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EVolution Conversions | Melbourne-based classic-car EV Conversions

As Tim Minchin says in his song "White wine in the sun" - "I get freaked out by churches. Some of the hymns that they sing have nice chords but the lyrics are dodgy"

Thanks Marty😀

Whether or not there is a cosmic architect may be an interesting question but at least at this point of time this is not a question we can answer with anything but conjecture. The usual argument is that if there is no god then where did the universe come from? My answer is I don't know although modern cosmology does have some hypotheses. Personally I am happy to say that I don't know how the universe came to exist and I am comfortable with that. The idea that the existence of the universe requires a cosmic architect does not really satisfy me. Children are great at asking questions that are free form social assumptions. A child will say "if god created the universe then who created god?" For me at least answering an unknown with another unknown is a little pointless. Some cosmologists suggest that there are multiple parallels universes and I understand that there is some evidence to suggest that this is not crazy. Whether or not I accept the parallel universe hypothesis or string theory or god the god hypothesis makes little difference to my life. As far as the god hypothesis goes, believers (at least Christian ones) will say it does matter because if you don't acknowledge this god and follow quite prescribed and curious rules you will (depending on the particular believer) not be granted eternal life or be punished by this insecure entity. I find this proposition to generate more questions than answers. The Bible whilst being a fascinating piece of literature does not appear to contain any supernatural information. The bible does not contain any information that suggests knowledge of any location other than the middle east. Are Australia Aboriginals (pre white settlement} prevented from being awarded eternal life because they could not have acknowledged a god that they had no chance of even being aware of? The bible was made available to the inhabitants of a small part of the world. If god really wanted everyone to acknowledge him why was the bible geographically limited? Are Australian aborigines' descendants of Adam and Eve? How do early hominids such as Homo erectus, Homo habilis fit in. Did they have the opportunity to be awarded eternal life after death and how do they relate to Adam and Eve? These are all questions that make me doubt the religious narrative.

Death is essential for evolution. Survival of the fittest requires survival of organisms that are more suited to their environment. The notion that any living thing can live for an infinite time is hard to accept. The universe most likely has a finite life. It would be an odd world if every homosapien ever born was still alive. Apart from that personally the idea of an infinite life span sounds awful. Life has meaning because it is finite. We make goals, we achieve some of them, we watch our children grow and hand over the world to the following generations. A quote I quite like is by the author Susan Ertz: Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Eternal life either by a body that does not wear out (entropy?) or by some superior being offering some deal whereby for the correct amount of gratitude and acknowledgment you will be granted some kind of eternal existence seems like a dreadful idea.

OK I can't help myself. No way at the moment does not imply no way ever. Recycling plants are being built GE announces first US wind turbine blade recycling program with Veolia Newer blades are made to be more easily recyclable. World’s first “fully recyclable” wind turbine blades roll off production line This is obviously false. The notion that all EVs are charged on 100% fossil fuels is quite clearly wrong. An EV owned by a Tasmanian if charged solely from the grid would on be charging almost exclusively by renewables Tasmania is now powered entirely by renewable energy An EV in Victoria would (using average figures) if charged solely from the grid use 24% renewables. However of course the proliferation of home rooftop solar must be considered. I am considering an EV in the near future (would have already don't if the stock marked hadn't taken a dive - thanks Vlad) I have been operating my ICE car as if it were an EV. By that I mean modelling each trip in terms of electricity required. I am pretty sure I could run an EV almost solely on my excess solar production rather than selling it back to the grid for f***all. The exception would be longer trips where I would need to charge at a public charging station. Networks like Chargefox claim to only be renewable power for their network. I haven't researched these figures but as a general comment I would say that a lot of technology requires lubricants. I would assume that thermal power plants also require large quantities of lubricants in their generators. I would also assume the as is the case when I get an oil change in my car, oil from electrical generators would be recycled. The use of renewables is not necessarily about not using any fossil fuel derived product but rather not burning fossil fuels. Crude oil will be around for many years to come because we need it for plastics, chemicals ,drugs etc. Yep that is certainly true at the moment but of course this is also true for fossil energy production. As with renewables at the moment there is a cost in fossil fuel to build and maintain it but in the case of a fossil fuel power plant these building and operating fossil fuels costs are as well as the running cost. Because at this stage steal and concrete and transport require a high fossil fuel input it doesn't mean this can never change, in fact it is changing. ‘Green steel’: Swedish company ships first batch made without using coal Likewise construction and transport equipment is changing. I have no idea if this is accurate but it does sound reasonable but on the other hand it is misleading. The 1.5 acres required for a single wind turbine is still available to be used in other ways. This year I have done quite a bit of travel around western Victoria. It is difficult to drive very far without coming across a windfarm. I do not recall seeing a windfarm that didn't have livestock grazing around it or crops growing. The notion that we need vast tracts of land to turn over to wind farms is not the case as far as I can see. In fact if anything it represents an intensification of land use. Farmers are able to graze livestock and grow crops and receive an income from the turbines. I suspect that the future of wind may be more large offshore wind. Indeed, but I am not sure any credible person is saying that the only source of power should be wind. Some areas are rich in sunshine others are rich in wind or hydro potential. I cant really think of any location where clear-felling has been undertaken to build a windfarm. Farmland seems to be the most common site for a windfarm. I think I have already dealt with this one.

Recycling of wind turbine blades is now starting to happen. Most industry in the past have created items that ended up in landfill. If I think back to when I was a child when our tv or radio died it would end up in land fill. Now theses items are recycled as recycling techniques have improved. The technology for recycling tends to lag behind. In earlier times my first PC ended up in landfill because recycling did not become economic until there were enough used PCs around economically justify it. This article does not do a comparison with the waste from coal fired plants Coal ash has become one of Australia's biggest waste problems It is interesting that the article talks about the end life of composite materials but only considers turbine blades and not other sources. We could apply the same criticism to the composites used increasingly in the aircraft industry as well as marine applications and other areas where composites are being used or introduced. These bike shelters are made from wind turbines Here is an interesting and I would suggest more balanced article Adding Perspective to the Wind Turbine Waste Debate Electricity from coal produces 200 times as much solid waste as electricity from wind It is entirely reasonable to question the life cycle of all products we create but it is easy to not see or think about the waste from the products that we are already producing.

Yep, its not going to buff out

https://aviationsourcenews.com/news/ukraine-crisis-clearer-photos-of-antonov-an-225-mriya-destroyed-is-revealed/?fbclid=IwAR3c3oFrmeVkIkTYZO9-lp8eRxJ3CGohu6QWteOB1yQYvhJSHNOM3Za1Vb4

Well I certainly hope this turns out to be false. Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Europe's largest nuclear power plant on fire, mayor says amid Russian attack

Although this pales into insignificants compared to the human tragedy, it is sad to see the end of this engineering marvel. Mriya, The World's Largest Plane, Has Been Destroyed by Russia's Strikes on Ukraine

This is probably the time and place to say that at least for the foreseeable future I am retiring from the forum. I have been considering this off and on for a while now but recently I reached out in a private message to a member to explain my point of view over a discussion we were having. What I got back in reply was quite a nasty attack on me as a person. I think the majority of people here are great and I have enjoyed chatting and debating with those who hold different views. I have been a member here since 2007 and goodness knows I have been involved in spirited debates but I believe this is pretty much the first time my character has been questioned in this way. Anyway Cheers folks - over and out

There is nothing wrong with challenging ideas the problem comes when "I disagree with your opinion" becomes "I disagree with your opinion therefore you are an idiot" or whatever. There are people here I often disagree with but I have great respect for them if they can challenge the views of others with a polite and reasonable argument.

At no stage have I said this. To sum up the discussion you are disparaging me and my experience. We may practice music differently but let me be clear I have NO PORBLEM with the way you do music. I am not criticizing your style but you are definitely criticizing my style. What I am saying is that some musician jobs require good sight reading, that is a fact. Many jobs do not and that is fine as well. Country no rock yes blues yes toured yes. Back in the day we used to around 240 engagements a year both in Aus and overseas. Ah more denigration I have done all of these things.. That's fine but a forthright statemen that you can play anything put in front of you is easy to say. I am not suggesting you read notation but you are suggesting you can play anything by ear within a few goes? Your main message seems to be how brilliant you are and how crap others are. Again playing by ear is a fantastic skill and I am in awe of those who are great at it (I am average and I am secure enough to admit that) I am not saying that every musician should go the formal route but the fact remains that some jobs require it and that is just how it is. The best musician I know don't go around saying how good they are it is self evident in their playing. Anyway clearly I am not the expert you are.

I haven't read your full post yet but I have to answer this ASAP. No you are wrong, I have great respect for people who play by ear and I don't believe I have ever denigrated anyone who uses this method. I have however pointed out that for many types of musical work you need to get to grips with large amounts of material in a short time. I think perhaps your belief that I am elitist or denigrating people who play by ear may be something you are imagining.

Sorry Dax but that cannot be true and is easily testable. If I post a link to a piece perhaps you could demonstrate your prowess? Sorry to sound perhaps a little arrogant here but I have earned my entire living from music and music education. I don't claim to be brilliant (like you) but I have always had enough work in all genres of music. Your comment about me having "very little knowledge of the popular music industry" is rather condescending. You have no idea what I have or haven't done. I would be interested to hear some of your work, don't be shy. Yep, this was a big part of my work life. Not true, This is my old band doing a long distance collaboration with the US air force band. Note that the solos are generally freely improvised. This does not make it fall apart. "Minor Distance" - Featuring The Airmen of Note and the RAAF Saxophone Sections Whilst the improvised solos are an opportunity to give your own interpretation the ensemble parts require a shared interpretation with dynamics, tome colour articulation and balance between the different parts. There is some truth to that but again musicians who read music still play by ear also. The aural course at the Con is of an extremely high standard. Even my less advanced student who do music exams have to pass an aural component. This involves hearing a melody and playing it back as well as identifying intervals and being able to sing intervals. At a higher level this involves a lot of skill. The Beatles did not have formal music knowledge however this does not mean that were not musical. Something they did rely on was the more formal knowledge of George Martin. What made them successful was the collaboration. Here is a link to a great podcast https://www.producingthebeatles.com/new-episodes This goes into who did what and contains some historically interesting behind the scenes recordings. Yes this was a lot of my musical life. I am in no way trying to belittle you although I understand that you think I am naïve and inexperienced. That is fine by me. I have a lifetime of experience you may think I am making that up but that is not my problem. The musicians I know and have worked with whether they are formally taught and read or play by ear or both have great respect for the various methods of making music, this is professionalism. To end where I started off I would suggest this is a tall assertion. Perhaps saved a little by the qualifier "yet to come across". If you can play anything you hear by ear with a couple of run throughs I would love to hear you do it. Are you saying in any style? Let me know if you are up to it and I will post a link.

Dax most musicians I know and do and have worked with do both. When playing with smaller ensembles with more popular music it is more normal to play without music but at some stage there would have been written music as part of the process. It is simply not possible to paly a Mahler symphony by ear. If you take a popular piece of music or song it is not just a case of of playing the melody. Usually the arranger will arrange the piece, this arranger may also be a player. They will decide on style, harmony and who is paying the melodic part and how that is handed on to another player. Yes there is a difference between classical and popular indeed there are more genres than just these two. You should not assume that there are 2 distinct worlds and a musician must inhabit one world or the other. Here is a example. In the 70s there was a well known band called 'The Sports" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd-oYM88niQ I knew the guitarist in this band. He may look like another pop/rock guitarist playing by ear. Martin was a classically trained musician and therefore was well equipped to carry on a great career in music. Later he composed for film and television, produced some well known records and for many years was head of Screen Music at the Australian Film, Television and Radio school. He was able to achieve this career because he was a well rounded musician. Again most of the musicians I know absolutely do both. As I said I have earned my whole living from music so I am not talking as a hobbyist. In order to earn a decent living playing music you have to be versatile. For me this meant I could be playing 20th century atonal music in the morning followed by popular music in the evening. This is different to playing in a small band that does a set list at a weekly or even nightly gig. I have played with a singer who needed the music to be in a lower key so we had to transpose on the fly down a third. As a professional you would just do it, it was expected. I recorded a clarinet part for the sound track to a computer game. It was a fairly rushed job. The composer email me the charts and the next day we recorded. How would you have achieved this? Asking the composer to send a recording (that may not exist yet) is kind of unprofessional. Consider the film music industry. Just to choose an iconic film score think about the process of recording the musical sound track for Star Wars (it is not just the main theme it is hours of music) This was recorded by the London symphony Orchestra. My point is that the composer (John Williams) has to communicate his music to the musicians. How would you suggest this be done in an aural way? Does John Williams hum the second bassoon part to the player? Remember that this orchestra was also doing regular concerts with totally different repertoires As in many areas of life a love of performing music is enhanced by understanding the theory behind it. I know why people seem to like "Take Five" and I know the musical device that makes it different. Knowing this I can find other music that uses the same device. More knowledge is not a bad thing and is nothing to be afraid of. Another job in the music industry is that of session musician. Again this usually does not usually afford an oppurtunioty to learn by ear. Often the composer will make changes at the last minute. As a music teacher I try to make (my more serious) students become well rounded musicians who could make a decent living if they wanted to. Being able to read music opens up a whole world of music just like reading words. I can play by ear when it is appropriate (a degree in music demands it) but this is not always the best way. Another point is that musicians may have music in front of them they at the stage of performance are not reading each individual note. There is a saying in musician circles "the score should be in your head not your head in the score. The piece in fact is mostly coming from memory however in a a long concert of complex music no-one could remember everything. It may be Stockhausen tonight but Mozart tomorrow. I have absolutely no problem with musicians who play by ear and I am in awe of those who do it well but this does not make musician's who read charts inferior. Both of these methods have pros and cons and the best musicians do both. Dax if I linked you to a recording of a sax quartet (you do play sax don't you) would you be able to pick out the alto part and play it by ear?

I don't totally disagree with this however if we use the example of a pilot there are procedures to be learned that allow pilots to navigate using procedures that are shared throughout the industry. Modern airliners are complicated pieces of machinery. The pilot cannot possibly know every shingle technical detail of the aircraft. There is much formal education surrounding what actions to take given certain engine malfunctions. A pilot could go many years without being faced with an engine problem. On the other hand the people who built and designed engine have a better understanding of what actions should be taken. At some point this information must be learnt by the pilot. I agree in that a lot of what people learn comes from experience hopefully built on a sound education in that area. As a slogan for an airline I don't think "fly with Eagle airlines, our pilots are self taught" is going to be successful. I am a great believer in the power of self education but this does involve using the knowledge that has been built up over history.

I have to jump in here and disagree. The only job I have ever done is being a musician and music teacher. I did my first professional music job in 1979 and it is all I have done in my working life. I have taught many hundreds of students some to them to be professionals. You are not wrong to say that you can be a fine musician without being able to read music however this does not hold true with all forms of music. I have taught many great musicians who played by ear but needed to be able to read music in order to find work. My firs job as a musician was as a fulltime musician in the RAAF. As well as the usual military BS we played school concerts, formal classical music concerts. As well as full band we had big band jazz ensembles classical ensembles and even a rock band. You could be asked to perform in any of these ensembles at a minutes notice and were expected to perform to a professional level. It is simply not possible to have many hours of music memorized and playing by ear is fine for 3 minute ditties or for improvisational pieces it is simply not possible for more complicated music. In no way am I bagging playing by ear but it does come with limits. An example would be that as a working musician I have received a phone call looking for a dep (replacement) for an unwell musician for the orchestra of a stage show. You simply cannot just jump in to the orchestra pit and play by ear. The musical arrangements are complex, you are not necessarily playing the melody but a harmony part. I had a sax student who was quite a good player but was unable to read music. His problem was that he had been asked to join a sax quartet. He was technically able to play the music but in order to learn his parts someone had to play the parts to him. This slowed down the process. Again I am not bagging people who exclusively play by ear but bagging people who read music is a little short sighted. A symphony orchestra could never function without reading music. Sure they can and do play things by memory but the source material is just too complex not to be written down. I have been playing clarinet/flute/sax professionally for 42 years and sure I probably could not just slot into you band but you certainly could not slot into a big band or sax quartet or orchestra playing complex arrangements purely by ear.

The increase in IQ scores is known as the "Flynn effect". There has also been an increase in DQs (development quotients) in infants. This certainly rings true in my family. My IQ is higher than my father's but lower than my son's

I have recently been using my time in lockdown to digitize all of my photos. One of the benefits is that it has made me look at photos I have not seen for years. This picture was my first ever flying lesson in 1989 I think. The confronting thing is that the fit young man in this picture bears little resemblance to the decaying human wreck I see in the mirror these days!

Sorry to here that Red. Hoping you and your family have a speedy recovery.

Only an idiot would not take precautions against an infectious disease especially one that for some people is fatal or debilitating.

I would hate to have the fear you have about having a vaccination that has been shown to be quite safe and effective.

The mRNA vaccines do not contain any inactivated virus. mRNA vaccines have been in development since 1989 and the first clinical trial of mRNA to treat cancer was in 2001. When people say the vaccine development was rushed I now ask them if they can explain to me which testing phases were missed out? The logic of at least some of the vaccine doubters seems to be around anxiety about the safety of the vaccine. The immediate safety is reasonably well understood. We are now up to 6.34 Billion doses with 2,6 Billion people fully vaccinated. In terms of long term safety, long term effects can happen but are extremely rare. What we do know is that side effects from contracting covid are very real and in some cases extremely debilitating. It seems that it is unlikely that we will totally eliminate covid therefore it is likely that most of the population will contract it eventfully. It is a question of weighing up the the known short term side effects which because of the huge number of vaccines given we can quantify plus the small chance of long term side effects although mRNA does have a reasonably long and safe history, against contracting covid which we know comes with the possibility of serious illness and possibly death and unlike the vaccine we know that for some the covid virus brings long covid with all sorts of long term side effects. I often wonder at what point these antivaxxers will consider that the vaccine has been around long enough to satisfy them of its safety and efficacy. There are more sources of information than the government. You can read peer reviewed papers, you can talk to your doctor. The notion that the government can be dishonest is reasonable but we seem to be in an age where people think we cant trust everything the government or scientists tell us therefore we can believe nothing and rather than doing our homework we just substitute any information from any old source that fits with our preconceived notions.