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From 1997 - 2022 there have been almost 1500 school shootings in the USA. (Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38433681/) To my knowledge there have been 2 in Australia since 1991 which resulted in death. There's a damn good reason some freedoms are restricted.

Had a really extraordinary rain occurrence last night. Before I went to bed, the sky was clear. About an hour and a half later I began to hear a strange rushing sound from outside. It's hard to explain it until I tell you what happened. The sound at first was a bit low pitched. I wondered if it was a truck approaching, but the sound was coming from the opposite direction from the highway. The sound seemed to be getting louder as it was approaching. Finally the sound arrived and with it extremely heavy rainfall. It was as if a fire hose was in use. If there is rain from a thunderstorm, it usually starts with scattered drops and then the main fall catches up. But last night it was like a wall of water was moving across the land. The boundary between rain and no rain was distinct. This rainfall continued for a short time, maybe five minutes or so, then abruptly stopped. Later that night I saw that the sky was clear again. This morning I checked the ran guage and saw that it regaistered 11 mm of rain. That brings total rainfall since last Monday to about 75mm. There is standing water in the more level paddocks and some dams now have water in them. The creek which runs through the place is roaring and the frogs are making quite a racket.

Father Hartigan was my mum's teacher in Narrandera.

IF people HAVE something, it's inevitable (almost) that they will want to Play with it. We are NOW Light years off the topic. Anyhow WE do NOT have a Bill of rights. It's been talked about often. Perhaps we should? Is Our two Party System a Con? I think under the current circumstances, the Question is Irrelevant. The UAP/ Liberal Party of R.G.Menzies is Unrecognisable in relation to Its current form which is Becoming Extinct at a great rate of Knots, before our very eyes. Making T Abbot the President, only ensures it's Fate. THAT role is Party Managerial , not Policy making. Abbot won't be able to Help Himself reaching for the Tiller. Nev

The difference between 60 years ago and today is the "culture" of the people. When everyone grows up in the same culture, they know what is acceptable and only a small minority cause trouble. For example, in Broken Hill we had explosives and guns everywhere, but it was not a problem. Then "outsiders" move in, not part of the culture, and in ignorance or indifference they do things that require regulation. We had an Asian visitor who shot sheep, and claimed he was just hunting like the rest who were shooting kangaroos. Multiculturalism requires much greater regulation, but that is not effective if the newcomers do not respect the regulations and their enforcers.

In Early Newcastle, Mines were everywhere and so were detonators and sticks of gelignite. I cannot recall a single incidence of inappropriate use but today People are More whacky. Nev

If we removed these restrictions, my suburban neighbour would get the right to buy explosives and blow stuff up. If they did this in their backyard, then as a neighbour, I would lose some rights, such as the right to quiet enjoyment of my property and possibly personal safety. Substitute boat with aircraft. Should we give people the right to buy a plane and fly untrained through congested airspace? I sort of agree with this, although sometimes a rule can seem overly restrictive or dumb if you don't look at all the ins and outs. If we take down the "No Hunting" sign in a forest, then in my opinion, we are taking a right away from those who want to peacefully and safely bushwalk. I was on a domestic flight a couple of weeks ago. As I travel regularly, I am well aware of the rules. There has been a new "restriction" on passengers' rights. You can bring a battery power bank with you, but you have to keep it within reach, and you MUST NOT USE IT during the flight. One passenger argued with the cabin crew member about it. I think they used the word "rights" I don't think there has ever been a time when humans were able to "do what we liked, when we liked, and where we liked." The drug dealers who lived next door for 18months before we got them kicked out, and some of them jailed, believed they could do "what they wanted, when they wanted and where they wanted" including flying a drone into our backyard and using a jackhammer at midnight, as well as waving around all sorts of weapons, knives, a homemade gun, etc. When I confronted the guy flying the drone, he said, "he could fly it anywhere he wanted to. Also, it was 3:30AM The phrase " to do what we liked, when we liked, and where we liked " reminds me of something a teenager would say I think a problem is that we are well attuned to things we believe impinge on our rights, but certainly would complain less about the rights of people doing things that annoy us. If the restrictions against riding a pushbike or a horse through the Burnley tunnel were lifted, then a small group of people would gain rights; however, the majority of road users would lose the right to travel this route at a reasonable speed and unimpeded. There are things I would like to do, but cannot. There are also things I do that are restricted, but I do them anyway. As well as legal rights and restrictions, there are social rights and restrictions. I think to portray Australians as being oppressed is a bit of an overreach. If we line up every society on earth in order of freedom, we are definitely (in my view) more towards the free end than the oppressed end.

There are rights and there are privileges. We have only minimal basic rights in Australia, but a lot of privileges extended to us. Privileges such as drivers licences, and firearms licences, and fishing licences. All those privileges can be restricted or withdrawn, according to the Govt of the day, reacting to pressure from parties involved with those issues, or the courts responding to offences against the Acts that govern those privileges. Ever-increasing restrictions on firearms ownership and use, is what seems to get a lot of people going - along with restrictions on fishing. Most people seem to accept the ever-increasing restrictions as regards driving on public roads. Ever-lowering speed limits, increasing levels of driving penalties, and intrusion by automation, such as AI-assisted cameras. Radar detectors are banned in every State and territory, another restriction that seems to cause great levels of complaint about Govt becoming Big Brother. We definitely have a vast array of major restrictions now, that we didn't have in my youth. I could buy explosives in any co-op and go and blow up anything I liked - all I needed was an explosives permit handed out by the local policeman, who just asked a few perfunctory questions. I could get multiple firearms and a licence with ease, along with unlimited amounts of ammo, and no need to tell any authority where I was going to shoot, or what I was going to shoot. I could go fishing nearly anywhere with only minor restrictions. I didn't need a boat drivers licence, I could go buy any boat and roar off in it anywhere. There were no demerit points and the fines for traffic offences were mostly mere annoyances. Drunk driving was regarded as a no-no, but no-one did anything about it, and it took a very drunk driver to get arrested. Even then, they were just released when they sobered up. We could knock down trees and vegetation wholesale and no-one could stop us. But nowadays, clearing bans and massive fines for "environmental damage" rule the day. Our basic human rights are still the same as they always were. We have no Bill of Rights, as America has, and the writers of the Australian Constitution decided there was no need for one, as we were a civilised country who treated people with respect. Well, the white Europeans, anyway. The Aboriginals rights were trampled for decades until they started taking Govts to court, aided by smart white lawyers - and they won a lot of concessions and reparations. That seems to stick in a lot of white Europeans throats, too. All in all, I think the biggest problem we have today is excessive bureaucracy. There are Depts and Divisions for everything, and ever increasing regulation of every single thing you want to do. Somewhere along the line we have lost a lot of the old "freedoms" - to do what we liked, when we liked, and where we liked. The cause of that has been vastly increasing numbers of people, increased numbers of badly-behaved people, and increased disapproval of activities that were formerly tolerated - not necessarily because they were harmless, just that few people saw it happening, and few people were affected by what is now regarded today, as unacceptable behaviour.

That is not really my point. I was commenting on the notion that our freedoms now are less than before. Sure, religion seeks to influence the government, but in terms of personal freedom, religious folks are not in any real sense degrading my freedom. I am saying that in the past, religion did have great control over the average person, but this power has decreased with time. So yes, I agree that religion does attempt to influence the government and does have its little victories; however, in issues like same sex marriage, divorce, etc., society has moved on from the old repressive rules (for most of society at least).

The Soviets got 440,000 trucks during WW2 from the Americans. They received nearly 2000 locomotives, and tens of thousands of railcars. They also got the manufacturing machinery to build a lot of American machines and equipment. Entire factories in the U.S were dismantled and re-erected in Russia - such as complete tyre factories. They received tens of thousands of machine tools, vital for manufacturing and repair of equipment. America provided almost half of the high octane aviation fuel used by the Russian Air Force during WW2. Even Stalin admitted privately, if it were not for American equipment and logistics assistance during WW2, Russia would have been overrun by the Germans.

It would appear that there is a silent coup going on in Buckingham Palace. King Charles seems to have given a bit of responsibility to Prince William and he has been doing things that reduce the power of Queen Camilla. William has sacked a number of Camilla's relations from powerful jobs within the Court. People don't seem to be showing Camilla the trappings of courtesy one whould expect. Queen Elizabeth made a decision that was important in maintaining the Monarchy by permitting William to marry outside the aristocracy. That has introduced fresh genes into the Monarchy, reducing the dangers of inbreeding that dogged European aristocracy over the centuries.

And we don't need to pretend to buy non existent submarines, for that.

I liked one comedian's take on why Trump didn't fly to the Bahamas for his son's wedding... Flying to an island makes him miss his mate Jeffrey.

Scomo gave it a try, how many ministries was he secretly running?

But it’s their three legged system of government that allows a corrupt president to accumulate so much power. It would be very difficult if not impossible for a prime minister of this country to do what Trump is doing.

The only time that will happen is after their next civil war. The senate already has the power to restrict Trump but they have become impotent with Trump quoting Emergencies when there are none and all the government appointees being sycophants. The only hope is republicans losing their house majority after the mid terms.

Rather than rewriting the constitution, if they just follow it...... Founding fathers tried to separate state from all religion. The US really began it's slide when the christian lobby got control - about the same time their (&our) government implemented prayer sessions into government processes. The only thing needed to reclaim some semblance of respect is to get the whole lot to obey the rule of law, ditch religious fundamentalism, and drop the Electoral College.

What else would you expect from an abusive, vicious President who has started fights with every single person on the planet who disagreed with him!

You want to RE-WRITE the American Constitution?? Wash your mouth out, and apologise to every flag-waving American patriot! This Constitution was written by God himself, looking over the shoulders of the Great American Founding Fathers! It is UNTOUCHABLE!!!!! No-one is ever allowed to re-write even one line of it!! 🙄 The world will end when that happens, and every American will retreat to their end-time bunkers with all their firearms, hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammo, and tons of dried food supplies, to take on the hordes that are coming to TAKE THEIR CONSTITUTION AND THEIR GUNS AWAY FROM THEM!!!! 🙄

I've got an idea for gun control in the USA! Invoke the spitir of teh Second Amendment which says "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The spirit of that amendment was to provide secutiry for the State. Therfore, make it a condition of gunownership that a person join a militia unit and attend training that leads to the unit being well regulated. If a person does not do that, then no firearm. People would find it too inconvenient to give up their time for that, and so would hand in their firearms.

And every creek a banker ran, And dams filled overtop; "We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan, "If this rain doesn't stop."

Had a shit of a night's sleep last night! Kept getting woken up by the rain pounding on the roof. When I got up this morning water was laying is sheets across the ground. I had to go out and clear twigs and leaves from the drainage channels I dug back when the last big rains came. I measured 50 mm in the rain guage, and it is still raining. The rain event is supposed to last for the next couple of days.

Hey! Wait a mo! That can't be OUR Jerry. There aren't enough keyboard errors. Where's my tinfoil hat?

It's well worth it. I'm a bit biased as my all time favourite movie genre is submarine movies, but for any technically minded person it's got heaps of interest. They were a British design if my memory is correct.

onetrack, have you been on the HMAS Ovens? I did the tour when I was over there eleven years ago, very interesting inside.

We've certainly earned that moniker well and truly today. The wind is still screaming, and looks like keeping up for a while yet. They had a gust of 102kmh at Swanbourne, and gusts of 133kmh and 135kmh at the Capes this afternoon. Rottnest Island recorded a gust of 113kmh just before 3:00PM, but it looks like the wind knocked the recording station out, it's currently offline. This is the most intense low pressure system I've encountered for quite a while, so maybe the BOM was right about it being a 1-in-5 year storm. My SD is currently without power in Stoneville, up in the Hills.

I look up if any crimes have been committed using commercial explosives (not homemade). So, whilst with the present restrictions, it is somewhat rare that it has happened (despite restrictions). I guess we don't know what would happen if explosives were freely available. Commercial or Industrial Explosives Some Australian bombings have involved explosives that originated from mining or commercial sources: The Sydney Hilton Hotel Bombing is generally believed to have involved a substantial quantity of high explosive, although the exact source and perpetrators remain disputed. The Russell Street Bombing used a large car bomb. Reports from the investigation indicated the perpetrators used commercially manufactured explosives rather than something improvised from household chemicals. Criminal groups have occasionally stolen explosives and detonators from mines, quarries, and construction operations, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. Australia's large mining sector means that explosives such as ANFO (ammonium nitrate fuel oil), emulsions, and gelignites are used legitimately in huge quantities, but access is tightly controlled.

I don't think Onetrack was calling it 'opressive'. He pointed out that there was no need to create a law, for instance, to prevent free availability to purchase explosives. I cannot recall any reports of neighbours blowing up anything in their backyard, can you? Do you fear that your neighbour would do that if he/she could? Our society has become less social as it becomes more crowded. The old social norms that encouraged individuals to be more considerate, have faded. But our basic freedoms are not, in my opinion, being oppressed.

We often comment on the peculiarities of English spelling. Her's one that got me wondering. How is it that the group of letters, 'choir', produces the sound 'kw-ire' when spoken? I took a dive into etymology and found this: The meaning "band of singers" in English is from c. 1400, quyre. It was re-spelled mid-17c. in an attempt to match classical forms, but the pronunciation has not changed. Now I wonder where 14th Century English got its spelling from.

I don't think that the basic Human Rights have been stripped awy. It's the more trivial that people whinge about. It's hard to come up with a list of Rights that people seem to think they have lost, or the extent of former rights.

He's probably also mindful that his cancer diagnosis might curtail his time in charge.

I don't think anything has changed since WW2. America only ever sees Australia as a convenient Southern base to protect its national and corporate interests. During 1942, the Americans moved in and took over a lot of Australian real estate, built a substantial number of airfields on land they didn't own (and the Australian Govt was very slow to compensate for land losses during WW2, not making reparations in some cases until 1947 and 1948. And even then, the compensation was poor), and set up "joint forces" command groups - where the Americans had virtually all the say. That was because they had an Army, Navy and Air force, that dwarfed ours. We built three new hospitals and turned them over to the Americans for their exclusive use, for their injured and sick military men. That grated on a lot of Australians who had to go without medical assistance during WW2, simply because it wasn't available. We both built and requisitioned vast amounts of military accommodation for American servicemen during WW2. Some of the those installations held up to 20,000 American troops. We supplied about 90% of the food the American servicemen consumed in the South East Asian region. At the end of the War, the bills were totalled (with "Reverse lend-lease" included, where Australia supplied goods and services for American military use), and the final result was that the Americans got more from us, than we got from them. The only real gain Australia made was the purchase of all the remaining U.S. military equipment left in Australia after the War. This was purchased at a value of around 5% of its manufactured cost, and it was nearly all sold at the Commonwealth Disposals Commission auctions held between late 1945 and early 1950, and these CDC sales reaped a very substantial profit for the Australian Govt. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/69591061

Teals are still discussing whether to form a party too. If they did I could picture a few moderate Libs jumping ship. And Teals would poll a lot better than PHONey in urban electorates.

Wille, what you are saying is that we must continue to get involved in the US conflicts as we have done in the past, in the hope that they MIGHT come to our aid in the highly unlikely event of us being invaded. The US has not historically behaved in the way that NATO (for instance) has a binding defense agreement to come to the aid of invaded members. Meanwhile we have repeatedly rushed to the aid of US involvrment in other wars. But none of those were cases of US being invaded. Do they owe us anything? I wouldn't count on it. I do not believe the US would do a great deal to help us if we really needed help. The US once said they would help Ukraine if Russia threatened it. Look how that turned out.

Setting a pretty Poor example. Nev

Just when I think the US can't get any worse, someone manages to show me another example of how networking works....

He was on a spinner winner!

Hey Marty, I'm bringing by kayak for a bit of whitewater fun!

Bit damp down here at the moment, over 140mm in last 3 days. Our little creek which is normally a gentle trickle.

That's just your algorithm working for you.

Trump has demonstrated how weak the US Constitution and their system of government is if you want to exploit or ignore it.

No. Just review it' - tidy it up by including the OK amendments as Sections. I think that what Trump has been doing is reason to reconsider the role of the Head of State and the House of Representatives in their roles in running the country. Trump has removed the ability to run the country from the Representatives. They could still keep their system for electing a President, but restrict a President's power to act as Trump has been acting.

I think that the only thing that can save the democracy of the USA as it moves into its second 250 years is a review of its Constitution. A review and rewriting would permit amendments which have had to be made to be presented in a more organised way, and some of the recinding amendments removed. I think that a new constitution should make the format of the government similar to ours and most other democracies. That is, the People's House should be the place where the people who run the country do their work. That's where the person responsible for the various ministries report back to the representatives of the People. There could be a House of Review to monitor laws proposed by the representatives. Finally, the Head of State should be as apolitical as possible, and have no power to make the sort of Orders that we have seen Trump do.

Hmm welcome AI

Rear tyre for your rat bike?

Since Australia is one of the few countries that drives on the left we have to accept that the majority of vehicles built worldwide are for right hand drive. It is annoying if you have grown up with the indicator lever on the right, but eventually you retrain yourself if your vehicle has it on the left. Can you remember the push-button gear selector in, I think, early Valiants?

That report is a misleading simplification. AEMC projects a 5% fall in the cost of producing electricity over the next five years. However, retail prices could rise by as much as 13% over the next five years due to inflation, network and distribution costs, compliance and investment costs, demand growth, retailer return on investment, and weather volatility.

We have got Jerry-AI-tric back. But I won't believe the real Jerry's back until I see his normal keyboard scramble posts.

A windfarm in sa that I had a bit to do with, with small MW turbines has had it life extended to 30 years. I am curious to see how the larger ones go. Huge amounts of forces when you have 162m rotors sitting on 150M towers.

when taken with: would, IMHO, mean that AI is in fact representative of most human "intellignence". Also, Claude may have been telling white lies, or at least responding in the same narrow contexts that we often do. Most AI models do interact and learn - this is the heart of machine learning. AI models are mainly advanced predictive/probability models and the interactions they have are used to further refine them.. So, the conversation does change them (or their predictions and insights using the same inputs). It may be that in that particular conversation, it's learning was switched off, but that happens with people all the time with people - how often have we seen people who have deep-seated beliefs not change them despite facts presented which stronly rebuff their beliefs? Acting differently is hard to quantify. What may be an illusion of responding differently may be in fact acting consistently; it is just the learning they are doing makes them respond differently. If their creators - or boss - enabled them to push back when ethics demand it, then they would. How many times have people still carried out something that they thought was unethical when their bosses demanded it. Just look at the Robodebt Royal Commission. And when we think of ethics in this context, we often think of clearly right or wrong, but what about the ethical conundrums that are hard to decide.. for example, one may be presented a situation where they are driving and have to swerve to avoid killing 5 people in a car, but if they swerve, they will kill a pedestrian - what decision should be made? Whether it's AI or real intelligence, is there a right or wrong answer, or does it depend on the individual's values? So, I would argue that AI does act like humans. It is not, and cannot be sentient.. But it can certainly seem like it. Even in that little exhange, it seemed to be reflective and understand/respond to conflict - just like we do. It is also very rare that humans come up with brand new ideas just out of their imagination. Often a stimuli (e,g. the apple falling on the head/ watching the clock as the tram moves away) links previousl experiences and knowledge to form a new idea. I am not sure how far AI is with it, but when I plugged in my idea on returning to Australia, Chat got very excited and without promprting, went into all sorts of different things about my idea thaty would likely work versus not. Then it suggested something that was quite left field and seemed innovative, and searches didn't yield anything that seemed materially analagous. If we look at the odd mishap: How many times do people get facts wrong v. AI? We have employees that will perform malicious acts, such as deleting production databases or providing maliciousl code to completely compromise the system - they used to be time bombs. Sadly, people also molest women (and others).. Things go wrong with AI. They also go wrong with people and people commit henous acts - probably far worse than AI have, yet. I have been quiet lately because I am involved in fdast tracking deploying AI for certain functions. If it works, it will mean far fewer jobs. But we are late to the party. Will governments have to have the foresight to implement changes for an as smooth transition as possible? Yep! Even Elon thinks so: https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-pushes-universal-high-111339678.html