Circumnavigating Australia and New Zealand

Christina and I are at Rosebud, Victoria at the bottom of Australia. We're spending a week at the Nepean Country Club but on Friday will be returning to the Bellerine Country Club to spend a few days with friends Michael and Gayle before heading off to Sydney and a cruise around Australia and New Zealand.

The Bellerine Country Club is an up-market over 55s/retirement village adjoined a golf course. There are numerous occupied houses and additional houses are being added weekly.

How did we happen to be here? Well, originally we were travelling to Nuriootpa in South Australia to check out The Vines Retirement Village but daughter Meredith had to attend a medical appointment at Adelaide and grandson Tory was on school holidays and it all just happened.

Meredith and Tory accompanied us to Adelaide and Meredith wanted to visit friends in Melbourne, so we finished up extending our trip. Meredith and Tory flew back to Alice Springs leaving Christina and I to carry on with the rest of our holiday.

A day before driving out from The Alice, we received a very good offer to join the cruise going round Australia and New Zealand and as our friends Michael and Gayle were on the cruise, decided to sign up.

We are looking forward to the cruise, which will be our third with Princess Cruises.

I'll keep you posted about the cruise as internet availability and motivation allow.

Robin

The Problem with Evolution

The main problem with evolution is that people don't understand it. At most, many people know what evolution means ie, the dictionary definition, but they don't study it sufficiently to grasp how it works.

This leads to people making silly claims like, "if we evolved from apes, how come apes are still here?" Anyone who has studied evolutionary biology knows that at one point in evolutionary history, humankind branched from apes becoming a separate species.

My grandson, who is 13, and I have been having some interesting discussions about ethics, religion, evolution and other topics. He's doing ethics and religion at school, but not evolution because it goes against the school's religious teachings. I'm filling in the gaps.

In so doing, I'm taking as much care as I can to not impose my views upon him, but to give him sufficient knowledge to critically analyse what he hears at school, elsewhere and from me and to decide what he believes.

During our discussions about evolution I showed him Richard Dawkins excellent title, "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution." It's a bit advanced for him to read yet, but it has some excellent diagrams about design failures in animals and humans.

For example, both the vas deferens of human males and the vaso vagal nerve of giraffes has been stretched awkwardly in a manner that would not have been done by an intelligent designer. The former was stretched when testes, which were once internal organs, descended from the body. The giraffe's nerve stretched as the length of giraffe's necks increased.

One was done to ensure fertility and the other to ensure food in tall trees could be accessed. Both survival strategies.

Next, we spoke about the large number of human births that don't go as well as they should. With a grandmother who is a midwife, information about the imperfection of the birthing process is easy to get. Maybe if the birthing process had been designed by someone smart enough, it would work much better than it does. He understood my logic.

Finally, I tried to explain to him the concept of irreducible complexity but, I'm not sure he grasped it fully.

We touched on the fact that birds evolved from lizards and that the evolutionary progress can be seen both in the fossil record and in some reptiles that are still present. We've left that for another day.

I love my grandson very much and enjoy our in-depth discussions about such often discussed matters. If I can get him to think rationally about life, the universe and everything associated with it, I will be forever happy. There are too many people who believe things that are irrational and that can't withstand intelligent scrutiny.

If you are still confused by evolutionary biology, I highly recommend Dawkins' text because it is easy to understand and gives a sound coverage of very complex topics.

Robin

Specially for Tina Miranda on MY Birthday

My birthday card

When you are as old as me you try to forget your birthdays.  After all, how many does one really need?

On 12 April I arose at 6:30 am and headed off for my Sunday morning golf game with buddy Darrell.

By the time I arrived home, I found that my wife had arranged a family barbecue for that evening and I had to contribute to the preparations.

Still suffering from that deep depression that golfers often get when they finally realise they are no Tiger Woods or Adam Scott, I had to energise myself and sweep our outdoors, covered area and otherwise prepare for our feast. On my birthday no less.

So much for letting your birthday slip by without anyone noticing. I don't need a celebration, I've had 68 anniversaries of my birthday already and every day I wake up happy that I'm still here and that everything still works. Well most of it anyway! That's celebration enough.

Then I received a message from Tina Miranda, the heart, soul and hub of the Miranda family. Tina wanted to know when she could expect to see my birthday post on this blog. Can you believe that?

Well, although nobody bothered to take any photos of our barbecue, or in fact any photos period, I thought I had better keep my good friend Tina happy. So here is a shot of one of two lovely, high tech shirts Christina bought me. (Note the Alice Springs Golf Club logo. Before you play golf, you've got to look like a golfer, right?)

Daughter Meredith and grandson Tory bought me a pair of Mr Marvel under pants (no, I'm not showing them here) and a box of Callaway golf balls (as if I lose that many).

Son Dale bought me a massive Toblerone chocolate and others bought bottles of wine,

My daughter in law, Yen bought a lovely chocolate cake from Wendys which was a good end to a lovely dinner with a variety of meats and salads and a few boiled potatoes.

I'd already shouted myself a carton of Asahi Japanese beer and managed to drink one bottle of that and perhaps two glasses of sangria for the evening. Hardly a wild night, but at my age, six bottles of beer and half a bottle of red wine is a big evening.

So, Tina, if you are reading this, because of you I had to write this almost meaningless post when I really had no intention of doing so.

Robin

PS: Thanks for thinking of me Tina ... love you and yours