old man emu

But Japan already had a strong manufacturing sector before WWII. All that was needed was for the factories to be rebuilt. By 1952 Japan had regained its prewar industrial output. Similarly, in Europe, the Marshall Plan was to aid in the economic recovery of nations after World War II by rebuilding the manufacturing base that had been destroyed by the war. Just because Australia is raw material rich does not mean that there is the money for turning those raw materials into goods. Just think of all the Australian manufacturers who existed in the 1950s/60s but which don't now. Simply because money from overseas has bought the businesses and then closed them down and established manufacturing in countries where regulations are virtually non-existent and wages are a fraction of what is paid in Australia.

I reckon that leaving stubble to rot, while it might initially reduce soil nutrients during decomposition, it is a means of putting carbon into our poor soils. Also, while the microbes breaking down the stubble might draw on nutrients in the plant material, individual microbes eventually die and return nutrients to the soil. As for baling stubble, have you seen how short the stems of modern wheat plants are? I've seen longer stems in a suburban lawn.

Old English bera "a bear," from Proto-Germanic *bero, literally "the brown (one)", usually said to be from Proto-Indo-European root *bher-. the "h" is formed by exhaling breath, so you get the sound you have described. Beard: Old English beard "beard," from Proto-Germanic *bard (source also of Old Frisian berd, Middle Dutch baert,. The "rd" at the end is a hard sound.

Well! I'll be a horse's .....

Looks like a filled croissant. The bastard child of a Parisian street walker and an Yankee GI.

Craven A???

Therein lies the rub. No one is offering him a flight. He's complained about that for ages.

Then how come it only takes two to fill a theatrical horse costume?

That's true about the non-urban areas, and in a different way in urban areas. However, after coming back to grain growing region after 40-odd years, I can see that the late Generation X and the Millennial farmers are taking up procedures that can either halt the degradation of the land they farm, or even better restore some of the damage. Maybe even while engaging in broadacre monoculture the crops they are growing may be doing something to restore or improve the soils. I notice that stubble burning is not so common. Maybe it's gone out of fashion, or maybe it's simply because of stricter controls over the use of fire. Ye, the family farm in broadacre farming is gone. That is simply the result of economies of scale. Bigger machinery lets one person farm more country, so that person needs more land, so buys out the aging Baby Boomer and early Generation X farmers and rips out the boundary fences. As for damage in urban areas, well every person pollutes, so the more you gather people together, the bigger the pile of pollution. How much does each of us contribute to solid waste? I have a recycling bag of about 60 litre capacity which I seem to fill every week with packaging, tin cans etc., even the white paper that my fresh deli meats are wrapped in goes into the bag. This morning as I tossed an empty 65 ml Yakult bottle into the bag I wondered if it would go to landfill or actually be recycled.

If you bought two single shower chairs and a two-seater, would it be a Nutcracker Suite?

It's not that we went wrong, it is quite simply that we have never had the population size that develops an economy that can produce the money for investment in the production of goods. It is said that no money is made unless something is purchased by the consumer. If you don't have a large number of consumers, you don't make sales and therefore don't make money.

There isn't a pennyworth amongst them.

The Fire Brigade is the designated rescue service in most States.

Of course it is. The Jews wanted to get back their pre-Roman era traditional lands. The Zionist movement of the late 19th Century promoted that desire, but the politics of the First World War provided them with the support of Britain, France during the war, and the USA afterwards, since the Zionist movement was strongest in the USA. Then the Holocaust and the destruction of Europe in WWII generated multitudes of displaced persons, including Jews. So the Jews flooded into Palestine where there was already a sizable Jewish population from the inter-war arrivals. The new arrivals took over the lesser quality land and applied the science and technology of Western Civilisation to make it agricultural productive. With the income from that production, they developed secondary industry. That gave them wealth, and with wealth comes power. Their religion really has nothing to do with the causes of the ongoing conflict. I bet there are more secular Jews than practising ones as there are amongst the Arabs and the Christians.

I was being a smartarse.

If all the nickel goes into making batteries for EVs, how are we going to power our mobile phones?

While it is important that Australia has a good reputation on the world stage, I think that there are many more important things impacting domestic politics than some insoluble neighbour dispute far, far away, and in which we really have no reason to involve ourselves, apart from decrying the death, injury and destruction. What a great leader would ay to Australian is this, "If you are a citizen of Australia, then your first concern should be what matters in Australia. Part of your philosophy might relate to the practise of a particular religion, but that is not 100% of you. Live by the tenets of your religion by all means, but Australia needs you to apply yourself to your secular life more than your spiritual life."

Religion can be one involved, but religion is, for some, just one form of fanaticism. Look at Hitler's, or Stalin's or Kim Jung Un's. I suppose I should have mentioned the three Abrahamic religions of the area. I don't really think that Islam -v- Judaism is the root of the problem. I think it is the arrival of so many displaced Jews after WWII and the differences in the economic cultures of the two groups. Just look at the swing to the extreme Right that is occuring in Europe due to the massive influx of non-Europeans whose cultures are so different from the Europeans. The Arabs were screwed by the British and French between the Wars. Promises of independence were broken, and the Arabs were not included in the promises made by Britain and France to international Jewry. There's more to the Arab/Israeli conflict than simply religion. But, as usual, Western Media doesn't provide us with a knowledgeable explanation of the history of the region.

I know it would be a great thing to be aware of factors that might cause one issues, but to me it puts it in the same category as finding out the sex of a baby in the first trimester. Sort of takes the expectancy out of an expectant birth. I didn't know the sex of my kids until I got the first hold of them. I think that getting that information after going through the months of the pregnancy was one of the most emotional experiences of my life. On the conspiratorial side of things, I think that having that information available for perusal by others reeks of Orwell's 1984. I know there would be privacy controls, but who trusts those nowadays?

I strongly doubt that what the Israelis are doing is having any sort of negative effects on the morale of the Arab people who may not be members of the targeted military groups, but who are bearing the brunt of of the "collateral damage". The Palestinians have been coping a serve from the Israelis for seventy five years. That's five generations which have grown up in those conditions. Over the same period, the Israelis have had their culture shaped by similar factors which they believe affect their survival. We happily accept the physical evolution of a species in response to their environments. Surely there must be an evolution in the cultural mindset of a group which is subject to constant circumstances which affect its survival. Perhaps if the British hadn't done the dirty and failed to live up to the the British government agreed to recognize Arab independence after the war in exchange for the Sharif of Mecca launching the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. (Lawrence of Arabia's bit), a situation of peaceful co-existence between the three Abrahamic religions of teh area might have been maintained.

I'm wondering if my Mum will. She's got 59 weeks to go.

Perhaps in the future a DNA sample will be taken from a baby at birth, analysed, and a lifetime health plan developed. Sounds good from a public health perspective, but seems it would remove the uncertainty of a person's lifetime health, which is a big part of the gamble of life. I don't decry doing these sort of DNA analyses when the provide enlightenment about the evolution and migration of Mankind, but applying it to the creation of a person's health plan is. to me, taking the information too far.

Yes. That's the one I was thinking of. I got the country wrong.

Hooray for wind turbines! They let us generate electricity without burning carbon-based fuels, thereby reducing the amount of extra CO2 being put into the atmosphere. However, these blades do wear out and have to be replaced. So what do you do with the old blades? Here's one solution. Watch until the end and then decide if it i actually an environmentally sound solution.

In the 1950s or so, there was an airplane developed which was able to carry a detachable shipping box, about the size of a small seatainer. Without the box attached it looked like a fixed-wing Sikorsky CH-54. It was designed to transport military supplies in the container, like the CH-54 on the left, which was detached at the destination and the aircraft flown back to base looking like the CH-54 in the foreground. Then it would pick up another loaded contained; fly out and drop it off and come back with the empty one it took out first. In flight trials, the aircraft flew nicely with the container attached, but was a handful without it. I'm pretty sure that it was a British project. Sorry that I can't remember its name so that I can load a ling to the video about it.