Who is Online

We have 95 guests and no members online

 

Our first overnight stop was at the ski-resort town of Kamloops.


 

Kamloops has a couple of pubs, one of which seemed a possible solution for an inexpensive meal.  It was a Canadian version of an Australian outback pub, complete with local workers and 'characters'.

The restaurant at the hotel was closed, so we walked around town and checked-out the restaurants.  The Pub looked better and better.  Maybe the ciders were beaconing?  In the end it was a good night.

Our next overnight stop would be Revelstoke.

Again, we walked, past the RCMP (Mounties) station, to the river and the more intimate vistas to be see there.  There is an unmistakable similarity to the scenery in the Netflix soapy Virgin River.  This is not surprising, as the series, that is supposed to take place in a remote 'Northern California' town, is actually shot, not far away from here, in Canada.

The following morning there was a local market set-up in the street, next to our hotel, that elicited a quick look. 

After breakfast we set off again, to collect our friends Brian and Kat, an hour late as we had not realised that it's a new time zone, and then on to Banff where we needed to call in to Hertz to get Brian registered as a co-driver for the car.

Brian's less likely to forget which side of the road to drive on, as they live in California. Actually, I've more often forgotten in Australia, after returning from driving oversees. Less attention paid at home.

No comments

Travel

Ireland

 

 

 

 

In October 2018 we travelled to Ireland. Later we would go on to England (the south coast and London) before travelling overland (and underwater) by rail to Belgium and then on to Berlin to visit our grandchildren there. 

The island of Ireland is not very big, about a quarter as large again as Tasmania, with a population not much bigger than Sydney (4.75 million in the Republic of Ireland with another 1.85 million in Northern Ireland).  So it's mainly rural and not very densely populated. 

It was unusually warm for October in Europe, including Germany, and Ireland is a very pleasant part of the world, not unlike Tasmania, and in many ways familiar, due to a shared language and culture.

Read more: Ireland

Fiction, Recollections & News

The Meaning of Death

 

 

 

 

 

 

'I was recently restored to life after being dead for several hours' 

The truth of this statement depends on the changing and surprisingly imprecise meaning of the word: 'dead'. 

Until the middle of last century a medical person may well have declared me dead.  I was definitely dead by the rules of the day.  I lacked most of the essential 'vital signs' of a living person and the technology that sustained me in their absence was not yet perfected. 

I was no longer breathing; I had no heartbeat; I was limp and unconscious; and I failed to respond to stimuli, like being cut open (as in a post mortem examination) and having my heart sliced into.  Until the middle of the 20th century the next course would have been to call an undertaker; say some comforting words then dispose of my corpse: perhaps at sea if I was travelling (that might be nice); or it in a box in the ground; or by feeding my low-ash coffin into a furnace then collect the dust to deposit or scatter somewhere.

But today we set little store by a pulse or breathing as arbiters of life.  No more listening for a heartbeat or holding a feather to the nose. Now we need to know about the state of the brain and central nervous system.  According to the BMA: '{death} is generally taken to mean the irreversible loss of capacity for consciousness combined with the irreversible loss of capacity to breathe'.  In other words, returning from death depends on the potential of our brain and central nervous system to recover from whatever trauma or disease assails us.

Read more: The Meaning of Death

Opinions and Philosophy

Energy woes in South Australia

 

 

 

 

South Australia has run aground on the long foreseen wind energy reef - is this a lee shore?

Those of you who have followed my energy commentaries published here over the past six years will know that this situation was the entirely predictable outcome of South Australia pressing on with an unrealistic renewable energy target dependent on wind generated electricity, subsidised by market distorting Large-scale Generation Certificates (LGCs) (previously called RECs in some places on this website - the name was changed after their publication).  

Read more: Energy woes in South Australia

Terms of Use

Terms of Use                                                                    Copyright