Old Koreelah

The F-16 is designed for a very different operating environment to the Russian jets that Ukraine’s pilots are trained for. Western experts say it would take many months for them to unlearn their current skills and learn how to get the best out of the F-16. Plenty nations use F-16; it would not surprise me if Ukraine quietly sent their pilots and ground personnel for training long ago.

It worked, but too often was overused. Good parenting can happen without violence.

Riding to Broken Hill one year, I had to lean flat on the tank so I could see emu heads above from the miles of monotonous saltbush.

Don’t leave it too long. So many of those “family re-union” shows are tragic because mum dies before they track her down. I’m the lucky one; tomorrow I’m heading north for a gathering of all my siblings and a few of their kids; they’re running a campdraft in memory of our young brother, who left us a year ago this Saturday. I’m a crap horseman, but tempted to liven up the party by entering in the Novice event on a kid’s pony.

Spacey it’s getting so much easier to find lost relatives- and much harder for fugitives to remain hidden.

I remember when people advocated giving errant fathers the Burdizzo treatment:

For all you truck fans, here is a revolutionary design from 1929:

Back to historic pix; just dragged out a few ancient magazines I inherited from my mum’s dad. He selected a bit of Comboyne in c.1904. By 1928 had paid for the place, build a home, raised a heap of kids and bought this car, for the price shown: That car was still on the road in the Port Maquarie area, last time I heard. How could he afford all this, starting with nothing? Bluddy hard yakka, plenty of luck and living off the land. He made good money “shooting bears” when their skins were in demand. He bought his ammo from a small sporting goods shop in Sydney, where the shop assistant was a young bloke call Don Bradman.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-17/blind-low-vision-community-call-electric-vehicle-noise-emitters/102318344

When a deer sees your vehicle coming, it will turn back and run off the road. Four legs, allowing rapid changes of direction. Roos can’t seem to do that and usually head across the road to get away. For years I rode my motorcycle big distances at speed, often at night and only once hit a roo. I reckon my small plastic “Shoo Roo” worked:

I’ve long said that we are required to qualify for a licence to drive, operate machinery, fly a plane and drive a boat, but any idiot can become a parent. Why isn’t parenting training required?

I’ve seen far too much parenting and not just from “the poor”. Rich kids have the wealth to do lots of damage when they go off the rails- and too many do! We know the male brain isn’t fully developed till about 24, so perhaps parents should bear some responsibility for their actions till then. Many cultures hold families collectively responsible for the sins of the individual; perhaps not fair or humane, but it works! The fear that your parents, siblings and children will suffer seems to have been pretty effective motivation for many. Red I totally agree. If a person is not contributing to society and needs it’s help in the form of income, they should do something useful. There sure is plenty to be done, but there never seems enough money or motivation. As a society we have a choice: If we continue paying unsustainable amounts of welfare to the idle, we’ll guarantee an expanding underclass of welfare dependents; a ticking social timebomb.

Not a silly picture, but one for all the mothers:

Not easy to look at. Most of those would contain the sad remains of a few poor buggers.

Chooks Jerry, chooks!

Has anyone checked on between crime statistics in nations without Murdoch media? Seems to me like the most progressive and civilized kept him out.

Thanks Red for starting this important thread. As the artlcle says, locking people up rarely works. (It also costs mobs more than sending them to boarding school!) An ounce of prevention is better than a ton of band-aids that don’t cure. In my teaching career I saw too many kids fall by the wayside because we didn’t have the resources to ensure they learned the skills need to get on in our society. I can name one who has caused hundreds of thousands in damage and who will cost similar amounts before he’s likely to be released. I totally empathise with the frustrated residents of those places suffering a crime wave. Who could blame them if they perceive that the police and courts are not protecting them and their hard-earned possessions? Cool heads and accurate information is vital, so we need to keep the tabloids out of it. (They are unlikely to sell many newspapers with good-news stories about prison reform- and there are plenty of those.) I’m all in favour of a carrot and stick approach: a quick and painful lesson if kids do something stupid (much cheaper and more effective than current policies) combined with plenty of love and care to bring out the best in them. We also need to have long-term vision; properly educate future parents and support them better. Our cultural fixation on single-family housing is unsustainable on several levels. We have ghettos of young parents struggling financially, often unable to afford childcare, while not far away clusters of elderly never see little kids. Madness.

We should just be grateful that we have escaped the urban disasters that have allowed wholesale redesigns of our streets, as happened in London, Paris, Berlin…

I’m resigned to the limitations of human nature: there are too many dumb, ignorant people out there who can too easily be manipulated by the likes of Murdoch’s media. Even the best democracy can quickly slide into autocracy. Do we want our society to be guided by greedy ammoral corporations, oligarchs or military dictators? We might be wise to have a backup: a well-trained line of leaders who know their existance depends on them defending the common people from these greedy bastards. I know one family which fits that bill. They’ve proven their humanity and decency.

Until the Whitlam government financed sewerage reforms, dunny carts were a regular sight down many a back lane all over Oz.

I suspect that was a major factor in Albo’s victory over the other lot. I suspect Australians have a lower tolerance for rorts than most nationalities.

A small fly in the ointment for the RF. If his claims are true there are a couple of issues: Although supposedly the offspring of the current royal couple, his not being conceived in wedlock might be a problem. Even if accepted as first in line, is he up to the job? All our monarks have been trained from birth for a bluddy difficult job. (William might be relieved to be replaced so he can escape the constant scrutiny). He hasn’t and is already ancient (old dogs can’t learn new tricks). Throughout history Kings have fathered illegitimate kids (you or I might be a descendant) only a tiny few have made the history pages.

You’ve got to admire how the Yanks used those bottlenecks as design standards, ensuring they could produce and ship astounding numbers of military gear. Their jeeps and tanks were designed to fit on existing railcars and fit through tunnels. The Sherman’s weight was limited to ensure it could cross normal road bridges. Just looked up Wikipedia’s entry on this bloke, who probably did more to win the war than anyone (all for a salart of $1): In January 1942, Knudsen received a commission as a lieutenant general in the U.S. Army, the only civilian ever to join the army at such a high initial rank,[9] and appointed as Director of Production, Office of the Under Secretary of War. In that capacity, he worked as a consultant and a troubleshooter for the War Department. In both positions, Knudsen used his extensive experience in manufacturing and industry respect to facilitate the largest production job in history. In response to the demand for war materiel, production of machine tools tripled. The total aircraft produced for the U.S. military in 1939 was less than 3,000 planes. By the end of the war, America produced over 300,000 planes of which the Boeing B-29 Superfortress benefitted greatly from Knudsen's direction.[10] Production of both cargo and Navy ships also increased astronomically. Knudsen's influence not only smoothed government procurement procedures but also led companies that had never produced military hardware to enter the market. America outproduced its enemies. As Knudsen said, "We won because we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production, the like of which he had never seen, nor dreamed possible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Knudsen