old man emu

Jerry, with all due respect, you are living in a different country, and have done so for many years. You have to be living where things are happening to understand what is occuring in those places. Even those members here who live in our major cities don't experience the things that we who live in rural areas do. Let me give you an example. The local indigenes in my town wanted their flag flown at the ANZAC Day service. That's sort of OK by me as many Aborigines have served. So the RSL committee which was organising the ceremony asked them to provide a flag to be flown in accordance with the protocols for displaying flags. Despite the request being made in plenty of time, no flag was made available. As you know, I volunteer at our Community OP shop. It is rare to see any Aboriginal person visiting the shop. I once mentioned this to another volunteer and was told that Aborigines have too much money to have a need to buy stuff at the minimal prices we charge. Another thing that I notice is that the local indigenes do not seem to be involved in activities organised for the whole town. There is definitely a feeling of Them/Us. I would really love it if Aboriginal people would make an effort to integrate with the rest of Society as the people from other societies have done.

Nature bounces back so quickly! I've been bitching for months about the lack of rain at my place and how the pastures have been drying up. A couple of days ago I was thinking of posting a photo of the almost bare paddocks whick looked like they had been mown like a bowling green. Then on the same day a very strong thunderstorm came right overhead and doused the ground. I don't have a rain guage, but I hear that some nearby places recorded more than 25 mm. The next day there was another, more steady fall of rain. This morning, a couple of days later, there is a distinct green tinge across the paddocks. If it does not get too hot and there is no strong wind, the plants might be able to put on a few centimetres of growth and things will be better for grazing.

Hmm. Maybe this idea might be applied in a certain Antipodean country where feeling guiltless about events three or four generations ago is considered arrogant.

Me mum's one of them.

What about Hitler's boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend or HJ)? By 1945 some of these boys were only 12 years old. By now any survivor would be in their nineties. https://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/hitleryouth/hj-boy-soldiers.htm

I beleive he revels in the honour of mouthing the worst Cockney-ish accent in movie history.

It is clear that this issue has been seized upon by "the Other Side" for point scoring. I bet that we can easily find similar examples from the times when the Other Side was in power. Is it worth getting worked up by the "righteous indignation" of any politician? It's all bluster.

I wonder if the number of deaths and casualties suffered by the Russian forces was not as result of poor military skills. I have an impression of Russian infantry engaging in human wave attacks against Germans. That is contrary to what the Germans and Western Allies learned on th Western Front. I suppose, too, that Russian officers were happy enough to use threat to shoot slackers to move troops forward.

The parallels with Germany from 1933 are striking. However, Trump does not have to talk of lebensraum as corporate America conquered the the global community starting in September 1940 with the Leand Lease Act.

Buigger going to the USA. I reckon it would be easier to get into North Korea.

This is a video made by an Englishman about the visa requirements. It contains images of the list of information an applicant must provide. The creator also brings up the economic effects associated with decreaased attendance at FIFA matches. CAUTION: At the moment these requirements have only been put up for consideration. They are not in force - yet. Here is an Australian story

What alchemy! His lead foot has turned to gold.

Forget planning a trip to Disneyland or Las Vegas. The Trump Administion now requires people requiring a visa to enter the USA to disclose not onloy their own digital presence for teh past ten years, but also that of family members. If you have posted in this thread, or the "Only in America" thread here, you won't get a visa if you have not laid down your life for Trump. The Administration has effectively destroyed the FIFA World Cup. Thousands of fans will be denied entry to the USA. Billions in tourist income will be lost. But Trump has his Peace Prize.

No pit lane?

It's so dry out my way that the mud-dauber wasps are building nests using fibro.

I told you that CentreLink staff are geat if you give them a tad of good manners. So glad that you had a good experience.

There's a group of really good people who can help you with pension applications. They work in a place called CentreLink. If you go to one of their offices and ask nicely you will get lots of help. What I am implying is that these people respond very well to courtesy and politeness. Remember, they have the knowledge in navigating application processes that you don't possess. Trust them.

Settle, petal. Just because someone asks a question does not mean that they are attacking another person's beliefs. Why did I ask about asbestos? Because I had heard something about it. Your response clarifies that what I heard was most likely journalistic hype. Asking a question is the first step in identifying if a problem exists and is the first step in planning to deal with an identified problem. I expect that the question of dealing with coal ash and other stuff coming from power stations has been asked and some sort of plan developed. How effective any such plan is can be determined by monitoring. What we must realise is that everything we do from gathering food to space travel creates some pollutants. That is inevitable. Our task is to minimise what is produced.

Wind trurbines or solar panels??? There have been concerns made about how to deal with end-of-life turbine blades, as some people say they contain asbestos. What are the the end-of-life products coming from solar panels? Do those products give rise to dangerous pollutants? But isn't there a ban in the import of asbestos products into Australia? Maybe the fear of asbestos in the blades is a red herring.

True, but you can discount farm equipment as the site is not farmed. Arson is drawing a bit of a long bow. The point I wanted to make was that a possiblity could have been an electrical short . You could be correct in saying that skynews might have reported this with as much relish as it might report an EV fire.

OOps! I forgot to link the video. While we all agree that skynews leans towards a certain direction, the fact of the fire cannot be denied. I do not know what the source of the fire was. I can only tell you that when the fire happened the air temperature was in the vicinity of 40C. I can't tell you what the fuel load was, but it would have been grass since the site was originally grazing land. Was the source of ignition a malfunction with the solar panels, or from a natural souce? I don't know, but there were no thunderstorms in the area on that day. All I can say is that we await the results of the investiation into the cause.

Solar farm on agricultural land + extremly hot air temperatures + absence of site supervision can give rise to a serious fire hazard. This happened at a very large solar farm at Wellington NSW. I suppose those factors were not realised when the site was approved. You can see from the aerial photo that the site at the time of photographing was not complete. I don't know how old the photo is. Here is a news report about the event. The report is from SkyNews, but there's only a tad of anti-renewable bias in it.

Well. The aforementioned frontal band of rain arrived; pissed down rain for a few minutes, and pissed off. Not even a puddle in an ant lion's hole. The temperature dropped, but it felt very humid. The could is moving to teh northeast, so I suppose the NSW Nortehrn Rivers area will cop thunderstorms tonight.

As I sit here at 4:30pm, my desktop weather meter says it's 40.5C and 17% RH. Wind is gusting to about 35 kts. The radar shows a frontal band of rain approaching, but I bet it will slip away to the southeast before a drop falls on me. This weather, especially the constant days of strong winds, is not normal. At this time of year the winds should be calm and the temperature in the low 30Cs.

Ah! The billygoat farting song! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer_is_icumen_in