Strange Weather

After a rather dry Winter and early Spring,things have suddenly turned wet, with something like 50mm of rain in the last few days. You may remember me saying a few months ago that Dorrigo just east of us had about 800 mm of rain in few days. That's just risen by another 400 mm! Let's hope that Armidale has even more rain to give us and the local farmers a great start to the summer season. Our garden looked fairly brown until last weekend, but it has visibly perked up in the last few days. The only downside are the 'cold' temperatures ... about 17 degrees C. That might seem wonderful to my UK readers, but we were getting used to the low twenties until the rain arrived.

AS

Twitter

In an experiment, I've just signed up for Twitter, but haven't yet tweeted. Could you please let me know if you have aa Twitter account so that I can follow your tweets? For example, I tried to find Emily Sorensen and Rebecca Sorensen but you'd never believe how many of them have got accounts ... and none identifiable as my daughters!

By the way, my Twitter name is a boring: TonySorensen. To follow me, or anyone else, you need a Twitter account.

AS

Decoupling

I'm currently invovled in several projects which involve long-term scenario construction or more general forecasting. For me, the future has always been more interesting than the past.

I've just been reading about the awesome potential computing power of future quantum computers and am looking forward to the day when my computer with a few hundred qubit capacity could store more numbers than there are thought to be atoms in the universe!! And I'm writing an article with a colleague from the University of Queensland on wicked problems, social messes and the relevance of quantum mechanics for the solution of increasingly complex urban planning problems through the extension of the idea of private - public partnerships (PPP).

And, as consultant to Australia's cotton industry, I'm looking at the future of Australian agriculture. This is mind-boggling task, not least because I'm trying to balance still explosive population growth, a likely decline in productive agricultural land, rising unavailability (and price) of conventional fuels, galloping technolgical development (which are vast in agriculture alone), huge economic growth in south and east Asia (and the GRIC countries) with associated consumption of different agricultural commodities, the transformation of agriculture from family operation to corporate enterprise ... now well under way in Australia, and the globalisation of agribusiness (now also well under way here with Chinese companies now buying up the Australian farm so to speak. On top of this, Australia's population is now expected grow faster than the world's in the next 40 years ... the only developed economy in this position. Our current 22 million population is now forecast to be c. 36 million by 2050, with an annual growth rate >2%.

Well, all this is considerable fun, even if hair-rising. Perhaps my acute lack of hair reduces the fraught side of the equation. Anyway, I've long thought that strong future orientation is one of the elixirs of life, so perhaps i'm in the process of extending my life span by a decade or so.

AS

Advance Planning

I had January River as the venue for the 2016 Olympics at about 5-1 on, and the outcome was no surprise. Indeed, I can't imagine how anyone in the world picked Tokyo, Chicago, or Madrid. Anyway, I have very good friends in Rio and humorously congratulated them by email on their win. I've met Ana and Scott every year for the last decade or more in 10 different countries on 4 continents (North America excepted) and we share common research interests. And now, as of this morning, Dot and I have an invitation to stay with them in Rio in 2016. That's good planning.

That sets me thinking. Would any of my UK readers be able to put us up in 2012 for the London games? As a quid pro quo, we run an open house here for those dropping by, but business has been a bit slow in recent years!

AS

170th Birthday

Armidale turned 170 today and the local historical society staged a play, or rather a series of six replica events, to mark the event before a large crowd of admirers. The scene was Armidale's McDonald Park, the precise spot where in 1839 the naming event took place. The NSW government's Commissioner sent out to survey the frontier area was George McDonald, who named his tent (there were no permanent buildings) Armidale after the castle of Armadale on the Isle of Skye - the seat of the Clan McDonald. The misspelling, we are now told, was deliberate because the Commissioner was highly literate and a poet. He would have known the exact spelling. He even rustled up a bottle of champagne to celebrate the event, though how that got here in drinkable fashion is anyone's guess. At the time there were no roads or railways and the Commissioner's party, including police, took weeks (May to September) to make the journey from the Hunter Valley.

The pictures show a local farming family and carriage; Sir Arthur Hogbin (grazier, L) taking to Commisioner McDonald (R); Governor Sir George Gipps (who gave Mcdonald his commission); John Everett (grazier, L) arguing with McDonald (R); and Ms Annabella Boswell. You can also the two-piece 'band' which played period music and the large number of school-kids of all ages in front. The whole event was very well done, all the way down to the costumes made locally, the acting, the research needed for historical authenticity, and its overall direction. Well done, and entertaining.

AS

Krakowskie Przedmiescie 2

This posting focuses on some of the buildings in the area including the Presidential Palace, the University Gate, one of the many churches along the route, and a statue to Cardinal Wyszynski - one of the prelates who made life tough for the communist rulers before JP II came along and put the first nail in their final coffin.

Just in front of the Presidential Palace, Prince Józef Poniatowski is mounted on his horse. If I recall correctly, Napoleon appointed him a Marshal of France. The Palace itself survived the war because it was occupied by German administrators.

AS

Krakowskie Przedmiescie 1

This and the next item will be my last postings on Warsaw and I'd like to thank you for reading this far! The street name above literally means Krakov Suburb (Krakov Faubourg in French), and is probably the most stylish in Warsaw. Once again, much of what you will see is reconstructed from the rubble left by the departing Germans in 1944. The district is also known as the Royal Route because it connects Castle Square with, some distance away, the summer Palace at Wilanów

It is a wide street, full of pavement cafes, grand monuments, classy hotels, and well-proportioned public buildings. My visit was, alas, at dusk, as you'll see from the accompanying pictures.

First let us have a look at the locality's typical streetscapes. At the western end end is Castle Square with the Zygmunt's column, and at the other end are the tall towers of the Holy Cross Church with the Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) monument nearby, and the same photo shows the opulent Bristol Hotel. This first of two postings on Krakowskie Przed. includes mostly street scenes.

AS

Village Life

The eastern part of Poland which we visited had scores of sometimes picturesque small (population c. 100) villages. Their inhabitants often tended to be elderly, extremely religious, and sometimes speaking strange dialects (given that the region has oscillated between Polish, German, (White) Russian and even Ukranian hands). I sometimes felt like being in a museum. Perhaps the attached slides give some feel for the region.

The attached pictures illustrate a village called Puchly which happened to be celebrating some Eastern Orthodox festival. Note the stork's nest high up on post, like countless hundreds we saw elsewhere.

AS

Bialowieza National Park

At 6.00 am just over a week ago a party of about 12 of us left for a walk in the Bialowieza national park - the oldest such park in Poland having been established in 1921. It is primeval boreal forest - the last patch of natural lowland forest in Europe much as it emerged from the last ice age.

The early departure was to try to see some of the park's shy inhabitants to best advantage. These include the few remaining European Bison, red deer, and pigs (or boar). Alas we saw nothing apart from hectares of beautiful trees hundreds of years old and a few of some 3000 species of fungi (including some 450 types of mushroom). The terrain is damp and swampy in places, which was also ideal for mosses and lichens.

At the entrance to the park lay a Palace Park dating back to when the area was a hunting ground of the Tsars of Russia, though the Palace itself seems to have disappeared.

Despite the absence of big fauna, it was a wonderful experience to wander through a deathly quiet landscape virtually untouched from the receding ice age.

AS

Lazienki Park

London has Hyde Park, New York its Central Park and Warsaw's equivalent is Lazienki (pr wazienki if my understanding of Polish is accurate). An L with a slash through it (but not on my keyboard) is a soft w; the w is, of course, pronounced v.

Unlike the others, this one is full of palaces, lovely lakes, and grandiose statuary. There is the famous Chopin memorial, the Jan III Sobieski monument (he defeated the Turks at Vienna in 1683), the Palace on the Water, and the Officer's School - all shown here. However, these pictures are a long way short of showing the park's rich contents which contain a mock temple, an orangerie, an open auditorium, an observatory, the national museum and several more palaces. The Sejm (parliament) is nearby.

AS