Brian V. Peck
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"About an hour out of Phnom Penh we are transferred onto a mini-bus which takes some time to arrive, but eventually comes. Then driven at breakneck speed on a very dusty road that gets dust all over everything, coming into the city is a bit of a shock as there is no doubt about it that the outer areas do resemble the Third world, but the inner city is clean and modern. We are taken to the King's Hotel where we could choose too stay or go - as I was tired I decided to stay, but without hot water in my cheap room - well what can you expect for 5 dollars. I shared dinner with Isabel and Jeroen - who I took a real shine too. And in the morning I have breakfast with Sarah from Sweden who I had first met in Chau Doc and came on our boat when partly through the trip. Sarah was one of these very assured intelligent young women who had done a lot of travelling – as breakfast progressed I kept thinking that her body language was saying categorically too me (was old enough to be her father) or probably any man who may have tried it on with her - that if you mess with me boy I will chew both of your testicles off with one bite. Apparently she was some sort of chemist who new a lot about food and what it does to us, when we eat it. I said very little while eating my breakfast and kept my legs very tightly together".
On the 26th April 2005 the Guardian newspaper printed a very beautiful picture of a ‘giant spiral Galaxy’ very similar to the Milky way Galaxy, so we were informed by most Cosmologist ‘3 million light years from earth’. This specific Galaxy itself is 160,000 light years across, so when we look at a picture like this; some of us should be able to understand how insignificant this very small Planet really is in the big scheme of things. The available evidence seems to suggest that our Galaxy is nothing special within the context of the Universe, as a whole. In fact our little Planet we call earth is so insignificant that we are nothing more than a grain of sand on any beach in the world. All the hard scientific empirical evidence backs up this premise from ‘The Birth of Time’ by John Gribbin, to Martin Rees in the Our Cosmic Habitat and the rest of this whole community - Rees may go to church but it seems that this is because his ‘class’ does…not that he necessarily believes in a divine maker (BBC Radio 4). Voltaire was not a Christian but may have believed in an all powerful & benevolent deity and seemed to think that a belief in God was useful for the lower levels of humanity…but for sure said that if God did not exist we would have to invent him (Selected Writings Voltaire – Everyman edition p, xxii). In fact if we could bring the great Voltaire back from the dead he would be amazed that there may be water on other planets in the Universe and probably life forms with a lot more intellect than most Popes and the religious community; who once had Giordano Bruno burnt at the stake for questioning Catholic orthodox. Even the present British Monarchy seems to believe that she was ordained by God, in some strange ‘natural order’ of things.
Life itself may have started about three and half billion years ago - which for at least the first billion years of life, only existed in female form, (Steve Jones + Carl Zimmer)… some of these strange life forms may have been the first readers of the Daily Mail in little Britain….so I have been told by the living stromatolites on the West coast of Australia (see below). Who we should really be praying to - because without these incredible life forms we would not be here because they helped to raise the oxygen level in the atmosphere so that people like Voltaire, Bill Bryson and my little self could write amusing books, for you all too read.
