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Italy Tour 2012
In May and June 2012 seven members of the Seaholme Probus Club toured Italy together. The posts on the tour that are linked to on this page are my personal responses to the tour. Margaret and I have...
View ArticleClimate Change: Lines of Evidence
Although some people and organisations in our political and media systems attempt to claim that there is significant disagreement amongst scientists about the reality and causes of climate change, this...
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Christmas Letter 2012
Hi all, This year brought some sadness to our family, with the passing of Margaret’s Mother, Joyce, in September. Joyce was 93 years old, having been born into a very different era, within a year of...
View ArticleSuccessful Predictions
Here is a talk given by Ray Pierrehumbert at the recent AGU conference. Steve Easterbrook discusses the talk here. He summarises the talk as follows: Ray’s talk spanned 120 years of research on...
View ArticleThe Particle at the End of the Universe
I am enough of a geek to have watched, live, the seminary last July 4th that announced the discovery of the Higgs Boson. Sean Carrol wrote a book on the topic of the Higgs called The Particle at the...
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Dubai 2013
Australia is a long way from Europe, so we break our flight and stay two days at Dubai. (Otherwise we would have the 14 hour flight to the Middle East, a 3 to 4 hour wait for our connecting flight,...
View ArticleTwelve Tone Music
This is a place holder for links about 12 tone music. Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times
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Euler's Identity
Leonard Euler discovered one of the most stunning and beautiful equations in all of mathematics. It is called the Euler Identity. Here is is:According to mathematician Keith Devlin: "Like a...
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Christmas Letter 2013
This has been a mixed year for us. MUM In May Stephen’s mother, Edna, passed away. She had fought ill health all her life. Stephen’s first recollection of his mum was visiting her in hospital when he...
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France 2013
One of my memories as a child is the family talking about a French town, Villers-Bretonneux, where my paternal grandfather, Samuel Charles Spencer, was wounded in April 1918, as he fought in WWI....
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Ireland 2013
After France we toured Ireland, starting in Dublin. Dublin is an attractive city to walk around, with many historical and cultural points of interest. The Easter Uprising of 1916 is commemorated by...
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Scotland 2013
When we had completed our tour of Ireland, we took a ferry to Scotland. Naturally pipers were everywhere. Among the many places we visited was Edinburgh Castle. One of our favourite crime writers is...
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England 2013
After the tour (of Ireland and Scotland) we spent two weeks in Lancashire, based at Philip's house in Preston. We arrived at about the same time as Philip's bees, and we watched him set up his hive. We...
View ArticleSummer Holiday 2013
For our overseas trip in 2013 we returned to Europe. We owe a debt of thanks to our friend and travel agent Christine Klein for her great organisation of our trip. If you need a travel agent contact...
View ArticleThe toughest thing ...
It was the evening of Sunday, 2nd February, 1975 and I was about to perform the most difficult act of my life. I was sitting at the kitchen table at my parent's house. That morning I had performed my...
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The Witness of the Holy Spirit
IntroductionIn this post I will argue that the fundamental issue maintaining religious belief is an indwelling sense of God in a person's life. The converse is true: non-belief is founded on a loss of...
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Western USA Tour
The first part of our North America vacation, 2014, visited some of the iconic areas of Western USA. (Note on photos. Click on a photo and a new tab or window will open at the flickr site showing a...
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Eastern USA and Canada Tour
NEW YORK The second leg of our North America tour began in New York. The beginning of our stay in New York was not auspicious as we arrived at night, it was raining heavily and our booked transit took...
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Canadian Rockies
VICTORIA The third leg of our North America tour was the Canadian Rockies, which began in the beautiful city of Victoria ... ... which huddles around a very attractive harbour ...... and is the...
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