Tuesday & Wednesday, April 26 & 27 2011 (diary)

Tuesday another beautiful day, a clear blue sky and no humidity, the dry season has well and truly arrived. Although a Public Holiday and the various vantage points will be crowded Rick takes me out fishing. There are excellent spots for fishing along Darwin harbour and its river systems, some with parking areas, boat ramps, toilets and fish cleaning stations. They are well attended but Rick finds a quiet spot with nice views.
I am not into fishing, don't like all that fiddling with lines, hooks, baits, etc. and am content to just sit there watching or reading a book. Rick catches three fish, but these are too small for consumption so they are allowed back into the water.

I received a phone call from the Casuarina Seniors College. Only two students have enrolled for my Blues Improvisation course which therefore has to be cancelled. I am quite relieved about that, because in hindsight I was not too keen on carrying my heavy keyboard backwards and forwards to the College every week. It is far to expensive an instrument to leave there for 8 weeks.
A bridge friend of mine, who teaches an Astronomy course at the College needed one more student to make his course viable. So I enrolled in that instead and am looking forward to it.

With the Royal wedding of Prince William and Kate (to be called "Princes Catherine") this Friday, the TV stations here are awash with related programs. One was the movie The Queen with Helen Mirren in the title role which I watched Tuesday night. It covers the events after Princes Diana's tragic death from the Queen's perspective.
The film portrays the dilemma of the Queen how to react to the general public's grieve for Diana, which has a rather flawed image of the Princes largely created by the media. It is a moving emotional story from which both the Queen and the then Prime Minister Tony Blair emerge as the wiser party.
In hindsight the marriage between 20 year old Diana and the twelve year older and quite contrasting character of Prince Charles, was a disaster waiting to happen. And it did.
In contrast the pending marriage of Prince William and Kate looks a much more promising and stable proposition and has (I believe) the potential to strengthen the British monarchy in the long term.

Wednesday Saturday, April 28 - 30 2011 (diary, astronomy)

No, I did not place the adjacent photo upside down!   This is exactly how I observed De Grote Beer, as we call this Constellation in Holland (for you perhaps better known as the Great Bear, Big Dipper, Plough or Ursa Major).

I always thought that I had lost this great friend in the sky from my childhood and student days in Holland when I emigrated to Australia in 1965, but my bridge friend Allan Cairncross who is teaching Astronomy at the CSC pointed her (?) out to us last Wednesday evening.
The Great Bear is not in the field of vision of the Southern Hemisphere skies unless you are near the Equator, like we are here in Darwin. Here you can see her, but of course upside down. It gave me great pleasure.

I do feel I should become more aware of the sky above, or more precisely the enormous Universe around us, and this Astronomy course I have just enrolled in will help me do this. I also saw the planet Saturn for the first time in my life on Wednesday and learned how to distinguish the solar planets from stars (stars twinkle, planets don't).
And I discovered that astronomers stay well clear of astrology, as they consider it to be a load of hog wash and have proven it to be so.

The time table for the Zodiac was defined several thousand years ago, but is no longer relevant to our world today. Due to the wobbling of the earth's rotating axis, the (apparent) movement of the sun does not enter (for example) the Constellation of Capricorn on December 21, but on January 19 these days. So, having been born on January 15, I am clearly not a Capricorn.

All the other 11 Constellation periods too have shifted markedly over the years. So if you still believe in this stuff I suggest you think again.

There is (I believe) little doubt that our personality is determined by our DNA and also by the environment in which we are born and grow up in. In this regard it is perhaps possible that the season in which we are born has some effect on us, and through this it may appear to be influence of the Zodiac, but that (in my view) is a long shot.

Note : I believe the astrologers' present argument is that it is not just the apparent movement of the sun but of all its surrounding planets (therefore the entire solar system) which determine one's Zodiac sign. I leave you to make up your mind about that one!

Ignorance (or denial ?) is still widespread these days, even in the Developed world, I could not help thinking when watching the magnificent spectacle of Prince William and Kate's wedding on TV last night. Everybody still obediently praising the Lord and piping to the tune of the Church.   (The Queen, being also the Head of the Church of England, appears to be locked within a moralistic box hard to get out off. I wonder whether she, or Prince Charles or Prince William sees it that way.)
The singing of the choir was magnificent however and it was good to see the enormous International enthusiasm and goodwill for this lovely newly wedded Royal couple.