This yodelling video is currently the number one trending video on youtube. I am unclear on whether it is for Switzerland or a bigger region. A small tractor is driving up a Swiss Alpine road with a group of yodelers sitting in a trailer. A car with Ma Cherie playing on the radio overtakes and the yodelers start to yodel the song. This video is on the Canton de Valais Youtube account.
Hydroelectric Power
Sixty percent of the of hydroelectric power produced in Switzerland comes from Valais with its 26 dams of which La Grande Dixence is one. They have French, English and German versions of this video.
From one side of the lake to the next by Pedalo
To keep the theme of renewable energy we have another project, to cross the lake in a solar powered Pedalo. It’s in French. I thought it was a project with an environmental goal at first.
Flying over Valais
Continuing with the theme of environmentally friendly activities Parapente is another. It’s a nice way to see such a pleasant landscape, especially if you find ascending air currents that prolong the flight.
Skydiving without the parachute
A few weeks ago after the Via Ferrata de la Farinetta near Saillon, I posted an image or two to Instagram and RealFly Sion liked the image. They’re the first indoor Sky diving simulator in Switzerland. It provides people with the opportunity to try skydiving without freefalling thousands of metres. This is an experience I would eventually like to try. I’m used to having the sensation of flying in a similar position underwater so trying it in a strong current of air would be fun.
Switzerland is currently following a flawed approach to ending a pandemic, because rather than taking a pro-active approach to preventing outbreaks in various communities across Switzerland they are doing the opposite. They are ignoring the problem until it flares up enough that they can no longer pretend to see it. Today the number of cases has reached 6000 a day for the whole of Switzerland.
A rational and moral government, within a healthy democracy, as we have seen in pandemics since the SARS crisis and others, have done everything to contain the threat, but also to prevent it from spreading. They have done everything they could to contain the threat, and to keep people safe.
During this pandemic it feels as though countries have failed to have the foresight to keep people safe, but also the political strength to resist populism. This pandemic feels as if it is as much about populism, news as entertainment, as it is about a pandemic that could be controlled, if only governments could stand up to pressure groups. In a healthy democracy, and I’m speaking about the issues across Europe, England and other countries, we see that politicians let the virus spread, without seeming to fear that they will lose power, and this seems absurd.
I would expect politicians, in healthy democracies, with healthy media landscapes, to do everything that they can to ensure that their citizens are safe, and that their economies return to normal. By normal I don’t mean with masks, distancing, and covid passes. I mean that the virus is eradicated, and that life is back to the pre-pandemic normal.
For now it feels as though we are stuck in this pandemic for seasons, or even years more.
An event sent an e-mail today, about needing volunteers for an event in January but I don’t see how it will be able to go ahead when we have gone from 1000 cases, to 2000, to 3000 and now to 6000 within a few weeks. Politicians in Switzerland refuse to commit to vaccinating people beneath a certain age, and refuse to acknowledge the trends that we see in other countries. They are benefiting from people’s habit of not reading international news like some of us do.
If I thought the Swiss government was trying to end I would still not be traveling, and I would still be using the pandemic as a reason not to travel, but as things stand, and with the current Swiss attitude, we stand no chance of the pandemic ending for a while, so we might as well take liberties that would be absurd under a different government.
Liberties like road trips.
We need a change of leadership in Switzerland, to include people who use science, and have the courage to stand up against interest groups, to ensure that Switzerland may exit the pandemic sooner, rather than later.
Today I spent some time expanding my knowledge of JSON because understanding how JSON works, and how it works, opens doors. Every social network allows you to download your file as a JSON file. If you learn how to use JSON you can then re-use your data on a site of your own design, according to your own moral code.
WordPress and Custom HTML
I was also playing with static pages from the older parts of my website and trying to bring them into wordpress and for now it half, rather than fully works. My goal is to be able to have The Romans section with one look, the Geography section with another and the Environmental Systems with a third, to give just two examples. I found something promising but I haven’t understood it fully yet. It is a work in progress.
A Centralised Web and WEB 3.0
People are arguing that the world wide web needs to be decentralised, to become web 3.0 and yet the services we use are more and more centralised. Google, Amazon and Microsoft all have data centres and are getting a stranglehold on hosting and cloud solutions. Solutions like those by Infomaniak are much harder to learn about because they are still a small player, in contrast to the giants.
Facebook went down due to a misconfiguration error and two topics come to mind. The first is that Facebook shouldn’t have all three services on the same backbone because it becomes a single point of failure, and that was precisely what the Internet was designed to avoid. The second issue is that behemoths like Facebook should not exist, because they monopolise too much. When they went down IM went down for many, image sharing went down for many, and discussion groups went down for many. For a slice in time the world had to think of an alternative to communicate. Even Facebook had to.
This demonstrates that the Web, when it is too centralised, as it is via Facebook, has become fragile. I don’t mention Google, Amazon or Microsoft because they are giants, but they help the little guys be seen. Facebook doesn’t. It likes to capture and keep its traffic. We need to keep working on personal websites, to keep the web from being to vulnerable to outages.
And Finally – A Rainy Walk
As is usually the case, I did not set out on my walk in the rain, expecting to get rained on. I set off because although the weather app said there would be rain, did not say that it would be heavy, so I set off and for most of the walk the weather was nice. Not t-shirt weather nice, but bits of sun, and not too cold.
During the walk I took the Sigg original bottle. I put it in my coat pocket and forgot about it. By this I mean that it’s so small and light that it doesn’t get in the way of walking at full speed for an hour or two. It’s a good, small bottle, for when you want a drink, but you’re not in the middle of a heatwave.
Translated from French, Sport the nicest of meetings reminds me of the legend that is told in Il Nuovo Cinema Paradiso. In Il Nuovo Cinema Paradiso we hear about the guy who waits outside a woman’s window for one hundred days and nights to show his devotion to her, and in the end he loses interest.
This is following the same theme except that rather than a man lusting after a woman it is the other way around. Instead of a woman using crappy dating apps and other rubbish she sees someone she finds visually appealing and so decides to take up running. At first she is slow but with time she gets fitter and she can keep with the group for longer and longer.
Eventually she excels beyond the group and she pulls alongside the guy, just long enough to make us believe in the stereotypical ending but nope, she pulls ahead and continues running. You take up sport because you want to seduce but eventually your passion for the sport takes over.
What I learned after three weeks with a cat is that they’re easy to take care of. Cleaning up the litter tray takes seconds and providing them with food two to three times a day is simple. It’s also simple to keep them entertained. A ball of string on a string and a laser pointer are great toys. They also enjoy shredding rolls of toilet paper so it’s good to be careful.
They like to go on a balcony and watch birds and they like to sit and “watch” a pipe. Don’t be tricked though. They are not watching the pipe. They are listening to the noises as people open and close taps, and as the pressure changes within the pipes make noise. I know because I tapped on the pipe and saw the cat stare intently at the source of the noise at his eye level.
If you’re planning to do anything then it’s a good idea to lock the balcony door. If he gets out he will stare at birds on rooftops for hours. As he’s happy to do this for hours at a time you may find yourself procrastinating for much longer than you would like.
Paradoxically this same cat will then nap during the afternoon and evening. He likes to go on the shelf where I have my clothes. He likes to investigate every bag and he is curious about everything he can find.
He loves investigating the lights that he sees on the ceilings during the day and night. I don’t mean incandescent bulbs. I mean the reflection that comes from cars, trucks and other vehicles as their windshields reflect light. He also likes the lights from these vehicles at night. He will sprint after, and try to catch them if they are in range.
Cats are independent and they don’t need your company for long. They’d be just as happy to see you for 20 minutes as you bring them food and then disappear, as to see you every few hours. If you spend too much time with a cat he will no longer care.
Keeping a window open so that the car can go onto the balcony and come back is unpleasant in cold weather, and those hours of exploration will result in you wearing clothes as if you were sitting outdoors for hours.
He comes in to have a drink of water and then he goes back out to explore. After a few more minutes he comes back in, meows and has some food before heading back outside again. This goes on for hours until it’s time for the next nap or you decide that it’s time for the human to go out.
I know that you can’t compare taking care of a toddler and a cat but I’d say that taking care of a toddler is more rewarding despite being much messier. You can play with a toddler and you can teach them new things. When you speak to them you see that they understand what you’re saying.
After three weeks of cat sitting I know two things. The first is that I am able to serve and it will live normally. The second is that they’re so independent that if you’re looking for an empathetic being you’re better served by being an uncle.
On Tuesday evening I go back to my normal life and we will see whether I miss having the company and responsibility of a cat. It’s easy to look after a cat. They take care of themselves. Being woken at 6-7 in the morning is fine.
Fearless is a documentary produced by Netflix, exploring the life of bull riders that come from Brazil, to the US to compete in 26 competitions to see who is the best bull rider. This documentary is interesting because, for the most part it is in Portuguese with English subtitles.
Big in Brazil
In Brasil there is an event Barretoswhere 900,000 people, at the time the documentaries were made, go to watch bull riders compete against each other. Bull riding is a unique sport because a person tries to hold on to a bucking bull as it tries to throw the rider off. The rider gets point for style, but so does the bull. If the bull throws the rider off within eight seconds then the rider gets zero points. If the rider stays on then they can get up to 90 points.
Dangerous
The sport is very dangerous because it’s a small human being, on a big bull. They can get thrown and land on their head and break their neck, trampled, headbutted, and more. They can get their arms or legs caught. They risk injury in a multitude of ways. The paradox is that it lasts for eight seconds. All of that danger and risk, for an activity that lasts a few seconds.
If you look at the stats you can see how often bull riders are thrown off their bulls. It’s impressive to see that people fall from two or more meters onto the ground and often walk away. it’s interesting to watch the helpers get in front of the bull to block its path when the rider is bucked off.
It’s a strange sport because the humans are injured, rather than the bulls. The bulls are fine aftre the competition.
Glimpses of How They Train
An aspect of the documentaries that I like is that we see that it’s not just that they ride bulls, and that is it. They train. We see a five or so year old child try riding a calf and get thrown several times. “Do you want to ride again?” “yes”. We also see a slightly older girl practice riding on the barrel. “Stay on, don’t let go” as the barrel mounted on a spring goes forwards and backwards, and from side to side.
We also see how the adults train, how they ride the grown up equivalent of a rodeo bull, how they react, how they “dance” to keep their balance and to negate the movements made by the bull to throw them off.
Fear
Although the documentary series is called Fearless it explores the riders and how they deal with fear, injury and continue riding. They explore how the riders are confident, until they are injured, and how they recover from the injury and it’s physiological and psychological effects. They use the analogy of broken eggs, and how one or two riders get injured, but seem unphased.
One rider speaks about how he retired, and never once missed bull riding. Another questions whether to retire at the end of the season.
And Finally
I am familiar with Razeteurs, bull fighting and the Running of the Bulls. I have even witnessed the running of the bulls in a small village. Bull riding is one version I have never really thought about, because in Europe Bullfighting, bull running and Razeteurs are more common. I watched this documentary by fluke, and I like the subject matter.
It explores family, bull riding in the US and Brazil, about family, life as a migrant in the US, with little to no English, and more. It’s a good subject matter. It is well filmed, well edited, with good use of event commentator and bull rider interviews.
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