What about Echinacea?

The best way to find out is to follow these simple steps:

1. Gather 2000 people who have the common cold


2. Split them randomly into two groups of 1000


3. Give vitamin C to one group, and a sugar pill (the placebo) to the other


4. Make sure the people receiving the pills and those dispensing the pills don’t know which is which (to make your trial double-blind)


5. Wait a bit


6. See if the Vitamin C group gets over their colder faster than the other group

You will of conducted a double-blind placebo controlled scientific trial.

Luckily for us, we don’t have to do it ourselves. Several of these trials have already been done. Enough trials, in fact, that one can do a Meta analysis, a statistical review and summary of all the trials.

A comprehensive meta analysis, by an unbiased organization, is the gold standard of scientific inquiry; it is our best chance of knowing the truth.

The Cochrane Collaboration is an international not for profit organisation set up 15 years ago to create transparent, systematic, unbiased reviews of the medical literature on everything from drugs, through surgery, to community interventions. And I have a cold. I read their review to find out whether Vitamin C or Echinacea would be effective in treating it.

Vitamin C

Here is the review of research on Vitamin C for preventing and treating the common cold.

Thirty trials involving 11,350 participants suggest that regular ingestion of vitamin C has no effect on common cold incidence in the ordinary population.

It reduced the duration and severity of common cold symptoms slightly, although the magnitude of the effect was so small its clinical usefulness is doubtful.

Nevertheless, in six trials with participants exposed to short periods of extreme physical or cold stress or both (including marathon runners and skiers) vitamin C reduced the common cold risk by half.

The failure of vitamin C supplementation to reduce the incidence of colds in the normal population indicates that routine mega-dose prophylaxis is not rationally justified for community use. But evidence suggests that it could be justified in people exposed to brief periods of severe physical exercise or cold environments.

Echinacea

Here is their review of research on Echinacea for preventing and treating the common cold.

Echinacea preparations tested in clinical trials differ greatly. There is some evidence that preparations based on the aerial parts of E. purpurea might be effective for the early treatment of colds in adults but the results are not fully consistent.

Beneficial effects of other Echinacea preparations, and Echinacea used for preventative purposes might exist but have not been shown in independently replicated, rigorous RCTs.

Get well soon!

via the BootUp Labs Blog.

• Graham King on identi.ca
• Graham King on Twitter

The nature of the medium means those thoughts will be generally raw and truncated, but timely.

In response to monkeys stealing his coffee beans, an Indian farmer observes: If you start shooting monkeys, you’ll spend the rest of your life shooting monkeys.

via Bruce Eckel

…until internal temperature reaches 74C (165F).

How many office kitchens have a cook’s thermometer? Score nothing for usability.

Should you for any reason attempt to sue the manufacturer, it will rapidly become apparent that you didn’t follow the cooking instructions. Score one for legal.

Building tracks the wrong way

If you’re anything like I was, all your train layouts probably look like this:

You can only run one train on that track, but say you’re happy with that. When you need to connect another station, you might, unsuccessfully, try this:

Notice the three two-way signals. A signal locks an entire section of track from that signal until the next signal or the end of the line. These signals define four locks, color coded on this screenshot. If the train from Lundinghattan Ridge is in the Mardingbury station, it will have a lock on the yellow section, but not on the green section. The signal nearest Mardingbury will be red, but the other two signals will be green. The train from Marbourne will be able to acquire a lock on the green section, and stop at the signal nearest Mardingbury. We have a train stand-off. Not good.

To make that layout work, you’d need to remove the signal nearest Mardingbury, thereby merging the green and yellow sections. You remove that, and you have two trains sharing a station. OK, so now you add a third station to your network. Now things really start to break down.

The blue section is shared between the Lundinghattan train and the Chenningpool train. The Lundinghattan train is top left, just leaving Mardingbury station. It has the lock on the yellow section. Notice the two signals nearest it are red (actually all the signals in this picture are red, but focus on just those two). The train from Chenningpool acquired the lock on the blue section, but and this is the first important concept of this tutorial, once it got level with the depot it had a choice of two paths: Mardingbury, which is blocked by a red signal, and the depot, which isn’t. A train faced with a red two-way signal will always avoid that signal, even if that means going away from it’s destination. If instead of the depot we had a track running to the other side of the map, our Chenningpool would of happily headed down it, to avoid the red signal.

In practice this means our Chenningpool train will head into the depot, turn around, and head back to Chenningpool. It will never make it to Mardingbury. There is something very wrong with our approach, and the short answer is that we were using two-way tracks and two-way signals. We need to think one-way. Let’s start again.

The basic loading loop

Every shared station should have a one-way loading loop.

Notice the signals around the loop are all one-way. To place a one-way signal place a signal as normal, then click the signal again, once or twice depending on the orientation you want for your signal.

Now let’s connect our loop up to a town, and run two trains betweens those two towns.

We connected the shared track from Marbourne to our loading loop, with two short one-way sections. We can see the back of a one-way signal in the red circle, and the front of a one-way signal just to the right of the blue circle.

Let’s look at what’s going on in this picture. The train circled in red has the lock on the red section of track, and is held at the signal circled in red. It is waiting for a lock on the blue section of track. Notice that it could of kept going around the loop, instead of branching off and stopping at the red signal. Faced with a red one-way signal and a clear track going the wrong way, the train will stop at the signal, which is nearly always what we want. This is exactly the opposite to what would of happened with two-way signals.

The train circled in blue has the lock on the blue section of track, and is about to acquire the lock on the yellow section. As soon as it does, it will release the lock on the blue section, and the train circled in red will move forward. This is a layout that works.

Prefer one way tracks

Let’s connect up the other two towns, and not get blocked this time. The trick is to make all shared sections of track one-way.

The only two-way signals in this picture are circled in blue. All the others are one-way. The two-way signals are there to prevent a train on the two-way track from locking part of the one-way loop. If the left-hand two-way signal was not there, a train in Lundinghattan station would hold a lock on it’s two-way section of track, and the bottom part of the one-way section, up to the next signals. Remember, a lock is between two signals or the end of the track. Incidentally, stations don’t end a lock. If you had a station half-way along a track, the lock would run right through it until the next signal.

Pre-signals, the pro-layout

Mardingbury is getting quite busy now, we’d like to have two tracks in the station. Stop all the trains (or be quick!), bulldoze the station, and build a new, two track one. I moved mine back a square to allow space for the tracks to merge. and made the loading loop a little bigger. To control access to a multi-track station, you need pre-signals.

Pre-signals come in two types, entrance and exit. An entrance pre-signal will be red if all the exit pre-signals behind it are also red. The motivation for pre-signals is nicely illustrated here: Pre-signals on the OpenTTD wiki.

The entrance pre-signal is circled in blue. Notice that it has a horizontal white-bar, to show it is different. The exit pre-signals are circled in purple, and have vertical white bars. There is currently a train in the station, so one of the exit pre-signals is red. Because one of the tracks is free (green signal), the entrance pre-signal is green. The next arriving train will correctly go to the empty track. Even though they are pre-signals, we are still using one-way signals

What you can’t see on the picture, but which are very important, are the two normal one-way signals circled in black. They control station exit, by forcing a train wanting to leave the station to acquire a lock on the yellow section. This prevents two train leaving at the same time crashing into each other.

When a train is in the station, it still holds a lock on it’s section of track. The lock runs from the exit -pre-signal at the entrance to the station, to the regular one-way signal at the exit of the station.

Scaling it up

You now know all the key concepts, the rest is just more of the same. Here for example is what you would do if Lundinghattan got busy.

You give it a loading loop, and a multi-bay station. Pre-signals control station entrance, and regular one-ways control the exit. You can see the one-way’s at the exit much better on this station.

There’s one final change we need to make to allow lots of trains – we need to replace the two-way section highlighted in blue with two one-way sections.

We don’t have any more two-way signals. Each station has a loading loop, and one-way tracks connect the stations. In our first tries we had one track connecting the stations, and could only run one train between them. Now we have two tracks connection the stations, and in this picture alone there are eight trains, all serving Mardingbury. Now that’s more like it!

The stations are quite close together, so it might not be clear what is loading-loop and what is the tracks that connect them, so here’s an example with stations further apart.

Other stations would have their own loading loops, and as long as the one way tracks connect, you end up with a network spanning the world. Trains can run from anywhere to anywhere, and new stations just need plugging in to the network.

I have one final tip: Playing with virtual toy trains can be quite addictive, so remember to get some sleep :-)

The game had a splash screen of a Far Side comic, then a short video of me tromping through the woods like a Neanderthal, which my Dad filmed and which I digitized with a very early video capture card.

In Borland’s Turbo C++ 3.0 I wrote a basic graphics engine to display the tiles of the world, and an event loop so I could move the main character around the world. I drew sprites for a proto-human (the micro zooid), dirt, rocks and sticks. He could walk around the world, and pick up and put down rocks or sticks.

Then I took a break to plan. I have a proto-human, rocks, and sticks. How do I get to civilization?

Most of what Picasa does can be replicated with the Colors / Levels or Colors / Curves tool. It’s well worth spending a little time experimenting with both of those (the documentation is very good too).

Crop

In the Toolbox, click the Rectangle select tool
In its options (beneath the tools), tick ‘Fixed: Aspect Ratio’
Enter 6:4 ratio (for 1.6 sensor, most DSLRs)
Tick Highlight. Draw a rectangle on the image that you want to crop to.
Image menu / Crop to Selection

Straighten

Click one of the rulers above or to the left of the image, and drag a guideline onto your picture
In the Toolbox, select the rotate tool
Select ‘Clipping: Crop to result’. Maybe ‘Interpolation: Sinc (Lanczos3)’, although that doesn’t seem to matter
Rotate until your picture is straight, using your guideline
Click Rotate
Image / Fit Canvas to Layers or Image / Autocrop Image
Image / Guides / Remove all guides

Redeye

Filters / Enhance / Red-Eye Removal (I have never used this)

I’m feeling lucky

Colors / Levels / Auto

Auto Contrast / Auto Color

Colors / Auto / something

Fill light

Colors / Levels
Drag the middle triangle (grey) to the left

Highlights

Colors / Levels
Drag the right side (white) triangle

Shadows

Colors / Levels
Drag the left side (black) triangle

Color Temperature

Tools / GEGL Operation / color-temperature
Adjust Intended Temperature

Neutral Color Picker

Colors / Levels
There are three color pickers near the bottom right
Use the left one to select black, the middle one neutral gray, and the right one white

Sharpen

Filters / Enhance / Unsharp mask
Try these values: Radius: 1 – 5 Amount: 0.5 – 1
OR
Colors / Components / Decompose.
HSV, Decompose to layers
Switch off the hue and saturation layer
Apply the Unsharp mask, as detailed above
Colors / Components / Recompose

Sepia

Filters / Decor / Old Photo

B & W

Image / Mode / Grayscale
OR
Colors / Desaturate

Warmify

Colors / Curves
Select Blue – pull the center-right of the curve down most of a grid box
Select Red – pull the center-right of the curve up most of a grid box
OR Tools / GEGL Operation / color-temperature / Increase intended temperature by 10k or 20k

Saturation

Colors / Hue-Saturation / Pull the Saturation slider to the right

Soft Focus

Duplicate layer (right click / Duplicate or use the icon bottom of layers pane)
Filters / Blur / Gaussian Blur.. Set to 60
Reduce Opacity to ~60%
Right click on blur layer, Add Layer Mask, White (full opacity)
Click the foreground color, set S to 0 and V to 50 (or 60, 70)
Select a brush, the Paintbrush tool, paint over the parts you don’t want fuzzy
To replicate Picasa this would be a big circle somewhere in the middle of the picture

Graduated tint

Duplicate layer
Switch off Background by clicking the eye
Edit that layer with Levels and Curves to expose sky correctly
Right click on new layer / Add Layer Mask/ White (full opacity)
Select Blend tool
Draw a line on the image to make a gradient. Try again.
Click the Background eye back on
Right click on the edited layer, and Apply Layer Mask
Merge the layers

Use the left and right arrow keys to rotate, the forward and back arrow keys to move.
The barrel of the tank is the little black line. That’s the front.

No, your tank can’t fire. Avoid the mathematical blobs. YEAH!
The longer you live, the more points you get. A score above 100 is, like, totally AWESOME! Good luck Bro.
Let me know in the comments how much you score.

This game is for Paul, who quit the comfortable life of a Brighton based software engineer, to go teach maths in Birmingham. Turns out there is a point to maths – it’s computer graphics.
The L.A. theme is just because I had that picture in my collection (which I took from the Griffith Observatory), and I’m a little nostalgic about it.

Download the source code. This code should be considered licensed under the GNU General Public Licence.

You’ll need the free Flex SDK to build it, and the standalone flashplayer (or know how to embed Flash in HTML) to run it.

Once you have those, unzip the source into a directory, and run:
mxmlc MathDodger.as ; flashplayer MathDodger.swf

If you are interested in ActionScript (not just for animators!), I suggest starting with the Senocular tutorial.

This is the privatization of profit and the socialization of loss.

The very concept of “Too Big To Fail” points to a deeper truth: the U.S.’s auto industry does not operate within the “free market” at all. Far from it. As their moniker suggests, the “Big Three” are an oligopoly with a long record of eschewing innovation ( electric cars, hybrids etc.), killing off alternatives like mass transit and bullying public policy (lobbying against CAFÉ standards, environmental and tax policies [Hummer owners get a $34K tax credit!], the threat of relocating factories etc.) all in an effort to conform the not so “free market” to its lumbering non-strategies of pursuing short-term profit.

Full article: Catch 22: Too Big To Fail, Too Big To Suceed

The consensus in the comments to that article is that if the government is saving a company that is too big too fail, it should be split up into several smaller companies, so that we only ever have to save it once.

• It is very cheap. Calls within the United States are about $1/hour!
• It makes your phone number virtual, and configurable, which means for example that my phone number will forward to my cell phone if my computer is offline. It also means you don’t have to be in the same country as your phone number.

I am running Ubuntu Linux on a Thinkpad, but most of this should apply to Ekiga on all platforms, and the principles apply to all Softphones.

First, you’ll need a headset with a microphone. The Thinkpad’s built in microphone isn’t loud enough, and will generate too much feedback from the speakers. I bought the Logitech Precision PC Gaming Headset which I’m happy with.

Next, you need to install Ekiga which on Ubuntu is as simple as sudo apt-get install ekiga.

Then you need to adjust your sound settings:

• sudo alsamixer
• Drop the ‘Mic’ to 0
• Move the ‘Mic Boost’ to max
• Exit alsamixer by pressing Esc
• Go to System / Preferences / Sound and change everything to use ‘ALSA’. This makes all programs share your soundcard, so you can hear the phone ring when playing music with Rythmbox.

Start Ekiga. It will prompt you to sign up for a SIP address (which looks like an e-mail address) at Ekiga.net. That is the address people can ring you on, if they are on a SIP phone too. You’re all set to make PC to PC calls. Dial one of the Ekiga fun numbers and talk to yourself.

You probably want to be able to dial out to the regular phone network. Follow the instructions on Using Ekiga to do PC to Phone calls. I signed up with diamondcard.us, the default provider, and the service is good. Don’t be put off by their ugly website. Once you sign up they call you to check you are a real person. In my case this was about 24 hours after I signed up. You’re all set. Remember to dial the full international number (starting with 00 then the country code), and you’re talking!

If you want to receive calls, you need to rent a telephone number. This is fun, because you can rent a number from anywhere in the world, and have it terminate at your computer (or your mobile, landline, anywhere). I am paying $3/month for a US number. On diamondcard (or whoever you are renting the number from) setup that number to ring on your SIP phone first (called IP Phone on diamondcard), then forward to your mobile. Increase the length of time it rings on your SIP phone, so you have time to mute your speakers, plugin your headset, locate the Ekiga window, and click ‘Accept’. I set it to 30 seconds.

I tweaked the default Ekiga sounds to make the ringing more pronounced, and the disconnect sound shorter. Fire up Audacity and open /usr/share/sounds/ekiga/ring.wav. Trim each end and increase the volume. Save it. Open /usr/share/sounds/ekiga/busytone.wav and trim it to one beep. This sound is played at the end of each call.

There you have it, a great telephony setup!

Finally, here’s a couple of tips:

• Dialing toll-free numbers. If you are in the United States, when you dial a toll free 1-800 number, that number will think you are abroad, so you will be charged normal rates ($0.017/min). Instead of dialing via diamondcard (or whoever), dial using a SIP gateway, by prefixing your number with *850, for example*85018001231234`. More SIP gateway details at Ekiga fun numbers.

• Dealing with the delay: There is a slight delay on the line. Closing any programs you have that might be using bandwidth improves the delay. Warn your conversational partners about the delay, and ask them to ignore it. Relax, and let them finish their ideas before you speak. Leave slightly longer gaps between when they finish speaking and you start. If you do start speaking, keep speaking even if you hear them. They probably started before they heard you and will stop as soon as they realise.

  Happy chatting!

Please note that this is a general indication – the origin of the wine and process used (such as aging) may change the order of this list. See Somm’s comment below.

• Download and install the excellent Gallery2Flickr

This plugin sends a Gallery2 gallery to Flickr, preserving all the titles and descriptions, setting the permissions your specify, creating a set with the same title and description as your Gallery2 set, and tagging all the photos with your Gallery2 tags plus ‘gallery2flickr’. The only problem is that it only includes your first photo in the set. That’s easy to fix.

For each gallery in Gallery2 you want to export:

• Select ‘Export to Flickr’ in the menu on the left. If it doesn’t appear you haven’t setup the plugin correctly.
• Whilst it uploads, go to your Flickr stream and rotate any portrait mode photos that don’t come in the right orientation.
• Once the upload has completed, go to Flickr, in the Organize menu select ‘Your sets and collections’.
• Enter the set in Flickr by double-clicking it.
• At the bottom, expand ‘More options’, select ‘Tags only’, and search for ‘gallery2flickr’. The number of results should match the number of items in your Gallery2 gallery. If not wait 30 seconds for Flickr to process your pictures and search again.
• Select all those pictures and drag them into your set. It should say that they were all added except the one that was already there.
• In the Arrange menu, select ‘By date uploaded (oldest first)’. Save.
• In your main Flickr page select ‘tags’, then the ‘gallery2flickr’ tag. Rename that tag to something meaningful for your set.

• Wait until that job has processed. When a search of your pictures turns up no more pictures with the tag ‘gallery2flickr’, you are ready to uploaded the next gallery.

  Note that I used gallery2flickr-0.9.0 dated June 27, 2007. Other versions may vary. Always test your export on a gallery you don’t care too much about just in case.

  Thanks Gunnar Wrobel for the great plugin.

Day 1 – Sunday

We arrive in the early afternoon. 15 students, ranging from 25 to 65 years old, from a range of backgrounds. We are collected from a tea house car park and driven by 4×4 into the woods to the camp.

The camp is in or near Eridge Park near Tunbridge Wells. There are Six instructors / helpers, including one women. They are mostly graduates from this school, including the trainee instructor. Lead instructor is Juha Rankinen, a Swedish instructor with over 20 years experience, and best mates with Ray Mears.

The camp has a main area with a fire that they never allow to go out. A parachute hangs over the fire, there are logs to sit on and a brew box. There is a separate instructors area, a latrine off in the woods, and a cooking area (pasta, soup and bread for dinner, cereal with powdered milk or tinned fruit for breakfast).

We are taken on a camp tour, told there will be an exam at the end, and not much else. We have dinner the introduce ourselves and say what we hope to get from the course. I particularly want to learn about wild foods. We are offered a welcome beer, then head a little deeper in the woods to each setup our own bivouac area.

Day 2

The knife is your most important tool. Then it is the saw, then the axe. We are loaned a folding saw and told to build a two-man shelter.

You need a forked stick about neck height and two long straight sticks which lean on the forked stick to form a structure. Then lean sticks all around the sides and back and a bit down the front.

Finally collect big packs of fallen leaves and, starting at the bottom and working up, lay them as if they were tiles or bricks. Pack them round to about hand-to-elbow deep. Make sure no sticks stick out, or water will run down the sticks into your home. Saw off any bits sticking out and cover with leaves.

It takes us about four hours to make the shelter. The leaf stacking is the most time consuming. An experienced team can do it in about two hours apparently.

Sandwiches for lunch.

We are loaned a hoochie, a billy can, and a bivvy bag.

In the afternoon we are each given a knife. Your knife is your life. Knives should have a single bevel – it makes them easier to sharpen, and be ‘full tang’, meaning the metal of the blade goes all the way to the back of the handle.

The sharpen a knife using a sharpening stone: Put stone on flat surface. Lay blade facing away. Tilt onto bevel. Fingers along edge for pressure. Push away and draw blade across stone. Small angle as tip on stone to keep pressure. Aim for a razor edge. Flip knife over and using pressure from thumbs do the other side. When you look down onto the blade (from underneath the knife in normal operation) you should not see any white reflections – they mean a flat surface. Then ’strop’ the knife. Tie a leather belt onto something (tree branch) and rub the edge of the blade onto it to take the razor edge off.

We walk off to a special are of the woods to collect Alder, to make a bow drill. Alder grows in clumps in wet, boggy terrain. We look for a dead standing tree. Slice the bark – the outer bark should be reddish. Push with fingernail. If you make a dent it’s good wood. Kiss it. Warmish and dry is good. Fell the dead tree by cutting 1/3 of the way through on the side you want it to fall, then the rest of the way through on the other side, and push it over. We then set off in search of Hazel. We need Hazel to make a pot holder called a Wogan stick. We make a pot holder, then have dinner (Turkey Korma and rice, then cake).

After dinner, we are taught to make fire. Clear the area and make a little platform out of sticks on the ground to keep the fire off the damp floor and allow air to pass around it. We will be using flint and steel. Striking the steel on the flint produces a spark. Most of bushcraft fire making starts with a spark – it you’re used to make fire straight from a flame (match or lighter), you’ve had it easy !.

To catch the spark we need first stage tinder. This can be anything that will light from a spark, such as very dry grass. In a temperate forest, where we were, the following make great choices: A Scottish mushroom called Horses Hoof, or Amadou. Or char cloth.

To make char cloth, put 100% cotton or silk cloth in a billy can. Make a hole in the billy can. Put the can in the fire. When smoke stops coming out of the hole take it out of the fire, check it, and leave in the can. Cloth should look ‘charcoally’. Or you can simply leave the cloth by the edge of the fire and put it out every time it catches fire. With our flint and steel we are going to use char cloth.

Once your first stage tinder (char cloth in our case) has caught the spark, you need second stage tinder. Dry bracken, shredded inner bark of sweet chestnut, or dry grass are all good choices. Crumple it up to increase the surface area. Then you need very small twigs. Birch twigs are ideal because they contain an oil that burns well, even when they are a bit damp. Then you need bigger and bigger twigs. You need all this before you strike your flint on your steel.

Fold the second stage tinder into a birds nest shape. Lay the char cloth on the flint. Strike the steel through the cloth until an ember catches on the cloth. Blow on it. Fold the cloth over and fold into the birds nest of tinder. Hold it in your hands and stand up – there is less moisture further from the ground. Blow on it some more. When breathing in move the nest up and down to increase air flow. Blow until the whole bundle erupts into flames. Put it down on your platform of twigs and put the birch twigs on top to get them to ignite. Fire ! Make as small a fire as possible using the least amount of fuel you need. Remember to dry out some first and second stage tinder, and some twigs, for use tomorrow morning.

Day 3

It comes as somewhat of a relief that the topic is Hygiene. We don’t have to pretend to be cavemen anymore. Wash feet in the evening, put on dry socks and dry the ones you were wearing. Wool socks don’t smell like cotton ones do. The main instructor, Juha, wears sealskinz gore-tex socks. Heat water and use cloth to wash body. A big handful of birch leaves, 2-3 horse chestnut leaves, or soapwort contain enough saponin to act as a good soap. Keep your toenails trimmed – the health of your feet is very important in bushcraft.

Next we learn more about bow drill fire making. Different woods and how hard they are to use for bow-drill making:

• Very easy: Ivy, Lime.
• Easy: Adler, Elder, Clematis.
• Medium: Aspen, Willow, Sycamore, Rose, Poplar, Birch (although birch is often too rotten).
• Hard: Elm, Hazel, Pine, Spruce, Juniper, Ash, Oak.
• Very hard: Apple.

Generally the harder the wood the more difficult it is to use to make fire with a bow drill. The wood has to be dead standing wood, otherwise it will be too moist. The dryer the wood the easier it will be. Knots make wood harder so make sure there are no knots on your drill end or where it meets the main plank. A friend told me after the course that he kept his bow-drill set indoors overnight so that the central heating dried it out. The next day it was much easier to use.

Then we make a wooden spoon. In Bushcraft, there is some kind of mystique associated with carving wooden spoons. Given that anything you can eat with a spoon you can probably drink (or at least slurp), the emphasis on spoon carving isn’t exactly rational. It does however teach good knife technique.

Find a piece of wood the width of which you can wrap you hand 3/4 of the way around, and which has a small curve in it. Split down the middle and work with the bottom half (it’s easier than the top half). Draw a spoon (using charcoal) onto the wood and carve it out so you have something that looks like a spoon from the top. Do the same for the side profile. Make it thicker in one profile if you went too thin in the other. Finally carve out the bowl using a crook knife. Mind your thumb !

Next it’s onto rope making. You can make rope from nettles (if you dry them first the rope will last longer) or the inner bark of the sweet chestnut tree, taken from a living tree. Scrape off the outer bark with the back of your knife. Cut a long section and peel off the inner bark. The longer the section the longer the strands you have for weaving, which makes it much easier. The same inner bark, but dead and dry, makes good tinder. Roll up and bash the bark to separate the strings, then dry it.

On to feather sticks. Split a log into very thin kindling size sticks. Remove the bark and any moist outer wood. Using the knife bevel scrape curls of wood down the length of the stick. You want the curls to be as thing as possible. Lay four sticks across each other and put a match underneath. In a wet forest the inside of dead standing wood will still be dry, so can be used for making feather sticks if you have no other dry wood.

The instructors give us some food. We make fire with our feather sticks, cook our food using our wogan stick, and sleep in our shelter. Perfect !

Day 4

The morning starts with more bow drill practice. Making fire with a bow drill is difficult !

There is a talk on breaking camp. We tear down our shelters and disperse the wood we used to build them. Make sure the fire is out then disperse the ashes and cover the fire pit. If it is dry season make sure the ashes are cold, also make holes in the ground and pour water in them.

Gutting a fish: There is a demonstration on two big salmon. Cut from the butt to back of the head underneath the fish. Scoop out all the guts. Throw them away if you are unsure of the water quality. Cut the fins off. Cut the skin around head and tail. Put your hand between the skin and the bones and peel bones off. A perfect fish skeleton with the head and tail attached (like cats eat in cartoons) should come off.

Cooking the fish: We are going to ‘panace’ the fish, Native American (First Nations) style. Split a long piece of Hazel almost all the way down the middle. Spear the salmon steak all the way through with two thin sticks to hold it flat. Sandwich the salmon between the split sections of the hazel. My notes don’t indicate this, but you probably have to bind the top of the split hazel back together. Cook above a fire until it looks tasty. The last 5 minutes of cooking but it skin side down onto the embers. This is truly delicious.

Navigation is next. Another lecture in the main area under the parachute. The United Kingdom is divided by the Ordnance Survey (government mapping company) into 100 km² squares. Map references start with the two letters indicating which square to use. Our bushcraft camp is in the TQ square. Magnetic and map (grid) North usually differ slightly because the magnetic north moves. The map will often indicate the difference. In practice the difference is too small to make a difference when on foot, and when there are occasional landmarks to correct yourself by. Average walking speed over flat grass is 15 minutes to a kilometer.

We are given a map (1:25000) with all features except contour lines, forests, rivers and lakes removed. We are told where we are and where we have to get to. We split into two groups and head off. It’s a nice stroll, past lots of deer.

Once at destination we cover water: We need 1.5 to 5 liters a day in temperate European climate, depending on the temperate / season. Always carry clean water with you. Look for running water. If near a lake look for the stream that feeds it. Before purifying water you can pre-filter it to remove organic matter by pouring it through cotton (a sock or t-shirt).

Purify water through:

• Boiling it: Water must reach a rolling boil with big bubbles. It doesn’t need to stay like that long – once the rolling boil is achieved the water is clean.
• Chemical treatment: A pump with iodine in the tube, or iodine drops or tablets. The pump type is preferable as you only get the minimum amount of chemicals.

We wade into a very muddy lake (between Eridge Park and Forge Wood in the map linked on Day 1) to collect cattails. You can eat the base of the stem. Peal the outside layers off and eat the inside. It’s like eating a big leek, but softer.

The root is a rhizome which runs parallel to the ground from one plant to the next. We pull one out each. There is carbohydrate in there. Later on we will roast them in the fire. Put the whole root directly in the fire. When it is charred on the outside remove, peel, and eat the inner white bit. Be careful not to eat the outside.

When collecting cattails make sure not to confuse them with the poisonous Iris which grows near it – the Iris does not have the cotton flower, and has a regular root running up-down instead of a rhizome.

We head off and stroll through some woods. You can eat the young leaves of beach and hawthorn. I eat some – they taste of leaves. If you can spot it, Wood Sorrel is a tasty garnish. It is a small three leafed clover-like plant that grows in shaded wooded areas. Base of the stem is purple-reddish.

We head further into the woods and stop to setup camp. We bivouac using a basha (also known by it’s Australian name – hootchie) strung between two trees and pegged out (we carve pegs on the spot out of sticks). We will sleep under it in a bivvie bag (a gore tex waterproof sleeping bag cover). We are shown the knots to use to setup our basha. The two main instructors head back to base and we stay out with three assistants.

We make camp and collect water. We make fire with a Swedish firesteel and birch bark. Scrape and peel the bark to have paper-like hanging off the main bark. Spark onto those, and add more bark scrapings onto it. Once caught give it some more bark and very small twigs, ideally birch because of the oils it contains. We boil the water so we can drink it. We kebab a trout (provided already gutted) and cook some rice. I make some notes then turn in for the night.

Day 5

We wake up under our bashas. I go to the stream to collect water and boil it for cooking breakfast, hygiene, and drinking water for the day. After breakfast we are shown how to pack up our bashas. We make an effort to cover traces of our camp.

Sit by the lake – more bow drill practice. With two people it is possible to make fire with the bow drill. On your own it is very hard work.

Juha and Laurence show up to teach us about tracking. They take us back into the woods where we camped and show us signs you can use. Look for things that are out of place / unnatural. A charred stick, carved, with a fork in it, means someone cooked. Cut branches. Food remains. Unnatural birch bark curls. Our attempts to cover our tracks turn out to of been quite poor. We do a better job.

We stroll off. The birch polypore skin makes a good plaster. This is a whitish flat fungus which can grow to the size of a hand spread out.

The sweet chestnut inner bark strands we prepared earlier are dry and ready to weave. We are shown how to weave two or three (I don’t remember exactly) strands of bark together to make rope. I really enjoyed learning to make rope.

We meet a variety of plants:

• Thistle – shave the stalk (clear sap) and eat. Roast the root in the fire to eat.
• Lesser celandine which you can chew to numb mouth pain.
• Yarrow can help heal wounds.
• Flowering plants typically don’t have much root because they have used their energy to produce the flower. Try and catch plants before they flower for a good size root.
• The taproot of Burdock can be roasted and eaten. Dig it up in Autumn, Winter or very early spring. Unfortunately it grows mostly in very rocky ground, so digging out the root can be difficult.

It is possible to live on cat-tail roots and burdock roots, but you would lack nutrients long term.

Our walk through the woods takes us to a river. We talk about fishing. It’s a good option when living off the land. A spinning rod (normal fishing rod) helps a lot. Juha carries mono-filament fishing line (quite thick), shots for weight (you could use stones), and barbed hooks in different sizes. Use live bait – anything edible. Instead of bait you can use a lure. You can also catch fish by snagging them – throw a triple hook over the head of a fish you can see and pull the hook into it.

Stringing a net across the width of a river should catch lots of fish – the same can be done between trees to catch birds. Thorns or bits of wood bound together can be used as hooks. Attach a small thorn to a rope, feed that into a worm / insect. When the fish eats the worm pull hard to hook the inside of the fish.

The best times for fishing are usually early mornings or evenings, sometimes even night. Look for bubbles of fish breathing breaking the surface. Shaded areas overhung by trees, near rocks, or small islands in the stream, are all good places to cast.

We make a night line. This is a line which will be hung over the river, with lots of smaller weighted lines with hooks on them hanging off it deep into the water. The hooks would be baited.

The school doesn’t have a license to fish, so we can’t actually try the techniques out. A lot of them would be illegal anyway – we are talking about back-country fishing or survival situations.

We head back into the woods, gaining height. We make camp in a beautiful area full of bluebells. Spend a very pleasant evening round our little campfire discussing bushcraft with a couple of the assistants. One of them is on secondment from the Dutch army’s mountain reconnaissance unit. The other loves the woods, and has done odd jobs all his life to be able to spend more time in them. Together they remind me of Beavis and Butthead.

Day 6

We pack and stroll back to base camp. On the way we are shown how to make a withy (essentially using a willow branch to make a strong thick rope). Not much time is allocated to this, and it’s a difficult technique. No-one in the party manages it, but we are impressed by how Juha makes a bow out of a willow branch.

We stop below a big pine tree. The needles, steeped in water, make a tea with lots of vitamin C and some sugar. Pretty much any pine tree’s needles will do. The very long thin roots which run out from pine or spruce parallel to the ground make good binding material. They can be used straight away. Better yet, scrape off the bark, dry, then soak before use. Split length ways trying to achieve two long sections. If the split runs towards one side bend the thick end more.

We will be making a fish hook. A thorn will be the spiky bit. It will be bound to a small carved piece of soft wood. The binding will be the pine root.

We are greeted back at base camp by all the ingredients to make a fried breakfast / brunch. Nice.

After eating we are given time to work on our projects. I make cord from the sweet chestnut bark. The group has gotten to know each other and gelled very well. Banter and jokes are exchanged. It’s quite a disparate group: A scout leader, a yorkshire bus driver, a tree surgeon, a forestry instructor, two mountain leaders, and several IT professionals. We help each other out in the bits we learned faster.

The Woodlore shop visits and they lay out their goods. I buy a Swedish firesteel. I browse the Fundamental Bushcraft book and resolve to buy it online when I get home.

Then it’s time to learn about trapping. We will snaring birds, or small mammals such as squirrels and rabbits. Our snares will Mangle, Tangle or Strangle.

The best place to lay snares are on the animal’s runs, not too close to their warrens. They would notice something different around their warrens straight away – best to wait till they are out running on the ‘motorway’ where they are not as aware of their surroundings. Look for droppings, flattened grass or the actual animals, to know where to lay the traps. Lay them late afternoon (before dusk), and check them each day at dawn and dusk, to prevent predators getting to your snared dinner.

First we learn a sprung bird trap. When the bird puts its foot in the rope it dislodges a carefully placed small branch, which releases a much stronger branch which grabs the birds leg and lifts it into the air – a nice piece of bushcraft engineering. We use the rope we have been making from the inner bark of sweet chestnut for this.

Two years after this bushcraft course, I was in the Ecuadorian Amazon jungle visiting an Achuar community, and they showed us a very similar trap. Possibly that is whom Ray Mears learnt it from. Or they both came up with it independently. Or Ray taught the Achuar (he does get around).

To trap squirrels we position a large fallen branch so as to create a shortcut between the ground and a tree branch. Apparently squirrels will usually take the shortest route to where they are trying to go. We put 7 to 10 simple steel wire loops at squirrel head height all the way up the branch.

Finally we do a rabbit trap. This is a larger loop of doubled over brass wire, fed through an eyelet using a small twig to keep it hanging at rabbit head height. The loop is tied to a rope or cord which is anchored to the ground with a strong peg. The whole trap is setup on a rabbit run. Try and locate where the front and back legs go and place it just in front of the front legs.

As about 15 people a week learn trapping on this estate, there would be nothing left if we got to actually practice. We take our traps down and head back up the hill to camp. The instructors have bought us each a freshly shot rabbit off a local farmer. We pretend we just snared it, and learn to gut it. As I have various cuts and scratches on my hands from the weeks knife work, I get to wear plastic gloves.

Squeeze out any remaining urine by pressing down along the belly. Cut the skin in the middle stomach (be careful not to cut into the actual stomach) and tear the skin off. Break the four feet off, cutting the tendons if needed. Pull up the stomach area, cut it open, and shake / pull the guts out. This is the smelly bit. If there are white nodules on the liver don’t eat the liver. Punch fingers through the diaphragm and pull the lungs and heart out. Push fingers in bum to clear, and cut off the tail. Pull the head off. You should now have a small fur bag – put the offal in there and bury it, or use it as fishing bait. Cut off the ’skirt’ bits.

For those of us unused to country matters, this is gruesome. A strong streak of black humour pervades the group, and we get on with the task. To get the meat slice along the spinal cord either side and pull out the saddle meat. This is the main meat on a rabbit. Break / cut the legs off. There is more meat on the back leg, and a tiny bit on the front leg. We stick to the saddle meat.

The smell of fresh rabbit guts is not particularly strong, or particularly unpleasant, but it sure does stick around. Despite numerous scrubbings, I could still smell it on my hands days later.

The meat goes into a pot and we eat rabbit stew. The instructors tell us there will be a test tomorrow. I make bits for my fish hook, practice feather sticks, start some more rope, and go to bed. Sleeping outside in the spring, and waking up in the woods, is a wonderful experience. It gets cold at night so I sleep fully clothed. I sleep better and better each night.

Day 7 – Saturday

I rise early on this, the last day of the course. I bind my fish hook, prepare my rabbit snare, and pack. We shoulder our packs and head a short distance down the hill to do the test. It is:

• Put up basha and prepare sleeping area.
• Make fire with one match and feather sticks.
• Put that fire out, and make fire again with the bow drill.
• Boil a pot of water on that fire.
• Identify the 19 plants laid out by the instructors.
• Setup our snares.
• Lay out what we made this week: Spoon, fish hook, withy, night line.

I get everything setup and done very quickly, then struggle all morning with the bow drill. After several hours I’m out of breath, my arm aches, and my knuckles are bleeding from rubbing on the ground. I get lots of smoke, a big pile of black dust, but no ember. Juha lends me his set, which doesn’t help. Finally Juha helps out and we do a two man bow drill – very quickly, we have an ember. In a real situation, I hope I have a match, a lighter, or my swedish firesteel. Or a friend.

After the test we clear the site and head back up the hill to the main camp. We return all our kit, except the knife which is ours to keep.

A fellow course member shows me how to fold the basha / hoochie. It must be still setup. Fold and tie the guy ropes. Then accordion the sheet to get a rectangle. Untie the ropes and lay on the ground. Fold in half length ways. Fold in the guy ropes then fold up in small sections. Wrap the end of main rope round one way, and the other end round the other way. This makes a nice hoochie package.

The instructors all gather and hand out our certificates. Everyone passes, although some get a special mention. Clapping, handshakes, and photos.

Someone drops me back in Tunbridge Wells. It is a spring Sunday afternoon, the sun is shining, and the streets are busy with urbane, attractive shoppers. I feel shell-shocked, and very out of place. I sit on the train back to London, and make more rope from the inner bark of a sweet chestnut tree.

Conclusion

I learned a lot on that Woodlore course. They really packed it in, and now almost three years later I can still remember most of it. So the course works.

It was a good group, and most of the instructors were great. Juha was an inspiring wise man of the woods. Lawrence, the second lead instructor was, unfortunately, miserable. I think he is now the main instructor, so check before booking. Oh, and you’re not going to meet Ray Mears.

The style was too military for my taste. We were generally not told what was going to happen next, and the instructions were of the type: ‘Gather a branch of this shape and length from this species of tree. Go’. Only later would we discover what that branch was for. Part of the reason for this was to put us under stress to test our psychological aptitudes, bushcraft being as much about a calm and comfortable approach to nature as it is about skills. The rest of the reason is the instructors probably find that style cuts down on questions, and they want an easy life. I would of enjoyed it more and probably learned better had the instructors been more open with us.

Would I do it again ? Most definitely, although I would probably try and go with Woodsmoke, run by the previous lead instructor at the Woodlore school. One of their prior students, also on the Woodlore course, told me they had a less military approach to bushcraft.

Whoever you go with, you get to spend a week in the woods, and it’s hard to beat that.

Key areas are in bold, with some of the more well known AOC as bullet points. If a specific AOC’s rules are different to the usual for the area, I list that by the AOC.

Red Bordeaux: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot. (Malbec and Carmenere permitted but seldom used)

• Saint Emilion: Merlot and Cabernet Franc, with small amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon.
• Pomerol: Merlot, often together with Cabernet Franc.
• Medoc: Cabernet Sauvignon, with small amounts of Merlot.
• Graves: Cabernet Sauvignon, with small amounts of Merlot and Cabernet Franc.

White Bordeaux: Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, and Muscadelle.

• Entre-Deux-Mers
• Sauternes (Chateau D’Yquem), Montbazillac: Desert wine. The grapes have been affected by Botrytis cinerea, also known as noble rot.

Champagne: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier (five other grapes that were historically important are allowed, but very unusual).

Red Burgundy: Pinot Noir

• Cote de Nuits (Gevrey-Chambertin, Morey-Saint-Denis, Chambolle-Musigny, Vougeot, Flagey-Échezeaux, and Vosne-Romanée)

White Burgundy: Chardonnay

• Chablis
• Pouilly-Fuissé

Beaujolais: Gamay

Loire Valley: Sauvigon Blanc

• Sancerre
• Pouilly-Fumé
• Muscadet: Melon de Bourgogne. The grape is often also called Muscadet, because of its strong associations with this appelation.
• Vouvray: Chenin Blanc (occasionally a small amount of Arbois)

Red Northern Rhone Valley: Syrah (Shiraz).

• Cornas
• Saint-Joseph: Syrah and up to 10% Marsanne and Roussanne.
• Hermitage and Crozes-Hermitage: Syrah and up to 15% Marsanne and Roussanne.
• Côte-Rôtie: Syrah and up to 20% Viognier.

White Northern Rhone Valley: Viognier, Marsanne and Roussanne.

Southern Rhone Valley: Lots of varieties, although Grenache often dominates.

• Chateuneuf-du-Pape: Many grape varieties allowed although Grenache Noir is the most common. Others are Syrah, Mourvèdre, Cinsaut, Terret Noir, Muscardin and Vaccarèse. Whites are produced from Grenache Blanc, Clairette, Roussanne, Picpoul, Picardan and Bourboulenc.

South-East:

• Cahors: Cot, with up to 30% Merlot and Tannat.

Languedoc-Roussillon: Very large area, lot of varieties.

• Fitou and Minervois: Mainly Carignan Noir, Grenache Noir, Mourvèdre and Syrah.
• Gaillac primeur: Gamay. (Note that regular Gaillac is mainly Duras Noir, Fer Noir and Syrah.)

Alsace: Lots of varieties. Alsace wines are usually varietals (single grape) and have the grape variety on the label.

Food / Wine pairing – things to consider

Flavours

The flavours of the food and wine should amplify each other. Similar flavours usually pair well. Opposites can also work – Sweet Sauternes or Gewurztraminer with foie gras. Dry rose with a fresh fruit dessert.

Intensity

Strongly flavoured foods need strongly flavoured wines to accompany them. A light dish like salmon mousse would not go with a strong red such as Shiraz. Try it instead with a chilled unoaked Chardonnay or Muscadet. The acidity will ‘lift’ the fish flavours and give the mousse a citrus ‘zing’.

Weight

Weight is the ‘texture’ of the wine. Weight differs from Intensity, in that a light wine such as Riesling can have an intense flavour. Weight is usually determined by alcohol content – the more alcohol the heavier the wine. It can also be given by aging the wine in oak barrels. This is particularlly the case with Chardonnay – the oak aging makes it feel creamy and heavy in the mouth.

Tannin

This is the bitter tasting substance found in red wines. Tannin clashes with acidity and with fish. It goes very well with red meat because the protein softens the tannin in the wine, and the tannin cuts through the chewiness of the meat. A heavy red such as Cabernet or Shiraz goes beautifully with rare steak. A lighter, less tannic red, such as Pinot Noir, pairs better with more delicate meat.

Saltiness

Salty foods do not usually go well with wine, especially tannic ones. Cheese is one of the most salty foods we eat with wine. Sweet wines are the best option – Port and Stilton, Rieslings with less strong cheeses, Sauvignon Blanc with goats cheese. The high fat content of cheese tends to coat the mouth, so heavy, high alcohol wines are a good match.

Assorted

The acidity in Sauvigon Blanc (Sancerre, Loire valley wines) and the alcohol in Port lift heavy creamy cheeses like Stilton.

The dry feeling on the gums from red wine comes from tannin.

Chardonnay that has been in oak gets a buttery taste / texture – the longer it is in the more flavour it has. Less time in oak can make a crisper, cleaner wine. New world Chardonnays tend to go for oaky, whereas French ones tend to be much lighter. The sweet taste, but without being sugary, is a ripe taste. Older barrels have less toasty notes. Cheaper, younger Chardonnays might be aged in stainless steel with oak wood chips thrown in. This can make the wine a bit oily (but less expensive).

Madeira is fortified by adding grape alcohol, to kill the yeast before it eats all the sugar. This is how come we can get strong, sweet wines. This is also done to Port. After fortification Madeira is baked slowly to get the caramel, coffee flavours. Hence it does not change with age.

Classico in Italian wine usually means from the original region, before commercial expansion (i.e. from the best land).

Vines produce as much grape as you want (within reason), but only so much flavor. So less wine from a plant often means better wine – most Appellation d’Origine Controlle have limits on the weight of grapes allowed to be produced per hectare. Stronger alcohol in a wine comes from more sugar in the grapes, because of better land, which often means better wine.

The edge of red wine gets darker with age.

Tanin tastes good with protein – hence the pairing of high tanin red wines with meat.

Try pairing Champagne with Parmesan cheese.

As Tom says: Experiment !

This is the webgroup’s first online gallery show. It is titled 10 ways to kill a pig.

Pig In a Box

A scathing critique of the established order, Pig In A Box is the Webgroup’s first work. Notice the pill. ‘Big Pharma’, the pharmaceutical empire, is here deconstructed. Why is the pig in the box ? Is he dead ? Did the pill kill him or will it save him ? An homage to Schroedinger’s cat, to breaking free. To hope. Even within our boxes.

Pig On A Stick

The Webgroup’s second work, Pig On A Stick, takes on darker overtones. An homage to Lord Of The Flies, it is youthful innocence defiled. When you turn the pencil, the pig turns.

Pig On A String

Their final work, their swan song, Pig On A String is the culmination of the Webgroup’s work. Notice the coffee cup – it helps to hang the pig. Free coffee isn’t free. Suspended from office supplies. Is this what office supplies are for ? What they do ? The pencils and the paper. This pig is dead.

10 ways. Why 3 exhibits ? Three is the triumvirate, the magic number, the whole in parts. All parts are one. One is all the parts.

Who is the pig herein represented ?

May 9, 2006 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: mailto:EPDU@halliburtoncontracts.com Photos: http://www.halliburtoncontracts.com/EPDU/

HALLIBURTON SOLVES GLOBAL WARMING SurvivaBalls save managers from abrupt climate change

An advanced new technology will keep corporate managers safe even when climate change makes life as we know it impossible.

“The SurvivaBall is designed to protect the corporate manager no matter what Mother Nature throws his or her way,” said Fred Wolf, a Halliburton representative who spoke today at the Catastrophic Loss conference held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Amelia Island, Florida. “This technology is the only rational response to abrupt climate change,” he said to an attentive and appreciative audience.

Most scientists believe global warming is certain to cause an accelerating onslaught of hurricanes, floods, droughts, tornadoes, etc. and that a world-destroying disaster is increasingly possible. For example, Arctic melt has slowed the Gulf Stream by 30% in just the last decade; if the Gulf Stream stops, Europe will suddenly become just as cold as Alaska. Global heat and flooding events are also increasingly possible.

In order to head off such catastrophic scenarios, scientists agree we must reduce our carbon emissions by 70% within the next few years. Doing that would seriously undermine corporate profits, however, and so a more forward-thinking solution is needed.

At today’s conference, Wolf and a colleague demonstrated three SurvivaBall mockups, and described how the units will sustainably protect managers from natural or cultural disturbances of any intensity or duration. The devices – looking like huge inflatable orbs – will include sophisticated communications systems, nutrient gathering capacities, onboard medical facilities, and a daunting defense infrastructure to ensure that the corporate mission will not go unfulfilled even when most human life is rendered impossible by catastrophes or the consequent epidemics and armed conflicts.

“It’s essentially a gated community for one,” said Wolf.

Dr. Northrop Goody, the head of Halliburton’s Emergency Products Development Unit, showed diagrams and videos describing the SurvivaBall’s many features. “Much as amoebas link up into slime molds when threatened, SurvivaBalls also fulfill a community function. After all, people need people,” noted Goody as he showed an artist’s rendition of numerous SurvivaBalls linking up to form a managerial aggregate with functional differentiation, metaphorically dancing through the streets of Houston, Texas.

The conference attendees peppered the duo with questions. One asked how the device would fare against terrorism, another whether the array of embedded technologies might make the unit too cumbersome; a third brought up the issue of the unit’s cost feasibility. Wolf and Goody assured the audience that these problems and others were being addressed.

“The SurvivaBall builds on Halliburton’s reputation as a disaster and conflict industry innovator,” said Wolf. “Just as the Black Plague led to the Renaissance and the Great Deluge gave Noah a monopoly of the animals, so tomorrow’s catastrophes could well lead to good – and industry must be ready to seize that good.”

Goody also noted that Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Futures Society was set to employ the SurvivaBall as part of its Corporate Sustenance (R) program. Another of Cousteau’s CSR programs involves accepting a generous sponsorship from the Dow Chemical Corporation, whose general shareholder meeting is May 11.

Please visit http://www.halliburtoncontracts.com/EPDU/ for photos, video, and text of today’s presentation.

Saving the world on your behalf, all praise the Yes Men.