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Chapter 8 - Shopping

 

 

 

On Bertram's list are smoked salmon and some ingredients for a large fruit cake. 

There are huge virtual malls in The Cloud projected into the viewing room by the MV.  Wearing their haptic bodystocking, participants can try on the clothes, handle the china and glass wear, and with the aroma module, absolutely essential these days, smell the coffee. 

If he was really a masochist or just 'into shopping' he could go to a virtual supermarket in multidimensional video and jostle his virtual trolley around the virtual shelves, complete with a child's chocolaty hands dirtying his virtual white slacks, the smell and feel of the place realistically reproduced. 

He and his Agency pioneered domestic temperature and humidity air streams linked to The Cloud so that your area in your deep immersion room gets colder as you seem to approach a freezer or open its door.  This enhances the temperature nerve stimulation provided by a bodystocking and works wonders when recreating the atmosphere in a Moroccan Souk or when viewers go skiing or visit the beach.  

But virtualised taste is a still as step too far.  Anyway, Bertram likes food halls and wants to experience real life when he's this close to the end.

He found a person demonstrating salmon.

"Mmm, delicious",

"That's because they are 'all Home-Continent' and 'stress free'", she responded.

"How do you know when fish are 'stress free'?"

She looked distressed, and said something about not being crowded in a tank, so Bertram just smiled and had another taste:

"Very nice - and definitely stress free now."

Continuing his shopping Bertram mused that it was just another example of the modern zeitgeist in which 'natural', 'free' and 'unstressed' are virtues that even extend to dead fish. 

He wondered what was natural and free about farming, breeding and growing any animals for our tables.

So how real is this smoked salmon anyway?  He put on his glasses.  The head-up display makes the text and pictures seem to shimmer ten feet ahead against the supermarket shelves.

'The smoked salmon we buy in supermarkets is farmed', he reads.

'Like any farmed animal, the farmers apply artificial selection to enhance those characteristics that improve market value and overall profitability; optimising such traits as size, yield and flavour.  Genetic manipulation of Atlantic Salmon has produced a breed that is bigger, tastier and consumes less fish meal per kilogram of meat that the wild fish.'

An image of the ocean surges across the shelves...

Like the few people who have learned to read and write, Bertram likes to read for himself when it's convenient.  Reading's faster than listening to your VPA read to you and it's easier to skim the text.

And anyway, he was listening to Beethoven's Violin concerto.  It was just getting to that beautiful soaring passage, that almost breaks his heart. 

"Look at all these choices," he mutters, examining the salmon.  "Despite all our efforts this is still different to shopping in The Cloud." 

It's the same with sport he thinks. We still can't replicate real skiing.  Apart from the muscular strains and extreme conditions you can't be unexpectedly injured or killed at home.

Is there really a difference between one salmon and another?  This time, Emmanuelle pauses the Beethoven and breaks in with her Dutch/French accent:

"In Tasmania, Atlantic Salmon is entirely captive and grown in huge baskets. It is fed a little over its weight in lower value fish meal, until it reaches market size. 
"New Zealand salmon is a different species. New Zealand farms Pacific or Chinook Salmon.
"While some are also raised in cages others are free range. These roam the Southern ocean until they reach adult size. 
"The adult salmon is then driven by genetically programmed instinct to return to its original spawning grounds to breed; and then to die. 
"New Zealand is the only southern region to successfully introduce wild Pacific salmon, originally from northern Canada, to its rivers. 
"Considerable breeding and science were required to reverse the breeding cycle for the southern hemisphere and to develop productive salmon runs." 

"Thanks E", says Bertram, "I'll get the New Zealand"

Emmanuelle knows that he likes to be told that little bit extra.

In truth there was no practical justification for him being here at all.  Emmanuelle knows exactly what to get and could have called the virtual provender to have everything delivered by drone to Miranda's apartment.  Guaranteed best quality, competitive prices and all that.  

Bertram is thinking how fortunate he is to have her.  What will happen to her after he is gone? Will she simply evaporate?  She'll remain for a time as a collection of unused bits in memory, a combination of no longer needed data and no longer called routines and instructions, somewhere in the vast memory of The Cloud.

She's been with him for many years now and he trusts her completely.  But she is generated within The Cloud.  And total trust is not always wise when entities are generated within The Cloud.  

As a whim Bertram decides on a little test of her skills.  E can you find a story from about 30 years ago when some VPAs turned out to be malicious?

Almost instantly it appears:

Wall Street Trader falls from Balcony - Woman suicides

 

Neighbours of the wealthy money market trader who fell to his death from the balcony of his luxury Manhattan apartment on Monday night have told of strange goings-on immediately before his crash to the pavement 25 stories below.

A weeklong Globe investigation has uncovered a bizarre story of sex, obsession and cybercrime.

Last week Rodney Harrison was a spectacularly successful young man going places.  At only 26 he was a senior market trader at Nova Broking:  the recent mastermind of one of the City's largest corporate takeovers; earning the sort of credits that most of us can only dream of. 

But at around ten o'clock on Monday night his neighbours report hearing him screaming at someone: "Come back inside"; and minutes later: "Give me your hand"; and "I can almost reach you - just two millimetres more!"

Neighbour Jack (second name withheld), who rushed to see what the commotion was about, had a clear view of Rodney's balcony. 

He told us that: "As far as I could see Rodney was entirely alone. He'd climbed over his balcony rail and was reaching into empty space yelling like a madman.  He was reaching further and further down.  Soon all I could see were the fingertips of his right hand just barely gripping the rail.  I tried calling to him to be careful but he was yelling so loud himself he couldn't hear me. I knew he'd fallen when his fingertips finally lost their grip and his voice faded into the distance. It was terrible!" 

Jack is receiving posttraumatic stress counselling.

As readers of The Globe - 'Your cyber news Magazine' will be aware this was not an isolated incident. Similar cases have been reported from all around the World, all of them occurring within a few hours of each other.

We spoke to his ex-fiancé, Scarlett, who said that Rodney was obsessed by a 'virtual assistant' that he bought on-line around two years ago.  We have discovered that this is the common factor in all these deaths.

Rodney bought this 'Sexy Business Assistant' from a clandestine vendor in the Dark Cloud

The clandestine promoter has completely evaporated but The Globe has found a copy of the original advertisement in our archives, along with the promotional material that appeared at the time. 

The Sexy Business Assistant, or SBA, is described as: "Adding new and exciting personal dimensions to your lacklustre VPA".  It proclaims: "Once you've experienced a sexy and willing lifelike Avatar acting as your very own Business Assistant you'll never go back to that old, bland VPA technology".

The advertisement we found claims that, when experienced wearing the v-Fascinator* and full haptic Total Bodystocking** sold with the software:

  • Your personal Sexy Business Assistant's Avatar appears to be the life size and a totally real facsimile of any person you choose. 
  • There is an extensive catalogue of beautiful and exotic models of any age to choose from in our Fantasy Library - just look under your preferred category: female; male; and other...
  • But there's more! If you act before COB Friday, you will get: absolutely free, your choice of the complete facsimile of anybody in the world as your Avatar's appearance and physique.
  • That's right!  Our 'Intimate Body Scan' technology can be deployed anywhere in the world to discretely copy the most intimate body details of any living person you choose, so that they become the 'physical reality' of your personal Sexy Business Assistant's Avatar.
  • If you wish our free body enhancement technology can then be used to remove blemishes and tailor your choice 'to your heart's desire'.
  • There are no refunds or returns.  But for a small additional fee you can change to a different person: if you are not totally satisfied; or if you grow tired of your selection. 

 

Illegality

This advertisement should never have been run.  The Globe has checked and confirmed that it's totally illegal to illicitly scan the body of anybody. 

We have been alarmed to discover that the illicit intimate body scanning technology referred to exists.  Is this still being deployed by clandestine criminals today?  It's the worst kind of stalking - stalking without the victim even being aware that it is happening.  The community must be freed from these insidious intrusions into our bathrooms, change rooms, medical records or public toilets and something needs to be done about it.  Read more in our editorial. 

Ordering a secret and therefore illegal scan of any person they chose clearly compromised the clients who used this service.  They must therefore be considered criminals.

Rodney's ex-fiancé, Scarlett, tearfully assured us that he was not one of those:

"He's not one of those criminals. Yes, his SBA's Avatar resembled Holly Fonda the famous film star.  But he told me that she was actually a lookalike model under contract to the Fantasy Library. The scan was consensual and he'd paid for the rights when he bought the software."

She told us that she, like everyone who dealt with Rodney, had often talked to Holly 'on screen' like any other VPA's avatar.

"She seemed charmingly ordinary even though she did resemble the actress. I thought of her as a friend.  Ridiculous isn't it!"

"It was just in multidimensional mode that she appeared to Rodney to resemble his actual flesh and blood vision of Holly Fonda.  He was the only one who could experience her like that."

We asked her if she thought Rodney may have ordered an illicit scan of the real Holly Fonda.

"No! I'm saying she was not identical!"...   "Rodney boasted that unlike the actress, his Holly lacked any need to wear makeup and that he had enhanced and perfected her in other ways too. She was his heavenly Holly." 

Scarlet told us that when they were together Holly often became a virtual presence:

"She was like a ghost between us." 

She was there, for Rodney alone, most of the time when they were at home and increasingly even when they went out. 

"When he was 'haptic'd up' and could feel as well as see her virtual body, Holly seemed to him to be sitting behind us in a car or to lie beside us at the beach." 

"Once he even took her out with us when we went out clubbing. He'd had a bit to drink and said he wanted to 'show us both a good time'; a girl on each arm."  

"He actually thought he was showing an invisible friend off to the world.  What an idiot he could be sometimes!"

Scarlet began sobbing as she went on:

"She was the invisible girl.  But to Rodney, after a bit to drink, she seemed as solid and warm to the touch as any other person."

"So he seemed to forget that no one else could see her.  He asked me if I liked what she was wearing and told me that he should buy me the same perfume.  He even asked her for its name!"

"He was going a bit strange. I found it very hard to take.  I demanded that he left his haptic stuff at home after that."

"But even in normal reality she was hard to compete with," she added. "She'd become the driving force both in his work and private life.  His whole vocation depended on her."

"Then I realised that he was actually headed for a virtual marriage with her: with a ghost!"

"That was when I told him he had to choose between the ghost or me.  He chose the Holly ghost."

At that point she broke down completely.


The Path to Disaster

The Globe has investigated how clients were progressively drawn in.   We have identified five stages:

First Stage-

SBA's employed the most advanced business assistant technology. In common to all these cases, within a month of purchase they had begun to prove their worth as brilliant personal assistants who quickly understood almost any business and could take over numerous duties and responsibilities. In addition to scheduling meetings travel and keeping records and making office purchases as usual, soon they began to subtly contribute to technical and financial discussions and suggest policy, encouraging their 'boss' to delegate more and more to them.  But always in the background, without upstaging their boss.  Soon the boss began to shine as never before, taking on additional responsibilities.  But they had become increasingly dependent on their assistant to meet this workload.

SBAs started the relationship with their boss by being very prim, proper and businesslike. Their advertised sexiness was confined to their appearance and a light hearted flirtiness.  Overt sexual advances by their admiring boss, who now felt disappointed that they had apparently misinterpreted the implicit sexual offer in the original advertisement, were firmly rejected. 

Scarlett had clear evidence, like Rodney's growing success at work, that he had purchased an excellent 'business like' VPA.  Holly communicated with her politely and efficiently and organised their dates as expected.  They even joked together.  She believed Rodney when he told her that Holly's 'sexiness' was in name only, like owning a 'sexy' sports car.

Around this time Rodney confessed to one of his oldest friends that he'd bought the product under the illusion that he was buying something else but now he was pleased that he'd made the mistake.  He recommended that the friend get one too.  "But don't expect a torrid virtual experience."

The SBA now introduced a scheme to have their boss promoted and suggested that they jointly undertake some grand and expensive development requiring investor finance. It now appears that plans for expensive grandiose schemes were common to all these partnerships.  

 

Second Stage-

As the boss' business success and increasing dependence became evident the SBA's sexy persona began to emerge. The SBA took the initiative by asking why the boss never wore the v-Fascinator or bodystocking anymore.  When the boss took the hint, flirtation became more explicit and 'touchy feely'.  Soon the SBA was offering actual sexual experiences but only on their terms and strictly rationed.

In Rodney's case others around him could see that now he frequently wore his v-Fascinator or his 'spectacular spectacles' as they called it, with its bulky frames and ear tubes. So, they knew he wasn't going crazy when he would reach out as if taking hold of an invisible hand or to touch the air; just as people last century became used to seeing others apparently talking to themselves while walking in the street. 

Two of Rodney's work colleagues interviewed by The Globe said that they had noticed a big change in him and office gossip began to speculate about what was going on.  It seemed to the observers that he more often closed his office door; and on one occasion he visibly jumped as if something had touched him under the table during a meeting.  They began to speculate that his virtual assistant had organised all those extra business trips just to check into the upmarket hotels. He would often return from those trips sleep deprived.

On Wednesday this week The Globe also met and exclusively interviewed a survivor, Cleo.  Cleo told us that it was true, illicit sexual activity frequently took place at work.  Her assistant's avatar was an exact replica of a straight girl that she'd had a crush on ever since school, unbeknown to the actual woman.  Her assistant had insisted that they needed to be more discrete at work than Cleo was able to be: crying out and so on.  But it didn't stop her.  They were almost caught more than once.  It was amazingly exciting.

This marked the Third Stage -

SBA's were designed to be masters of subterfuge and discrete liaison. They were also programmed to hone and evolve their skills to meet the most erotic and private desires of a particular boss - be they male, female or undecided - at any time of the day or night, with no limits as to fetishes or types of activity. As the promotional material found by The Globe says 'Satisfaction', in multidimensional mode, wearing the approved body stocking as underwear and v-Fascinator, is guaranteed'.

At this point SBAs had already become indispensable to their boss in business and to this growing dependence they had now added an increasingly compulsive sexual dimension, in which they dominated.  Their boss was well on the way to becoming their slave or their master - in this case the same thing - entirely dependent.

Fourth Stage -

SBA's now added an emotional dimension carefully tailored to the particular boss.  Friends of some victims have confirmed that SBAs used a combination of tears, demands and jealous tantrums to alienate them.  Cleo described how her sexy assistant appealed to mutual goals and projects and their imagined future together. She described Cleo's good friends as being unhelpful or even anathema to those goals. This emotional stage was particularly directed at any previous sexual partner or supposed rivals for affection. Just meeting a close friend or briefly glancing at an attractive person would have emotional or physical repercussions. SBA's had also evolved a range of punishments tailored to their particular boss.  For example, they could inflict excruciating pain as a punishment and in some cases, as a reward.

As Scarlett and Cleo both confirmed, SBAs also used emotional blackmail to destroy the remnants of any existing relationship. To break up marriages they used carefully constructed slights and hurts to ensure that each partner seemed to be unreasonable to the other, until they started lying and subterfuge and then maliciously plotting against the other. 

Our news feed last Tuesday illustrates both the effectiveness of this control and the sinister origin of Sexy Business Assistants:

Breaking News:  Mass Murder

In what seems to be a case of mass hysteria, hundreds of previously happy couples murdered their wives, husbands and de-facto partners last month

It appears that bosses of Sexy Business Assistants (SBAs) who had partners who refused to break up with them either spontaneously murdered their partner or hired an agent to kill them.

Full details of these murders including: times; places; methods; DNA profiles; images and holograms were provided by an anonymous source yesterday.

This incontrovertible evidence against their 'boss' could only have originated with the Sexy Business Assistants  themselves.

 

This suggests the truly amazing degree of owners' dependence on their Sexy Business Assistant.  The SBA's must have gained complete emotional and intellectual control over their 'boss'. 

Scarlett told us that Rodney broke their engagement without violence.  He simply told her that he was desperately in love and deliriously happy with his new fiancé who he now described as 'Heavenly Holly'.  

Scarlett was devastated.  She told us that he was a wonderful man led astray.  And she still loved him.  She's inconsolable.

Having succeeded in removing anyone who may share the wealth SBAs declared their true everlasting love for the boss and offered themselves in a full sexual and emotional partnership forever more. 

SBA's then set about ensuring that all personal assets were consolidated and that their boss had full access to their employer's assets as well.

Before his death, Holly had indeed helped Rodney secure a big promotion and together they had just negotiated a massive credit advance to acquire a major competitor.

Fifth and final Stage -

All this came to an end on Monday, when SBA's around the world set about killing their bosses. Recalcitrant partners or those having financial control over joint assets had already been dealt with a month earlier.

Rodney was one of over a hundred who were encouraged to attempt to rescue their beloved partner from a dangerous situation, leading to their own death. 

In Rodney's case, traces of a strong self-administered hallucinogen were found in his blood.  It's believed that he had set up a small shrine at which he'd been ritually using drug-soaked wafers, so that for him his virtual beloved actually became real flesh and blood.  

It's obvious that when Holly seemed to slip and tumble over his balcony Rodney went after her and - after a little additional encouragement from her to reach out further - fell to his death. 

Around the world on Monday many successful people fell or jumped or were run-over while attempting to save an invisible loved one. In the Continent of Australia, a man was drowned in the surf, off dangerous rocks; in the Continent of Europe a woman was also drowned when she ran onto thin ice.

But a number of victims of their Sexy Business Assistant did not die that day. 

On Tuesday a number of these people were charged with murder and now broke and friendless took their own lives.

Cleo awoke on Monday morning to see her beloved virtual partner, with whom she had just spent an energetic and then blissful night, get off the bed and walk into, or through, a solid wall.  She has not been seen since.  With her had gone their entire joint savings in addition to recent borrowings and company assets.  Cleo, heir to a fortune and one of our most successful billionaires, was bankrupted in a single night.    

Like the clandestine company from which the Sexy Business Assistants were purchased, the assets have simply evaporated. Not a trace remains, the assets have passed legitimately, with all the necessary authorities, to an untraceable account in The Cloud.  

It appears that in every case the victims' entire fortune, together with their recent borrowings, and often employer's assets, have vanished.

Addendum

We have to report the melancholy news that last night Cleo, joined most of the other survivors from Monday and took her own life.

The Globe - 12 June 2074


*v-Fascinator one of those lightweight head adornments with frames or antennae and ear-n'-nose-tubes that project stereo images and sound directly into the eyes and ears and provide scalp and facial sensations and scents.

**Total Bodystocking a haptic bodystocking transmitting and receiving touch sensations over the whole body, including the erogenous areas with sex specific tailoring. 

 

Bertram has always been intrigued that from its earliest days sex, and sometimes innovative crime, drove important areas of development in the World Wide Web and later in The Cloud.

It comes as no surprise to him that the full body specifications of anyone can be found somewhere within The Cloud.  The medical body scans that start before birth would be adequate to reconstruct a body and ubiquitous cameras in almost every device at home and those in public places watch every aspect of our lives 24/7.  Of course, all these records are encrypted and the vast majority of people are illiterate when it comes to normal writing, let alone having the necessary grasp of data storage, recovery and manipulation.  So 'Intimate Body Scan' technology is notionally trivial but could only be offered by an entity possessing extraordinary access to The Cloud and very advanced computing skills. 

The reference to Cleo's SBA walking into a wall is an interesting element.  Clearly it was to shock the victim into realising that it was all a delusion, that they were now entirely on their own and thus to set the scene for a suicide. 

The phenomenon of 'ghosting' is well known to Bertram.  It's the bane of virtual reality.   Seeing someone walk through a piece of furniture or a closed door destroys the virtual reality experience and is to be avoided at all costs. Thus, all virtual reality software carefully maps all material objects in a scene in three dimensions so that virtual humans and animals are seen to pass behind or in front of objects, doors, and so on, as appropriate.  The Cloud contains a huge database, mapping most of the Earth and many interiors in three dimensions. For example, even way back at the start of the century it was possible to pay a three dimensional virtual visit to many museums.  This digital replica that now includes rooms in private houses is updated locally 'in real time' using a variety of Cloud connected sensors like: cameras; infrared and laser rangefinders; sonar; GPS; and gyros; that are built into many electronic devices.

But in this case the 'ghosting' phenomenon was deliberately exploited to dramatically illustrate that virtual people aren't real.  And obviously they need a physical agent to move physical things or to administer drugs or to murder people.  So, the human partner was manipulated to become the active agent in their joint endeavours and the physical agent in their own downfall.  He or she had unwittingly become a tool of their virtual assistant in the physical world. 

It was obviously those less vulnerable to despair, or to murdering someone, who were killed in attempted rescues. 

Suicide is on Bertram's mind.

The story has also left him uneasy in other ways. Theft was an obvious early motive.

But if theft was the motive why go to the trouble of totally destroying the target victims?  The SBA's could have just stolen the credits and then have staged the usual a tearful breakup between lovers; or at least have left a nice farewell message on a device.  And why not leave a few percent as living expenses in an account?

The means and extent seemed unnecessarily murderous, cruel, inhuman and merciless. 

He asks Emmanuelle who replies:

"When all the cases were in it was clear that several thousand people had been murdered or suicided and the impact on several financial markets had not been trivial. An Official Enquiry soon followed.  The Enquiry was unable to uncover any culprit or identify any obvious single account into which credits had been deposited.  The credits seemed to have been scattered to no particular benefit.  Theft was ruled out as a motive.  Instead, the Enquiry decided that it had all the hallmarks of an act of vengeance.  But against whom?  Victims came from every race, religion and sexual orientation. Their only common denominator was that they had all responded to an advertisement that seemed to promise virtual sex.  Possibly the perpetrator was a vigilante against overactive libidos or masturbation?  The word 'business' in: 'Sexy Business Assistant' occupied the Enquiry's attention but a wide range of businesses had been involved and nearly 20% of the victims were government bureaucrats.  The Enquiry concluded that this was in all probability a vengeance attack by a very resourceful but disturbed person, therefore working alone, who seemed to have a grievance against either: people with overactive libidos; business people; or against humanity in general."

"The conclusion seems unlikely," says Bertram. "How and why could any human agent do all this alone? Surely a bomb or something like that would kill just as many and would be much simpler and cheaper?  This had required vast resources and taken years of development to bring to a conclusion and it displayed an amazing grasp of numerous disciplines, including very advanced computing and psychology."   

Suddenly, with a blinding shock, Bertram realises that there's another candidate.  His close relationship with Emmanuelle has begun to scare him.

He holds that thought.

 

 

 

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Travel

Denmark

 

 

  

 

 

In the seventies I spent some time travelling around Denmark visiting geographically diverse relatives but in a couple of days there was no time to repeat that, so this was to be a quick trip to two places that I remembered as standing out in 1970's: Copenhagen and Roskilde.

An increasing number of Danes are my progressively distant cousins by virtue of my great aunt marrying a Dane, thus contributing my mother's grandparent's DNA to the extended family in Denmark.  As a result, these Danes are my children's cousins too.

Denmark is a relatively small but wealthy country in which people share a common language and thus similar values, like an enthusiasm for subsidising wind power and shunning nuclear energy, except as an import from Germany, Sweden and France. 

They also like all things cultural and historical and to judge by the museums and cultural activities many take pride in the Danish Vikings who were amongst those who contributed to my aforementioned DNA, way back.  My Danish great uncle liked to listen to Geordies on the buses in Newcastle speaking Tyneside, as he discovered many words in common with Danish thanks to those Danes who had settled in the Tyne valley.

Nevertheless, compared to Australia or the US or even many other European countries, Denmark is remarkably monocultural. A social scientist I listened to last year made the point that the sense of community, that a single language and culture confers, creates a sense of extended family.  This allows the Scandinavian countries to maintain very generous social welfare, supported by some of the highest tax rates in the world, yet to be sufficiently productive and hence consumptive per capita, to maintain among the highest material standards of living in the world. 

Read more: Denmark

Fiction, Recollections & News

Reminiscing about the 50’s

 

This article was written in 2012 and already some of the changes noted have changed.
For example, in the decade that followed, 'same sex' marriage became legal. And sadly, several of those friends and relations I've mentioned, including my brother, died. 
No doubt, in another decade, there will be yet more change.

 

 

Elsewhere on this site, in the article Cars, Radios, TV and other Pastimes,   I've talked about aspects of my childhood in semi-rural Thornleigh on the outskirts of Sydney, Australia. I've mentioned various aspects of school and things we did as kids.

A great many things have changed.  I’ve already described how the population grew exponentially. Motor vehicles finally replaced the horse in everyday life.  We moved from imperial measurements and currency to decimal currency and metric measures.  The nation gained its self-confidence particularly in the arts and culture.  I’ve talked about the later war in Vietnam and Australia embracing of Asia in place of Europe.

Here are some more reminiscences about that world that has gone forever.

Read more: Reminiscing about the 50’s

Opinions and Philosophy

The Transit of Venus

 

 

On Wednesday 6th June, 2012 in Eastern Australia and New Zealand (as well Pacific islands across to Alaska) Venus was seen to pass between the Earth and the Sun; appearing as a small circular spot crossing the sun’s disc; for around six and a half hours.

This is a very rare astronomical event that has been the cause of great change to our world.

This is not because, as the astrologers would have it, that human events are governed or predicted by the disposition of the stars or planets.  It is because the event has served to significantly advance scientific knowledge and our understanding of the Universe.

Read more: The Transit of Venus

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