Month: February 2014

The Luhimba Project

The Luhimba Project   (UK Registered Charity 1084849)   

Luhimba Project on Facebook

LUHIMBA is a remote village in rural southern Tanzania, East Africa. It currently has a population of 3,500 villagers who live in scattered clusters of dwellings. Their houses are of two main types – mud huts with grass roofs, or constructions of home-produced bricks with corrugated sheet roofing.

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There is no mains electricity or piped water to the village.  The only electricity is provided by generators and solar panels on a few of the houses and community buildings. Otherwise lighting is by oil lamps. The villagers fetch water from pumps. Untreated surface water was freely drunk, with consequent high rates of water borne disease particularly amongst children.

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Rudolf Diesel 1858- 1913

Rudolf Diesel

The first production passenger car equipped with a diesel engine was the Mercedes 260 D (1936), widely used as a taxi due to its efficiency and reliability. Until that time, diesel engines had been considered too slow and heavy compared to the automobile petrol engine. In industry and in trucks, trains and buses, the diesel engine was well established. However, it was many years until the gradual disuse of steam engines. At the time they were seen as  inefficient, heavy, and complicated in operation. Diesel engines, named after inventor Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel, found their way into every sector of the transport industry.

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The Set of the Sails (1949)

Rating: ★★★★★

I like brand new, shiny books as much as anyone. But every now and again an old, scruffy paperback a minute away from the rubbish bin proves to be a real gem. Such was ‘The Set of the Sails’, the 1949 autobiography of Alan Villiers (1903- 1982).

    The Set of the Sails (Pan paperback-condition as found)
The Set of the Sails (Pan paperback-condition as found)

Alan Villiers was the second son of Australian poet and union leader Leon Villiers. The young Villiers grew up on the docks watching the merchant ships come in and out of the Port of Melbourne and longed for the day on which he too could sail out to sea. Continue reading The Set of the Sails (1949)

Thomas Quick: The Making of a Serial Killer (2013)

Rating: ★★★★★

Råstam had one question for Sweden’s most abominable serial killer. And the answer turned out to be far more terrifying than the man himself . . .

Thomas Quick

Walter Mitty Syndrome  is a phrase occasionally used by psychiatrists and others in describing a person who prefers a fantasy world to reality, particularly if others consider him a failure, but when the potential for real harm results from his behaviour, it becomes a whole lot more sinister than the fictional stories.

“The desire to want to be somebody important without expending any effort, or making up stories to get attention is actually fairly common,” says Dr Colin Gill, a psychologist and expert on the nature of identity. “Of course, we only hear of high-profile cases such as these, when people get caught out. I suspect there may well be thousands of people telling these kinds of lies or leading double lives.”

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Dating Israel’s first Camels

Radio-carbon dating of camel bones discovered in the Arava Valley has challenged Biblical accuracy, that is, according to reports based on an article published in Tel Aviv the journal of Tel Aviv University‘s  Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures. In recent weeks, this has, as might be expected, attracted media attention.

 Arabian camels

The claim is also made that this anachronism is direct proof that the texts were compiled perhaps centuries after the events described..

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