Roast Yam

One of the more common introduced mammals in the Southern Alps is the YAM (young Australian male). These mammals usually congregate in pairs, or in packs up to ten. I met an uncharacteristically charming and intelligent specimen yesterday in Christchurch. We got to talking about his recent climb of Mt Sefton and then he spotted me reading some papers and said he was very interested in physics, and he was even thinking of going back to university to study it (his background was in the Arts).

It transpired that he had been listening to radio shows on the String Wars, and in particular he remembered an episode on a certain book, the title of which he could not quite remember. Anyway, to cut a long story short, he was very keen to hear all about Category Theory! He said that there had to be something very wrong with physics when it was perfectly clear to a layman such as himself that the entrenched concepts being discussed were so plainly inadequate. We agreed that neuroscientists, for instance, had a better conceptual picture of the measurement of space than many physicists. I must confess, I had no idea this topic had become so mainstream.

Mount Cook has had a number of fatal accidents over the years, but very few lucky escapes. Last week, however, a group of three climbers headed down towards the Linda glacier from the summit. They attached themselves via a sling to a large rock, which then gave way (the rock, that is) as two of the climbers began to abseil. The guy at the top survived the fall, because a small falling rock cut cleanly through the anchor sling, separating him from his colleagues.