FEAST OR FAMINE

Canberra Times (October 30, 2012) announced an overwhelming positive response to the Australian Capital Tourism campaign in its first weekend. Organizers deemed the “social media frenzy” to be successful – and “beyond their expectations.” Some data is still being analysed, but initial results were promising. Australian Capital Tourism director, Ian Hill, said that the first weekend of the campaign (the Human Brochure campaign) had 4,300 tweets, 2,700 Instagram images, and 1,100 Facebook comments. On Twitter, #humanbrochure trended in Australia’s top five most-tweeted subjects, indicating widespread interest. Similar campaigns would expect to have an 80% positive attitude toward a product or service, and the initial statistics for the weekend show higher figures. Ian Hill said that, so far, 92% of posts were extremely positive with participants recommending Canberra as a holiday destination to their online followers. It’s not sure, at this early stage, whether t...

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns of a worldwide food crisis, as early as next year. Dr. Mark Hearn of the Department of Modern History and Politics at Macquarie University, writing in Canberra Times (October 29, 2012) says global grain reserves are at critically low levels, warning that 2013 may herald a time of worldwide famine. Due to extreme weather events, food supply may no longer be reliable. However, he states that famines throughout history have not always been unlucky accidents. In recent years, grain has been increasingly converted to biofuels, which FAO maintains has exacerbated the food supply problem. Politics, too, has influenced famines. World War II triggered starvation that claimed nearly 20 million lives as global conflict heightened. Hearn cites Lizzie Collingham’s The Taste of War which argued that the demand for food was a central cause of the war. Currently, the world will face shortages of potable (drinking) wa...

Chinese Embers (1995) began as a memoir for Eva Dower’s family, written in hospital, prior to her death. Thirty-three years later, it was published by her younger sister’s grandson. Chinese Embers is essentially a memoir of love, the love of a country and a man during the author’s time in Peking (now Beijing) and Shanghai from 1919 to 1932. Eva Dower (1890-1962) was a country girl from South Australia, who went to China when she heard of jobs at the Rockefeller Hospital in Peking. There she met Frenchman Maurice Rene Roy, the director of a French bank, whom she married in 1921. Living in the Walled Diplomatic Quarters in Peking, Dower writes of the finance minister seeking refuge in the diplomatic quarters; riding on donkeys by the Great Wall near Shanhaikuan, “the point where the wall runs down into the sea after a 2,000 mile stretch across the country;” visiting a mountain temple after being transported by chair “slung on the shoulders of four brawny carrier...

Canberra citizens will have the opportunity to publicly list what they like about their city as part of the Centenary of Canberra celebrations that will culminate in March 2013. Canberra Times (October 23, 2012) announces the launch of a Centenary of Canberra campaign, commencing on October 24, 2012, which aims to produce a list of the top 100 reasons why residents of Canberra like their home city. Residents of the national capital will be asked to nominate what they like about Canberra and then vote on the nominations, with the top 100 list revealed during the centenary year next year. Centenary of Canberra executive director, Jeremy Lasek, said nominations would be grouped before being disseminated for a city-wide vote early in 2013. The final 100 would be revealed in March. National Zoo advertising managing director, Clinton Hutchinson, kicked off the campaign by stating his nomination: Canberra is a designed city. ''What better than living i...

Kashmir Watch (October 17, 2012) reported that the Kashmiri language now has its first novel. At a literary event in Srinagar attended by a variety of writers, Kashmiri poet and novelist, Ghulam Nabi Gowhar, launched the novel, Arg-e-Ashud, and its English language adaptation, Torch Bearer in Dark Circle. Adbee Markaz Kamraz collaborated with the Kashmir Centre for Social and Development Studies to organize the literary function. Professor Rahman Rahi, who presided over the function, called the novel “a great addition to the Kashmiri literary treasure.” Guest presenter, Justice Bashir Ahmad Kirmani said, in comparison with British literature, it could be likened to Charles Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities. The author, Ghulam Nabi Gowhar, said at the function that the novel covers the historic period in Kashmir from 1930 to 1990. Gowhar’s novel, the first of its kind in Kashmiri fiction, is therefore both voluminous and historically rich, and regarded ...

The Medici Giraffe: And Other Tales of Exotic Animals and Power (2006) is a seven part documentary of the captivity, transportation, and aristocratic collections of exotic animals, from 275 BC Egypt to the 1970s. It moves from story to story, incorporating elephants, giraffes, the Roman gladiatorial arenas, menageries in 16 th and 17 th century Prague, to the Chinese government’s gift of two giant pandas to America in 1972. My favourite chapter is “The Black Swans of Malmaison” in which Belozerskaya details Josephine Bonaparte’s plant and animal collection in 18 th century Paris. It relates Nicolas Baudin’s neck and neck race to the southern continent, Australia, with British explorer Matthew Flinders. Her husband, Napoleon, “who had a weakness for Australia, readily approved the venture.” Of the 118 men on board the ship bound for Australia, 22 were scientists: 5 zoologists, 3 botanists, 5 horticulturists, 2 mineralogists, 2 astronomers, 2 hydrologists, and 3 sc...

Giraffe (2006), based on a true event, commences in 1971 in Kenya when a female giraffe narrates her own birth. At the age of two, Czechoslovakian hunters tranquilize and capture Snehurka, meaning White Snow because of the unusual whiteness of her underbelly. The main narrator is Emil Freymann, a Czech student, studying hemodynamics – the blood flow in vertical creatures (humans and giraffes) and the morphology of the jugular vein – which has implications for cosmonauts and high-altitude fliers. The government wants him to travel to Hamburg to supervise the passage (by barge and truck) of 33 giraffes to a small zoo in Czechoslovakia as part of a long-term breeding project during the Communist regime of the mid-1970s. Although one giraffe had died during the sea voyage, leaving 32 giraffes, it was the largest group of giraffes ever transported across the world. Once in the zoo, the narration fragments to document the historic program, and its consequences, thro...

As part of my publisher’s on-going support, they have provided a sample PDF of my 2011 novel, Bardot’s Comet. Strategic Book Publishing has provided a link for “Free download sample PDF” (see below) expressly for use on my blog. The sample is the first, uncut 21 pages of Bardot’s Comet. Included on the last page are the Kindle (Amazon.com) and Nook (Barnes & Noble) links to the full e-book versions. FREE download sample of Bardot’s Comet at http://epubco.com/samples/978-1-61897-570-6sample.pdf My next novel, Liberia’s Deadest Ends, is nearing the end of its publication cycle and will be released before the end of the year.

Who Got Einstein’s Office: Eccentricity and Genius at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study (1987) is a fascinating account of Albert Einstein’s time at the hallowed institute – and the scientists who were there with him, and a selection of those who followed him.   Virtually all of the great figures of twentieth century physics and mathematics were there – for periods between one to two years – to conduct research – in fact, to do whatever they wanted. To the time of writing, the Institute of Advanced Study had employed and housed 14 Nobel Prize winners. The Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) is located in Princeton, New Jersey, USA. It was established as a separate entity to the University of Princeton (not affiliated with it at all) in 1930. When it officially opened in 1933, and Albert Einstein moved in, it became the world centre for physics. With no students, no teachers, no classes, no laboratories, no machines, and no equipment – established for re...

Neuroscience – the study of the nervous system – can provide us with insights into how the nervous system functions, normally and abnormally, to advance our understanding of human thought, emotion, and behaviour. The Society for Neuroscience explains that through the study of the brain, spinal cord, and networks of sensory nerve cells (or neurons), as they communicate with each other through electrical signals and by releasing chemicals (called neurotransmitters) which leap across synapses (small gaps between neurons), we gain a fuller understanding of humans themselves ( http://www.sfn.org ). Humans have about 100 billion neurons within our nervous system. The nervous system contains two main parts: (1) the brain and spinal cord; and (2) the peripheral nervous system containing the nerves in the neck, arms, body, legs, skeletal muscles, and internal organs. The nervous system controls functions such as vision, hearing, learning, and breathing – and ultimately, all of huma...

  Fourteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai was well-known at eleven, when, in 2009, she campaigned for the right for girls in her region of Pakistan to go to school. She publicly declared that she wanted to be a doctor. Since 2007, the Taliban endeavoured to close schools, burn them down, and intimidate female teachers and girls in her region. Malala was aware of the dangers in speaking for her rights, but she remained brave and defiant. Malala lives in Mingora in the Swat District in Pakistan’s Khyber-Paktunkhwa (KP) Province, formerly the North West Frontier Province, close to the Afghanistan border. It is a rugged and mountainous region, at an altitude of 984 metres (3,228 feet). It is also spectacularly beautiful – “the Switzerland” of Pakistan. Tourists don’t go there anymore due to the presence of the Taliban. Malala was shot in the head yesterday (Tuesday, October 9, 2012) by the Taliban in an attack condemned by Pakistan and the rest of the world. It was dayli...