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Travel

Greece and Türkiye 2024

 

 

 

 

In May 2024 Wendy and I travelled to Europe and after a string of flights landed in Berlin. By now we are quite familiar with that city and caught public transport to Emily and Guido's apartment to be greeted by our grandchildren and their parents.  I have previously reported on their family, so, suffice it to say, we had a very pleasant stay and even got out to their country place again.

From Berlin we flew to Greece and had an initial few days in Athens, before returning to Berlin, then back to Greece, a week later, to join a cruise of the Greek islands and Türkiye (just one port).

At the end of the cruise we spent a self-guided week on Crete. We finished our European trip with a week in Bulgaria, followed by a week in the UK, before flying back to Sydney.

Read more: Greece and Türkiye 2024

Fiction, Recollections & News

The U-2 Incident

 

 

 

In 1960 the Russians shot down an American U-2 spy plane that was overflying and photographing their military bases.  The U-2 Incident was big news when I was in High School and I remember it quite clearly. 

The Incident forms the background to Bridge of Spies a 2015 movie, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance from a screenplay written by Matt Charman together with Ethan and Joel Coen that centres on these true events. 

Spielberg and the Cohen Brothers.  Who could miss it?

 

 

Read more: The U-2 Incident

Opinions and Philosophy

World Population – again and again

 

 

David Attenborough hit the headlines yet again in 15 May 2009 with an opinion piece in New Scientist. This is a quotation:

 

‘He has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, a think tank on population growth and environment with a scary website showing the global population as it grows. "For the past 20 years I've never had any doubt that the source of the Earth's ills is overpopulation. I can't go on saying this sort of thing and then fail to put my head above the parapet."

 

There are nearly three times as many people on the planet as when Attenborough started making television programmes in the 1950s - a fact that has convinced him that if we don't find a solution to our population problems, nature will:
"Other horrible factors will come along and fix it, like mass starvation."

 

Bob Hawke said something similar on the program Elders with Andrew Denton:

 

Read more: World Population – again and again

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