onetrack

I don't know if you blokes and gals noticed, but the Spring Equinox was at 10:43PM, AEST tonight. For the next few months, the days are going to get longer and hotter! It's good to get some nice fine, warm days - this Spring so far, for us in the West, has been perfect.

Kathryn Crosby, 2nd wife of Bing Crosby, has died aged 90! She married Bing in 1957 - she was 23, he was 54. Bing died in 1977 at age 74, from a heart attack, after a round of golf! https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/kathryn-crosby-dead-7th-voyage-of-sinbad-actress-wife-bing-crosby-1236008739/

There's going to be a lot more of that in the near future, the Chinese are desperate to corner the EV market, the Chinese Govt has poured US$350B into subsidies for their EV manufacturers and they're churning them out like biscuits on an Arnotts production line. The problems with the Chinese EV's, are - 1. You're likely to be left holding a pup if you buy one, as dozens of Chinese EV brands are going to disappear in the near future as they find they can't compete. 2. Warranties won't be worth the paper their written on, many Chinese EV owners are already listing their fights for compensation over faults and an unwillingness to honour warranties. We already have enough problems with Western and Japanese car manufacturers failing to honour warranties, the Chinese will make the Western recalcitrants look like angels. 3. The resale value of the Chinese EV's will be bugger all, if you like writing off your entire investment in one, well, that's O.K., but most people like to see some residual value in their vehicle. 4. Parts and service for the Chinese vehicles will be a nightmare. In the Chinese brand equipment market, this is already true, as brands vanish overnight, and parts supplies, even for current brands, are often unobtainable.

The Kookaburras are ruthless killers, Harry Butler hated them with a vengeance for killing all his great snakes. They're terrors on snakes, they snatch them up and beat the crap out of them.

I can't see myself buying a hybrid any time soon, they look like twice the complexity and twice the problems as they age. I'll wait for the swappable solid state battery EV's.

There's a large cohort of Aboriginals in the communities around Alice Springs and remote communities throughout S.A., N.T. and Northern W.A., who speak very little English and who won't learn a satisfactory level of English. As a result, they're unemployable, and then they get bitterly angry when any relations who have managed to reach a satisfactory level of English, get paying jobs and money to spend. Then they take out their frustration and anger with violent behaviour. It's pretty common to get quantities of rocks thrown at you in these communities whenever you drive in, or even just past a group of them. In towns such as Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing, vehicles are regularly pelted with rocks as they drive through on the highway. One recent episode a woman was seriously injured in her truck by Aboriginal rock-throwers. The police can't catch them generally, because the rock throwers are usually juveniles and fleet of foot.

Keep moving, and keep active, and keep up the social interaction, they're all proven to have major benefits in keeping away the Grim Reaper. SWMBO went to see her brother yesterday for a coffee, they keep in touch fairly regularly. There's 5 in her family, 2 older girls and 2 younger brothers. Her brother reported the oldest sister (I think she's 79 now), is in poor shape. She's been grossly obese for years and doesn't move enough. She sits and reads all the time, so she's not getting any movement benefit. Apparently she had a fall in recent times and that knocked her about as well. Her brothers opinion was that she was becoming quite decrepit. Meantimes, we're getting on with a major bathroom renovation, and house improvements, and we're only 4 and 5 years younger than her. Mind you, we're getting tilers and plumbers for the backbreaking stuff, I'm getting past that, anyway! The tilers had to rip out the 1950's cast iron bath and basin yesterday, I gave them a couple of sets of my 12 tonne machinery skates to roll the bath out of the house, and they were pretty appreciative of the loan of them! I took off to the wheatbelt yesterday for the day, and left them to wreck the bathroom by themselves! They sure made a mess! On with the revamped plumbing this Tuesday, then the tilers will come back to start working their magic with the new tiles, bath and handbasin we bought. The tiler is a little Iraqi bloke, he's working like a Trojan, trying to extract the rest of his family from the Middle East cesspit. He says life in Iraq isn't pleasureable any more.

That's making a mockery of real Turkey.

Around about 2%-5% seems to work best for me, but a bit of trial and error will soon sort out what works for you. It's important to use good quality water - rainwater is best, much tap water is highly mineralised, and this can seriously affect acid bath results. Ensure the solution is kept covered with a sheet of board or metal, you need to keep sunlight away from citric acid, as it decomposes it rapidly - and the board or metal sheet keeps evaporation to a minimum. Citric acid is best obtained from a chemical supplier, it comes from them much cheaper, and in more suitable quantities, such 1, 2, 5 and 25kg bags - rather than buying it in small quantities at exorbitant prices from the likes of soap-making suppliers or retailers.

Re the phosphate treatment, whenever I acid bath an item in citric acid, I pull it out of the bath, and pressure wash it - and if it's not 100% clean, it goes back in for a few more days, then gets pulled out and pressure washed again. Then, as soon as I've finished pressure washing, I make up a solution of about 3-5% phosphoric acid in a spray bottle, and spray the item all over with the phosphoric spray, wetting it thoroughly all over, then letting it dry. Warm days helps in this process. The standard Ranex phosphoric acid you get from Bunnings is 32%, so you add about 10-15% of Ranex by volume to a 500ml spray bottle and this solution works just fine. I use old spray bottles from laundry sprays, and throw them out, and get another one, when it stops working properly. The adjustable tip for a fine spray works good.

With the recent conviction of the former ATSIC boss, Geoff Clark, on major theft charges from his local Aboriginal group in Victoria - I wonder if the authorities are now going to go back, and try to find out how much he defrauded ATSIC over the years he was in absolute charge there? Fat chance, I'd say - it won't even be considered - even though Clark has proved himself to be a full-time criminal over many, many years - including rape convictions, as well as fraud and theft. The criminals, thieves and fraud merchants are drawn like a magnet to the Aboriginal Industry and its permanent pots of gold with little oversight. It's interesting that Clark was only investigated when a smart detective saw Clark posing with one of Australias top QC's, who was representing him against the rape charges. The detective simply thought about how much this QC was costing on a daily basis, and couldn't figure out how Clark could afford him - and thus started an investigation into the source of his ill-gotten wealth.

That's what painkillers are for, don't try and "tough it out", take the recommended product and dose, and if it's not working for you, let them know, pronto. I was on Tramadol (synthetic opiate) for the pain when I damaged the bursa in my left shoulder, and it's bloody horrible stuff, it leaves you constipated and feeling substandard - but it works. You just have to get off it, as fast as you can. You new knee should be coming good soon, you've just got to live through this crap in the meantime.

"Welcome to Country" ceremonies have turned into a PC money-making exercise for Aboriginals in the right position to exert power over all Govt authorities - and in turn, make the rest of the nation hostage to this basically fabricated, "important tribal heritage", BS ceremony. My father had a substantial level of interaction with Yamatji people in the Station country of the Murchison region of W.A. in the 1930's. He lived on Doolgunna Station for 4 years, from 1930 to 1934, and the Aboriginals in that era still lived a largely traditional, quite nomadic lifestyle, on and between Stations and on Crown Land - and even though corroborees were held regularly, there was no such ceremony as "Welcome to Country" in the Yamatji tribal culture. He attended numerous corroborees, and was amused at the simplicity and essentially child-like entertainment involved in them. The corroborees were like modern TV entertainment for the tribe, the older Aborigines made up simple chants to relay news and information to the others in the tribe. Dad was amused by one chant (accompanied by didgerdoo and clapsticks), that went, "Na-Na-Na ..... Na-Na-Na .... Jimmy got a new motor car" (Jimmy being the station owner, and he'd recently bought a new Dodge tourer). Dad was quite impressed by many facets of the Yamatji culture and skills, including the technique of catching fish in local billabongs by stripping bark from the local Paperbark trees to make a small raft, then setting the raft afloat on the water of the billabong with a couple of picanninies sitting on it, while the adults walked abreast, behind it. The adults then beat the water with their hands, and the fish became startled and jumped high in the air around the raft - whereby the picanninies on the raft would then knock them onto the raft, collecting a nice selection for a tribal fish feed.

......And Man made Great Plans for Himself ...... and the Electricity God laughed.....

Sixteen times.

Is this the same cat? The craftiness of this cat is amazing. I'm trying to figure out how he knew the wedge was stopping the door from opening?

Yeah, they share all these great personality features...... Massive self interest and greed Litigious to the point of being vexatious litigants Require a legion of worshipful followers Prepared to use all their money, and others as well, to get what their personal greed desires Have dubious morality and ethics when it comes to business and political dealings Seriously overweight

Is there a sunset in there somewhere??

Super Bowl - the Eagle

Red, that's not a cat video, you have the wrong FB link.

I'm with Jerry on this one. It has Fake written all over it.

Potato - Pot-eight-O's.

Litespeed, Clive actually makes a vast amount of money from the Chinese-owned and operated, Sino-Iron, magnetite mine on the NW Coast of W.A., as Clive owns the leases that are being mined by the Chinese. Clive also owns the land where the magnetite is being shipped out - but he's been in constant dispute with the Chinese over that deal, too. His lawsuits have sometimes been successful - but usually only because they've been settled out of court to get rid of the nuisance. In most cases where his lawsuits have gone right through to final judgement, he's lost.

As the Phantom says, "For those who came in late" - here's the background (links below) to Clives gripe that "he wus robbed". The former (Liberal) W.A. Govt (led by Colin Barnett) did not approve Clives "Balmoral South" iron ore mine, because his mining proposal (involving an iron ore mine, a slurry pipeline, a desalination plant, a dredged shipping channel, a conveyor, a trestle jetty, and ship-loading facilities) was judged "manifestly inadequate", and therefore undeserving of any serious consideration. So, suffering serious hurt to his money grubbing aims, Clive set out to sue the W.A. Govt for $30 billion over his (purportedly) major losses from the rejection. The W.A. Labor Govt of Mark McGowan countered with a rather draconian piece of legislation that stopped Clive from launching any lawsuit against the rejection of his mining proposal. So then Clive sued over the anti-lawsuit legislation, claiming it was unconstitutional. Fortunately, the High Court rejected Clives claim, stating that the W.A. legislation wasn't unconstitutional - so Clive then moved all his company operations to Singapore and now claims that because his company is based in Singapore, the W.A. Govt (and by default, the Federal Govt), in passing the W.A. legislation specifically targeting his company, has infringed on his international legal rights. It will be interesting to see what the famed International Arbitration Court judges come up with. https://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/parliament/pquest.nsf/3f9c0f35f2b504544825718e001105c9/88cde76e87b87fd148257cf6001ebb74?OpenDocument https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-did-the-high-court-rule-against-clive-palmer-and-what-does-the-judgment-mean-169633

Clive Palmer looks like he's going to lose another of his money-grubbing lawsuits, with his claim that the Australian Govt owes him $300B for the W.A. Govt cancelling his mining lease, against International laws, he claims. However, his case is starting off on a pretty poor footing, with the Solicitor-General slamming Palmer for withdrawing half his list of witnesses, and then stating he won't cross-examine the 5 high-powered expert witnesses the Govt is producing. The S-G is ripping Clive a new one, basically saying his claim is based entirely on Clives unsupported evidence, and the fact that him not wanting to cross-examine the Govt witnesses, leads to a conclusion that in doing so, his case will evaporate like a Trump lawsuit. The case is only going to be heard over 3 days, so it could be a swift end to this money-grubbing exercise of Clives - until he finds another one to bring up, of course. https://www.bilaterals.org/?clive-palmer-s-300bn-claim-absurd