Old Koreelah

I use my credit card as an almost free accounting service; every time I spend money, the bank makes a record and tallies it all together, so I can check it anytime. All the details are there: dates, times and exact amounts. Best of all, I rarely collect the paper receipt, because my bank helps me prove I paid for things. Even better, my credit card account is a diary of places I’ve been. My bank keeps a close eye on my financial behaviour and if something anomolous comes up, they phone me straight away. Yes, I carry cash for when Teltra’s network fails.

Over the years when people have quoted me a surprisingly low price, I’ve often jokingly asked if they were a front for an illicit operation; maybe they were!

How bluddy lucky am I to have been born after that insanity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneath_Hill_60 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_in_the_Battle_of_Messines_(1917)

Good point, Bruce. There are lots of international ranking schemes, for Universities, Quality of Life, etc. Perhaps ranking public dunnies is a more accurate indication of the quality of people. (What form of human life smears crap on the wall? Some of Trump’s insurrectionists are reported to have done this to walls in Congress; Are they proud?)

As you pointed out on a previous thread, the Americans’ far-sighted ban on supplying graders to Japan sure made a difference during the war.

For too long we’ve heard environmental dinosaurs saying we have to burn stuff to get energy, when it’s all around us, free for the taking. We’re rapidly becoming smart enough to harness it. https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/how-scientists-turned-humid-air-into-renewable-energy-by-accident

I’ve read accounts of their “no nonsense” methods in North Africa. Today we’d call them war crimes. Colonising the world made some European nations very rich, but they’re sure paying for it now, generations later.

Good to see some history from an Aussie perspective. Despite many decades of reading about WWII aeroplanes, that’s the first time I’ve seen a P-40 being started by ground crew; cranking up a flywheel starter, as on many German fighters. I’ve seen images of the Japanese using a small truck that backed up to their fighters with a belt-driven overhead shaft to engage the spinner.

The use of caesarians to deliver babies is increasing; less trauma and risk for mothers, but that might mean more larger-headed babies survive. They might be dependant on a surgeon to deliver their babies. It’s not PC to say, but poor people tend to have more kids, who survive due to welfare paid by richer, better-educated and more productive people (who themselves, have fewer kids if any). We are constantly hearing about increasing disparities in income and housing, but little about disparities in working hours; I know small business operators who work 80+ hour weeks, plus have the honour of being unpaid tax collectors for the government and superannuation administrators for their employees- if they can find them. I fear that multigenerational welfare dependents, some with appalling parental skills, are condemning their kids to a life of dependence and/or crime. Australia’s relatively harmonious society can quickly become riven by the divisions we see in France, the US, etc. Gated communities, anyone?

Being a UN nuclear inspector might be hazardous enough, but how many would be queueing up to work in a war zone? Arriving via helicopter is not my cup of tea, after Wagner troops shot down a heap of Russian ones!

Surprising that anything like independent media is still allowed in Putin’s crumbling empire.

Moving wind turbine blades by road requires this sort of steering. A few years ago it was big news on the local TV when one of the long blades was delicately moved through Tamworth traffic. A couple of years later I was passing through Glen Innes and diverted west to check out the new wind farm. Was surprised to find over a hundred big turbines spinning away. They had moved hundreds of the ultra-long blades up the New England Highway without incident.

Back to youth crime; it gets plenty of media attention, but the reality is that rates are declining: https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/is-sydney-in-the-grip-of-a-crime-wave-the-facts-are-surprising-20230628-p5dk4b.html

Back on topic:

Probably. After being the sole survivor of a massacre, the poor thing was probably suffering PTSD and a host of other psychological disorders. No social life, nobody to unload on. As in John Farnham’s song: One is the loneliest number…

But wait, there’s more: months after a fox cleaned out our chookpen, what I took to be a scrub turkey came sneaking past our house looking for water. Turns out one chook had survived and was living up in the bush. Without daily feeding by humans, it had reverted to it’s ancestral form. After that, it followed me around for years and would sit under our bedroom window some mornings and crow.

One reason Vodka is so popular.

I inherited some negatives taken with my grandfather’s 1920s Kodak, which I still have. When enlarged, they have better definition than many much more modern pix taken by SLRs. I guess the larger format is one factor, the other being slow exposure (which is one reason ancient family pics don’t include many smiles).

All conflicts seem to result in “friendly fire” casualties that cause long-term animosity between people who are technically on the same side. Most are honest mistakes, but his was deliberate killing of their own. I doubt the Russians will be forgetting this any time soon.

My wife’s brother is an ex-pilot with a fascinating stress-release hobby: he builds scale models of military aircraft. He aims to build models of every plane ever flown by the RAAF and is well on the way. His attention to detail is phenomenal, down to instrument paneos and seat harnesses. I’ve tried photographing his models, but depth of field issues spoil the result. I suspect the trick used to get all those Star Wars models in focus was to use very bright lights, thus allowing a very small aperture, which would get everything in focus.