old man emu

When you are President, you don't need a spray can to tag a wall.

My Dad told me of a notice that used to be displayed at unrinals in public toilets. Please do not throw cigarettes butts into the urinal. It didn't take long before there was a scrawled addendum to the notice, It makes them soggy and hard to light.

I don't know about the original arrow, but I was lead to believe that nowadays the location of the image of a fuel bowser on the instrument panel performs the same function.

There are three living species of zebra: Grévy's zebra (Equus grevyi), the plains zebra (E. quagga), and the mountain zebra (E. zebra). Zebras share the genus Equus with horses and asses, the three groups being the only living members of the family Equidae. The skin of the zebra is black. The stripes are the result of differences in the concentration of melanin in the hairs - more melanin = black, less melanin = white. The differences in concentration can be explained by the concept of the Turing pattern. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_pattern . Sometimes this effect goes wrong and a zebra has a coat without stripes. In those cases the coat looks brownish, but may have feint stripes or small spots. Why does the zebra have stripes? Zebras suffer the scourge of flying, biting insects. Laboratory experiments have shown that alternating aras of black and white visually confuse these insects and they do not land on striped areas. Other experiments in which horses have been covered with striped horse rugs reduce the numbers of insects landing on the horse. (There's a commercial opening! Make horse rugs with a zebra pattern. I wonder if a checked or tartan pattern would work.)

Go back and watch the video for an explanation of how varience in a biometic feature is caused. The differences are not influenced initially by genes. The genes allow the production of the causative chemical, but it is the random distribution of the chemical within the organ that causes the varience. That explanation does not deny that genes are responsible for the correct formation of a substance. What Turing's idea is that the genes allow the production of a substance, but the biometric feature is the result of the density of the substance as it diffuses through the organ. Imagine pouring 10 mls of black ink into a litre of clean water. Do that several times and you will never get the exact same distribution of concentration of ink in the water initially.

We all know about the English mathematician, Alan Turing. He's the bloke who was very instrumental in developing a machine to decode German military messages created using Enigma machines. But what did he do after the war ended? Well he want back to being a mathematician working on developing computers. However, he must have got bored with that field of study. When Turing was 39 years old in 1951, he turned to mathematical biology, finally publishing his masterpiece "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" in January 1952. "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis", which describes how patterns in nature, such as stripes and spots, can arise naturally and autonomously from a homogeneous, uniform state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_pattern Turing proposed a model wherein two homogeneously distributed substances (P and S) interact to produce stable patterns during morphogenesis. These patterns represent regional differences in the concentrations of the two substances. Their interactions would produce an ordered structure out of random chaos. There's an explanation of this process in the attached video. Go to timestamp 3:18 It is interesting that the stripes of an individual zebra are unique to that zebra, in the same way as your fingerprints are unique to you. This individuality is also the basis of eye pattern recognition used in security systems.

In 2022 when I moved here, it rained and rained and the country was Ireland green. In 2025 it barely rained at all and the country is brown. That's a depressing scene.

Let's face it. The American Empire is in its terminal phases exacerbated by the mania of Trump. China does not need to conquer militarily. It has conquered commercially. The irony is that it applied the lessons taught by the American Dream. I also think that Russia is declining in importance. Putin is 73 years old. Just look at our thread where we advise of the passing of famous people. So many of those passing on are past their "three score and ten". Can Putin and his philosophy have long to last? The European Union is strengthening itself. At the moment it is spending some effort on military defence in response to Russia's activity, but at the same time is going ahead comercially. India is a growing commercial entity, but not a military one. Southeast Asia just wants to make money. The problem areas are Africa and the Middle East, but these areas are involved in localised tribal conflicts. None of the countries involved there have the ability to become world powers.

I'm happy now!

That link gets me into the BOM site. I did see that I could get to other places, but some of them display information in the new format, which it not as quickly seen as it was in the old format. I don't mind looking at tabulated data, or black & white charts. I want facts, not pretty colours. The BOM site should be a source of information. It does not need to be infotainment.

For several days now I have been getting constant winds of about 15 kts from the Southeast. It is an unusual situation since air coming from that direction used to bring rain, but the sky has been completely clear. I wouild have liked to see a synoptic chart, but it seems that the BOM thinks they are not worth posting.

Our Society isn't so uncaring that it will not accept a person's inate human dignity by denying them a basic funeral. A pauper’s funeral is intentionally simple. A pauper’s funeral is intentionally simple. The service usually covers: a basic coffin; transportation of the deceased, and a burial or cremation arranged by the council or appointed provider. I imagine that efforts would be made to bury a person according to their known religious beliefs, but if they are not known then the burial would be in the General area of a cemetery. Given the growing scarcity of burial plots in urban areas, I imagine that for space saving reasons, such bodies would be created. Cremation is also cheaper than burial.

First gets gold Second gets silver Third gets bronze Fourth get laid.

I wonder how efficient those panels are when the ambient temperature is 38C+. It seems that higher temperatures decrease solar panel efficiency because heat increases electrical resistance, reducing voltage and overall power output, with most panels losing about 0.3-0.5% efficiency for every 1°C above the optimal 25°C (77°F) test condition. Solar panel efficiency, the rate sunlight becomes electricity, typically ranges from 17-24% for common panels. At 40C, temperature rise from 25C = 15C. Reduction in efficency due to temperature: 15 x 0.05 = 0.75% Assumed solar panel efficiency: 20% Reduction in efficiency: 20 - (0.2 x 0.75) = 20 - 0.15 = 19.85% Doesn't seem much, does it, but that would be per panel. How many panels on a farm?

I'm posting this link to a video, not for the subject matter, but to get you to look at the background images. The video is about how sheep fixed a problem with weed control on a solar farm in China. We have talked about grazing sheep under solar panels, but what astonished me was the size of this solar farm.