Old Koreelah

It wasn’t me who mentioned Yamamoto. Plenty of military historians say Patton was over rated and Monty was exceptional. A proud tradition. Despite what we saw in Lawrence of Arabia, the Arabs didn’t liberate Damascus. I believe the first Allied troops to enter the city were Australian Light Horse. The story goes that the British ordered them not to go in, but to secure the northern gates. Bugger this, they said, it’s miles around the outskirts to get there, so they took a shortcut through Damascus, becoming the first to liberate this most ancient city. Most history books are written for and by people from the larger winning nations. The amazing contribution of other countries is overlooked or actively suppressed. Millions of Indian troops helped defeat Japan, but are forgotten.

While it’s great that Australian troops were spared the firing squad, the logic escapes me. All Australian soldiers were volunteers- they chose to be there, so I guess they signed a contract of some sort. Why would the English troops, conscripted against their will, be any more guilty of LOMF?

I read an interesting comment recently about WWII. Allied warplanes that were shot down provided lots of good quality aluminium scrap that the Nazi war machine was desperate for. A crashed De-Havilland Mosquito yielded mostly splintered wood or ashes!

Nope. If he ever existed, the Lord gave up on humankind long ago. Like Elvis, he has left the building.

Hidden behind paywall.

One of the TV channels has a budget simulator that allows you to try your hand at being Federal Treasurer.

That post might attract the attention of the Feds!

So we’ve found a Republican who isn’t appalling. The rest are unfit.

So did I. Lots of exciting chemicals could be had by mail order. Instructions for making explosive stuff were freely available, making up for my total lack of chemical knowledge. Our neighbours recall many of my experiments. One reached hundreds of feet; another exploded on the pad, removing much of my hair.

So true Nev. It’s been almost eighty years since the big nations rejigged the world’s trading system around the US dollar and it’s overdue a major reset. If the big trading nations return to some form of currency backed by gold, Australia won’t be at the table. We might be a major producer of the yellow stuff, but keep very little as a currency reserve.

Long, long ago, I bought a Phantom Skull ring by mail order and was fascinated by it’s eye sockets glowing in the dark. Am I gonna die?

That’s interesting. The building I worked in replaced an older picture theatre that burned down. The old projectionist described how he kept warm from the heat radiating from all the exposed electrical equipment.

Cleese is right on the money as usual. Here is just one example of what he’s talking about:

That brought back a nearly-forgotten memory of my teenage years upstairs in our local picture theatre. I believe I could still operate all that machinery in the dark, having done so for years. The projectors were from the 30s but the arc boxes dated from about 55. The carbon rods, of different gauges, were manually controlled by big bakelite knobs. As the first Q marks appeared, you touched them to strike an arc, then quickly pulled them apart to acheive the optimum gap of about 7mm. At the next Q mark, you started the motor, using your right hand on the pulley to help it get under way. After watching the ten-second countdown on the metal blank in front of your projector, at the last Q mark you rammed the slider sideways to swap projectors. Then adjusted the electric motor that automatically advancing the carbon rods. My offsider was known to get so engrossed in the movie that he’d allow the rods to burn so wide that he lost the arc, causing a big collective groan from the audience below. Crikey that was a long time ago.

My bladder gets me up.

Clocks working weeks and calendars have taken most of humanity far from the rythms of nature. Have we lost the ability to tune in?

I grew up just east of Stanthorpe and vividly remember bitterly cold winters, wild westerlies and deep frost and occasional sleet. I suspect one reason Tassie has milder winters is the maritime influence; water doesn’t change temperature nearly as much as the land does. The relatively warm air off the Southern Ocean doesn’t pass over very much cold land before it gets to NP’s place. The wild south westerlies we copped at the farm came from the same ocean, but crossed hundreds of km of cold inland before they assaulted us.

I have a full-colour Lanz sign, about 400 square, made from sheet metal. Big single-cylinder engine with a ruddy great belt-drive pully hanging out the side.

As OME says, the French arrived only a few days behind the British First Fleet. https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/french-australia/fate-la-perouse#:~:text=La Perouse's ships sailed out,the expedition left Botany Bay. Several French expeditions explored around our continent, hence so many French names of coastal features. Australia missed out on being French by a whisker. Eighteen years before, Cook was very aware of the legal implications of his voyage. Recent interpretations of his journal show evidence that he knew where he was going; he may have carried secret charts made long before by Portugese explorers (who would have kept their activities quiet, because they’d crossed “the Pope’s Line” into the Spanish hemisphere.) It seems Cook knew that Van Diemans land was separate, long before Bass Strait was officially explored and named.

Eisenhower was the last decent President the Republican Party produced. The last to balance the budget. That party has long ago been taken over by a cult of greed.

And it does work well. Plenty of Americans were impressed when, late last year, Australia had a national election and by mid evening we knew the outcome. The next morning our new PM was sworn in and got to work.

Putin’s main handicap is the lack of commitment of it’s people to this conflict. All he has to do is convince them that Mother Russia is under attack.