Please may someone ask Apollohad76 in UK to contact me. Impossible to respond her, her geographical boxsettings are wrong nowadays and Don't fit on the saite and it's impossible to email her. Thanks in adavance everybody in UK for that. Have a nice day. Regards. Marc, Paris, France
Congratulations Rob again for your pictures. Like it very much. Your photos remind me a travel in Ballarat and Yarck, Victoria during the 2008 season when I was working in horse farms and wine estates. Best regards. Marc
PS : tell me if you'd like to correspond as a pen-pall. I am located near Versailles, France at the moment.
I am not sure. Asking myself a lot of questions about religions and their place in a such modern World. Nevertheless, Benedict XVI has tried to built new relations with France, my country of birth.
"...Pope Gregory XII (1406-1415), resigned in 1415 in order to end the Western Schism, which had reached the point where there were three claimants to the Papal throne..."
"...Pope Benedict XVI to resign on Feb. 28, Vatican says
By Claudio Lavanga and Alastair Jamieson, NBC News
Updated at 6:52 a.m. ET: ROME -- Pope Benedict XVI announced Monday he will resign on February 28 because of his failing health, saying he no longer has the strength to carry out his duties.
The 85-year-old announced his decision during an address, in Latin, at the "Concistory for the canonization of the martyrs of Otranto", a small event held in the early morning.
The decision, which took even the Vatican hierarchy by surprise, makes him the the first pope to resign since the middle ages.
His statement was posted on the Vatican Radio website.
He said carrying out the duties of being pope — the leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics worldwide — requires "both strength of mind and body."
"After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry," the pontiff's statement said.
The choice was a "decision of great importance" for the church, he added.
Greg Burke, senior communications adviser to the Holy See, confirmed the pope will step down on February 28 at 8 p.m. local time (2 p.m. ET), leaving the office vacant until a successor is chosen.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became the 265th pope in April 2005, describing himself "a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord."
His tough stance on theological issues had earned him the nickname "God's rottweiler" ..."
I imagine that beer may not be bad, you're right, as the Summer has gone in Oz. But I hope that you will drink or taste another beverage during your lunch or diner.
I had an old Spanish red wine yesterday night. It was not bad at all.
I remember to have tasted a nice Shiraz from the Barossa Valley when I was visiting Adelaide during September 2008. And one of my housemates in the city had a huge collection of red wines from all South Australia. Some were very expensive.
CADEL Evans has issued a plea for cycling fans not to abandon the sport as it reels from the Lance Armstrong doping scandal, saying it has moved on from the past.
Evans's comments come after US rider Armstrong was stripped of seven Tour de France titles, following the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) branding him the central figure in a sophisticated, systematic doping scheme.
"Behind the news, hysteria and sensationalism, I hope that people remember that the events being uncovered mostly occurred seven or more years ago, amongst a minority of those involved in a sport which has already changed and moved on," Evans said in a diary entry posted on his website.
Evans, 35, said recent events were "difficult and confronting" for both those involved in the sport and fans, and he urged people to commend the authorities who are succeeding in the battle against doping.
He said the sport had learned from the mistakes of the past and was now at "a level playing field where the hard work, meticulous equipment preparation and natural ability are winning the big beautiful prestigious races".
"For those who are disappointed with the situation right now: do not despair, do not abandon us now we are in our best years, preparing things for our most important moment yet - the future...," he wrote.
Earlier this week Evans acknowledged meeting a doctor at the centre of the doping scandal, saying he spoke to Michele Ferrari in 2000 but they never discussed anything untoward.
"There was never any discussion of doping or any sign of anything illegal," he said of his meeting with Ferrari, whom USADA has handed a lifetime ban for his role in an extensive doping network that included Armstrong.
Key cycling figures, including disgraced American cyclist Tyler Hamilton and Australian anti-doping expert Anne Gripper, have hailed Evans's 2011 Tour de France win as a victory for clean cycling..."
"...Captain Paul Watson: Fear and Loathing of Sharks in Western Australia
Commentary by Captain Paul Watson, Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
I was a surfer in the sixties and seventies and I don’t recall a single moment that I ever felt afraid of sharks — the beautiful and unique creatures that Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett is now condemning. I don’t think Barnett was ever a surfer.
Real surfers not only love the ocean, they also understand it. They understand the complex inter-relationships between species, and if they love and understand the ocean they also love and understand sharks.
No, I simply cannot see Barnett astride a surfboard.
He was most likely one of those poor timid souls who sat on the beach, traumatized by having seen the Spielberg travesty called Jaws.
This week, this same premier of Western Australia issued a shark-hating Fatah, calling for their total annihilation.
This was simply an opportunistic knee-jerk reaction to media histrionics over the deaths of five surfers this year.
Yes it is a tragedy that these five surfers died, and it is sadly true that shark attacks have increased, although relatively by very little, but instead of responding with a hysterical nonsensical pogrom on sharks, maybe the Premier should have taken a serious look at why there has been a slight increase in shark attacks and taken measures to solve the problem without causing blanket damage to bio-diversity in our oceans.
Barnett holds a degree in economics and majored in statistics so he should certainly understand that statistically shark attacks and fatalities are not that frequent and make these animals less dangerous to the public than ostriches, dogs, chimpanzees, elephants, mosquitoes, bees, ants, wasps, deer, horses, cows, and jellyfish.
Statistically the chances of dying in an automobile accident are astronomically greater than being killed by a shark, and there is a far greater possibility of being struck by lightning while playing golf than of being attacked by a shark at the beach.
When it comes to dangerous sports, surfing has far fewer risk factors than golfing, mountain climbing, hiking, hang-gliding, horseback riding, skiing, swimming, scuba diving, boxing or skate-boarding.
Statistically, sharks are simply not a serious factor affecting human mortality compared to almost every other human activity including the fact that on average twenty Australians die each year falling out of bed and another five died while getting into their bathtubs.
On the other hand, we humans slaughter some 70 million sharks annually primarily to supply a few affluent Chinese with a bowl of tasteless soup.
The truth is that hatred of sharks is a manufactured hysteria thanks primarily, although I’m sure without malice, to Steven Spielberg, who resurrected a long-extinct Megalodon shark as a vicious killing machine in Jaws. The notion of such a shark living today is as fictitious as being attacked in modern times by a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Targeting Great White sharks means targeting an endangered species and is no different than calling for the extermination of tigers, rhinos, and whales. This is the same kind of shallow-thinking, ecologically ignorant mentality that was responsible for the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger..."
"...A new wetsuit is being developed to deter sharks Posted 3 October 2012, 18:39 AEST
A number of wetsuits are being developed by researchers which they hope will make surfers unattractive to sharks.
A research team from the University of Western Australia and University of Queensland has found that sharks are highly visual animals but are probably colour blind.
It has found the animals see colours in shades of grey.
UWA assistant professor Nathan Hart says this information could prove useful.
"Sharks are highly visual animals but the world they see lacks colour and will appear as shades of grey like we see when we watch a black and white movie," he said.
"It may be possible to use this knowledge to change the way a shark reacts to certain objects.
"It may also lead to better design of equipment such as wetsuits and surfboards that reduce the risk of shark attack."
The need is urgent after five fatal shark attacks in WA in less than a year.
UWA's Professor Shaun Collin says they plan to create a wetsuit, using particular patterns, that would make the wearer look unappealing to sharks.
"It makes the wearer appear obnoxious, poisonous or unattractive to the shark, somewhat like a sea snake," said.
"Some species do not typically target these types of patterns on other animals."
The team is also investigating another method to prevent attacks from White Pointers, the breed believed to be responsible for the majority of attacks off the West Australian coast.
Professor Collin says they're working on a wetsuit that would make the wearer look less like a seal, the species' favourite food.
"White pointers generally attack from below so with a lighter background some of their food sources, such as seals, cast a very distinct and high contrast silhouette," he said. Personal protection
The owner of Dunsborough's Yahoo Surfboard Company, Mark Hills, says there would definitely be a demand for the prototype suit.
The 46-year-old is a surfer himself and has been for 38 years.
"Every surfer has a wetsuit so if it's a situation that it's striped or coloured in such a fashion that it's a preventative against sharks, then I can guarantee you every surfer will be wanting to buy one," he said.
Mr Hills says he's heard of a number of products that have either been trialled or retailed to protect beach goers.
"A Hawaiian-based company that is tied up in dive and surf made a dive suit that stops a shark being able to hear your heartbeat so immediately you become invisible.
"35 per cent of a shark's head is dedicated to being able to hear your heart."
He says there have also been stories of surfers drawing sets of eyes on their boards in an attempt to scare off a potential predator.
"A shark can understand the distance between a gap and an eye and so the bigger the game, the bigger the fish apparently," he said.
And, a range of electronic devices have been retailed in Australia, including a small device that can be attached to a surfboard leash and sends out an electric pulse.
Its maker claims that pulse short-circuits the gel in a shark's nose and deters those within a six metre range.
Mr Hills says despite the growing market for shark deterrents, there's still an element of luck about being attacked.
"I still haven't seen a shark in the water but the one that will get you is the one you can't see," he said..."
Hi Abagail and Wash. I agree with that. Nature MUST be respected. That's obvious. Let's the White Sharks live in their own area. That's also obvious. Kind regards.
Reading this article about the new Australian plan to kill the white sharks. Hope they will not kill all the sharks as the French want to do in la Réunion, Indian Ocean...
"...Great White Sharks Off Australia's Indian Ocean Coastline To Be Hunted And Killed By Authorities...
CANBERRA, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Authorities will hunt and kill great white sharks which pose a threat to swimmers along Australia's western Indian Ocean coastline under a new plan to protect beachgoers after five deadly attacks in the past year.
Great white sharks have been a protected species in Australian waters for more than a decade, but the latest spate of great white attacks at Western Australian beaches have prompted the government to allow pre-emptive hunts.
"We will always put the lives and safety of beachgoers ahead of the shark," Western Australian state Premier Colin Barnett told reporters.
"This is, after all, a fish - let's keep it in perspective."
Barnett said the his state had recorded only 12 shark fatalities over the past 100 years, but five of those deaths happened over the past year.
The plan will allow authorities to catch and kill a shark if it is found close to beachgoers. Sharks could previously only be hunted if there had already been an attack on a swimmer.
The government will also buy more jet skis for surf lifesavers, and fund more helicopter patrols of beaches.
More than 100 species of shark are found in Australian waters but most are not aggressive. The white, tiger and bull sharks are considered the most dangerous, although they tend to live in waters away from popular beaches.
White sharks prefer the colder and temperate waters of Australia's south, while tiger and bull sharks are more common in northern tropical waters.
French authorities last month authorised a cull of around 20 sharks off its Indian Ocean island of Reunion after a series of attacks in the surfing hotspot..."
"...The Believing Brain: From Ghosts, Gods, and Aliens to Conspiracies, Economics, and Politics—How the Brain Constructs Beliefs and Reinforces Them as Truths...
In this, his magnum opus, one of the world’s best known skeptics and critical thinkers Dr. Michael Shermer—founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and perennial monthly columnist (“Skeptic”) for Scientific American—presents his comprehensive theory on how beliefs are born, formed, nourished, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished. This book synthesizes Dr. Shermer’s 30 years of research to answer the questions of how and why we believe what we do in all aspects of our lives, from our suspicions and superstitions to our politics, economics, and social beliefs. In this book Dr. Shermer is interested in more than just why people believe weird things, or why people believe this or that claim, but in why people believe anything at all. His thesis is straightforward:
We form our beliefs for a variety of subjective, personal, emotional, and psychological reasons in the context of environments created by family, friends, colleagues, culture, and society at large; after forming our beliefs we then defend, justify, and rationalize them with a host of intellectual reasons, cogent arguments, and rational explanations. Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow.
Dr. Shermer also provides the neuroscience behind our beliefs. The brain is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. The first process Dr. Shermer calls patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless data. The second process he calls agenticity: the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, and agency.
We can’t help believing. Our brains evolved to connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen. These meaningful patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which adds an emotional boost of further confidence in the beliefs and thereby accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive feedback loop of belief confirmation. Dr. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths and to insure that we are always right.
Interlaced with his theory of belief, Dr. Shermer provides countless real-world examples of belief from all realms of life, and in the end he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality..."
Well, "Do you believe?" is the hard question to respond to...I think that we all have our own In this, his magnum opus, one of the world’s best known skeptics and critical thinkers Dr. Michael Shermer—founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and perennial monthly columnist (“Skeptic”) for Scientific American—presents his comprehensive theory on how beliefs are born, formed, nourished, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished. This book synthesizes Dr. Shermer’s 30 years of research to answer the questions of how and why we believe what we do in all aspects of our lives, from our suspicions and superstitions to our politics, economics, and social beliefs. In this book Dr. Shermer is interested in more than just why people believe weird things, or why people believe this or that claim, but in why people believe anything at all. His thesis is straightforward..."
Tim Blake’s teenaged daughter Sydney has vanished. Her supposed co-workers claim never to have heard of her. The police begin to turn their investigation toward Blake. As the days stretch into weeks, the lack of answers begins to drive Blake to desperate acts of recklessness. In Fear the Worst, author Linwood Barclay milks this scenario for every ounce of suspense he can.
Barclay has earned favourable comparisons with American novelist Harlan Coben, a well-regarded purveyor of domestic terrors. Although both authors traverse the same thematic territory, employing admirably lean prose and rich character development, Barclay neatly sidesteps the third-act woes that often plague Coben.
Like the best suspense novels, Fear the Worst expertly navigates an increasingly jumbled plot with clarity and precision. It is a given that such novels include red herrings galore, but Barclay keeps the story moving at such a terrific clip that the 400+ pages fly by.
Barclay never sacrifices character development for action. Fear the Worst would not work half as well if Blake were anything less than a full-blooded individual who commands empathy from the reader.
If there is a quibble, it’s that as exceptional a ride as Fear the Worst is, it evaporates quickly after the last page is turned. Unlike the novels of Andrew Pyper (arguably Canada’s most criminally underrated thriller writer), which resonate long after completion, Barclay’s tale is like a Hollywood blockbuster, providing popcorn thrills and chills but not affecting the reader beyond an immediate visceral impact. Despite this minor complaint, Fear the Worst is excellent entertainment, smart and satisfying.
Marc2010 Forum Posts (75)
Please may someone ask Apollohad76 in UK to contact me
Please may someone ask Apollohad76 in UK to contact me. Impossible to respond her, her geographical boxsettings are wrong nowadays and Don't fit on the saite and it's impossible to email her. Thanks in adavance everybody in UK for that. Have a nice day. Regards. Marc, Paris, France