Early Risers.

[monkeysarefun]

28 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Like Greedo?

 

I'm guessing this was a local race? I didn't see any political advertising this year during the game. Candidates for national office ran ads in 2020, as you might expect.

 

Based on your description and a little searching, (and a YouTube hit) I'm guessing it was for a candidate for US Senate from Arizona.

 

That's the one! Has since expanded his argument by calling the complainers snowflakes.

 

https://www.newsweek.com/jim-lamon-mocks-outrage-super-bowl-ad-shoots-joe-biden-kelly-giffords-1678386

[Ozexpatriate]

10 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

That's the one! Has since expanded his argument by calling the complainers snowflakes.

 

https://www.newsweek.com/jim-lamon-mocks-outrage-super-bowl-ad-shoots-joe-biden-kelly-giffords-1678386

Per the article:

Quote

The ad sparked a backlash, especially because Kelly's wife, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in an assassination attempt in January 2011. The attack left Giffords with a brain injury and led her to becoming a vocal gun control advocate.

Here is Gabby today, performing with Yo Yo Ma (literally broadcast a couple of days ago).

 

Don't focus on the 'quality' of the musical performance but the courage of an individual trying to rehabilitate a devastating brain injury. During the shooting, 15 were injured (13 by gunfire) and six died, including a Federal Judge and a nine-year old girl.

 

Edited February 19, 2022 by Ozexpatriate

[monkeysarefun]

The irony is I've been to Darwin and it's got probably the greatest risk out of any other city in the world of getting eaten, fatally bitten or stung, drowned, lost in the wilderness, dying of thirst or heat and a heap of other things, yet the people of Darwin seem to be the most capable of anywhere since only tourists seem to meet their demise there in stupid ways.

[Ozexpatriate]

2 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

The irony is I've been to Darwin

Dad has slides of the Galapagos Island tortoises (collected by Charles Darwin) during the period they lived in the Botanical Gardens in Brisbane and developed a fondness for eating hibiscus flowers. They were brought to Australia by John Clements Wickham (1st Lt. of HMS Beagle during Darwin's voyage and later Commander.)

 

I have a photo somewhere of the last surviving tortoise (Harriet) at the late Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo before it too died. 

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

Well, by the time I got to Vickie’s to pick up Ava, the rain had turned into sleet and it was really coming down quite hard. After that, the rest of the day was mostly wet, although the sun did shine later and the afternoon turned out rather nice. 

 

However, as I predicted earlier, I’ve not done a great deal today, just sat on my @rse on the sofa surfing the tinternet. All this talk of power tools, both full size and mini, etc had me surfing the net to see what was available. There’s quite a bit of interesting bits of kit out there and I was very tempted, but so far, I’ve not just before I made this post, I succumbed and pressed the ‘buy it now button and got this for £19.99 + £4P&P. Should be here by the end of next week!

 

photo via eBay. 

 

This afternoon, after Ava had packed up we all sat and watched ‘Chicken Run’ for the umpteenth time, it always makes us laugh. 

 

Tonight was spent watching a French thriller was a nice bottle of merlot. 

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[zarniwhoop]

 

4 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Attributed to many, including Robert A Heinlein who wrote “An honest politician is one that stays bought.”

Regarding certain Americans and guns: it’s awfully tempting to regard this intense attraction as a paraphilia.

 

I can understand the need for rifles and shotguns, especially as many do go hunting for food (an American university friend of mine would go hunting for deer during the season and bag one or two which went into the freezer and kept her in meat for the entire year). But why they see a need for AK-47s is a bit beyond me. 
 

Could it be that deer and bears are getting tooled up and are shooting back?

The right of the people to keep and arm Bears, shall not be infringed.

[monkeysarefun]

Speaking of Darwin last week marked the 80th anniversary of it's bombing by Japanese planes. 242 planes were in the raid, compared to 353 used at Pearl Harbor. In defence were just 10 Kitty hawk fighters of the USAF.

 

Subsequently a further 100 raids of lesser severity were launched against Darwin through 1942. News of the raids were suppressed by the Australian government at the time to prevent national panic and as a result have remained largely unknown by Australians, let alone the rest of the world.

 

[monkeysarefun]

42 minutes ago, zarniwhoop said:

 

The right of the people to keep and arm Bears, shall not be infringed.

Spiffing I do declare that the joke of the season!

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

News of the raids were suppressed by the Australian government at the time to prevent national panic and as a result have remained largely unknown by Australians, let alone the rest of the world.

Well known to me.  (Singapore fell just four days earlier on February 15, 1942 with perhaps as many as 15,000 Australian troops surrendered.)

 

It was well reported in Australia - see The Argus - February 20, 1942. (Quotes from the PM and everything.)

 

It is featured/dramatized in the penultimate act of Baz Luhrmann's rather cringeworthy 2008 flick "Australia" with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.

 

The IJN mixed and matched the six carrier fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Darwin was attacked (February 19, 1942) by the First Air Fleet / Mobile Force (Akagi, Kaga, Hiryū, and Sōryū). Through April, Kaga would dry dock for repairs (temporarily fixed after hitting a reef in early February).

 

Five carriers (including Shōkaku and Zuikaku) would then attack Ceylon (Columbo and Trincomalee) in early April and subsequently drive the Royal Navy Eastern Fleet* all the way to Africa. Shōkaku and Zuikaku were sent east in Task Force MO (to invade Port Moresby) and would be intercepted by the US in the Battle of the Coral Sea in early May 1942. The four carriers that attacked Darwin were sunk at Midway in June 1942.

 

* Despite failing to locate and engage it

 

The attacks on Darwin played into the whole "Brisbane Line" mythos variously attributed to either MacArthur or the former Fadden administration where the alleged plan was to only defend territory south of Brisbane in the case of a Japanese invasion. 

 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Ozexpatriate

[monkeysarefun]

4 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

6 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Well known to me

 

Perhaps then  more the fault of subsequent history syllabuses rather than government censorship. I learned more about the  League Of Nations and how many wheelbarrows of money it cost Germans to buy bread in 1934 and so on than Australian history.

[Ozexpatriate]

1 minute ago, monkeysarefun said:

Perhaps then  more the fault of subsequent history syllabuses rather than government censorship.

I learned a lot of fallacy about the "Brisbane Line" growing up - like how Curtin stood up to MacArthur's plan to burn Queensland and sent soldiers to stop the Japanese on the Kokoda Track instead. I don't think it happened exactly like that.

 

MacArthur had his headquarters in Brisbane. There's still a plaque on the building. I'm certainly not in the MacArthur fan club but there was a lot of negativity around him, at least some of which was probably exaggerated.

[iL Dottore]

8 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

My penchant for pedantry is now in overdrive. 

 

….and the erroneous overloading of Darwin's concepts with despicable pseudo-science like eugenics.….

My dear fellow, there’s a big difference between pedantry and insisting on scientific, medical or technical accuracy (although for the under informed it is difficult for them to distinguish between pedantry and the desire for accuracy). Pedantry may mean adding a comma where most people would not use one; accuracy can mean the difference between life and death.

 

It’s amazing to learn how popular eugenics was in the pre-World War II period, with advocates for eugenics in high places in countries as diverse as Germany, Britain and the United States. Biologically, there is absolutely no reason why humans cannot be bred to select for advantageous traits and to remove disadvantageous traits from the population. We are, after all, animals.

 

But when you get to the practicality of it there are two problems unlike with animal husbandry: firstly, the long reproductive cycle - even if you were to breed humans as soon as they could reasonably successfully reproduce, you’d still be looking at least 30 years to see if you were heading in the right direction (Parents >>> 15 years >>> F1 generation >>> 15 years >>> F2 generation). And that’s just for the very few Mendelian traits that humans have - such as cystic fibrosis - the majority of human traits are passed on by non-Mendelian inheritance.

 

The second problem, and the one that brings down the whole flimsy pack of cards that is eugenics, is how do you select which humans to breed (or more accurately allow to breed) and how do you factor-in (and deal with) human independence and self determination. For the first point, proponents of eugenics in the 1920s and 30s identified so-called “traits“ that closely aligned with their political and social prejudices as what should be selected for, and for the second point, proponents of eugenics argued for forced segregation, forced sterilisation and worse. And we all know where that led to.

 

I think that it would not be unreasonable to assume that, if humans really do want to breed better humans, it will be done in the laboratory by editing fertilised ova’s genomes using CRISPR gene editing and the like. Whilst this sort of approach will certainly not engender the suffering and criminal acts associated with eugenics taken to the extreme, it nonetheless does raise its own set of ethical and moral dilemmas.

[iL Dottore]

9 hours ago, simontaylor484 said:

@iL Dottore it would be interesting if you could get the rough dimensions of the parcel and see via a website how much it would cost for the likes of DHL et al to ship it to your secret alpine lair and see how much Mark up Micromark were putting on the shipping 

 

I get a bit pi55ed off when I get charged just short of 4 quid for delivery and it turns up in an A5 jiffy envelope 

That’s an interesting idea, indeed. Although it would require a best guess as to the dimensions and weight of the item properly packed and protected by Styrofoam bullets, bubble wrap and the like. Somehow, I don’t think the Amazon approach of sticking things into the first available box and filling it up with packing material would be the best way to go.

I will certainly have a rummage around on the Internet to see what I can find.

iD

p.s. I certainly agree with getting rather annoyed at the fact that you have been charged quite a few pounds for postage and packing only to find out their cost of postage and packing was but a few pennies in comparison to what they charged.

Edited February 20, 2022 by iL Dottore

[iL Dottore]

8 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I occasionally receive MicroMark catalogues. I have one lying around somewhere.

 

Flavio, I would be happy to oblige if you would like to experiment, but do suspect their shipping might be cheaper than I would see from USPS. International consumer package rate postage has odd size/weight trip points.

That’s a very kind offer. Perhaps we could do such an experiment using something small and light - so whatever P&P costs there will be, will be minimal.

Let me have a shufti at MicroMark’s online catalogue and have a ponder…

[iL Dottore]

6 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

The irony is I've been to Darwin and it's got probably the greatest risk out of any other city in the world of getting eaten, fatally bitten or stung, drowned, lost in the wilderness, dying of thirst or heat and a heap of other things, yet the people of Darwin seem to be the most capable of anywhere since only tourists seem to meet their demise there in stupid ways.

It seems like the inhabitants of Darwin have not forgotten a fundamental premise of being human: survival is dependent on always remembering that nature is definitely out to kill you, one way or another, at any time and in any place possible (especially in Australia).

 

I suppose the biggest concern that the Darwinians may have, is that will they get the tourists’ money before the tourists’ untimely demise at the hands of nature.

 

I see a great business opportunity here: one-way ticket to Australia, five days of wilderness adventure (self-guided) and a traditional Aussie funeral to finish! 

[chrisf]

Today is my 74th birthday.  Later this morning I shall be at Cambridge Crematorium, reflecting and remembering my parents.  My mother died on my 37th birthday - not the best present I could have had.  Had she been spared, the day after tomorrow would have been her 100th birthday.  The rest of the day will be spent quietly as the next journey round the sun gets under way.

 

Chris

[Ozexpatriate]

3 minutes ago, chrisf said:

Today is my 74th birthday. 

Happy Birthday Chris. I understand that the day is bittersweet for you, but completing another orbit is worth noting.

[Ozexpatriate]

55 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

It’s amazing to learn how popular eugenics was in the pre-World War II period, with advocates for eugenics in high places in countries as diverse as Germany, Britain and the United States.

Yes. The Empire of Japan too. Frankly it's a little frightening just how prevalent (and often admired, and by whom*) it was.

 

* Corn Flakes anyone?

 

US Public Broadcasting (under their American Experience documentary banner) covered eugenics in the 1920s in a documentary a couple of years ago.

 

55 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

... it will be done in the laboratory by editing fertilised ova’s genomes using CRISPR gene editing and the like.

There is some speculation about how far such things have already been attempted, beyond the three-year sentence handed down by the PRC to He Jiankui.

 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Ozexpatriate

[TheQ]

Mooring Awl, 

Winds getting up again, we are promised 60mph later and 75 mph tomorrow morning, strangely they haven't named this one yet.. I think I might take the Landrover to work tomorrow..

 

4hours plus 2 hours plus one hour so not a bad total amount of sleep.

Ben the I want out Collie dragged me out around 05:00, the heavy rain we've had overnight had stopped, we had a good squelch around on patrol.

 

Plans for today,

Find the solder station, I'm using solder sleeves on the joints for the trailer wiring.

Finish the stairs lights, my legs have recovered enough to have another go.

 

Now gusting 40mph

Time for breakfast.

 

[Tony_S]

Morning all. Birthday greetings to Chris .

Now the loft jobs are are finished I will spend a few days putting all my tools back. I will attempt to be ruthless with all the bits of wood stored in the garage too.

Tony

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

seems like the inhabitants of Darwin have not forgotten a fundamental premise of being human: survival is dependent on always remembering that nature is definitely out to kill you, one way or another, at any time and in any place possible (especially in Australia).

Yeah it'd be either that or they don't want to be mocked by the NT News headlines guy.

[jamie92208]

Good moaning from the former pit village.  Another good day was had yesterday and Beth and I were trusted to put Emily to bed again whilst Rachel and Laura went out.  I had the very important job of reading the bedtime stories.  The actual  wedding anniversary is on the 23rd and like Chris' birthday is a bittersweet day as Beth's dad died that morning.  We were glad to be able to babysit for them.

 

Today there will be some small tssks performed then this afternoon  we are off to Bradford to spend some time with no 2 son Paul and his partner Gillian.  There are also horses and a dog to be introduced to.  Weather permitting Beth may even be taken out for a short drive in a trap, driven by  Paul.  

 

Chris, I hope that the day goes wel

 

Jamiel

Edited February 20, 2022 by jamie92208

[Barry O]

Ey up!

 

@chrisf congratulations for the birthday, commiserations for your mothers passing.

 

Baz