Monday, May 10, 2004
Blogger Idol - Secrets
Brisbane's Drains
Brisbane is in a subtropical area, and the main city is built on the banks of the Brisbane River. These two factors combine to require the city engineers to construct large stormwater drains. These drains make excellent caving (speleology) or draining expeditions.
The secret places of a city are often the most interesting.
Creek St runs down through the city from Spring Hill to the River. Its name comes from the creek that it now covers. Thus there is a tunnel underneath the street that permits the water flowing from the spring to the river. This tunnel is a double red brick oval tunnel, with the water actually wearing away the first layer of bricks in the bottom. Entrance can be obtained at low tide (the river is tidal for several kilometres) from below the Rowers nightclub building. You will get wet getting into the tunnel. About waist deep at low tide for the first 20 metres or so. After that the water is no more than a trickle in the bottom. This tunnel has lots of overhead obstructions that HURT your head when you hit them. Pipes and concrete overcasts mostly. There are also plenty of manholes, but be careful with these as they are in the middle of a busy street! After several hundred metres it opens up into a room where you have 3 tunnels to choose from. One is reached by climbing up a ladder and heads off to the Myer Centre. You can get into the underground carpark / bus area from here. The second continues up creek street and then angles off down Adelaide St. We pushed up a manhole cover and emerged in front of the fountain on the footpath out the front of King George Square - much to the delight of onlookers (at about 3am they are all mostly drunk anyway so who cares). We haven't been up the third tunnel yet - it may head on up the hill.
Another tunnel well worth exploring is to be found down by the kangaroo point cliffs park. From the river (via boat) this is an obvious entrance but from land is a bit harder to find. It is just east of the captain cook bridge. Once again entrance needs to be obtained at low or medium tide and involves getting wet the first 20-30 metres. This is a natural rock tunnel carved under the cliffs for some 100 metres or so. Then it suddenly turns into a gigantic concrete round tunnel. You could drive a small truck up this tunnel - it is huge! At one point we climbed a very high manhole ladder up and up and up til we pushed out the manhole and found we were in a grassy piece in the middle of the Vulture St/ F3 Freeway interchange. Back down we continued up the tunnel. Exploring a side tunnel we found a large amount of money and other stuff that had fallen down drains by simply digging in the muck at the bottom of the tunnel. This side tunnel was eventually blocked by a bridge or building piling that had been driven right through the tunnel, leaving only a small gap for water to flow through!
We continued up the main tunnel for more than a kilometre eventually calling it quits for walking and climbing out a manhole in a street in Annerley. Next time we take pushbikes or skateboards I think!
Sunday, May 09, 2004
Friends
Am I the only person who (a) has never watched friends (well I did once watch half of one episode) and (b) just doesn't care about the finale or something?
Still here's a funny post on the Cynical Tyrant's website about it (she watches way too much TV!)
Soccer
Today's outdoor game was played in the rain. I was keeper and had a great time sliding and diving on the wet surface - makes the game far more fun even if trickier to manage the ball. I had one goal scored on me due to a handling error and another from a error in the backline that wasn't my fault. We won 4-2.
Integrity
I have promised in the past to post an article I am researching and writing about integrity. This isn't it. You see it got real complicated the more I thought about it.
(Interestingly enough John has posted two articles recently that complement some of what I have started on.
Rules and Honesty)
Here are the issues as I see them.
First a defnition of integrity is pretty easy; dictionarywise anyway.
Merriam-Webster Online has this definition:
Main Entry: in-teg-ri-ty
Pronunciation: in-'te-gr-tE
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English integrite, from Middle French & Latin; Middle French integrite, from Latin integritat-, integritas, from integr-, integer entire
1 : firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : INCORRUPTIBILITY
2 : an unimpaired condition : SOUNDNESS
3 : the quality or state of being complete or undivided : COMPLETENESS
synonym see HONESTY
The difficulties I have encountered come from the application of the theory to the practical reality.
Perhaps you can help me out.
Heres what I've come up with so far.
Absolute Integity - a characteristic of God, self defining absoluteness. - can man have this? I think no - at least not in our fallen state.
Moral Integrity - adherence to a presupposed set of moral beliefs and values. Can a man have this? Once again I think not in the fallen state. but what about as a regenerate man? Are we accorded the morality of Christ through the cleansing of His blood?
Practical applications
Sexual and marriage integrity. Marriage vows state clearly one wife for life. Christ rubbishes the pharasaical (Bill CLinton) view that not actually having sex outside of marriage is holding to this principal in His sermon on the Mt - Matthew 5:27-28.
So how many men can honestly say that they hold to this? Job 14:4 suggests no-one at all. I wonder whether woman are included in this (man meaning mankind?)
Business relationships. A gentlemen's handshake means total trust in the openess of the transaction. Maybe here there could be integrity. What has happened here is the actual application of the principle of integrity has been limited to a certain set of actions and possibilities. Thus by excluding the possibilities where integrity could not be held, a limited form of integrity is gained. Is this really integrity? I suppose in the limited fashion it is, but using the full meaning of the word that includes the complete and undivided nature of the whole, then no. Am I playing with semantics? Not sure.
What other applications of integrity are there? There are many uses in common language. Artists and musicians who have held to the principles of certain artistic mediums are identified as having held to the integrity of the medium. Once again this is a limited set of rules.
I suppose you can apply the same limited sets of rules idea to sports, road rules, games, closed systems etc. Thus you can have integrity within a casino with adherence to the rules. Well that's as far as I have got so far. I'm struggling with the application of the wide definition of integrity to mankind. Is there any form of the wide application of integrity that man can hold to?
Your thoughts are welcome.
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