2014-01-01
New year resolutions 2014
1. Less carb
2. More yoga
3. Be creative about cooking
4. Be creative about feng shui and orderliness
5. Be creative about travel/commuting
6. Be creative about entertainment
7. Increase the art and music
8. Philosophise a lot,
9. Think about big history thresholds (see Big History Project)
2. More yoga
3. Be creative about cooking
4. Be creative about feng shui and orderliness
5. Be creative about travel/commuting
6. Be creative about entertainment
7. Increase the art and music
8. Philosophise a lot,
9. Think about big history thresholds (see Big History Project)
A list of discoveries from the last while
Discovery 1: The answer to a given question is undoubtedly somewhere in between all the extremes. This is self evident since extreme points of view or 'yes and no' answers summarise the knowledge of the universe that is present in the minds of humans. Therefore, if we are able to summarise available knowledge and perspectives and take it all into account (a difficult thing to do as an individual), we will end up with the most wholesome answer...the closest thing possible to a universal truth from a human perspective at least. This is also a way to avoid ignorance and to be inclusive.
Discovery 2: Be creative about all things. The big and the small are both extremely important since big and complex things (such as high-level research) emerge from the simplest of experiences. For example: orderliness around a home (such as washing the dishes or arranging the garden) has huge effects on our mode of life and way of being. Patience and enjoyment of 'menial' tasks means that we can never be bored and can never have the feeling of meaninglessness in our lives.
Discovery 3: The mind can make trillions of connections that are as expansive as the universe. Therefore, in this, there is endless possibility. Don't accept limitation.
Discovery 4: In every difficulty lies opportunity. (This is evident from number 3 since difficulty presents us with real problems and demands creative solutions).
Discovery 5: Sharing ideas just has to be a good thing! I can't accept the idea that keeping discoveries and ideas to ourselves (this is rife in the academic world) serves any great purpose.
Discovery 5: Sharing ideas just has to be a good thing! I can't accept the idea that keeping discoveries and ideas to ourselves (this is rife in the academic world) serves any great purpose.
2013-12-29
2013 Summary
The year started by congregating back in Tuart Hill and Suz and Brendan left back home after some extreme Barina driving and bird watching on the south coast. We then took up Fawna's idea and had an Ivanic art-show day which was quite well attended (mainly by geologists) on a lovely January day with a few sales. The first (and hopefully not last) time the house became a gallery. Then it was farewell to the folks at the end of Jan on the same day pretty much that we upgraded our little cars to one big one: Carl, our 4x4.
It was not long until our much anticipated Hawaii trip in March which was so extremely diverse and full of new things for us. Active lava, giant telescopes on top of the highest mountain in the Pacific (courtesy of Nick's hospitality). Rainforests, canyons, coral reef, turtles, dolphins, it really had it all. On our last couple of days on Kaua'i we were then married on the beach, just us with an officiant and a photographer present. At the moment of the Hawaiian chant there was an uprising in the ocean and the crashing waves seemed to salute us. A very special time.
A wet winter for WA...we did manage to get a Minnesota trip in though in June in time for Fawna's grandparents' burial ceremony and life celebration for a day or two at the cabin. The time at the cabin turned out to be a musical get-together with the advent of the drum-didgeridoo combo and Kim's Journey dance celebration. The trip also involved picking up Fawna's old boxes of stuff from Pittsburgh where we had a great salad and french fries speciality dish with Pam. [I managed to move the window so the air con unit went tumbling onto the roof but Pam handled this news very well]. We had a few good catchups with friends and cousins too, including a swing-by to a fresh and cobalt-skied Chicago on the way back to MN. We didn't stop in Ohio since there is nothing there, nor Wisconsin as it was only inhabited by cheeseheads. Thanks to Deb for housing us in St Paul where fine foods were had and sketchy banjo was played.
A long way home and straight back into the field again, this time wet and very different for me. Fabulous to see the bush getting rain with some great scenery, some of the best. Then we both went out a third time, myself to the amazing Golden Grove mine with fab minerals...strange having to work from the mine village again, very cushy with beer and darts most nights it turned out. Weather starting to heat up to about 37C here and there in October. Chris Yak stayed for a couple of weeks, which was a nice time that included some progressive music creation and a great day trip or two around Perth.
November another trip up north, this time pushing 40C, though a useful trip, sharing our info with lots of keen folks from academia and industry and I got to show them round some of my old stomping grounds. Also in November, we continued the Tuart Hill Thanksgiving tradition, which was a great day with another huge turkey. A final trip away in early Dec was for me to get my volcanology training in the world class course over east on the coast on the border between NSW and VIC. A truly inspiring trip with good guides and lots learned, not to mention fab scenery...a place to dwell at when we eventually get around to driving round this country!
It was not long until our much anticipated Hawaii trip in March which was so extremely diverse and full of new things for us. Active lava, giant telescopes on top of the highest mountain in the Pacific (courtesy of Nick's hospitality). Rainforests, canyons, coral reef, turtles, dolphins, it really had it all. On our last couple of days on Kaua'i we were then married on the beach, just us with an officiant and a photographer present. At the moment of the Hawaiian chant there was an uprising in the ocean and the crashing waves seemed to salute us. A very special time.
Hardly were we back and we were both into the field for the start of quite a long field season. May was in Yalgoo for me with the Chinese geologists once more. It was relatively routine but the area was new and interesting. Not so snaky as last year for Fawna but a flood did cause some surprise as a foot of water rushed through camp sweeping some of the party's shoes and lunchboxes away.
A wet winter for WA...we did manage to get a Minnesota trip in though in June in time for Fawna's grandparents' burial ceremony and life celebration for a day or two at the cabin. The time at the cabin turned out to be a musical get-together with the advent of the drum-didgeridoo combo and Kim's Journey dance celebration. The trip also involved picking up Fawna's old boxes of stuff from Pittsburgh where we had a great salad and french fries speciality dish with Pam. [I managed to move the window so the air con unit went tumbling onto the roof but Pam handled this news very well]. We had a few good catchups with friends and cousins too, including a swing-by to a fresh and cobalt-skied Chicago on the way back to MN. We didn't stop in Ohio since there is nothing there, nor Wisconsin as it was only inhabited by cheeseheads. Thanks to Deb for housing us in St Paul where fine foods were had and sketchy banjo was played.A long way home and straight back into the field again, this time wet and very different for me. Fabulous to see the bush getting rain with some great scenery, some of the best. Then we both went out a third time, myself to the amazing Golden Grove mine with fab minerals...strange having to work from the mine village again, very cushy with beer and darts most nights it turned out. Weather starting to heat up to about 37C here and there in October. Chris Yak stayed for a couple of weeks, which was a nice time that included some progressive music creation and a great day trip or two around Perth.November another trip up north, this time pushing 40C, though a useful trip, sharing our info with lots of keen folks from academia and industry and I got to show them round some of my old stomping grounds. Also in November, we continued the Tuart Hill Thanksgiving tradition, which was a great day with another huge turkey. A final trip away in early Dec was for me to get my volcanology training in the world class course over east on the coast on the border between NSW and VIC. A truly inspiring trip with good guides and lots learned, not to mention fab scenery...a place to dwell at when we eventually get around to driving round this country!
The final month was a big one for the house too. Fawna is now strummin' a little mandolin which suits her just fine. It has helped me get back into violin also: the exercise book actually helps out since the violin has the same string tunings! So now we're drumming and strumming and didging here and there when we are stationary. The house has also gained a decent air con unit allowing light from where the old one blocked the window. Finally an overdue new oven should be with us in early 2014, looking forward to getting into the home baking a lot more next year. Creme caramel and creme brulees have already been a success in this new episode!
2013-07-16
Reading: Mountains of the Mind - a thought dump
Having just finished the brilliant "Captain James Cook: A Biography" by Richard Hough, I am now most of the way through "Mountains of the Mind" by Robert MacFarlane. This combination has been immensely inspiring and enriching to me as a geologist, artist, antipodean dweller...in no particular order.
Cook sailed the seven seas on amazing voyages and saw things that no others had seen. Completion of the task of charting the coastlines of all the continents (except Antarctica but he was close and circumnavigated it for the first time). The first nourished global perspective if you like having gotten close to completing the map of the earth. As adaptable as our minds may be, it is this planetary situation that shapes us the most and its manifestations are nearly all that we interact with. This is something so funamental that we are obliged (perhaps) to have it reflected in it our own nature.
Then comes the Mountains of the Mind...a fantastic progression through the chapters is certainly to a geologist's liking. Cook managed the 2.5D conception and charting of the coastlines in the late 1700s. In the 1800s mountaineering and mapping gave us the third dimension as altitudes and contours were established in large swaths of the globe. During this century Hutton and Darwin gave us conception of great geological and evolutionary time, the until-then missing dimension.
The 1900s provided refinement of all these dimensions with advancement of the microscope, the telescope, radioactive dating, plate tectonics. The documantation of the full dimensionality of our landscapes is something like complete to a particular resolution with fine-scale details and active change being areas in need of constant attention. The Mountains of the Mind really takes the funtamentals of this 3-century-history and examines the way that this interaction between man and planet is ultimately the mirror for our own mind....the circumstance of our existence...the context for life...the interactions of the human condition with the physical. How can we communicate these conceptions about the land? Do we all have a non-verbalized (possibly subconscious) understanding of this that is deeply engrained?
The valleys and oceans of our thoughts can be tested, challenged, sculpted and crystallized against views into the magnificence of it all. Our knowledge of the earth is the fabulous backdrop to the further worlds of the imagination and provide all our metaphors for understanding. I am reminded of this connection very clearly in the words of many passages from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, talking of our feelings of being 'human...all too human' as we place ourselves in context on top of a mountain!
The Mountains of the Mind takes us on a journey through the history of mountaineering. From the evolution of thought from fear to awe to obligatory exploration. From the early conceptions of geological processes to great time. Ideas on ice(!). Human spirit, collaboration. Achieving undoubtedly great things. For me this was a great summary of how it is possibly to put the world together in ones mind independendly of education and socialization. I probably got a taste for this aged 9 on top of peaks of the lake district. It was the the longest day of the year and Dad took me up there to overnight on the cold craggy mountaintops where we huddled in rocky gully watching the sun rise through dramatic peaks at about 4am. Leaping forward to the present I'm still viewing things the same way.
Cook sailed the seven seas on amazing voyages and saw things that no others had seen. Completion of the task of charting the coastlines of all the continents (except Antarctica but he was close and circumnavigated it for the first time). The first nourished global perspective if you like having gotten close to completing the map of the earth. As adaptable as our minds may be, it is this planetary situation that shapes us the most and its manifestations are nearly all that we interact with. This is something so funamental that we are obliged (perhaps) to have it reflected in it our own nature.
Then comes the Mountains of the Mind...a fantastic progression through the chapters is certainly to a geologist's liking. Cook managed the 2.5D conception and charting of the coastlines in the late 1700s. In the 1800s mountaineering and mapping gave us the third dimension as altitudes and contours were established in large swaths of the globe. During this century Hutton and Darwin gave us conception of great geological and evolutionary time, the until-then missing dimension.
The 1900s provided refinement of all these dimensions with advancement of the microscope, the telescope, radioactive dating, plate tectonics. The documantation of the full dimensionality of our landscapes is something like complete to a particular resolution with fine-scale details and active change being areas in need of constant attention. The Mountains of the Mind really takes the funtamentals of this 3-century-history and examines the way that this interaction between man and planet is ultimately the mirror for our own mind....the circumstance of our existence...the context for life...the interactions of the human condition with the physical. How can we communicate these conceptions about the land? Do we all have a non-verbalized (possibly subconscious) understanding of this that is deeply engrained?
The valleys and oceans of our thoughts can be tested, challenged, sculpted and crystallized against views into the magnificence of it all. Our knowledge of the earth is the fabulous backdrop to the further worlds of the imagination and provide all our metaphors for understanding. I am reminded of this connection very clearly in the words of many passages from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, talking of our feelings of being 'human...all too human' as we place ourselves in context on top of a mountain!
The Mountains of the Mind takes us on a journey through the history of mountaineering. From the evolution of thought from fear to awe to obligatory exploration. From the early conceptions of geological processes to great time. Ideas on ice(!). Human spirit, collaboration. Achieving undoubtedly great things. For me this was a great summary of how it is possibly to put the world together in ones mind independendly of education and socialization. I probably got a taste for this aged 9 on top of peaks of the lake district. It was the the longest day of the year and Dad took me up there to overnight on the cold craggy mountaintops where we huddled in rocky gully watching the sun rise through dramatic peaks at about 4am. Leaping forward to the present I'm still viewing things the same way.
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