Old Koreelah

This isn’t my gripe for the day; it’s for the season, year and probably the bluddy millenium! For over a week my wife has been crook and unable to get a doctor’s appointment at the two local practices or even an online doctor. Travelling to bigger towns is not an option, as all doctors seem to have closed their books. Despite being a very long term client of our local doctor surgery, she cannot get an appointment- for months! My last visit to the doc required an 8 week wait. Good thing I’m pretty healthy (at least from the ears down). She keeps very active and does all the healthy things, but now has a virus that won’t shift. Not covid. Her being out of action sets off a whole domino effect; other people have to take over her community and family roles, causing knock-on effects for them. Meanwhile, family members in the city still tell her to just go to the doctor! They have no such problems; lots of doctors live there, close to the beach, restaurants and airports. For decades, people like me have campaigned to have Medicare Provider Numbers allocated by population and postcode, to encourage medicos to set up where people are, rather than where the best lifestyle is. I suspect the AMA has too much power over governments.

Crickey, it’s about more than money! There are plenty of happy, secure blended families where trust and respect have outclassed genetics.

My understanding of composites is that carbon fibres have immense tensile strength, much greater than fibreglass and others. One of the main advantages of carbon fibre is that under load it stretches much less than other fibres. Why use it underwater, where these advantages are not needed? Composites have little resistance to compression- that’s taken by the resin, so that sub was a plastic tube with metal end caps.

If Prigozhin’s men had any loyalty to him, seems he didn’t return it. How much loyalty will they show to their new masters?

More likely, the Russian Federation splinters into dozens of warring tribes. So many ethnic groups have long been under Russian domination, there’s sure to be lots of wanna-be national founding fathers. The question is, will they be Ataturks or Kim il Songs? We’re told that some Oligarks have already set up their own militias in preparation.

A very likely scenario. Easy to laugh at Russian unpreparedness, but our own record is not wonderful. When once our military was called upon to defend Sydney from an aerial threat, they failed dismally and visiting British forces had to save us! https://uselessinformation.org/the-ghost-plane/ https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/71676908

Crikey! A weight-shift craft. Sounds like this composite capsule was very experimental, so it should have been more rigorously tested than conventional ones. Makes this Australian- built device all the more impressive, because it took James Cameron to the bottom of the ocean and back up again safely: https://www.smh.com.au/national/sydney-designer-of-james-cameron-s-submersible-describes-what-can-go-wrong-20230622-p5dilo.html

Quite true Spacey, but there’s no progress without risk. I’ve encountered that poisonous gas; Carbon dioxide produced when vegetation debris is washed into caves and breaks down. For safety, cavers habitually carry three light sources, the third being a disposable cigarette lighter, which is useful in testing air quality. CO2 is heavier than air, so ends up in the sump of a cave system. In still air at the bottom of Bungonia caves I was able to detect that invisible boundary: lit my lighter and gradually lowered it down through the air. The flame wouldn’t burn inside the CO2 and separated from the lighter by about 200 mm before flickering out.

Crikey you blokes, trying to keep up with this deep and meaningful discussion is hurting my brain! Nev’s truism is certainly understood by the learned. A useful analogy to learning is exploring a cave system for the first time; many pass by an innocuous, almost hidden grotto before someone stops to take a proper look, then squeezes through, finding themselves in a whole new gallery, complete with a new set of openings to yet more worlds. And so it is with science: today’s specialist in an obscure corner of one quite new discipline is quite likely to pioneer a whole new field of inquiry, which itself might solve a few age-old problems.

And some of those people stayed in the local area for a loooong time:

Bruce I totally disagree. DNA has little to do with it; it’s all about the culture in which a person has been raised. I have friends who adopted Korean babies. The sure look different to the other kids but are as Aussie as you or I. I totally agree that too many people are falsely claiming Aboriginal identity. I notice that decendants of Tasmanian Indig people are calling for a change in government policy on this; they want to return to a policy whereby the Aboriginal community itself decides who is indig.

Even if “The Ancients” didn’t know about electro magnetism, this little bloke does:

We’re told that no mummies or other evidence of burial have ever been found in the Pyramids. Nor do they have heiroglyphs or other inscriptions typical of other Ancient Egyptian monuments. Deep tunnels have recently been discovered in the area, but the authorities have sealed them up. Who knows what will be found down there? I don’t expect any relics to survive like they did in the dry Valley of the Kings: all along the Nile Valley the water table has risen significantly, due to constant, year-round high water levels since the Aswan High Dam was built.

Crikey! That’s my old car! Mitsubishi RVR. Same colour, same wheels (which I still have). Best seats, which are now installed on my verandah. Does that make me a proper Bogan?

Bruce there are plenty of ancient relics which could only be made today with the most advanced technology (if at all) and whose purpose we cannot fathom. I can send you links to some if you are interested. Regarding ancient sea voyages, recent research is starting to show some pretty surprising distribution of human DNA. The history books are far from complete.

While we talk trivia, people are fighting for life in Ukraine. This report shows how desperate they are for reliable equipment; wounded soldiers recovering in hospital keep in close contact with their mates and try to help: Viking, 33, sitting in a wheelchair after being seriously wounded by mortar fire in the northern Luhansk sector of the front at the beginning of June, said he had just been “trying to get spare parts” for a car his unit was using near the frontline to extract the wounded, complaining it had been bought only two weeks earlier and already needed to be repaired. So cash-strapped is Ukraine’s military that the parts would be paid for by the soldiers and wounded soldiers themselves. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/17/21st-century-warfare-ukraine-counteroffensive-frontline Meanwhile Australia resists sending Hawkeyes, claiming they’re not ready. I wish our people showed the enterprise and motivation we see in Ukraine.

Even though much lower than today, those ocean gaps were still pretty wide and daunting for land lubbers like me. This image shows (in white) the land exposed during the Ice Ages. Looks like the narrowest gaps are still over 20km. Early people were probably able to see distant peaks across the water. Adventurous or desperate, they needed decent water craft to get there. Today we often assume technology has gradually improved throughout history, but sometimes things go backwards. Some ancient achievements are beyond our modern capacity. There is evidence of amazing ocean journeys in ancient history, so maybe they had better boats than their decendents.

Sorry to go back to this post, but that statement deserves further examination. Should we accept every claim made by Allied forces and dismiss those of the former enemy? Amongst all the misinformation and propaganda of war, quite a few acts of chivalry by our enemies have been ignored by history. There are precedents for Allied servicemen being awarded gallantry medals in the recommendation of their German foes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Trigg) but Japanese efforts have not been so successful. One of Sakai’s sixty-odd victories led to him trying to get recognition for the bravery of his victims, an Australian bomber crew. He honoured these men; our own authorities didn’t. https://pacificwrecks.com/aircraft/hudson/A16-201/panorama_1998.html

The Wallace Line stopped Asian and Australasian land animals from mixing. It had to be crossed by water. Even when ocean levels were lowest, the Lombok Strait was deep and wide. I’ve crossed it in a 100tonne boat and the rough seas scared the crap out of all of us. The very ancient peoples who crossed it must have been gutsy to do it in canoes or rafts. You’re probably right; the Maori boasted about eating the peaceful peoples of the Chatham Islands. There’s an interesting theory that prevailing winds and ocean currents brought Polynesians to NZ, but would not have carried them to this continent.

About a decade ago NSW’s incoming LNP government delivered on an election promise to remove speed cameras from our highways. Shortly after this, we had three fatalities in a previously accident-free stretch of highway- within a km of where the local radar cam had once stood.. I have a map showing locations of road accidents in our area that our VRA attended over forty years. The seems to be no pattern to them; almost no black spots, just randomly distributed along our major roads. Fatigue and/or distraction seems to be the main factor.

Some of them, but too many don’t. While driving our 9t trucks to emergencies I often exceed the posted limit, but too many of our rough roads are simply not safe enough to do so. Very true and this has led to my receiving a few unwelcome letters from the authorities. While watching for kids on the roadside, I’ve missed the plurry speed sign.