Scouting

I am a Scout -- formerly of Woy Woy Sea Scouts, and now part of another troop, after moving. Few people know exactly how many Scouts there are in the world, and few people know just how young the entire Scout organization is.

First of all, let's make this clear: there are two Scout organizations, actually far more, if you include the organizations like the World Organization of Independent Scouts and even more if you include Scout-like organizations like the Royal Rangers. By far the largest and oldest Scout organization is the World Organization of the Scout Movement, or WOSM. These Scouts are called Scouts or Boy Scouts. The second largest is the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS). In countries like America where the regular WOSM-associated Scout movement only admits boys to their Scouts, the Girl Guides are called Girl Scouts, and the WAGGGS Scout movement tends to be far larger. In countries where there is only Girl Guides, Girl Guides are simply called "Scouts", and the Scout movement admits boys to their Scouts.

Needless to say, WOSM is larger than WAGGGS... by 30 million Scouts. There are roughly 53 million Scouts in the world, not counting adults. That's about 1% of the entire world population, and 2.5% of everybody under the age of 18.


It's amazing how new Scouts is. Far from being thousands of years old, both Scouts and Guides were started by one man, at the beginning of the 20th century. The man in question was Robert Baden-Powell, whose name is well known in the Scouting society. Baden-Powell served as a lieutenant-general in the British army, and was the garrison commander at the Siege of Mafeking in the Second Boer War. When in the army, Baden-Powell wrote a manual, Aids to Scouting, to be used to train soldiers. By the time the Mafeking siege had been lifted, Aids to Scouting was being used by teachers and youth organizations. Baden-Powell decided to rewrite the book so it could be used by children, and held a camp for 20 boys on Brownsea Island on 1907 to test out his ideas in the book. 

The book itself, Scouting for Boys, was a roaring success. Boys and girls spontaneously formed Scout troops around the world, and within a year, there were almost 25,000 Scouts in the world, 11,000 of which turned up at the Crystal Palace Rally in London in 1909. The Girl Guides movement was formalized under Baden-Powell's sister, Agnes, with help from Baden-Powell himself.

In 1920, the first World Scout Jamboree took place. Jamborees are massive events which happen every three or four years, and involve all the Scouts in a country or even the world. In 1922, there were almost a million Scouts world wide. In 1939 there were 3 million.

Scouts is for ages 11 to 18; however, Cub Scouts was quickly added for years 8 to 12. In some countries, such as Australia, there is Rover Scouts for ages 18 to 26. Some countries even cut Scouts in half, leaving Scouts for ages 11 to 15 and Venture Scouts for ages 14 to 18. The Scout movement has long ago become the largest youth organization in the world. And it's still growing.

Moving to Brisbane

You may notice there have been few posts over the past few months, and that is because I have just finished moving to Brisbane, Queensland from Woy Woy, New South Wales.

It wasn't the longest move I ever did. (The longest was moving from America to Australia, which took four months). It wasn't the shortest, either. (We once moved another house on the same block; that move was so short, I carried my own stuff from one house to the other). However, the move was not short; almost 1,500 kilometers between houses, two days on the road, six days with essentially nothing but our sleeping bags, two and a half weeks with everything packed in boxes, and two weeks after moving with bad Internet.

This was the first move of my life I did not want to do. I had been moving on a yearly basis since I was born, and every two years I had moved to a different state or country. Instead of being sick of it, I felt quite comfortable. However, after ten houses and seven changes of postal address, at the age of thirteen feeling good not having moved in three years, I was sick of it. I didn't want to move to Brisbane.

I've changed my mind since then. Brisbane is a very nice place operated by a local government which actually does things. I live next to Mount Coot -- tha, a mountain which breaks up the city sprawl and gives astounding views of Brisbane from its summit. It's about as good as Woy Woy.

The best thing is, I think we just might stay in Brisbane. My father finally has a good job, and mother actually likes Brisbane. Whatever happens, I just don't want to move again...

Explorations of the solar system

For a long time, people have looked at the stars. Ancient civilisations, such as the Greeks and the Romans, have noticed that five objects in the sky move around. The Greeks have named these objects ἀστήρ πλανήτης(aster planetes), "wandering star". They had a name for each of the planets(Stilbon, Phosphoros, Pyroeis, Phaethon and Phainon), and gave each one a god to which it was sacred to(Hermes, Aphrodite, Ares, Cronus, and Zeus), but the Romans merely named these five after their versions of these gods(Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn). When Uranus was discovered in the 19th century, it was named after the Greek god of the sky, but Neptune was traditionally named after a Roman god, the Roman version of Poseidon.

The only planet we know that has life on it is Earth, and even though it is right under our feet, it took a long time to discover! The ancient Greeks were probably the first to find that that the world was round, more than 2000 years before Columbus. They called it Gaia.

The far side of the moon, photographed by
Apollo 16. Luna 3 was the first spacecraft
 to provide a picture of it.

Earth, as we know, has only one moon, which has a volume of approximately 1/64 of the Earth's. In 1959, the first spacecraft to fly close to the moon, Luna 1, and the first spacecraft to impact the moon, Luna 2, made their missions to the rocky world. A decade later, Neil Armstrong and his crew made the first mission to bring people to the surface of the moon. Two robotic rovers went there in the 1970s.

People have also turned their attention to Mars. The first rover that landed(Sort of, it crashed) on Mars was Mars 2, launched by the USSR in the 1970s. The Viking program was the first to successfully land and operate rovers and landers on Mars. People might be sent there sometime after 2025.

Callisto, one of Jupiter's moons.

The outer planets(Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) have been closely photographed by the Pioneer, Voyager, Cassini and New Horizons probes. The Voyager probes have gathered information from both gas giants(Jupiter and Saturn), and are still functioning. I will not write anything else about the Voyager probes in this post, because it is about the solar system, and they have both crossed the border into interstellar space.

In the 19th century, five new planets were discovered, Vesta, Juno, Ceres, Pallas, and Pluto. They were all named after Roman gods, due to tradition, and the first four are all in between Mars and Jupiter. These bodies were all reclassified by 2006, Vesta, Juno, Ceres and Pallas as asteroids in the Asteroid belt, and Pluto as a dwarf planet.

At July 14, 2015, New Horizons took close-up pictures of Pluto for the first time, after nine years and seven months of travel. I think these will really change peoples' idea of Pluto. The pictures show that it is yellowish in colour, and displays a big heart-shaped impression on its surface.

Above: An image of Pluto, based on pictures
 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Below: The new Pluto.

The Jenolan Caves

There has ought to be somewhere -- a range of mountains, or a forested island -- near every city, where city people take walks in the forest, or see interesting attractions from wonderful views, or go fly fishing, or canoeing, or simply tour around and see all the sights. For New York, the place is -- I don't know, where do you New Yorkers go for a day out -- maybe the Appalachians or something -- anyway, Sydney has such a place, and it's called the Blue Mountains.

I have already introduced the mountain range on several occasions. It's a gigantic mountain range, and backs up the suburbs of Sydney. It's about five times the size of Sydney itself. The Blue Mountains are not mountains, but a plateau dissected by deep, cliff-lined gorges and valleys, and box canyons half a kilometer high. The southern reach of the Blue Mountains is made of granite and slate, and is composed of deep gorges with steep slopes topped with ranges.

In this southern part is a layer of limestone, a hard kind of rock, made of animal remains, in which beautiful caves form. Some of the oldest and largest caves in the world are located in the southwestern Blue Mountains, including the Jenolan Caves, an immense and spectacular cave system.

Legend has it that the Jenolan Caves were discovered when an English settler was trying to track down an escaped convict who had stolen his horse. The settler found the escaped convict, and walked further down the valley to find himself surrounded by towering limestone arches. A road was hastily constructed from the farming village of Oberon to get tourists to this new attraction.

Soon enough, a dip in the ground was uncovered near Carlotta Arch, one of the grander limestone arches. At the same time, caves, namely the Nettle cave and the Arch cave, were found in an arch called the Devil's Coach House. These caves were covered in dirt, however, and did not have stalactites or stalagmites. In the dip in the ground, pioneers found the entrance to what they called the Elder cave. This cave was very deep, and covered in limestone formations.

One of the explorers found out the cave was a passageway down to an underground river and an arch called the Grand Arch. After this discovery, more caves were found, including the River, Orient, Ribbon, Temple of Baal, Pool of Cerberus, Imperial, Chifely, Jubilee, Lucas, Red, Aladdin, and Mammoth caves. More caves are found all the time.

All the caves above are toured regularly. The Orient is the most beautiful cave. The River cave is the longest. The Elder, Mammoth, and Aladdin caves are used for adventure tours. The Lucas cave is the biggest. And so on.

The Jenolan caves are the largest cave system I have ever been to. Not that I have been to many caves; there are caves in America that are bigger. However, the Jenolan caves is also the largest cave system in Australia, and that's saying something.

Vivid Sydney

    Vivid Sydney is an annual event held at many places in the city of Sydney from May 22 to June 8. It features many light, music and ideas events.
    My family went to Sydney on Monday, May 25, and we did a short walk around The Rocks and Circular Quay. Most of the events start at exactly 6.00 pm.

    During Vivid Sydney, many artworks are displayed, lit up by neon lights, LEDs, and glowing fibres, accompanied by the amazing light shows projected onto the southern pylon of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Customs House, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Argyle Cut, and the sails of the Sydney Opera House.
    Me and my family walked from the Tree Of Light, which is a tree lit up by a huge number of LEDs, to Enchanted Sydney, a projection of images shown on the side of one of Sydney's buildings. Along with all of the artworks, LEDs light up buildings in the skyline, and ships in the harbour.

    One of the first artworks on the trail was Jigsaw. It looks like a group of flashing and fading jigsaw-shaped tiles...from a distance. When the viewer steps closer, he or she may see patterns and details that are not visible from farther away. Jigsaw was built at the quayside, close to the Harbour Bridge.
    During the walk around the artworks, I noticed that the events have changed since 2014. For example, 'A Light Year Ahead' was described as "a space odyssey" last year. Now it appears as a mix of bubbles and strange shapes. Nevertheless, it is a stunning artwork, a cube made of one open side, three screens, and a mirrored floor and ceiling, creating an amazing display.

    Argyle Cut is a huge sandstone tunnel in The Rocks, Sydney. It has a very wide ceiling and during May 22-June 8, 7.00PM-Midnight, The ceiling is used as a projection surface for videos filmed for BBC Earth's Life Story, a six-part series about nature narrated by David Attenborough.



    Two of my favourite Vivid Light events were Enchanted Sydney, projected on the Sydney Customs House, and Mechanised Colour Assemblage, projected on the MCA. They both feature a huge variety of colours, shapes and sounds that blend together to form captivating scenes. The images fit into the structure and architecture of the two buildings, making them look real and three-dimensional. If you want to see one of these light shows yourself, you could search 'Enchanted Sydney Vivid Sydney' or 'Mechanised Colour Assemblage Vivid Sydney' on YouTube, or if you live around, I suggest going to Vivid Sydney. It is really worth having to get through those crowds!

Everest, part II

This article is based on the article "Everest" which was written earlier this month.

From the first ascent of Everest, the numbers of people climbing the mountain quickly increased. Only a decade after the first ascent, an expedition was led up Everest via the incredibly dangerous west ridge route. When forty people made it to the top in one day, a controversy began. Soon enough, the Nepali government closed Everest to all but four expeditions, for only one year. During that year, all the climbers climbed up the north side of Everest, which was thought to be more dangerous. The Nepali government let more groups up Everest, and the next year on Everest was busier than ever.

Even with an increasing amount of people climbing Everest, there have been several controversies since. The root of the first and longest-running controversy was a storm in 1996. Sixteen expeditions were getting ready to climb Everest from the south side that year. Guided expeditions were competing with each other, trying to get the most clients possible to the top of the world.

Three expeditions were on high camp on the night of May 9. There was a noncommercial Taiwanese expedition, and two guided expeditions. The Sherpas were slow stringing fixed lines up the southeast ridge, and it took hours to fix lines to the top of the Hillary Step, a step of rock half an hour below the summit.
The earliest climbers reached the summit by 1:00, which would normally have been a safe turnaround time. The bulk of the climbers summited around 2:00, but people kept on arriving at the summit until 4:00.

Very few people were back in their tents at high camp by the time the storm struck. It came from the south, and was the remnants of a typhoon in the bay of Bengal. It came very quickly, and swept in from below.

A group of people arrived at the flats of the South Col, where the high camp was, but they could not see the tents and quickly got lost. Amazingly strong wind ripped across the South Col, countering the lost climbers, who had just found out where camp was, in the direction of the wind. Wind chill was minus 100 that night. Soon the group collapsed behind a boulder, unable to go further. Two people in the group succumbed to frostbite, one of which died, and one of which was left for dead.

Meanwhile, at the Hillary Step, three climbers were in a desperate struggle for their lives. The climbers included Rob Hall, the leader of a commercial expedition. Two other climbers died of unknown reasons. Rob Hall stayed alive, in the storm, for twenty-four hours before dying of frostbite. Below, at a place called the Balcony, the two other expedition leaders were dying of frostbite. The noncommercial expedition leader, Makalu Gau, was rescued later but lost all of his fingers and toes.

After the disaster, the press tried to blame people for the disaster. The press tried to blame Rob Hall, who had not reinforced the turnaround time at the day, Doug Hansen, a climber crazy with summit fever, who died with Hall, and Anatoli Boukreev, a Russian guide who climbed Everest without supplemental oxygen, and descended far ahead of his teammates. The press did not realize many important things, like how the lack of oxygen must have acted on people's minds that day. Boukreev also spearheaded a rescue attempt for the lost climbers on the South Col, which he could not have done without rest.

There have been several controversies since. The most famous of them circled around the death of David Sharp. Sharp climbed the mountain alone, without Sherpa support. What exactly happened was unknown, but some hours after Sharp began his push for the summit, a group of climbers walked by a climber that was dying of frostbite just below the summit. The group of climbers did not stop to rescue him, as they simply thought he was a member of a commercial expedition that had already made the fateful decision to abandon him.

After more than fifty climbers had passed the dying climber, very few people tried to help him, and many of these people were from noncommercial expeditions. Gradually, the climber's legs curled from frostbite, and he died. Only later did anyone find out he was climbing alone.

A little later in the season, at 26 May, Australian climber was found alive after being declared dead the day before. These people sacrificed their own summit attempt to rescue Hall, and he later made a full recovery. This shows that people attempting the summit should value other's lives over their summit.

Where are all these places?

This is a brief overview of the Southeast Ridge Route of Everest:

Base camp is at the head of a valley which reaches deep into the Everest massif. Climbers fly to the base of the valley and trek for ten days to the foot of Everest.

The first obstacle out of base camp is the Khumbu Icefall. This part of the glacier, sometimes named "suicide popcorn ball" because of the maze of shifting seracs, is the most deadly part of the mountain. Camp I is just above the Icefall.

Above the icefall is the Western Cwm, or valley, which is called the "valley of silence". Camp II, or advanced base camp, is a very safe, provisioned camp. Above the camp is the Lhotse Face, which is the subject of frequent avalanches. Halfway up the face is the steep, barren Camp III. At the top is the South Col, a rocky, windy area of flat ground. Climbers normally begin their summit push from here, but Edmund Hillary set up another camp, at the Balcony, which is three hours above the South Col.

Both camps are in the Death Zone, an area above 8,000 meters above sea level. The Death Zone is an area most people need bottled oxygen for. At 28,000 feet is a mound of snow called the South Summit. At 28,500 feet is the final challenge, a step of black rock known as the Hillary Step. From there, it is relatively easy walking to the summit. Most climbers are exhausted by the trip to the summit, and use every drop of energy on the way down.

A job to be done

Jobs are the force which drives the entire economy (Actually, it's more directly money, but jobs are more interesting and an article about money is likely to be one-sided). It is one of the most efficient ways of managing the system, for everybody gets to work on what they want and live where they want (to a point, of course!) and not everybody is working to make rich guys even richer than they already are.

Besides, if you work hard enough, you are likely to get your dream job. And just remember that, even in the capitalist system, money is not happiness. My father worked hard to get a job as a scientist, despite science not being an industry with a lot of money in it. He is now a physicist, and should be much less happy if he worked as, say, a doctor, despite the amount of work it took to be a physicist.

You know about the DiSC charts that are used to determine four types of people? The assessment was first used by psychologist W. M. Marston.  The borderlines: if the subject perceived oneself as more or less powerful than their environment, and if the subject perceived the environment as favorable or not. There are four possible combinations:

 

Dominance

Perceives oneself as more powerful than the environment, and perceives the environment as unfavorable.

 

Submission

Perceives oneself as less powerful than the environment, and perceives the environment as unfavorable.

 

Inducement

Perceives oneself as more powerful than the environment, and perceives the environment as favorable.

 

Compliance

Perceives oneself as less powerful than the environment, and perceives the environment as favorable.

 

I think the DISC assessment, as well as helping people work together as it is commonly used for, could also be used for determining which kind of jobs people could be good at. "C" people, like my brother, see small details and that could be useful for a science job. "I" people are the most common type, and there are many different kinds of "I" people. A high amount of "S" people are working class and don't exactly have a dream job. I am a "D" person and I want to be a tour guide when I grow up. All of these personality types have their pros and cons, and everybody has a little of each personality.

Every person has a job unless they are young, old, or in big trouble. Since I will be doing a job for a long time, around forty years, I need to choose a job I like. And if I choose wisely, I won't even have to work very much; their job will be my happiness.