willedoo

I worked on a rare earth exploration job in the Kimberleys in the 1980's. It was a hard job to do as the environmental destruction was total. On a small, steep conical shaped hill, we had to build 64 drill pads with enough room for a water truck to turn around on each of them plus the corresponding access tracks. With the spill from the pads cascading down to the next pads below them, not one speck of the original hill was left visible. It looked like one big quarry. To make matters worse it was right beside the old Hall's Creek road and plainly visible to the tourist traffic passing by. The only consolation was talking to the geologist. He said the tests had shown it to be viable to mine, in which case the whole hill would be gone and it would then go open cut below ground level. On completion of mining, all the overburden and non rare earth matter would fill the hole and the surface restored with topsoil and vegetation planting. The hill would be gone forever but at least the eyesore would eventually go away. I remember when Bob Hawke as PM wanted to establish facilities to turn our raw rare earth into the finished product instead of exporting the low price ore to France and buying back the finished products at great cost. If my memory is correct, his idea was to set up facilities in South Australia. It was an admirable goal but failed due to the realities of market domination and control by existing world players.

I saw both those situations when I was in ER almost two weeks ago. Lots of ambos in the reception area and the odd one wandering through the emergency ward. And same here, in the reception area I was babysat by the ambos for a short time until an emergency doctor saw me. My condition was worsening and serious enough to be wheeled into the ward after only a short wait as the ward had the gear to stabilise things. I also saw a police officer sitting on a chair and being responsible for keeping an eye on a patient. I don't think it was a mental illness case; I got the impression the patient was under arrest for something.

Putler is getting desperate but as always is trying to hide the fact and put on a fake veneer of confidence. They are currently trying extensive meat assaults in the Kharkiv region to draw Ukrainian troops away from southern areas. The only problem is the Russians don't have the ability to fight effectively on multiple fronts. Despite small losses of territory further south and in the Kharkiv region, the Ukrainians are holding the line and continuing to deplete the Russian assets. My guess is that putler can see the writing on the wall as more needed Western supplied equipment is coming on line. Things don't happen right now but things like the F-16s, now totaling 85 when delivered and operational, will make a big difference. Another example is Sweden pledging two ASC-890 Early Warning Aircraft to Ukraine. This will give Ukraine eyes in the sky for 200 to 300 klm into Russia as well as the battle zone. For context, Ukraine will have one third the number of AWACS as Russia due to recent losses of Russian AWACS. Another important milestone is Ukraine getting the green light from France and Britain to use long range missiles to strike military targets within Russia. And good on French president Macron for facing up to reality and getting with the programme. He's even badgered Germany's weak, dithering, Kremlin fearing Scholz into agreeing. Scholz has had to be dragged kicking and screaming into support for Ukraine, but he's finally got on the bus with the others and that's a good thing. Another issue for putler is that much needed artillery shells have arrived and Ukraine now has adequate ammunition to match the Russians. It will still take time, but Ukraine's ducks are slowly starting to line up in a row. For putler, he probably has two chances. One is a breakthrough of the lines and gaining a significant amount of new territory before negotiating a settlement that lets him keep it. The other is to negotiate to keep what he has now as the first scenario is not likely. He knows his only chance of keeping some of his lollies is a negotiated settlement which Ukraine would only agree to if they were desperate. putin thinks he can outlast Ukraine and their Western backers, but if the West continues what they've done recently, then maybe total or near total victory will be possible for Ukraine. Even if putler is eventually forced into a settlement that gives them only a similar amount of territory to that which they started the war with, he would be in trouble at home. Even with all the state propaganda and a brainwashed general population, surely he would start to be seen as a failure who almost destroyed his country for little net gain.

Belgium is supplying 30 F-16s to Ukraine by the end of the year. Added to the F-16s from the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway, the total fleet number will rise to 85. President Zelensky's plane was escorted in Belgium by Ukrainian pilots flying F-16s so some of them are at the stage of flying missions.

I think the more professional ones in the cities do. The buskers around my area seem to be still on coins. For context, they don't make a low enough denomination to match the talents of 80% of them, but the other 20% are good. Buskers seem to range from the great to the woeful.

And let's not forget that Goebbels had nobbels at all.

I have the opposite problem. When the covid lockdowns arrived, I went mostly cashless and now use plastic or online transactions. I used to always have coins that were mainly used to buy limes from a bloke down the road with an honesty box and unmanned stall at his gate.These days I'm always on the hunt for coins to pay for the limes. When I was mainly cash transacting pre covid, I always came back from town with coins in the pocket. The gold coins I would put in a piggy bank as a reserve for times of being broke. The $2 coins soon add up to a stash in the hundreds of dollars. Now that I'm mainly cashless I compensate for the empty piggy bank by trying to budget a bit better and not experience those short bursts of abject poverty.

Sounds a bit like a poker machine in reverse.

She could do a remake - ' Kiss Kiss Donald's arse '.

Here's some tips for repurposing old pallets.

It's definitely a cult. He gets his biggest audience response when he does that weird thing with his hands (the air accordion one) and utters some incoherent strange sounds. It's not what he says that gets them going, it's the weird antics. I'm sure the twits still think it's a game/reality show. When he does the weird hand thing in combination with the little round mouth, he looks like a cross between a canary and a seal. What a buffoon.

It will still come down to votes. Poll figures show more than 50% of republicans will still vote for him if convicted. I forget the exact figure, but I think it's around 16% won't and the rest not sure. Among republicans he's still got that large cult following element, but whether they are enough to carry him is another thing.

That's still fraudulently presenting yourself as a potential buyer if you haven't got the money or means to ever buy one. I'm with ome, I couldn't take advantage like that. If I went up to the salesman, told him I was flat broke and could never hope to buy one, then asked him if I could have a drive, that would be different. I wonder how many salspeople would say yes to a test drive if you told them the truth. Not many I would think.

My suggestion would be New York. That's New York, a town in eastern Ukraine not far from the front line. With all Donald's hot air they could use him as a barrage balloon.

Sounds like sticky keys. I wonder if they are getting worn or if there's some dust buildup in the keys.

Oil certainly is finite; the specific and rare set of circumstances that created our reserves happened millions of years ago. Possibly there might be some in the making now, but I doubt the human species will survive the timeline required for new oil to be made. The theory of peak oil turned out to be a fizzer, at least in the dates predicted. There's quite a lot still there but the problem is the low hanging fruit is running out and what's left undiscovered or is being discovered will be harder to extract and correspondingly more expensive. The ocean regions are very promising except for the logistical side of getting to it. It's not only depth for drilling and extraction, but distance that holds back a lot of deeper ocean development. At present it's not practical for platforms more than 200klm out due to the limitations on servicing by helicopter. With a big price rise in oil, companies would be more inclined to find a work-around to that problem. With land based reserves there's still promise in some parts of the world, but the day could come when demand outpaces supply. A lot of oil is being found in previously worked out areas or areas that showed low prospect in the past. This is due to the rapid increase in technology of seismic data processing. The pace of change is hard to keep up with at times and previously overlooked areas can be a much better bet only 12 or 18 months later due to better data processing. Most of our exploration data was (and probably still is) processed in Texas and at times it's been like keeping the motor running waiting for their next new trick. I guess that's the way advances in computing are affecting lots of industries around the world.

Fibrillation is the heart beating irregularly and often fast as well. If it's beating regularly but raised over 100 I think it's classed as tachycardia.

I was joking, Nev. The bit out Chad was true though. For context Chad's had a beer or thirty with a large percentage of the population, so it's nothing out of the ordinary.

My first thought was maybe Madonna but when I saw the country music hint I could recognise Dolly's eyes and mouth.

I was tipped off. Expanding the photo showed the file name - countrymusicsinger.jpg

It's Dolly.

I can top that. I've had a few beers with Chad Morgan.

I remember back in the 80's seeing the biggest wallaroo I've seen in my entire life. In fact he was the biggest hopper I've ever seen and I've seen a lot of big reds. He was built bigger than any NRL front row forward I've ever seen and his chest was massive. He was standing upright and in height would probably only just fit under an average house doorway. That was near Surat.