others for those subjects.

>126 pgmcc: As I recall, the hotel pointed Family Glen towards an old dear who lived, I think, in Lisdoonvarna and looked remarkably like my undergraduate taxonomy lecturer. Like the latter good lady, she knew every plant in her area personally. But if the Old Dear of Lisdoonvarna is still around, she'd be about 110 years old by now!

>125 hfglen:, 126 I can see it now ... Green Dragon Tours, with local members as guides. Perfect!

>128 Sakerfalcon: Then maybe you could quote the bronze dragon in #119 and say on your return "I learned something from a Green Dragon" -- might make quite a good slogan for the tour company, come to think of it.

I mentioned in a recent thread that the family grew yesterday by two SPCA-graduate kittens. Here they are.



The ginger one on the left is called Leo, and the black one is Mr Inky Mistoffeles (remembering that "A cat must have Three Separate Names", and the third one "no human research can discover / but the Cat Himself Knows, and will never confess". They're watching what we call Kitty-TV, with rapt, if not gift-wrapped, attention.

>130 hfglen: Adorable! I do so love kittens :)

>130 hfglen: Very nice. I hope the fish do not get them.

That's quite a tank. Fresh or saltwater?

But what about Leo? Where is his other name? If you give him the name Arnold, he will be named after my grandfather. Though to be complete it would have to be Leo Fernando Arnold. Grandpa never spelled out Fernando. His mother got it out of some book or other and he hated it. I thought it sounded romantic.

Your furbabies are lovely, may they heal your heart's loss.

Very nice kittens - so much fun to have them!

I have yet to read Anne McCaffrey. One of these days.

The kitties are adorable! I would love to have another one to keep my youngest cat occupied. He keeps trying to play with the old ones and they are quite grumpy about it. But five is enough, so my husband says. :)

>133 suitable1: Fresh. Marine is a major load of daily maintenance. (Seeing you mention it, a Feb Fab is that at the beginning of the month DD was offered a part time job testing water and maintaining the marine tanks at a nearby pet shop.)

Thank you, all, for the appreciation.

>134 MrsLee: We hadn't discussed the second name; Leo, of course, knows the third. We may well go for Arnold-Fouché, combining @MrsLee's grandfather and a family friend from way back when (actually, my parents' generation; Leo Fouché died the year before I was born! He was a fine historian / archaeologist, edited The Diary of Adam Tas for publication, participated in the first excavation of Mapungubwe and worked out the route of Louis Trichardt's disastrous trek from the Soutpansberg to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo); he wrote that up with one Claude Fuller, in a rare book called Louis Trigardt's Trek across the Drakensberg, 1837--1838.

Certainly, the name Arnold-Fouché would fit the need, as belonging to Only One Cat!

>130 hfglen: What lovely kittens! I hope they give you many years of entertainment.

Well, my Leo has no claim to fame such as yours, but he was a faithful and devoted husband and father, a worker of the land/cowboy/pioneer/philosopher/humorist, and he lived to be either 99 or 100, the records of his year of birth are contradictory. :) "The naming of cats is a difficult matter, it isn't just one of your holiday games..." Happy naming, I know you will come up with just the right one for Leo.

ETA: For that matter, something I never expected, but cars can be difficult to name as well. All the signs and indications on my car said it should be named K9, and yet, she insisted she be named Esperanza.

Legends of Steam by Colin Garratt. Coffee-table book, with loads of colour pictures and some historic b/w's. Text a bit sparse, as one may expect from the genre. Probably fascinating if you're already a steam-locomotive fanatic; somewhat indigestible otherwise. The good thing about library books is that one can return them without it costing an arm or a leg.

Antonia and her Daughters by Marlena de Blasi. Methinks the lady is losing her touch, or I'm becoming cynical. Her previous books detailed her own experiences as an American living in Italy; in this one she writes the story of an Italian neighbour on a farm in Tuscany. I read most of it, but skimmed the last 70 pages or so. There are, as usual, recipes; and just as in her Thousand days in Venice I'm not inclined to try any of them. Possibly the best bit is that I can take it back to the library tomorrow.

50 flippen brilliant South Africans by Alexander Parker and Tim Richman, with cartoons by Zapiro (author touchstone points to wrong person).

Short pen-portraits of some of the amazing people who have called this mad and sunny land home, or grew up here and went abroad to achieve fame and fortune (like Charlize Theron and Elon Musk), or came to this country to start their rise to fame (like Winston Churchill and Mohandas K. Gandhi). And a few who had elements of greatness but also made a spectacular mess of the place, like Shaka and Thabo Mbeki. A thoroughly entertaining read, though the authors occasionally (too often for export) lapse into Seffican rather than proper English, and there are some places where a wide-awake editor would have improved matters. Nevertheless, I can easily see fellow Dragoneers liking this one, while being informed about some truly remarkable people. I, meanwhile, will be keeping an eye open for the companions volume, 50 people who stuffed up South Africa.

Many thanks for all the good wishes to Inky on the weekend thread. He's speaking to me again, mostly to say FEED ME NAAAOOOW (he has an amazingly raucous voice for a little kitten, and believes that only the second part of "little and often" should be obeyed).

This week's picture is the tufa waterfall on the Kadishi River at Blyde Canyon. (Google Earth probably won't show it, but the viewpoint is on Abel Erasmus Pass, on the boundary between Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces.) This is one of the few waterfalls in the world where rock is being deposited rather than worn away -- which is why it sticks out from the surrounding cliff face. Somebody did once try to explain how this one worked, and I may even have remembered the gist for as long as half an hour, but that was many years ago, and I now rely on @pgmcc for help here. The picture was taken in July 1972.

Is it being fed from a spring?

The spring is way up in the V in the mountains on the horizon.

Nice picture! I hope @pgmcc or someone else is able to enlighten us on the rock-building quality of the waterfall.

To the Nines by Janet Evanovich. The good news is that you can pick up any Stephanie Plum story and know that what's inside is what it says on the tin. Lots of wildly improbable action, a goodly quantity of slapstick humour, some quite probable description -- when she describes Trenton NJ I see Germiston, Gauteng (dirty blue-collar town) with Durban's climate, at least in summer. Pleasant fluff; enjoyable if accepted as such, but would be deeply disappointing if you were looking for anything intellectual.

Still Life by Louise Penny. The first Armand Gamache story, and a very competent debut. Makes me want to visit Three Pines, or almost anywhere else in rural southern Quebec -- even though I have not a word of French. I'll be keeping an eye open for more of Chief Inspector Gamache.

Life at Natal a hundred years ago by "A Lady". First published in the Cape Monthly Magazine (which is rare as hens' teeth) and supposedly letters written by a military officer's wife in 1864--65. A wider and longer look would have been fun, but the latter at least is improbable, as the series ran in 1865 first time round. Fun for lovers of "live" social history. The Lady was said in a 1911 article to be one Louisa Grace Ross, but the introduction suggests that the author was actually Sir John Robinson. Of Mrs Ross I can tell you nothing, but this Sir John entered the Natal legislature in 1863, becoming Prime Minister in 1893. If he wrote the articles, it would explain the close observation of the colonial bigwigs. I can think of a few Dragoneers who may enjoy the book if they can find a copy.

Which brings me to Dear Louisa, which was recommended to me in glowing terms by a RL acquaintance. Oh dear. It's thirty-odd years' worth of letters from a Byrne Settler's wife, covering the period from her arrival in what is now KZN in 1850, destitute because the ship was wrecked on arrival off Durban, to her death in the early 1880s. Suffice to say that when I worked out that it took me six days to struggle through the first 30 pages, I decided that this was not only a DNF but a non-starter.

>144 hfglen: & >147 SylviaC:

Thank you for the "no pressure" approach.

The water emerging from the spring will be saturated with calcite having passed through calciferous rocks. On emerging from the spring there will be a reduction in pressure and CO2 (carbon dioxide) will be released reducing the waters ability to hold calcite in solution and the calcite will precipitate from solution thereby forming the tufa.

>151 pgmcc: Ah. Memory begins to surface. There's a tourist trap called Echo Caves a few km up the road; AFAIK it's in dolomite and +- upstream of the waterfall. And somebody did say something about calcium carbonate. Now I can fit those three things to make some kind of sense.

>151 pgmcc: I knew you would come through! Thank you.

So, yous guys (;), the Bruce Peninsula is dolomite, I believe (is limestone the same or similar?), and other things and there are many fossils. In a park near here, there is a huge boulder that has fallen off the bluff. This thing is full of little fossils and the rain has been falling on it for who knows how long, and the rock has dissolved in such a way that the water has gone through various parts of it and is leaking out the sides carrying with it grey dust and the fossils which pile up along the bottom. I like to imagine the rock is giving birth to a new one.

I love rocks, especially the rocks of the Niagara Escarpment which are so full of creatures that I feel that they are talking to me, so much history! I even followed the construction machines along the edge of our road (when we lived in the country here) as the boulders there were crushed so that I could take chunks home and show them to people and say "Nobody has ever, ever, seen this before EVER and it's OLD."

Yes, people think I'm crazy.

Dolomite is a calcium magnesium carbonate. The term is also used to describe the rock containing dolomite. The Dolomites is a mountain range in North Italy that is predominantly dolomite. Limestone contains calcite, i.e. no magnesium. Dolomite is a carbonate with magnesium. Magnesium rich fluid passing through limestone could convert it to dolomite.

A test for limestone is pouring hydrochloric acid on it (5% solution is sufficient) and observing the effervescent reaction as bubbles result from the acid reacting with the calcite. Dolomite has a much weaker reaction to this acid test.

And dolomite often has trace amounts of iron in addition to the magnesium, which gives dolomite rock a lovely warm buff colour when it weathers, unlike limestone which weathers gray.

There is a place near here where springs have built up tufa terraces with a cave underneath. A waterfall comes down over the mouth of the cave.

I wish I had been on LibraryThing in the 1970s. This would have been great as a help for my revision before exams.

...and for those of you wishing to know a bit more about limestone and dolomite, click here

So there must be dolomite and limestone. The rock quarried from here (trucked out in huge quantities) is sent all over the world for decorative purposes. My big boulder must be limestone, it's grey.

>159 nhlsecord: probably, but pgmcc is correct, the best way to tell is with hydrochloric acid. Geologists often have holes in their pockets from carrying around a small squirt bottle of 5% HCl. It's not dangerous, but will eventually rot your clothes, especially natural fibers.

The Berlin Airlift by Robert Jackson. Turns out the author is a retired pilot, and this could be none other than a pilot's-eye view. Very strong on technical detail that requires flying experience to appreciate. Details of what the airlift meant to Berliners are scanty.

Busy with Cooked by Michael Pollan. A slow and fascinating read, especially for the foodies that abound in the GD.

Sorry all. Last weekend's picture is a tad late.

It shows the nature reserve just round the corner from where I live (I'm just over the horizon behind the pale green tree on the left.) What's special for our resident geologist is that the cliffs are part of the tear that happened when Gondwanaland split up about 120--140 million (?) years ago, and Africa separated from Antarctica. So yes the green rolling bit on top does continue, but rather a long way away, and it isn't green there.

Finished Cooked, which is excellent to the last crumb. Deciding what to tackle next.

Thought for the day: with all the daily updates, is the software we use really any improvement on what we used 20 years ago? I ask, having just had one of those "plaited-fingers" moments where letters get inadvertently transposed. Back in the day one used a shareware wordprocessor called PC-write, which if the truth be known was a bit of a kludge, but it had one incredibly useful feature I've never seen anywhere else. The combination shift+esc transposed the two letters immediately to the right of the cursor. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had that feature when typing posts here?

Dumb question for northern-hemispherians: When do the clocks go forwards in those of your various countries that have daylight saving / summer time?

>166 hfglen:

USA - Second Sunday of March to first Sunday of November.

>166 hfglen:

Norway - Last Sunday in March to last Sunday in October.

>166 hfglen: UK - this year Sunday 29th March to Sunday 25th October

>163 hfglen: That is quite a view to have just around the corner!

I haven't read anything by Michael Pollan yet, but Cooked will probably be the first one I do.

Daylight savings time is the same in Canada as in the US, except in the province of Saskatchewan, where they don't use it.

>167 suitable1: - >170 SylviaC: Thank you all. So LT time is already an hour closer to "Central African" time, and in just over two weeks BBC time will be only one hour behind us.

>170 SylviaC: Saskatchewan vs the rest of Canada sounds a bit like the inverse of here. South Africa doesn't have Summer Time, mainly because the standard meridian is so far in the east that Cape Town (for example) has 48 minutes of daylight saving every day, summer and winter. But Namibia sets their clocks back for six months in winter.

Sylvia, the view situation is even better: our front verandah overlooks one of the minor streams flowing into the gorge. I posted that one because I thought @pgmcc would be interested in the geology.

>171 hfglen:...and @pgmcc is interested in the geology. Thank you for posting.

Peter, here's one I suspect you may have problems in equalling: a geological sight that no longer exists, for natural reasons.



We're about 140 km north of Keetmanshoop, Namibia, about 15 km east of a railway siding called Asab, next to the main road to Windhoek. No, there aren't any places on the map closer than that -- southern Namibia is kinda spread-out. The rock structure is shown on old maps as Mukorob / Vingerklip / Finger of God, and was quite an important part of staying awake on that soul-destroying road. However it fell over in a storm about 20 years ago. If you look for Vingerklip on a modern map you'll be directed to a rather less spectacular pillar west of Outjo (a long way north of Windhoek) on the way to Khorixas. I took the picture a day or 2 before New Year 1970 -- hence the lousy colour.

And yes those are fishing rods attached to the car. My father was a keen angler, and the attraction was a place called Mile 72 (the name says it all) north of Swakopmund, on the coast. Maybe one day I'll explain Swakopmund if anybody's curious.

>173 hfglen: that looks super. It is a pity it fell over.

That is pretty cool though. We had one here in NH that fell down as well, it was called the Old Man of the Mountain and 4 months before it fell we actually stopped to look at it because I said there was no telling how long it would last. The march of time, even geological, is relentless.

>175 Bookmarque: Amazing! As I recall, elderly guides that mention Mukurob also say it can't last forever. Still, one can be glad it fell over at night when nobody was around.

>173 hfglen: I'm the sort that would be hesitant to stop near it to take a photo! Naming it "The Finger of God" make my brain explode with questions. Which finger? Is it the forefinger, hence pointing the way, or accusing? Is it the pinky finger, showing the delicacy of relations? Or perhaps the middle finger? Showing, well, you know. ;)

Well now Lee, it couldn't be the middle finger, or the scree would be all around, wouldn't it? (Though come to think of it, if it's not a contravention of the sign in the doorway, the middle finger would be a good response to the government of the day when this was taken ;) )
Maybe a forefinger?

Oops, I didn't mean to say it looked like that pinnacle beauty, Hugh. What I meant was we had a geological formation that fell to bits.

Bookmarque, and didn't Old Man fall shortly after your state quarter came out? It was one place I wanted to visit and see.

It collapsed in 2003. Can't remember when the quarter came out. It's a bit of a bummer because, frankly, we got nothing else. Not iconic like that was. Here's the old superimposed on the way the cliff face looks now -

>179 Bookmarque: I didn't take it that way, @Bookmarque. And it gave us a second chance this week to enjoy your splendid photography (which IMHO shows a structure every bit as impressive as Mukurob.)

By the way, if we have any stamp collectors in the GD, you may be interested to know that the 1961 (first decimal definitive) SWA 1c stamp shows Mukurob from the other side to my picture.

ok, cool. Just clarifying. The shot isn't mine though. :(

Just finished Wicked Appetite by Janet Evanovich. I had some difficulty distinguishing between Lizzie Tucker (heroine of this one) and Stephanie Plum, so it came as no surprise to discover that Diesel and Wulf feature in some of the unnumbered Plum stories -- no great leap for them, and only half-a-day's drive for anybody else between settings. An enjoyable piece of fluff between "real" books.

And Nature's Clocks by Doug MacDougall. All you ever wanted to know about establishing dates using radioactive isotopes. Amazing how precise they can get when all things work in the researcher's favour. At the short end of the scale, he notes that carbon-14 dating fixed an earthquake in @maggie1944's neck of the woods to 1690-1715, and a Japanese account of the resulting tsunami meant that researchers could fix the earthquake to within an hour or 2, one night in January 1700. At the other end of the scale, he shows how it was possible to date a pebble formed at the beginning of the solar system to within less than a million years -- a long time for the tapping of the feet, but still five significant figures, which is impressive.

>185 hfglen: My brother-in-law's hobby is repairing clocks. He has been building a grandfather clock which is now looking very well. I will not let him know about Nature's Clocks. My sister would never forgive me if he started building atomic clocks. She would put him and his clock making equipment out into the garage.

>173 hfglen: You have to give us some background on what shaped that rock that particular way. Is it just due to the erosion caused by powerful winds in a particularly flat part of Namibia? You did say that the route was "soul-destroying". Inquiring minds want to know...

Jill, as far as I recall (*bows in the direction of the GD's resident expert*) it was shaped over many millennia by windblown sand. The countryside is not quite flat, but singularly lacking in water (but not quite as dry as the Namib itself), vegetation or anything else that makes up scenery. Farms are necessarily enormous and villages are almost non-existent. On the good side, this is Namibia's busiest road, and still there isn't much traffic.

>186 pgmcc: Glad to hear of the grandfather clock. The clocks in the book are read by means of a mass spectrometer (which one could probably make by hand) in a very, very clean garage.

ETA: ;-P

>189 hfglen: Was that an ambidextrous face, Hugh?

>190 nhlsecord: If you want it to be.

Sorry Peter, I don't appear to have a picture of the Kimberley Big Hole. So here, instead, is the Premier Mine and village of Cullinan, from a plane returning from Harare in 2001. Premier Mine is where the Star of Africa, which features in several places in the British Crown Jewels, came from. The sad story is told of one De Beer, who had moved as a lad into the back of beyond to get away from people in general and the hated British in particular. And they found diamonds on his farm and paid him a fortune for it; and that became De Beers. So he stomped off into the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek to get away from those @#$% unspeakable Brits. And had hardly been there as long as ten years when some a$$hole snooped around on his farm and offered him an even larger fortune for it, because there was gold there. So he took the money and stormed off east of Pretoria, having made as sure as he could that there were no minerals under this bit of bush. He even went so far as to take pot shots at anybody found on his farm, especially if they didn't speak Dutch. You guessed it. He'd settled on the farm that became Cullinan. And made a third fortune.

>191 hfglen: Some people have the worst luck.

Pioneers' Scrapbook, edited by Elspeth Huxley. Reminiscences of Kenya mostly before WW2. Very interesting, and would make a good "bathroom book", as most of the pieces are very short. Just a pity the authors of the reminiscences didn't always read through what they wrote before sending it off. On the other hand, if they had we'd be spared this memorable image: "I was four years old and was carried out to our farm ... on an African's back, and have been there ever since." A few intentionally humorous stories are good, but too long to quote here. Overall, the stories are horribly believable, as I recall long-drop loos, bad to imaginary roads and inconvenient wildlife from my own y00t -- which wasn't spent anywhere near Kenya.

Holidays in Hell by P.J. O'Rourke is, I gather, a classic. And deservedly so. He seems to have a genius for getting into places normal people would go far to stay away from, and a hilarious turn of phrase when exposing the absurdity of what makes these places so awful. His predictions of the "next 25 years" (to 2013) are about as wide of the mark as can be without starting to approach from the other side. This probably should make one wonder how accurate his observation was in the first place (not very, if his tally of alcohol consumed is to be believed).

Mothballs and Elbow Grease, which apparently arose by spontaneous generation; to be found in National Trust shops in UK (but not Scotland) -- heaven alone knows how this copy found its way to Hillcrest Library, Durban. Origins of some domestic words and phrases; a good loo-book if you come across a copy (there is a note on the origin of the word "loo").

Currently reading: The Cat who smelled a Rat.

This week's photo is, unlike previous ones, purely scenic. It's the Onseepkans aloe "forest" (or utter desolation)*, seen some 30 years ago. The hills in the distance are in Namibia, and the Orange River runs in the depression in front of them.



* I can't help being reminded of Victor Borge's splendid description of a stage set for a Mozart opera: "It's kind of a small forest, but it's a forest".

I love Victor Borge's sketches. His phonetic punctuation is a particular favourite.

>196 hfglen: That looks very science fictiony. It would make a good book cover.

Hugh, where is the aloe? Are those trees aloe? None of this looks anything like the aloe plants I'm familiar with!

>196 hfglen: Forest does seem a tad overstated...

>197 pgmcc: Brilliant clip - had a good giggle watching that one.

I'm with MrsLee, where's the aloe?

>199 MrsLee: >201 catzteach: The trees are Aloe dichotoma, the Qiuver-tree Aloe. Before you ask, that's the kind of quiver you keep arrows in.

>200 Peace2: And the trees are half-dead!

LT is having problems with this thread, so I'm starting a new one