old man emu

I remember the HD being called the Holden Disaster, and the HR the Holden Revenge.

Ramseet??? I thought you meant Ramjet. I wanted o post this video as a bit of a joke, but as I listened to the song, I realised how American kids of the Boomer generation were being subjected to jingoistic propaganda.

I'm doing a lot of thinking about the Hereafter. I go to a cupboard and think, "What am I here after?"

You know you are old when you see the first model Commodore or an XD Falcon with historic plates.

A big AI company wants to create data centres in Australia that will require more electricity than we are capable of generating. Data centres' demand for energy will increase more than sixfold from 2024–25 to 2040, surging from 2 to 13 per cent of the country's total energy use. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-27/ai-data-centres-pressuring-energy-transition-greenpeace-says/106722390

Just found out that Lorraine Bayley (Grace Sullivan) passed away on 28 February 2026 aged 89.

"Jerry built" has a couple of possible sources. From an 1856 use in Liverpool, "built hastily of shoddy materials," from jerry "bad, defective". Thr jerry could also be a corruption of "jury" as used in the term "jury mast", a temporary mast put up in place of one that has been broken or carried away." and the earliest citation given is from 1616, with the spelling lury mast. It is wrong to associate "jerry built" with anything German, unless the thing was built by a post-war German refugee working for a shonky house builder.

Don't tell Jerry that!

I noticed on that unsealed road beside my place that the corrugations run from one side of teh road to the other. It's a road that only has one vehicle at a time on it so there is no need to keep to the left. Most people would drive straddling the crown. One would think that wheeltrack ruts would form and that the corrugations would be only in those ruts. I wonder why, then, that the corrugations are right across the road.

For all their expertise in hardware sales, it is strange that Bunnings' attempt to get into the British market failed. Probably it was due to cultural differences such as we have seen with the failure of Starbucks and some other US mobs in Australia.

If it's the heavy trucks that are causing the corrugations, how do you explain corrugations in minor roads? I have an unsealed road beside my place. It starts at the intersection with the sealed highway. The road is mainly used by light vehicles, and when a heavy does use it, the speed is low because they have either just turned into the road or are coming out of a dip where the creek crosses the road. Also, the distance between the crests of the corrugations is shorter than the footprint of a truck tyre. After following the conversations here, I get the feeling that no one watched the video which show a demonstration of how these corrugations form.

He pulled another swifty. He settled out of Court so that the matter would not be tossed out by the Court. The settlement included $US1776 Billion, payable from taxpayer money, plus an incredible set of conditions that prevent the IRS from going after him, his family and his mates. There is no oversight on how the money is distributed. It is the most incredible out-of-court settlement in the history of any legal system so far developed.

He's just appointed a bloke as the head of all US Intelligence Services who has no experience in Intelligence at all. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-william-pulte-acting-director-national-intelligence-tulsi-gabbar-rcna348036

Ever wonder how come corrugations form on an unsealed road? Here's a video which explains it. The video is a bit slow to start so advance to 6:30 to miss the fluff.

I think that once did say something that was the truth, but that was probably the only time.

Isn't a politcal party an alliance of like-minded persons?

I've given up believing anything that Trump is reported to say about the Middle East situation. This morning the ABC reported that he had said that he had got Israel and Hezbalah to stop shooting at each other. He also was said to have claimed that a peaceful end of the Iran situation was at hand. To my mind those were the ravings of a person with no hold on reality.

Who'd be a grain grower? In May it was too dry around here to plant. Over the past week we have had good falls of rain. Now the ground is too wet to get onto. The end of the sowing ssois fast approaching, so it may still not be possible to get a crop in.

Unfortunately a lot of people are being killed, wounded and having their futures adversely affected in the meantime.

That doesn't sound correct. I thought submarines travelled faster on the surface.

So it's now an insult to say that a bloke was hung like a donkey?

What exactly is Iran's ideology? Nobody seems to have laid it out for examination. Sure, it's dominated by a theology. How much impact have the actions of the Isrealis and the USA over the past 78 years influenced that ideology?

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.

Down, down, down I go. the qu seems to actually have been an Old French spelling change. It's all tied up with the name of that part of a church/cathedral where the group of singers is located. c. 1300, queor "part of the church where the choir sings," from Old French cuer, quer "(architectural) choir of a church

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.