old man emu

Trump has invaded Venezuala! Now we know that we can't trust the American Military to act lawfully!

Batteries for recycling have some amount of dollar value. If we sent our batteries to the USA, woulf the recylcing plant in the USA have to pay a tariff on them?

On the topic of snail mail, Trump is allegedly going to take the fact of that delay to get rid of mail-in votes. The current system is that for a mail-in to be counted it has to be postmarked on or before election day. The problem is that there is often a delay between when a vote paper is dropped in a mail box and when it is stamped. That means that votes posted on or near voting day might not get postmarked in time, so the vote is not counted. The only way that a person voting near election day can be sure of their vote counting is to hand the envelope to a post office and see that it is postmarked then and there. Not many people would do that. Of course, if they had election day on a Saturday, and didn't gerrymander the electorates, they might get a fairer election. But fair elections aren't what US democracy is about.

Pulling down the East Wing to build a ballroom an name it after himself; adding his name to the JFK Memorial Center, and calling his New Your Building Trump Tower, is a clear indication that Trump suffers from an Ediface Complex.

When you are President, you don't need a spray can to tag a wall.

My Dad told me of a notice that used to be displayed at unrinals in public toilets. Please do not throw cigarettes butts into the urinal. It didn't take long before there was a scrawled addendum to the notice, It makes them soggy and hard to light.

I don't know about the original arrow, but I was lead to believe that nowadays the location of the image of a fuel bowser on the instrument panel performs the same function.

There are three living species of zebra: Grévy's zebra (Equus grevyi), the plains zebra (E. quagga), and the mountain zebra (E. zebra). Zebras share the genus Equus with horses and asses, the three groups being the only living members of the family Equidae. The skin of the zebra is black. The stripes are the result of differences in the concentration of melanin in the hairs - more melanin = black, less melanin = white. The differences in concentration can be explained by the concept of the Turing pattern. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_pattern . Sometimes this effect goes wrong and a zebra has a coat without stripes. In those cases the coat looks brownish, but may have feint stripes or small spots. Why does the zebra have stripes? Zebras suffer the scourge of flying, biting insects. Laboratory experiments have shown that alternating aras of black and white visually confuse these insects and they do not land on striped areas. Other experiments in which horses have been covered with striped horse rugs reduce the numbers of insects landing on the horse. (There's a commercial opening! Make horse rugs with a zebra pattern. I wonder if a checked or tartan pattern would work.)

Go back and watch the video for an explanation of how varience in a biometic feature is caused. The differences are not influenced initially by genes. The genes allow the production of the causative chemical, but it is the random distribution of the chemical within the organ that causes the varience. That explanation does not deny that genes are responsible for the correct formation of a substance. What Turing's idea is that the genes allow the production of a substance, but the biometric feature is the result of the density of the substance as it diffuses through the organ. Imagine pouring 10 mls of black ink into a litre of clean water. Do that several times and you will never get the exact same distribution of concentration of ink in the water initially.

We all know about the English mathematician, Alan Turing. He's the bloke who was very instrumental in developing a machine to decode German military messages created using Enigma machines. But what did he do after the war ended? Well he want back to being a mathematician working on developing computers. However, he must have got bored with that field of study. When Turing was 39 years old in 1951, he turned to mathematical biology, finally publishing his masterpiece "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" in January 1952. "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis", which describes how patterns in nature, such as stripes and spots, can arise naturally and autonomously from a homogeneous, uniform state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_pattern Turing proposed a model wherein two homogeneously distributed substances (P and S) interact to produce stable patterns during morphogenesis. These patterns represent regional differences in the concentrations of the two substances. Their interactions would produce an ordered structure out of random chaos. There's an explanation of this process in the attached video. Go to timestamp 3:18 It is interesting that the stripes of an individual zebra are unique to that zebra, in the same way as your fingerprints are unique to you. This individuality is also the basis of eye pattern recognition used in security systems.

In 2022 when I moved here, it rained and rained and the country was Ireland green. In 2025 it barely rained at all and the country is brown. That's a depressing scene.

Let's face it. The American Empire is in its terminal phases exacerbated by the mania of Trump. China does not need to conquer militarily. It has conquered commercially. The irony is that it applied the lessons taught by the American Dream. I also think that Russia is declining in importance. Putin is 73 years old. Just look at our thread where we advise of the passing of famous people. So many of those passing on are past their "three score and ten". Can Putin and his philosophy have long to last? The European Union is strengthening itself. At the moment it is spending some effort on military defence in response to Russia's activity, but at the same time is going ahead comercially. India is a growing commercial entity, but not a military one. Southeast Asia just wants to make money. The problem areas are Africa and the Middle East, but these areas are involved in localised tribal conflicts. None of the countries involved there have the ability to become world powers.

I'm happy now!

That link gets me into the BOM site. I did see that I could get to other places, but some of them display information in the new format, which it not as quickly seen as it was in the old format. I don't mind looking at tabulated data, or black & white charts. I want facts, not pretty colours. The BOM site should be a source of information. It does not need to be infotainment.

For several days now I have been getting constant winds of about 15 kts from the Southeast. It is an unusual situation since air coming from that direction used to bring rain, but the sky has been completely clear. I wouild have liked to see a synoptic chart, but it seems that the BOM thinks they are not worth posting.