Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin was one of my childhood heroes.

I was obsessed with space travel when I was a kid. I built models of the space shuttle, I had posters of astronauts on my wall and I dreamed of one day going to Space Camp in America.

I borrowed books about Skylab and Mir, the Apollo missions, the various bits and bobs of space junk floating around up there... Not to mention Astronomy magazines. I think I borrowed every single one in my local library, and occasionally managed to convince my mother to buy a few for me.

I started to form a real interest in Astronomy until I hit my teens. Then I don't know what happened. I think my childhood love of all things science ran into the wall of my teenage hatred of all things involving maths. Actually, I think it had something to do with Star Trek. I started to find science fiction infinitely more interesting than science at about that time.

My interest in Space had a bit of comeback in the late Nineties when I simultaneously discovered NASA's satellite tracking website and the television series Space Island One (an uneven TV series featuring a crew of scientists working on an International Space station in the not-to-distant future) and found myself following the progress of the ISS with a lot of interest. But, by that stage in time, I had almost completely abandoned science for literature. Plus, I had worked out that I would never pass the physical to become an astronaut.

Most of what I learnt during my Space Age has subsequently fallen out of my head, which is a pity.

Yuri, though, will always rock. The man is a legend. He did the most dangerous thing in the history of the world, without knowing if there was the slightest chance he would survive. I mean, being strapped onto a giant explosive and sent outside the planet to a place where the only thing between him and certain death were a few feet of metal and electronics? With no guarantee that there would be no leaks? That takes some guts.

I always associated Russia with top-of-the-range technological development because of their Space programme. Sure, the American's made it to the Moon first (and second, and third), but everything else was Russia. Russia put the first satellite in space. Russia put the first animal in space. Russia put the first man in space. Russia put the first woman in space. The only space stations that managed to last a decent length of time were Russian (at least in part). They just seemed to do the Space Thing so much better than anyone else.

In fact, I used to harbour a secret dream to be a cosmonaut, rather than an astronaut.

It was really weird to hear about their submarines. The Russians appeared to do mechanical so much better than the US for a while, that it was really weird to find out that they didn't do electronic very well at all.

For some reason, I was never as inspired by Valentina Tereshkova. Probably because I could never remember her name. But, you'd think the first woman in space (who was also, technically, the first civilian in space) would be quite the inspirational figure for a young girl with a space fixation. She sort of was, in that I knew she existed and was the first. I just wouldn't recognise her name instantly like Yuri's.

Monopoly

If the world were a giant game of monopoly, then it would make perfect sense for someone to buy Russia out of the Baltic Sea.

Seriously. Whenever Russia starts looking at buying boats, all of the other countries on the Baltic Sea put a hand on their metaphorical sword-hilts while trying to look nonchalant. Wouldn't it just be easier if they all pitched it to buy that weird little piece of Russia that sits between Poland and Lithuania?

Sure, Russia would still have that stretch of land in the Gulf of Finland, so Estonia would still have to keep looking over her shoulder, but at least that's on the same side of the country as the land boarder. It makes for easier deployment of defences...

Not that anyone would think of deploying defences, of course. The very suggestion would be an insult to Russia. You just ask the Russian government. The same Russian government that thinks it's perfectly reasonable to bolster their own defences against...

What, exactly? Is anyone thinking of invading Russia? I know the French and the Germans gave it a good try before realising that invading Russia is a bad idea. That was quite a few years ago, though, and if history has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that invading Russia is a bad idea.

My knowledge of Russian history is admittedly limited, but from what I remember Russia's greatest threats have all been in-house. The only people even capable of taking on the Russians in Russia are other Russians.

The Chinese might be able to do it, but quite frankly I think they'd just focus on that part of Eastern Russia out to the Sea of Okhotsk. Even that might fall into the too-hard basket.

The fact of the matter is that only Russians are capable of making a decent fist of Russia. They're the only race on the planet with the fortitude for it - with the possible exception of the Inuit, but when was the last time the Inuit ever invaded anyone?

The Vikings could have done it, I suppose, but I think we're out of those now.

So, here we have a country which is is known for a) being really difficult to invade, and b) quite successfully invading other countries. And Russia feels she has a legitimate reason to keep a "defensive" presence in the Baltic Sea, which will be easy enough to justify for as long as there is a piece of Russia touching the Baltic Sea.

So, why don't the other countries with Baltic frontage buy them out? I'm sure it could be done - if not wholesale, then piece by piece. It's the 21st Century, after all, and everything has a price...

In the mail

So, I finally got around to filling in the "Intention to Graduate" form today. I even put it in the mail!

With any luck, it will actually get to it's intended destination, and I would have really finished my Masters.

Maybe then I'll feel smart.

Pants

I like to think of this as a parable which, if you contemplate it and tease out the deeper meaning, might sum up everything that is currently wrong with modern society:

I have two pairs of pants. They are actually two different sizes of the same style of pants. One is a size 14, the other a size 16. The 14 is so tight I can't comfortably keep things in my pockets; the 16 is so loose I need to hold it up with a belt. There is no 15 - such a thing does not even exist.

For my own personal amusement

Ja, wir haben keine Bananen.
Wir haben keine Bananen, heute.
Wir haben Bohnen und Zweibeln, Kohl und Frühlingszwiebeln,
Und alle Arten von Obst, und doch
Wir haben eine altmodisch Kartoffel
Ein nett, saftig Tomate,

Aber, ja, wir haben keine Bananen.
Wir haben keine Bananen, heute.

My Mother's Car

I'm currently using my mother's car while my uncle is borrowing mine. His ute is currently being serviced, and I have a station wagon so he borrows my car to take his dogs around.

We've done this on more than one occasion in the past. Usually I take the bike while he has my car, but this time the weather is not bike friendly and my mother is on vacation, so I have her car.

I do not like driving my mother's car. It's like a box with a few slits in it. I can't see anything that isn't directly in front of me. I look over my shoulders, and all I can see is the interior of the car. I glance behind me in the mirror, and (unless I have the angle just right) all I can see is the interior of the car. The little tiny windows that exist are almost entirely obscured by the headrests of the seats.

If I took the time to peer out of the small patches of glass available to me, I might be able to see something, but by that stage in time I probably would have run over something in front of me...

Also, the lines of the car are so bad that I can't tell what the dimensions are while sitting inside. I don't know where the front of the car starts, I have no sense for how wide the thing is and if someone is too close behind me I can't gauge how far I am from the front of their car.

I'm mildly convinced I'm going to hurt someone. Probably run over a cyclist, or something.

Who designs these cars? Why do they think it's a good idea to steadily reduce the visibility until the car is basically a giant blind spot? Why aren't people stopping them from doing that?

Saving Daylight

So, Daylight Saving is over for another year and the entire east coast of Australia is now in the same time zone. On the one hand, this makes things easier for those of us who live in the DS free zone to co-ordinated things with our southern neighbours. On the other hand, my 6pm lesson is now a 7pm lesson, so I'm sitting in my office until 8pm rather than 7pm.

So ist das Leben.

I've never understood the point of Daylight Saving. Getting up an hour earlier in order to stay up an hour later seems counter-intuitive to me. Growing up in the Tropics, there's only really about an hour's difference between sunset in Summer and sunset in Winter anyway. To gain the extra hour's worth of sunlight, most of us would be getting up in the dark - which is entirely unpleasant.

I was willing to accept, though, that in more temperate regions, where the sun rises earlier in the morning, that Daylight Savings might be a more practical concept. Then I moved to Tasmania. I came to realise you don't need sunlight after 9pm. I'm sorry, but you just don't.

Most people, by that time, have gone home and are watching the TV. You don't need extra sunlight for that. The argument is, of course, to have more daylight to play with after you get home from work... but you have that anyway because it's Summer. You already have a few more hours of daylight to play with than you do in Winter.

You leave work, play in the sunlight that is already there (because it's Summer), then go home to eat with your family... and mostly just stay there after that. Most of my neighbours weren't out in the backyard playing after-dinner cricket or footy in their saved daylight. If I was coming home late from a walk (at, say 6.45 or 7ish - the latest I'd be out), I'd be passing other people on their way home - I very rarely passed someone who was heading out to enjoy a stroll by the river in the after 8pm sunshine.

Heck, I lived alone and had nothing better to do than go outside and play in the saved up daylight, and I rarely ever did. Mostly because it just freaked me out. When I leave a building at night time I expect it to be dark. I would watch TV, even though it bored me, or read a book rather than go outside and enjoy the saved-up daylight. I was not alone. My street wasn't full of the sounds of children playing and adults enjoying the open air.

Maybe Daylight Saving worked 70 years ago when most homes didn't have a TV and people actually spent their evenings talking to their neighbours. Right now, though, I don't see the point.

Feel free to enlighten me.