eightyknots

I have mentioned before that I have posted photos on Google Maps. In fact the photo count is now 181. I received this surprising email form Google in my Gmail account.

 

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If you Google "Essendon Airport", this is what comes up (at least today, March 2nd 2020):

 

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That photo of the DC6B is one of mine, the heading photo.

Good stuff!

.. and when you push the button you get to see a working model of a black hole sucking all that time and space in ...

Or this:

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And about time the Jewish jokes started.

I was on the golf course and hit a bad slice, with the ball going wildly out of control I yelled "FOUR!" and suddenly from the other side of the course I heard in a Jewish accent; "$3.80! Special Today!"

Careful Bex

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A somewhat useless sign.

The original Drifters

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I thought this was the original drifter:

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(this Drifter is for sale on eBay)

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Imagine the outcry if Philips ran an ad like this nowadays?

Everything is about decency and not causing offence. Do we live in a better world now?

National radio here has spent all day running coverage of the earthquakes. I listened to this for 4 hours solid in the car, and at no point was anybody's God invoked, blamed or insulted.

In other astonishing news, despite the fact that the affected regions are now crawling with various response personnel, the media have so far entirely failed to anoint a single Hero!

I went to Wellington for the day and I could not believe how much of ghost town the Wellington CBD was. There were plenty of people with high-vis vests and clipboards and trucks with orange flashing lights but none of the usual office people. I also went into the Newcastle (NSW) CBD back in 1989 and Hunter Street was far messier: many parapets and gables from commercial buildings had fallen into the main street.

There were some pretty big aftershocks felt during the day I was there GeoNet - Quakes . I am going again there for the day today (Tuesday); I hope there won't be the same number of shakes today.

Young earthers cling so much to it that they created their own "creation research institutes" to scientifically show that the Earth is only 6000 years old and was made in 6 days. Oddly, these institutions have produced no Nobel Prize recipients among their alumni and made a sum total of zero revolutionary scientific discoveries.

Most young earthers believe that the world is more than 6,000 years old: 6,020 to be precise. This is because by as accurate a reckoning as possible, using biblical genealogies, it has been calculated that the earth was most likely created 4,004 BC.

Most of the road signs seem to be on the side of the road, what about the 'sign on the dotted line' Alan.

That is the dangerous one!

What about the sign of the times?

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Long time since we've seen a silly sign on this thread.

Okay, I think this is a silly sign:

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I seen an awful lot of roads that if you drive 5 ks over, you'd catch a green light every time.Aussie, NZ ,Ireland and the UK. My older brother never had a speeding fine in his life, & he was an awful driver! 130k on the wrong side of the road coming to a right hand bend, left side queued to the corner, and he smugly says, "they'll let me in", my wife & I both had our eyes closed.

 

spacesailor

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I think the road safety campaigns have created a good portion of drivers that think doing 73 in a 80 kph zone (or say 91 in a 100 kph zone) ......... is just the ducks nuts and look how safe I am driving - in certain circumstances this could well be the case

But, that same person is the one that I think causes bad decisons from others and accidents

 

Usually that person when they get to a passing lane will speed up to 10 to 20 k over the speed limit - they should slow down and let everyone pass !

 

they then will decrease to a turtle at the end of the overtaking lane where no one can then pass

A thing that I have seen more and more is that people who (over)pay big money to by a hybrid car (such as the Toyota Prius for instance) are so obsessed about saving a few petrol dollars that they travel between 10 and 15 km/h below the speed limit.

Is this in order to make even greater petrol cost savings? ...I am not sure without asking those drivers but there certainly seems to be a pattern in my highway encounters.

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Swell patterns, phosphorescence colour changes, specific bird sightings, cloud formations, star patterns and movements, aiming off techniques but these were not general stories but rather as Bex suggests highly specific "trade" knowledge taught to a select few. We The Navigators is a great read as are all of David Lewis's books. He studied navigation techniques across many indigenous cultures around the world and there are quite a few lessons in there for all of us.

....applicable to aeronautical navigation?

Hey, this is a bit rich, coming from a bloke operating in a country that still worships Chairman Mao as some kind of God!I'm old enough to clearly remember the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution - and the near-destruction of China, in the name and pursuit of socialist idealogy!

BUT....

.... do you remember the little red book?

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Excellent in theory - unfortunately, it doesn't take into account, the ability of politicians to waste taxpayers money wholesale, even when it's not spent on defence items.Japan has spent virtually nothing on defence items since WW2 (apart from a small amount of "self-defence" items) - yet it's the most indebted nation in the world, with a Gross Govt Debt to GDP ratio, of 229%.

 

Japans gross debt makes America's 104% ratio and Australia's 36% ratio, look quite benign by comparison. The Japanese actually owe more than Greece.

 

Country List Government Debt to GDP

There is one essential difference: Japan's government has borrowed almost exclusively from the Japanese people. Greece, the United States and Australia have borrowed much from Big Banks, Chinese and Arab interests who are keen to get their hands on government bonds. Having debts to external entities is far more dangerous and it is likely that Japan will happily carry on with its enormous 230% of GDP debt while Australia's debt will become worrying when it rises from the current (estimated) 37.5% of GDP closer to 50% of GDP.

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Exactly which bit am I pretending about, tell me?

It costs about 50c/watt to manufacture PV. So a 250w panel, which would probably give the essentials of light and charging to a household, is $125. I'd be surprised if you couldn't do a basic inverter, battery pack and a couple of LED lights for another couple of hundred bucks. So for $400 per household you'd have energy with no ongoing costs.

 

I heard today that the top 25 hedge fund managers in the USA get $25 BILLION per annum between them. (Note I say "get", not "earn", because no one's effort is worth $2.75 million every day of the year). If they were to donate one year's income to charity, which wouldn't really impact them in the slightest because they'd each get another billion next year, they could bring power to 62.5 million poor households.

 

Yes the west certainly has the wealth sloshing around to solve many of the world's problems, but not much of it is in my hands.

The best way to help humanity is to heavily reduce spending on armaments. This is an indescribable expense for many nations (few excepted such as Costa Rica) and is a huge drain on their economies. Armament spending is a very large wealth transfer as follows:

1. governments collect taxes from people but the ultra-rich usually pay minimal or no tax shifting the burden on the lower income, lower wealth people.

2. frequently there is still not enough money so governments extend their indebtedness to rich banks or overseas investors.

3. a sizeable proportion of this collected tax -which could be used to make the life of people better- is instead used on armaments, usually sending money to companies based in Europe or North America.

4. armament companies have a large concentration of uber-wealthy shareholders ...why? Because they are such a fantastic cash cow business. Similarly, there are many well-paid executives, engineers and technicians who earn salaries there often unattainable elsewhere.

5. armament companies employ the best sales executives who appear to have unprecedented contacts in government circles.

6. governments are forever talked into the latest-and-greatest equipment and this leads to the retiring of the last generation's hardware which governments paid a lot for in the first place (frequently they are still paying loans off for these toys) and, at times, these same companies talk governments into very expensive life-extension or upgrade projects which also cost a lot.

7. Back to step 1

Governments seem to ignore these facts:

1. Smaller commitments to "defence" spending (which in many cases should be termed "offence" spending) would keep more money in low income earners' pockets.

2. Overseas indebtedness would reduced markedly which means our own sovereignty is kept.

3. Instead of having large, standing armies, navies and air forces the labour 'wasted' there could instead be used for wonderful humanitarian endeavours. This could involve installation of PV panels on many remote huts, a decent, microbe-free water supply and education.

No it is far worse than that- it is a criminal act to know and not report it immediately. That allows the pastor to continue to take victims and condones his crimes and facilitates further crimes against children.

Hey Litespeed, that is exactly what I said. I will quote myself:

That's shocking: it is a criminal act and MUST be dealt with by law. Dealing with this in-house is no better than sweeping the matter under the carpet.