Catalan Referendum, Catalonia, Computer Troubles, 3D Photos under the Microscope

Cross-eye - stereopair, Globularina foraminiferan

Puerto Rico and the President' negative comments continue to smoulder in the news. Apparently, Rex Tillerson's efforts for dialogue with North Korea through meetings with  China have been undermined by President Trump saying he was wasting his time. Is this good-cop/bad cop play?

The Tory conference was greeted today with a massive demonstration, estimated to be 30,000 by the police. The protests were against austerity and student fees - and presumably the Tories in general. However, all the news has been dominated by the Spanish government's response on the Catalan self proclaimed referendum day on secession. Rubber bullets were fired and there was plenty of footage of police either laying into demonstrators, dragging them out of schools by their clothes and hair, and removing election urns wherever they could find them. Whilst a substantial proportion of the Catalan population had been against secession, surely the rough action of the central Spanish government will sway opinion. The Catalan regional governors have claimed that 90% of votes that were cast and counted were for leaving Spain.

According to Wikipedia, Catalonia was initially established as a Frankish vassal buffer state in the 8th Century against Moorish invaders. by 1137 it was united by marriage under the Aragon crown.  in the mid 17th century it revolted and came under French control until reconquered by Spain in 1659. It has been a powerhouse of industry and income for Spain. The Catalan language is a Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin, a phrase that brings up the wrong sort of, and totally undeserved, image in my mind.

Cooked a roast chicken lunch today and then tried to do some urgent work. Foiled by the printer and PC not communicating properly with each other and then Word not behaving and excluding key fonts from a document. Had to go through the repair functions of both printer and Microscoft Office. It was nearly five pm before I was able to get started and at least get an hour's work done. Blasted updates!

Edited a few more holiday pictures - this time of the ruins of the giant Roman villa on the Sirmione Peninsula and of Brescia. 

In the evening, tried creating stereo-pairs of images through the microscope. The only way I could do this at high magnification was to tilt a microscope slide either to the right or the left, by inserting a thin piece of card under one end, on the microscope stage. The technique worked reasonably well with the Globularina foraminiferan. Used stacking of batches of 30 to 50 images each per subject to get images in focus for 'left' and 'right' images for six varied subjects.