Why Camping?

This was taken from an interview my son Simon did with me for a school project.

How often do you go camping?

About five times per year.

Why do you go camping?

I go camping because I love to be in the outdoors. I also love to explore places that few other people can get to. That is why I own a 4WD. There is something wonderful about the tranquility of a bush setting, sitting around the campfire with a magnificent blanket of stars above your head that just can't be found in city living.

What is your favorite thing to do when camping?

My favorite thing to do when camping is to drink a small glass of port late in the evening with my friends and family while sitting around a warm campfire on a cool evening.

Would you recommend camping to others and why?

Camping is not for everyone, but I would recommend that people give it a try. One of my friends who was unsure of camping once said to me after coming on a few camping trips "Wes, I finally get it". Unless people try they may miss an experience of a lifetime. The vast expanses of desert in the outback, or the magnificence of rugged mountain ranges. or the thick vegetation of coastal rain forests can all be enjoyed so much more when you set up your tent and get amongst it.

If you could go camping to one place on earth where would it be and why?

I really love our usual camp site on the Turon River near Capertee NSW. It is remote enough that you rarely see other campers in the area, and it is also close enough to Sydney so that you can get there for a weekend. My second choice would be anywhere in the Australian Outback.

Do you think that camping is just a thing for men?

No, it is best enjoyed with your wife and family. It is also good to share the experience with friends.

What is a tip that you could give other people about camping?

Don't try anything too ambitious to begin with. Experiment with different locations and types of equipment. You can often borrow things from friends while you're trying to figure out what will work for you.

Test a blog with two photos

Here are some old landcruiser pics.

Miracles in Mozambique: How Mama Heidi Reaches the Abandoned

I only had time to read the first of this 8 page article, but I could tell that it was be worth sharing and spending more time reading later – http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/may/miracles-in-mozambique.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+christianitytoday%2Fctmag+%28Christianity+Today+Magazine%29

 

 

Classic Abbottspeak

"Look, all the signs are there. It is a very, very restless caucus. In the end it's up to the Labor Party to choose which failed leader it wants to take into the election."
Tony Abbott interview with Lisa Wilkinson

States I have visited in the USA

I had a bit of fun adding up how many states I have visited in the USA. I was quite surprised to discover that I have visited almost half of them (23/50) -- but to be fair, on a couple of them we were quite literally just passing through on the interstate.

Alabama
Arizona
California
Colorado
D.C.
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Louisiana
Maryland
Massachusetts
Mississippi
Nevada
New Mexico
New York
New Jersey
North Carolina
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Texas
Virginia
Washington

My City2Surf 2011 photo courtesy of marathon-photos.com

I really missed the usual blue sky. From memory I think they said that
it was one of only two rainy days in the 40 year history of the event!

My results:
http://tiktok.biz/city2surf/2011/10059

City2Surf Results

Well, the results are in!
Amazingly, our first time City2Surfer Andrew Houtas has blitzed the field with an outstanding 76mins and 40secs!!! He even managed to eclipse Glen Mace's incredible 'most improved' time by 12 seconds.
Despite a dodgy knee Geoff still managed an impressive 78mins and 37secs. The remainder of the Stoddart family must have been holding hands as they crossed the line with a very respectable collective time
of 86mins and 42secs.
It also looks like Jonathan managed to steal line honours from his dad by just 12 seconds with an impressive first time result of 89mins 20secs.
Incredibly, Andrew has only narrowly missed leap frogging the 'green' group and going straight to the 'red' group if he decides to run next year.
To be honest, I am a little disappointed with my own results even though I did beat my previous years time by one minute. I had been struggling with a cold all last week, and as of this morning I have been diagnosed with a related sinus infection after a nasty ear ache last night.
I am now on antibiotics and will hopefully I will be all better for the Pub2Pub in couple of weeks. I think if I try to keep up with Andrew for a long as I can I might be able to get a reasonable time in that event!

A recent exchange on the Huffington Post article "The Bible: History or Myth?"

I am a long time supporter of Creation Ministries International and I recently had a discussion with an atheist on Huffington Post web site. I have included this on my blog because I hope it shows that you don't need to be a scientist or theologian in order to refute some of the theological and scientific arguments often presented in such discussion threads. I believe it is important to always be able articulate the reasons for my faith.

Lee Harvey
"Creationism is the belief that God could create the world in 6 days, but couldn't find 2 naked people hiding in a garden." - Anonymous

Wes Dart
I think Lee that you may have missed the point of the question.
"Adam, where are you?" has a much deeper almost existential meaning. God was calling Adam to examine the state of his own heart, and the predicament that he had found himself in, as a result of his rejection of the boundaries that God had established for the creation.

George Genung
08:01 PM on 7/18/2011
Wes, did this deity of yours select this creation out of an infinite possible creations knowing everything that would happen, before it made the creation?
Your answer will tell a lot about the basis for your theology.

Lee Harvey
My post was supposed to be funny. Maybe it failed.

Brooke123456
01:25 AM on 7/19/2011
And you know this how?
If you had a conversation with god, then did others hear it?
Did he sound like George Burns?
If you had thoughts in your head, that's just your brain doing what it does, if you heard audible voices then, please seek help.
If your post was meant as a joke, then please forgive my response.

Wes Dart
08:37 PM on 7/19/2011
Hi Brooke, I was doing my best to reflect on Lee's original post in the context of the Genesis narrative. We all start with a presupposition of some kind; mine is intelligent design, yours is likely some variant of materialism i.e. what we can observe is all there is. From my perspective the very fact that you can even have 'thoughts in your head' is testimony to an intelligent designer. We don't observe complex systems with amazing redundancy and inter-dependencies arising out of chaos anywhere in nature; detailed information is coded into every living cell.
http://creation.com/mind-by-design-peter­line-interview
I would imagine that you would interpret the same evidence in a very different way based on your own pre-supposition?

Brooke123456
12:58 PM on 7/21/2011
No presupposition here.
I have a brain, the brain can be observed and scanned.
The activity in the brain can be correlated to my activities­.
Same goes for your brain.
Where is the presupposition?
You state:
"We don't observe complex systems with amazing redundancy and inter-dependencies arising out of chaos anywhere in nature.."
Answer: Sure we do, its called life and its all over the place on earth!

Wes Dart
04:52 AM on 7/23/2011
We both see the same evidence "it's called life and it's all over the place on earth"; but you have revealed the source of your presupposition in your answer. You are relying on observation and correlation of the physical evidence to explain what you are seeing. This presents no problem for me. My question to you is where can you observe non-living matter becoming living? You are relying on a presupposition that all this happened somewhere in the unobserved distant past. Observation in the present will verify that life is required in order to 'create' new life. There is no evidence even that a mutation results in any new information being added to our DNA e.g. like getting feathers instead of hair -- it is always a 'loss' or a corruption of existing information e.g. an extra or perhaps missing finger. So this won't help you either.

Brooke123456
15 hours ago (10:23 AM)
Wes Dart....ok­ay...I have loose evidence that abiogenisis happened..­..there is decent suppport for it. But I will grant you, there is no way to KNOW for sure...of course that applies to everything­.
That does not however mean you get to just make stuff up! The appropriate response is "I Don't Know", not my magic sky daddy did it.
I could make up a story that fits the facts a whole lot better than your god!
Flying Spaghetti Monster is a much better answer!

Ryan Nice
11:03 PM on 7/19/2011
Actually his reading of the that verse isn't that abstract - I'm surprised your having trouble getting it. But then again purposely missing the point is a quick way feel like you're winning an argument. Well done.

Wes Dart
0 minute ago (2:15 AM)
Hi Brooke, I guess the point I was making is that we both are taking a 'faith' position when it comes to the past. I am much happier taking the eyewitness accounts of people who were ultimately happy to lose everything, many even losing their lives, for the sake of remaining faithful to what they had seen, touched and experienced. That's why I could never consider a 'flying spaghetti monster' as a rational alternative to an omnipotent God. Wes

An amazing coffee made by my nephew Josh

A fabulous finish to a magnificent meal enjoyed with my brother and sister-in-law Leigh & Amanda and their family on our way back from the Gold Coast.

Virgin Money Childhood Dream Competition

I just entered the Virgin Money Childhood Dream Competition, hoping to win myself a trip to space!

Part of the competition was that you had to submit your childhood dream in 25 words or less.

I was going to make something up, but then I remembered that this really was my dream when I was in my early teens:

"To build a new community in a remote part of Australia using innovative construction techniques, technology and alternative energy as a model for the world."

Funny how life turns out sometimes. I wonder whether Richard Branson feels like he has achieved his dream?

Mothers Day Lunch with a couple of extra Irvings

Are We Disappointed With Space Exploration?

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/are-we-disappointed-with-space-exploration/237136/

A very interesting article and to be honest it is pretty hard to fault the logic.

My only observation would be that what is perceived as valuable often changes with the passage of time. There are potentially lots of opportunities for profit in outer space, unfortunately opportunities are not always apparent until you have spent some time in a place.

In my own country, the Dutch explorers arrived before the British and decided that Australia wasn't all that interesting to them from a commercial perspective. Curiously they made a similar decision about Manhattan Island! Then the British decided that Australia might make a nice prison camp.

Eventually someone worked out that money could be made on a massive scale growing wool for export; but it wasn't really until the 20th century that we began unlocking the vast mineral wealth lying beneath the surface.

At the end of the day I believe it will all come down to obtaining resources at the best price possible. I am betting that eventually we will need to look off-world to satisfy demand. If we can build a space tourism market in the mean time, then this will help to establish the necessary infrastructure to begin mining H3 on the moon or perhaps some other exotic minerals on passing asteroids.

The question to ask is: what resource that is scarce on Earth is otherwise readily available elsewhere in the solar system?

Also, I would add that the role of government is to provide an environment where private enterprise can flourish.

If we had insisted that the Australian government be solely responsible to mine the mineral wealth of Australia; we would have ended up producing sub-standard product at an uncompetitive price. Now that sounds a lot like communism to me, or the National Broadband Network or a host of other government programs in my own country. Perhaps there are even shades of NASA there too.

Instead I believe the role of government is to regulate in order to bring the best outcome for as many stakeholders as possible; then, I hasten to add, to happily collect royalties and taxes along the way. This is how you end up with world class mining companies like BHP-Billiton or RIO Tinto.

Don't leave outer space to NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, CNSA or JAXA. It is too important to be left with the politicians.

Let's encourage entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, John Carmack and Robert Bigelow. I only wish we could add some Australian names to the list -- Rupert Murdoch seems too focussed on his terrestrial concerns. Perhaps we should be looking at some of our mining magnates?

Running at Hawks Nest

We enjoyed an excellent time with other leaders from our church at Hawks Nest over this last weekend. Jonty, who one of our international guests currently doing a gap year with the church happened to take this amazing picture of the sunrise as we were running past.

I absolutely love running, but it is being outside enjoying creation that often thrills me more. Just before this photo was taken we had witnessed a pod of dolphins swimming in synchronized perfection among the morning breakers.

Lockheed Martin shows test spaceship

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8227136

It has been fascinating watching the progress of this with Obama wanting to cancel the Constellation program and Congress determined to keep as many pieces of it alive as they could manage. For all the wrong reasons in my opinion!

Don't get me wrong, I love watching the space program, but I would love to see NASA focus on the cutting edge stuff like the Nautilus X that I sent you links about a few weeks ago. I find it pretty hard to get excited about what essentially appears to be Apollo Mk2.

An old letter from 1978

My mum recently dug out an old letter she had originally sent to her mother in Perth back in 1978. It gives an interesting insight into my life when I was around 10 years old. I don't remember being 'keen' about piano lessons, but I can still play a couple of the pieces that Gem Buck taught us, so I guess something went in.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Hi family,

Dad has been having quite a clean up and came across this letter written to my Mum, dated August, 1978. Thought you might be interested in these excerpts:

"I can hear Natalie singing to herself in her room, but she's not complaining yet so I'll continue on here. She is a real delight right now and we feel as if we'd like to "freeze" her and keep her just as she is at 18 months old. She is learning to talk and says quite a lot of words and will try to repeat words we ask her to. She says 'bye-ee', and will often find me where-ever I am, carrying her bag and tell me 'bye-ee', wave and toddle off. She's a real bundle of mischief, more so than all the boys put together and is able to climb up and get into everything. However, for the most part she is very easy going and amuses herself well (even if it is up on my dressing table!)

This week is education week in NSW schools and this morning I have been up to the school to visit Leigh's classroom. I spoke briefly to his teacher and she said that she is delighted with him. I was aware that with his schoolwork he was way ahead and I know from what he brings home that he rarely makes mistakes, but it was good to hear that she is also very happy with his behaviour, so I have come away feeling quite proud of my little boy!

Tomorrow is sports day for the primary school, and on Thursday I have to visit Carey and Wesley's classes. They both brought home very satisfactory reports and while they're not genius standard, they were both average and above average and also very pleasing in the comments on behaviour and social adjustment. Wes has done particularly well with his 'book work' and is in fact quite a book worm (as his mother and grandmother before him).

Did I mention that all 3 boys have been learning music this term? Carey and Wesley are especially keen - I guess maybe Leigh is a little young as yet. One of the ladies from the church is teaching them all. Two of them go together on a Monday morning before school and they take it is turns to have a lesson alone on Wednesday mornings. It's a mad rush to try and get them there by 8a.m., but well worth it we feel. The only problem is that I get awfully sick of hearing that piano practice all the time, with three of them on the go!!"

It was great to find this letter. It was three pages all up mentioning things I have long since forgotten.

Love Mum

Deep divisions simmer in our cultural melting pot

A very interesting article:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/02/18/3142403.htm

I find myself in agreement with much of this article. I remember being at school in the 70's and 80's and gaining the impression that Australia had little if any to offer in terms of culture before the wave of post WWII immigration.

It has definitely fueled my own determination retain the core values of what it means to be Australian.

The extract from Paul Keating's speech is pretty good:

"The first loyalty of all Australians must be to Australia, that they must accept the basic principles of Australian society. These include the Constitution and the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech and religion, English as a national language, equality of the sexes and tolerance".

Wes the space shuttle pilot

From our recent trip to Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

Nautilus-X could be NASA's first manned deep-space explorer

I am very excited about Nautilus-X.

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/02/nautilus-x-coul.php

http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Holderman-Henderson_1-26-11/Holderman_1-26-11.ppt

The PowerPoint is a thing of beauty.

This is the sort of thinking, planning and building that NASA should be doing. This is a proper spaceship!

My friend suggested that we still some way off working out how to overcome the debilitating effects of long term space travel both physically and psychologically.

However, I believe that the centrifuge with artificial gravity will make a big difference. They are hoping to test a version of it on the ISS. With the Mars 500 mission underway in Moscow we are already doing long-term psychological experiments on the type of isolation required for a long range space flight.

I'm just excited that there appears to be some original thinking and planning going on inside NASA.

Last minute Micheal Bublé

Free tickets too!!! Thank you Iain and Sarah - and the NAB.

Tom's first good reverse park