The Mushroom Philosophy of Life

Some people say life is a war.

Some say it's a party.

Some say it's a journey.

Today I think it's a mushroom:

everything gets so busy, you've heaps to do and you never know how you'll get anything done. Then, one day: pouff it's all finished.

A little while later it's grown into tenfold as much to do as before then - pouff!. And so the cycle continues.

The human brain. . .

ehT namuh si a lufrednow gniht


e
h
T

n
a
m
u
h

d
n
i
m

s
i

a

l
u
f
r
e
d
n
o
w

g
n
i
h
t

It's amazing what one can work out. Which sentence did you find easier to read? I found the second one easier, I think because I didn't have predefined expectations.

2 rite or not 2 rite

(Misquoted from Shakespeare's Hamlet)

Is SMS language (cu l8r, etc.) acceptable English? Some people say not. English should be correct and formal. Others seem to think it's the only form of English in existence. Many English essays for school and final exams have contained terms like "u" for "you" and "2" in place of "to". If so many people are using it, how can we say it's not accepted? On the other hand, as long as there are objections how can we say it is accepted? My take on it is that it's not accepted - yet. SMS language is growing into a widely used style of writing and I think it will be accepted for its ease of use, but I don't think it will ever replace "standard" English - after all "2" could be "to", "too" or "two" and "u" could mean "ewe". Perhaps we will have two Englishes in the future. Who knows?

National Chlorine Plant

Today was science field trip to NCP (National Chlorine Plant) day. We donned our jeans and school shoes (fashion deluxe, but that's regulation apparal), lab coats, hard hats and safety goggles. With emergency respirators and visitor ID cards tucked safely into our pockets we embarked on our tour of the plant.

The purification of brine [NaCl(aq)] is much more complicated than you'd think. We saw brine reactors, settling tanks, supersaturators and more as we scribbled down notes for our portfolio project. Having climbed what must be over 100 stairs to see brine purified to less than 10ppm we trekked through the plant to see the ion exchange towers. Finally we got to see the electrolysis cells themselves.

Quick check before we go in: any pacemakers? The electromagnetism could cause malfunctioning. Once the class had figured out what a pacemaker is, they assured our guide that we could move on and we observed the cells. Excitement! Well, actually there wasn't that much to see, but it was pretty interesting. They feed a massive amount of electricity into that plant. As well as the mountains (10m high?) of salt that we saw. Each day they use hindreds of times what a household uses in a month. Tens of thousands of kilowatt hours - not that they have to worry about load-shedding, being the only provider of chlorine for water sanitation in SA.

All in all, pretty cool. I've never seen that much salt before. I've never seen that much industrial equipment before either. It was quite an experience. Awe-some! I had fun!

Real Evil

Sometimes we seem to come under the attack of real evil. It's something like a run of bad luck, but I think it's more than that. Things go wrong. Fixes that ought to work don't help, or just make things worse. Even praying doesn't seem to help. Somebody told me:

"If praying doesn't seem to help, imagine what would have happened if you hadn't prayed."

I guess I just need to keep on praying. Experience makes us stronger. So, I am being strengthened.

Thundershower

Thunder claps as
lightning cracks the sky
opening a path
for water to sluice down.