Camberwell RC website.

Minutes.

20 central Rotarians enjoyed a vibrant and fun meeting with a delicious meal of arancini  balls thoroughly enjoyed by all.

To give you an idea of who's getting around the meetings at present, those in attendance were Ludeman, Dillon, Officer, Bray, Askew, Harris, McPherson, O'Brien, Northeast, Taylor, Grace, Blain, McMillan, Irvine, Riley, Keogh, McLeod, Ritchie, Hoekstra & this minute taker. Many other members have attended various meetings in recent times, and it will only take a slight tweak for us to suddenly hit 30 at a meeting, which is what we are aiming for.

Among a number of reports we discovered Matt Northeast's recent acceptance of an offer to host the regular Wednesday night trivia at The Seanchai resulted in an unexpected (but apparently standard) whip around the participants and raised $512 which will come into the club, being Matts nominated charity. Well done Matt, and thanks from all of us. No doubt it was a fun night, and what a happy outcome. There was general enthusiasm at the idea of having a club trivia night before long. Stay tuned.

Bob McMillan reported that with John Clue liaising with a Ballarat club, Sinclair Wilson kindly donating 120 computers and monitors to be packed and transported up to Lismore in northern New South Wales to replace children's computers in areas where the kids have been left with nothing. He called on volunteers to attend at Sinclair Wilson the following morning to bubblewrap and box of the computers and monitors before they were collected by Wettenhall's transport at 12 noon to be taken up to Lismore via Ballarat.

I can report that a good number of us turned up at Sinclair Wilson the following morning for what was a very enjoyable hands-on project. A project soured only slightly by the fact that at least four of us have now picked up Covid!

Rowan O'Brien reported on goods which were collected to be taken down to Melbourne for Ukrainian refugees. I missed all the detail, but by the sound of things either Rohan or Lew Officer confused 50 Merri Street with 50 Merrivale Drive, but in the end all worked out well. Apparently there are about 300 Ukrainians in Melbourne who have come out to stay with family and friends.

To wrap up the meeting Rob Harris was interviewed on his life and background. As always, it was an enjoyable and very interesting interview although we only got through about half of his life. Very much like Ian Senior's original interview where after about 45 minutes of intense questioning we were still only up to his second  devil's lettuce crop out in box Hill.

And finally, Bore's new knee is apparently working so well that he will be able to start driving again next week. Everyone nervously glanced sideways, but then walked out to enjoy the rest of the afternoon.

I would say that I'll see you all on Wednesday, but regrettably I'm one of the crew that contracted Covid, whether at the working bee or elsewhere. See you in seven days!

Robbo. 

Boré’s View.

It is not easy being a multicellular eukaryotic organism.  Your string of DNA needs to build a complex cell with its cell wall, endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, golgi complexes and all the other organelles that make the cell work.  You then need to replicate your DNA and divide the cell and all its contents to create two new cells over and over again.  You then need to precisely turn on and off parts of your DNA to allow cells in the correct position to differentiate into all the specialized cell types so your mass of cells work together as a whole.  You do this for years and years in hope that one day you can package half of your DNA into a cell that you can combine with half the DNA of another multicellular eukaryote of the same species so you can replicate half a version of yourself.  It is hard work.

A virus can’t be bothered doing any of this.  It is a leaner not a lifter.  It simply wraps its nucleic acid code in a protective coat and goes looking for a cell mechanism created by another life form.  It inserts itself into the foreign cell, hijacks it, and uses the cellular mechanism to replicate versions of itself, often destroying the host cell in the process.  It is very annoying.

Boré is a man of science who understands this process only too well.

We thank Boré for this wonderful cartoon.

The inevitable response.

Thanks Ron.  I hope you won’t mind if I respond because I think these are interesting issues that relate to the work we do as Rotarians. 

Firstly, I never claimed poverty had been wiped out, only that we are in the process of doing so.  Extreme poverty is classified as earning less that US $2 per day in today’s money.  In 1800 85% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty.  By 1966 that figure was 50%.  In 2017 only 8% of the world still lived in extreme poverty.  8% is still a lot of people, and that is terrible, but it is getting better.  It is bad, but it is getting better. 

However, Ron’s main point is about population.  Fewer people would be better for the environment, but what to do about it?  Again, lets look at the data.  Today there are two billion children in the world.  How many children does the United Nations predict will exist in 2100?  Two billion.  The projected population increase is entirely due to people living longer, not because more children are being born.  So, the world population is already beginning to plateau at a new level. 

What is causing this?  People in extreme poverty (less than $2 per day income) have five children each on average.  Until about 1940 the world’s population was stable because an horrendous number of children died in misery of preventable diseases every year.  People earning more than $2 per day across all cultures and all religions have two children each on average.  The data is clear; we have controlled population growth by lifting people out of extreme poverty.  If we lift the last 8% of people out of extreme poverty the problem of population growth will have been completely solved.

Ron, I am still going to claim that what we have done has worked and what we are doing is working. I highly recommend ‘Factfulness’ by Hans Rosling for a better explanation.