“Not all introductions worked well. Rabbits were an unmitigated environmental disaster. Unchecked by any natural predator, they bred at a staggering rate and chewed their way across vast areas of pastureland as well as any garden that came their way.”

When possums were introduced in 1837 to start a fur industry, no one predicted that these Australian neighbours would naturalize with destructive enthusiasm, wreaking havoc on gardens and bush alike.

Maize and pumpkin seeds were soaked in water for several days and then blackened with tar before planting – the most effective way to deter rats, mice and birds.

Attempts to control them by introducing ferrets, weasels and stoats did much more harm than good. Although these predators probably killed a reasonable number of rabbits, they also devastated populations of kiwi and raided the nests of flighted birds.

For those dependent on their gardens for fresh food, it was often a case of feast or famine… (One settler wrote), “Strawberries were now so plentiful that… I made 287 lbs of jam…”

Even where the land was more receptive, settlers soon learned to take some precautions before planting their vegetables.

Up to 20 million possums a year were killed during the height of the fur trade, but this barely checked their rapid expansion.

Among top grandmasters the Dutch is a rare defense, which is good reason to play it! It has not been studied very deeply by many opponents, and theory, based on a small number of ‘reliable’ games, must be rather unreliable.

Observation of my life to date shows that the larger the number for whom I work, the more positively effective I become. Thus, it is obvious that if I work always and only for all humanity, I will be optimally effective.

Rigging is like Zen meditation. You must bend over the boat until your back is breaking, until your brain is filled with numbers and fractions of numbers, until you can accurately measure an oarlock’s pitch without bothering to use the pitch meter. Only then will you see the way of eternal rigging happiness.

I chose the name Pi because it’s an irrational number (one with no discernable pattern). Yet scientists use this irrational number to come to a “rational” understanding of the universe. To me, religion is a bit like that, “irrational” yet with it we come together we come to a sound understanding of the universe.

Of course I know our economic growth can’t match our population growth so of course I know we’ll all get poorer until we get that number down – don’t tell me, tell the other idiots!

My point was that removing Saddam should not have been our highest priority. Fighting terrorism should have been our number one concern, followed by the Palestinian peace process.

My value as a woman is not measured by the size of my waist or the number of men who like me.

The trouble with being number one in the world – in anything- is that it takes a certain mentality to attain that position, and that is something of a driving, perfectionist attitude, so that once you do achieve number one, you don’t relax and enjoy it.