onetrack

Back to the original thread subject - here's my "positive" report for this week. (SWMBO says I've been too grumbly and short-tempered this week. Might be, because I'm fighting to finish several projects). Thursday night, we went to the W.A. Gravity Discovery Centre, located about an hour N of Perth in the Yeal Nature Reserve, which is halfway between the coastal City of Yanchep, and the rural inland town of Gingin. The night Observatory tour we went on, is called the Adults Only Stargazing Date Night. The tour included dinner, and about 2.5 hrs of stellar and sky discussion and learning. We got there at 6:30PM for a supposedly 7:00PM dinner time, but we were told some people were running a little late, so the dinner start was put back to 7:15PM. We spent 45 minutes checking out some of the site attractions, such as the informative galleries. The whole setup is owned by the University of W.A. and comprises several display galleries as well as a "leaning tower", and the GDC Observatory - which is a retractable roof building housing several large telescopes - which we all got to peer through, to view some of the planets, and some of the more prominent and well-known stars. There were only 5 couples in the tour, and we got a nice meal from the little cafe, with the (pre-ordered) choice of chicken or steak, followed by cheescake dessert. Then we headed off into the darkness (aided by the tour speakers small red light, to ensure our night vision was preserved), to view stars and planets from the Observatory. He had a big green laser pointer which he used sparingly to point out the various celestial bodies of interest, and he waxed on comically for about a couple of hours, talking about star formations and collapses, the various features of planets, the research on Gravity Waves, and a host of other celestial and physics of the Universe that left our heads spinning. He reckoned he'd been doing this for 30 years, so he knew astronomy inside-out! Someone asked a question about satellites and how they affected sky-viewing. He got quite animated about this subject, and especially about Musks Starlink satellites (and he constantly referred to Musk as "Mush"! 😄 ) He talked about how he'd set up cameras to take dozens and even hundreds of shots of the night sky - only to find in the morning, that his sky shots were criss-crossed with satellite trails! - which left criss-cross lines all over his great photos! He said, "about then, you start having homicidal thoughts (about Musk)". 😞 I was staggered to find out, that there's now around NINETY THOUSAND satellites in low Earth orbit! - as against perhaps only a couple of hundred, say 30 years ago. We had an absolutely PERFECT night - a perfectly clear sky, cool to the point of being chilly, no moon (moonrise was around 10:00PM as we finished up), and as dark as we could get, allowing for the fact we were just 70kms out of Perth. Naturally, the City lights glow was still pretty visible on the Southern horizon. All in all, we had a very enjoyable evening, doing something a little different. The Adults Only Stargazing Date Night is currently unavailable, we got the last booking date for the event, for the time being. I'm not sure when there will be another repeat of this event, they might be struggling to get staff to run it, as it appears they rely a lot on volunteers. https://gravitycentre.com.au/

Not in my neck of the woods. The Bandags were very good, due to their tread band design. It was the everyday, molded recaps, that threw treads here.

It looks like a whole lot of dead wood to me!!

If you put something in the water of Corroboree Billabong, you'd get the end bitten off it, within 10 or 20 seconds!

I've got some Michelins on my little old 5 tonne Isuzu truck (8.25R16's) that are over 30 years old! - and they're still going O.K.! The tyre companies are the ones saying tyres are only good for 5 or 6 years - guess why? I can recall when the local Michelin agent (Bell Bros. in W.A.) used to recap Michelin truck tyres with Bandag recaps, they'd buff a letter off the "Michelin" name on the side of the tyre to show the number of times the tyre was recapped. I remember seeing recapped Michelin truck tyres, where there were only the "I" and the "N" left visible, from the Michelin name on the side of the tyre!

Pete - There were no oars - and the strict instructions from the crew were NEVER to hang any body part (or anything else, for that matter), over the side of the boat!

I was once marooned and left drifting in a large billabong full of giant crocodiles, thanks to TWO outboards that BOTH refused to run!! (look up Corroboree Billabong). The primary outboard failed to start, then the backup outboard failed to start as well! We drifted for a good half hour before another boat came to our rescue! Meantimes, we sat and watched as two 4.7M crocs devoured a water buffalo!

Ford Model A's all used steel wire spoke wheels. The first 2 years of production (1927-29), they were 21" wire wheels, the second 2 years of production (1929-31), they were 19" wire wheels. Get us a photo, Spacey, so we can ID the car.

All recycling requires huge energy inputs to produce the end product, which makes the recycling largely uneconomic. However, a recent development utilising a molybdenum catalyst may reduce that energy input requirement. The system under study still requires heat input however, which is still a major cost. Perhaps solar-sourced heat will be the answer. https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/new-technology-uses-air-moisture-to-quickly-recycle-plastics-with-94-efficiency/

Poland, at the forefront of Russian expansion dreams, has just ramped up its military spending to 4.3% of GDP. They are leading the EU nations into self re-armament, now rapidly concluding that relying on America for military support and hardware, as they have done in the past, is no longer a viable option. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/07/poland-could-be-europes-rising-star-defence-and-security

Re the U.S. Subs - we urgently need to re-assess this dreadful purchase. It's a mind-boggling cost, with no guarantee they'll be delivered - ever - and trying to equip submarines with crews is a costly and difficult task. But we have the modern answer to subs - and it blows U.S. Nuclear subs out of the water, so to speak. And the answer is an Australian invention! - the Ghost Shark autonomous submarine! This thing has a massive depth ability increase over regular subs, and no need to risk any crew lives to operate it! Regular subs will become obsolete in the near future, exactly as tanks have become obsolete, due to the massive advances in drones and guided munitions. https://www.eurasiantimes.com/australias-silent-predator-ghost-shark-xl-uuv-a-game-changer/

And the wood would dry out in the wooden-spoked wheels and shrink, and make the wheel wobble! Then you had to buy special wedges to hammer under the ends of the spokes, to tighten them up!

And they were dreadful cross-ply tyres! - with zero handling traits, they'd pull you all over the road under braking effort (that's if you had brakes that worked reasonably effectively) - and they had inner tubes that created friction and heat, which shortened their already short life! I used Michelin radials from the early 1960's, they were a godsend to high-speed country motoring. But you had to keep the pressures up in them, to reduce wall sag, or you'd get sidewall stakes with sharp rocks, especially on freshly graded roads. And aftermarket PBR VH-series vacuum-operated brake boosters, were the answer to go-faster drum brakes. Plus - sealed roads were few and far between, and most sealed roads were narrow, necessitating pulling off onto the gravel shoulder to pass oncoming traffic - which was very light, on most roads.

Androphobia is a fear of men, Spacey, not quite what you're describing you've endured. I had some bullies of teachers in primary school, they would be called child abusers today.

The problem with the "smashed car" analogy that GON uses, is that Donald Trump is not actually fixing the car - he's dismantling it, to smash it further, to ensure it never goes back on the road again. Trump is driven by vindictiveness and spitefulness, and nothing else. He has no plan for making America "great" again, but he has a plan to ensure that he dominates the world, and bullies anyone who opposes him in his plan. He belittles any nation or leader that speaks against him, and has installed his loyal followers in important positions, based on their loyalty to him, and nothing else - while he decries DEI as installing incompetents, in important leadership roles. But his ego is so outsized, he can be easily and simply manipulated by other cunning dictators. I reckon he's the original Manchurian Candidate.

Whoa!! - Metric?? That rotten simplified measurement system invented by the FRENCH?? It can't be any good, because it wasn't invented in America!

Bruce, wasn't that the basis of all the old Scottish/English charitable/benevolent care organisations and groups, such as the Ancient Order of Foresters, Buffaloes, Masons, etc, etc? The Order of St John is the oldest sick care organisation in the world, it started during the Crusades in the 11th century.

Is that really you, Donald? Surely you aren't planning on taking on the global pharmaceutical companies and the medical instrument/equipment suppliers??

Being adaptable to vastly changed circumstances in jobs, industries and occupations, is all part of our life paths, and many people re-train more than once during their lifetimes. I have changed occupations multiple times, and had to learn new skills each time. Most of the changes were forced on me, I just rolled with the punches, and kept going. I've bordered on "technical bankruptcy" a couple of times, and been quite wealthy at other times. The only constants in life, are change, death, and taxes.

Timor Leste just sounds like a 3rd world sh**hole country, so good enough reason to keep them out, according to the MAGA doctrine.

Queue.

There's nothing quite like American arrogance. Australia doesn't rate too highly for invasion, as the Chinese already own everything they want here, anyway. But Taiwan has the worlds most technologically-advanced computer-chip manufacturing, and 5 of the worlds leading, cutting-edge, computer-chip factories. That's what the Chinese REALLY want - and the Americans will stop them from getting it. So on that basis, Australia is only useful as a base for operations, same as WW2.

I could spend 30 minutes trying to work this out, and still not find the answer!

It's gotta be another old bloke who acted in Westerns, 50 or 60 years ago.

Australian manufacturing wasn't "stopped", it was over-run and soundly beaten, cost-wise, by low-cost, large-production output Asian manufacturers, particularly the Chinese. When was the last time you bought an Australian-made product from Bunnings - at a high price - in favour of the dirt-cheap Chinese one? That's right, you did the same as every other Australian, you went for the cheapest crap you could buy. Where is the car made that you drive, and why did you buy it, instead of an Australian-built one??