old man emu

If you try cooking a beef heart at 180 degrees, it straight lines.

Don't tell GON.

A person can ask for the job of representing an electorate, using their own reputation and support of a Party's plans and if they gain the majority of the support of the electorate get the job. Of course it's a job and they are paid to carry it out. Isn't ironic that while the rest of the population is subject to annual performance assessments relating to their employment, politicians are only assessed at the time of the next election. Therefore, if the politician is a dud, there is no way the people of the electorate can either administer a warning for the politician to improve performance, or if the politician fails, to sack them before the end of the term.

I was being flippant.

Let's face it. Automotive engineering has come a very long way in the past 75 years. Sure we Boomers drool over the cars of our teenage years, but they are not a match for the quality and longevity of modern vehicles. Modern vehicles only lack one thing that those early vehicles had - distinctive styling. Back then you could actually identify the Make of a car by its appearance. Today cars are so similar that you have to read their badges to determine who made them. A possible reason for the similarity in styling could be explained by 'form follows function'. The aerodynamics of a passenger vehicle, which now form part of a vehicle's fuel economy determination, lead to its design. In Biology the process is called "convergent evolution", the independent evolution of similar traits in distantly related species, driven by similar environmental pressures, resulting in analogous structures or behaviors.

I happened to come across a newspaper produced for workers in the mining industry. I was flicking through it and what struck me was the number of stories and ads about little companies that manufacture or supply bit and pieces for the mining industry. Our impression of mining is often of massive diggers and transporters and kilometre-long trains, but we forget about the support industries which provide employment and increase the Nation's level of technical skills.

We are going into an election and the Parties are still using the bread and circuses approach - trying to buy our votes. When was the last time you heard a Party stand up and describe its political philosophy - its manifesto? All we are hearing are promises to provide funding that eventually ends up in the coffers of Big Business. I think GON might be right in refusing to vote. Whoever wins, the people will get screwed somehow.

Yes we do, and they are applied commonly, but at times thoughtlessly. There have been instances where a person who came to Australia in the 1950-60s as a child and who never became naturalised after our citizenship laws changed in the 1980s, has been deported to Great Britain after completing a sentence for a crime committed as an adult. We end a lot of Kiwis back, and of course, those who fail to meet refugee status

The problem with having tyres retreaded is not so much the replaced tread material, but the state of the sidewalls and rim bead. These are made from "strings" of various materials and impacts with bumps and kerbs, or simply the flexing that they are deigned to do can fracture those "strings". The minor fractures cannot be detected visually, so a tyre with damage in those areas could pass for retreading. Also the material from which the tyre is made will suffer damage from UV light and heat changes. Some one has said here that, despite their initial "highish" cost, the outlay for them is a good insurance purchase. NB: I used the word" strings" because I could not think of either the correct term, not a simple way to describe how a tyre is made.

My positive is that I went to Sydney ostensibly to watch my grandson play in a baseball grand final, but I left early and on Friday I met a cousin I had lost track of over sixty years ago. We had a wonderful day just talking about our lives and families. It was so trouble free, as though I had just seen him a month before. By the way, the grandson's team didn't succeed.

Hopefully my recon-ed oil pump arrived last Friday while I was away. Nomad's effort might enthuse me to do the replacement job. Unlike his bike, mine has remained registered while it has been in storage, but I need to get it running by June so I can take it into town for its pinks slip.

I've had my car for a few years now, and never have had a flat tyre. I'm driving down the Sydney tomorrow, so, being a pessimist, I decided to check the pressure in my spare tyre. It's one of those "limp into town" ones that have an 80 kph speed rating. I was amazed to see that the recommended pressure was 60 psi. When I hooked it up to the air pump at the garage, the indicator showed its pressure as 21 psi. I'm glad I did the check, but hope that pumping up the tyre has been simply a necessary precaution.

GON, have you ever heard of the Hutt River Provence? I reckon you'd be happy to imitate it.

That'll make the Jan 6 pardons shaky in 2027 when there's a Democrat in the White House holding the pen.

That's kinda surprising.

The value given for the diameter of the moon is probably derived from a straight line measurement from one side of the Moon to another, through the centre of the sphere. The value for the distance across Australia is probably derived from the length of an arc of a Great Circle passing through both points. If a chord was drawn through the Earth's sphere between the two points, then the length of the chord would be less than the length of the arc. Therefore the straight line distances, diameter -v- arc, would have Australia being narrower than the Moon.

Have you bought any avocados recently? A doctor told me that eating them is a way to control one's bad cholesterol. I had never really developed a taste for them, but I did find a way to enjoy them, and have started eating more. However the quality of avocados has been very poor recently. They are small, hard as rocks and will not ripen. I thought that the poor quality available locally was due to my supermarket buying cheap, but enquiries with café owners and chain supermarkets revealed the same thing. Perhaps the poor quality is due to growers harvesting what could be saved after the terrible weather on the east coast growing areas.

European nations are actively involved in submarine production, with key players like Germany, France, Sweden, and the UK building both conventional and nuclear-powered submarines, with some focusing on export markets. At least if we bought from Europe, the nuts and bolts holding things together would be Metric.

We grew up knowing it as French Indo-China.

Hey! We have a celebrity member! That shit could only have come from the keyboard of one Elon Musk.

The questions that should be asked when purchasing military goods is, what do we want the item to do? In the case of a submarine, the task is locate, track and destroy if necessary. Does the submarine really have to be nuclear powered? The way I see it, we are buying advanced detection and attack systems which the Yanks want to pack into a boat with a certain type of power generation system. Nuclear subs have very much greater operating ranges than diesel electric, but while operating under electric power, the D/E is much quieter and hence more difficult to detect by listening equipment. The only drawback is that the batteries go flat, forcing the sub to rise close to the surface to allow its diesel engines to recharge them. During recharging, the operation of the diesel engine makes noise. Do we need subs that can range far from our shores, or simply ones that can operate along the boundaries of our territorial waters.

I heard on the ABC (Australia) news this morning that there are strong calls from Labor rank and file members to withdraw from AUKUS, for much the same reasons as Portugal is backing out of its arms deal. I have just finished reading a book giving a potted history of Australia's submarine service, which has been closely aligned to the Royal Navy. Dealing with WWII, the author tells that when the Royal Navy was able to send a fleet to the Pacific after the fall of Germany, the US Navy didn't want anything to do with it. The RN brought midget submarines with it, which often had Australian crewmembers. The Yanks wanted no part of them, until they were presented with a plan for the subs to cut the undersea telephone cables the Japanese were using to avoid interception of radio traffic. If you look at the history of the war against Japan, you will find that the Yanks paid little attention to the defence of Australia, or cooperation with any other Nation having interests in the area.

We should first look at what industries we could either start or expand. I reckon we should look at value-adding to our minerals and agricultural products.

How does one know that the advice to use "Delete Me" isn't a scam?

A man was sitting in his doctor's waiting room when a nun burst out of the doctor's consulting room; raced, screaming, across the waiting room to the exit, and charged out of the building, still screaming. The doctor looked at the man and called him into the consulting room. Puzzled, the man asked the doctor, "What was that all about?" The doctor replied, "I told her she was pregnant." Incredulous, the man asked, "Is she?" The doctor looked at the man and said with a hint of a smile, "No. And she doesn't have hiccoughs any more."