Bruce Tuncks

I share Nev's worry about Trump getting in again but I really think its unlikely. Last time, I actually was surprised that he got in but I was also a bit taken in by his " drain the swamp" stuff. He appeared to be promising to lessen corruption. Well now we know him better, so much so that he is an unusual One-term President. And well-deserved too. But it is strange to see the Republicans forming up as part of an unholy alliance with russia... what a turn-about. I can't see this helping them win any elections though.

Yep Nev, we are very unlikely too.... looking at the sheep dogs I know well, it wouldn't help them much to be smarter... Gosh, one in particular is so smart she worries too much about things she has no control over.

If you start knowing the periodic table is the same everywhere ( or there is an amazing coincidence of spectrum evidence ) then you come quickly down to carbon life-forms. It is the only element that can make up complex molecules easily. Those Aliens look very unlikely to me.... their heads look too big for their pelvises, so how could they be born? I got to agree with Nev on this, they are all we can imagine. Personally, I reckon we are alone. The moon being necessary for agrigulture is a big thing, as is the stability of our climate. Agriculture could never have started on Mars, for example... the precession of the poles is too much and the summer/winter balance is too far off and it varies too much. AND, where are the tourists from the future? Their non-existence indicates to me that they will never happen.

I've been reading a book about the pioneer airman PG Taylor. He learned to fly under an instructor " who had broken down under the stress of flying inferior machines against the German Albatross. He had been sent home and made an instructor but he shouldn't have been allowed to fly anything". Well this partly explained something I've wondered about.... in WW2, there was a tiger-moth school at Port Pirie where they killed 5% of their trainees.... gosh, our gliding club never killed anybody at Gawler and we would have been in great trouble if we had. And we operated with a tiger moth aero-tow plane before 1969 when I joined. What an amazing difference!

Ball lightning sure is interesting, and it is something which has lots of credible evidence. It is thought the min-min lights were ball lightning. We need some pictures huh. Onetrack's dad obviously didn't have a mobile phone with a camera way back then.

that's awful willedoo, in my time, we saw kids being given orphan lambs. Mary had one, it's fleece was white as snow. Now the kids have to be registered livestock owners??? PS Camels are not on the list.... the Rajah used to have a whole string of camels. AND I have seen a swarm of bees alight on a random tree.... somebody needs to explain to those bees that they are breaking the law.

The reason why "new " cars can have a lot of miles on them is cos the salesmen use them as company cars to go home with. It's a perk of being a car salesman.

The butcher in Alice Springs used to be called " harry the horse" which puzzled me as a naive kid. Anyway, one day this woman was gushing over the wonderful leg of lamb she ate last week. Harry apparently thought it was a good time to come clean.... " that was actually goat, madam" he said. She apparently went out the shop to the gutter and threw up. Even as a naive kid I thought that was really silly. I would have no trouble eating goat. I have also eaten kangaroo and crocodile. The croc was a chicken-fishy tasting white meat, I thought it would be ok in a curry but tasteless as a steak.

These days most people have a phone which can take photos. I read that these phones caused the near-extinction of ufo reports, just as ufo's killed off religious sightings years ago.

"evidence" would be quite tough, and it would include being smelly and living in a rubbish dump when it could have been cleaned up.

I like the idea of applying a basics card to ALL those ( including whites ) who have shown they need one. I hate it that returned servicemen can't buy a beer if they are black. Personally, I would start by assuming that they were all ok and then implement the program on evidence. What more? There should be money from the first idea to pay for employers to subsidise employment for ALL those who need it.

Well I am less connected with Hawthorne than even Jerry. I started "supporting" them when they were down and nearly out, on account of liking Dermot Brereton even though he was getting old and nasty. For awhile, I was the only supporter I knew, although there were some others that shook their brown and yellow flags from behind the goals. When they started winning again, all sorts of people came out of the woodwork including the Premier, Jeff Kennet. Well I reckon they were always there, well some of them anyway, and I apologise to Jerry if he thought I was doubting his sincerity. Yep, footy is a bit of a religion in Vic and surely a coach would be a believer? Of course he would and who could blame him? And why would you expect a footy coach to be a woke sissy?

Can anybody explain to me how giving guns to angry ex-inmates does not immediately lead to those guns being used against the military which supplied them? I reckon I'd be using mine against the officers quite quickly.

Thanks guys. The locals at Murtoa were very nice to relatives of the dead couple , I don't think that the truck driver will be whitewashed. Also, unlike Onetrack's brother's killer, this driver had not been drinking. I still think it's relevant to know if this could have been prevented by a harder truck-driving test, one which required the ability to think. I have read that 90% of road deaths are caused by the stupidest 10% of drivers. This would make an unthinking reaction more likely and I reckon that is what happened here. The truck was ( apparently ) tail-gating a car which was trying to overtake a farm machine. The story then goes that the car tried to overtake the farm machine and then tried to pull back in, but the truck had advanced . Then the truck suddenly swung out to the wrong side of the road.

But here's my very real gripe... A very good mate and top bloke, plus his wife, were killed by a 24 y/o truck driver on the way from Edenhope to Bendigo. I want to know what the driver's IQ is. If he is a moron, I still want to see him punished, but I also want to see all those who gave him a license punished too. Yes this was very recent and the truck was completely on the wrong side of the road when it hit the poor little Alfa head on.

Some of them are quite good! I especially liked broadghettos and slanderingham

Our lambing percentage went up when we got a few alpacas.

Alpacas don't eat thistles, I wish they did. Our fences around here are not good enough for goats. Alpacas are lovely animals, they are very dignified.

Here's the nub of the problem... some people want PRIVILEGED treatment of aborigines, and some ( including me ) regard this in itself as a racist idea.

Over our ( at the moment non-existent) back fence , there is some tape protecting an aboriginal cultural site, which looks like a tree to me. I must look into Victoria's rules etc. Thanks guys for alerting me, gosh I wish I could help with those bureaucrats in WA.

Australia is different from the US in that the number of new GP's is decided by the government and not the AMA ( medical union in the us). We are the same with respect to specialists.... here and in the US, the number of new ones let in is decided by the unio...err "college " and so it costs big money to see one and you may have months to wait. Apparently the waiting time for a public patient to see a neurologist is ten years, a figure I find hard to believe. This guy I knew well was told by his GP that " if you have got what I think you have then you have 6 months to live" at a time when the waiting list was 12 months long.

If I were advising a kid who wanted to become a millionaire doctor, I would tell them to see if they could become aboriginal.

The cards were stacked in their favor. They got 3 points for "english not being their mother tongue" and so the first-year med classes looked very chinese. Also, you could ( if you knew how to play the system ) get to do your year 12 in 2 years! I was actually on a no -account committee when this was happening at the U of Adelaide. It got so bad that even the politically correct lot had to notice there was something wrong. They have corrected things a bit now I think.

I thought that cameras on phones had killed the ufo lot.

If they really were deprived, why do many of those with about 10% of aboriginal blood identify as "aboriginal?" I suggest that there are tangible benefits in doing so.