~~~ above the water line

fancy going to a road trip?
who am I to say no!
we drove to the Herault
to an abandoned village by a lake

Celles is on the shore of Lac du Salagou
merely 143m altitude

it should have disappeared
submerged in the late 1960's

but this didn't happen

the lake is quite otherworldy

with its deep red soil and basalt black rock

volcanic landscape

martian palette

Celles remains abandoned

but protected by chain fences

asleep
maybe one day reawakened 

:::: lost in translation

learning a language 

is easier when you live where it is spoken

you pick up the slang, the abbreviated

the phrases and sayings

and the nuances of regional dialects

here being Occitane, Ariegois and Catalan
you worry less about the le and the la
the correct tense and endings
you just go with it

but when it's 2am 

and you're feeling fine

with wine

try explaining cockney rhyming slang 

it ain't bright and breezy to bubble and squeak, treacle
~~~~ 

~~ keep your balance

the human body is full of bacteria
some good
some bad

E. coli is the best known bacterium 

that regularly associates itself with humans

it is the most studied of all bacteria
a sequence of 4,288 genes on its chromosome
but we don't entirely understand
its relationship with humans
and their normal flora
both host and bacteria benefit from each other
and the feeling is mutual
nutrients, a stable environment, protection

there are also parasitic flora
who live at the expense of the host
opportunistic infectors
striking when defences are let down

sometimes the relationship between them
can't be deciphered
where there is no apparent benefit or harm to either
a commensal relationship

thinking on this
when you visit a new country
or become close to people
your flora can be unbalanced
your normal shaken up
it takes time for you to adjust

but it's up to you to notice
wait for things to calm
or take action to make it right

t = [ ln (Nf/No) / (-0.693) ] x t1/2

getting back my reading mojo
delving into books
I never thought I'd enjoy
or get past the first few pages

or even understand

but this book 
I can't put down

carbon-14 is in all living things

when living things die

they stop taking in carbon-14 

and so the radioactive clock is reset

reliable detective work for carbon dating

if the thing is less than 60 000 years old

we all know about counting tree rings 

it's called

dendrochronology

each ring a year of growth 

tell tale by it's size

changes in climate, weather, illness

trees keep growing until the die

the creationists debunk
the conspiracists conspire

instead of convincing us it's not true

maybe show us how it is?