Ozexpatriate

I don't know - but I'm wondering if it is the Cairo Citadel and the Muhammad Ali Mosque. The roads on the side of the open space (lower left) suggest the Salah El-Deen.

Snowpack for the Willamette valley is at 144%. We had a dry April, but early May caught up. We're still above 'normal' precipitation for the 'rain year'.

78°F / 25°C well after sunset here and much closer to sea level.

How warm is it in SW BC? We've seen a record high yesterday (above 90°F / 32°C). Very warm again today, but less so tomorrow - perhaps 27°C - still very unseasonable. Mountain snow is melting fast in these temperatures. I attempted to mow the grassy verge today. The result (with a manual reel push-mower) was uneven. The battery for the electric weed-wacker / strimmer needed to go back on the charger. I will edge the verge tomorrow.

They invented them - frites! Try them with mayonnaise and truffle oil (and Belgian beer*, maybe some mussels steamed in beer - Moules et frites). Yum. * I'm partial to Dubbel Brun ales. (I just finished a US craft beer in the Tripel style after dinner.)

I would think there's still plenty of air in there. When under steam, pressure increases above atmospheric pressure. As the steam condenses the gas in the pressure vessel (now mostly air) returns to some pressure level - possibly atmospheric, perhaps above. I doubt it would go below atmospheric pressure, and certainly not a "total" vacuum.

Don't know if Flavio posts on this thread, but he might encourage you. Actually it's not that difficult - just inconvenient. Much easier than home brewing beer. Pickling (canning) is big here - there is a brand of glass jars (Mason) that exists solely to support it.

Someone paying AU$50 for a tin of beetroot would need their head examined. Blame "free-market" capitalism. I'm not sure what the effective alternative is. It's pretty stunning how many brands are owned by Kraft-Heinz. You may not recognize them, but it's a good chunk of the supermarket in the US. A local one is "Ore-Ida". They started on the Oregon-Idaho border and sell oven chips (mostly).

You instinctively use it every day - without making the connection. Relative to distance, velocity is the first differential with respect to time, and acceleration is the second differential. It is calculus that can analyze every second of Mickey the MG's motion. The power required and energy expended can all be derived - thanks to the former member of Parliament for Cambridge in 1689 and 1701 (or was it Leibniz?)

Considering abandoning* Microsoft Excel? * aka not purchasing Office for home. From your blog post - yes the "somebody else's problem" notion is one of Adams' funniest insights (along with the total perspective vortex which I find to be closely related psychologically). They both speak to the ease with which humans willfully embrace cognitive dissonance - yet simultaneously identify as being rational. One of the many aspects I enjoy about Star Trek is that this is the essence of Spock's character - his Vulcan side representing pure rational thought as distinct from literally everything humans (who are thoroughly irrational in every way) do.

Why is "the old viewing platform closed while the new viewing platform is being built". (I'm guessing the old one was dangerous - partial washout or something.) This doesn't square with the following: According to the NP site there are three viewing platforms at Cahill's crossing. Somehow I'm not keen on using the 'picnic area'. Shades of Wally Gator doing a Yogi Bear with the pic-a-nic baskets.

Very common up and down the west coast of the US - perhaps Canada too, though there is less development (per distance) directly on the BC coastline and much of it is slightly more sheltered (I'm thinking the inside passage / Queen Charlotte Sound). In some more northerly climes people wouldn't build anywhere near the waters due to things like calving glaciers. This issue is very common on the west coast of Michigan.

Fabulous. The suburban Portland metro saw nothing like that. I did go outside. It was 'visible'. Darker skies (available outside the metro) were needed. What I could see looked like very thin misshapen cloud and was barely evident. It was clearly indistinctly there, but not enough contrast with the ambient city glow.

Back home we had a beastie that size trundle close to home in the middle of the night on it's way from the Port of Brisbane, many moons ago. Fun to watch. They don't bother to go around the round-abouts - just through. Lots of route planning was involved, dodging and if necessary deactivating, overhead wires.

We're actually in the "maybe" zone for the Aurora Borealis here in Portland, but it won't be visible with the light pollution. With darker skies Central Oregon is a big possibility. The new moon gives everyone a better chance too. With those evidently fabulous sights in the south of England I'll give it a shot - just in case. (I'll be opening the windows tonight anyway.) 50°N has a higher probability than 45°N (here). Skies will be clear. We hit consecutive warmest days of the year Thursday and Friday here. Thursday exceeded 80°F (27°C). Our first 80°F day is (on average) May 8 so that was right on time. Today likely exceeded 90°F (32°C) and may have been a record high. We don't normally see that until mid-June. Harbinger or not it's too soon to tell. It is nice to see the warmth return, but it is very warm. I've not yet turned the air-conditioning on - it is about 24°C indoors and temperatures will be closer to the seasonal normal next week. I did sleep with the windows open for the first time this year. Nice - until the birds woke me up at 5:00am. I closed the windows and got some sleep until the alarm at 6:00am.

This is a more useful reference. I wasn't going to sit through 45 minutes of 'dramatization'. The aircraft was a Lockheed Electra. The airframe was first delivered to QANTAS in 1959 and was 34 years old at the time of the accident - which is pretty old for that vintage of aircraft - even if it 'only' had 33,000 flying hours.

This sort of thing would appear much faster in the early days before search was monetized and internet trawling was also accomplished by daisy-chained links to who knows where. Now search results are much more likely to show you something to purchase - even if not very related to your search. I once saw a reference to that sort of thing - unintentionally (I hasten to say). It was a bit eye-opening about the lengths people will go to. According to a separate news article I read, this sort of thing is a problem that big city hospital emergency rooms / casualty see. Perhaps not on a regular basis but not unheard of either. If I recall correctly the article quoted a hospital in San Francisco. If not done well the subject can bleed out. It is a very dangerous procedure - despite claims that such things are regularly done to livestock.

😉 I know what you mean, but that just sounds funny. One is tempted to ask (a bit facetiously) how a snake walks a dog. I do hope she is doing better.

Most of the names in the colonies are of four varieties: Place name from the old sod Anglicized indigenous name Prosaic A named person either of note in the old sod or pioneer/settler As for examples, for (1) two local cities are named Portland and Salem (the state capital). Which is more reflective of the transitive property of old sod names, the ones here being named for towns in "New" England - earlier reused there. (2) Lots of these both locally and growing up in Australia. I've lived in examples. (3) See post(s) above. Australia is littered with variations on the theme of <ordinal> Mile Creek. An good Oregon one is Black Butte. It's a volcanic cinder cone, and it is black. (Also an excellent porter.) (4) On a clear day I can see Mount Hood. Same honoree as the HMS one. Two thirds of the Australian state capitals are named for peers and one is named for a Queen. Two Australian states were named for Vicky Reg. Six US states are named for English or British royals. A couple of local towns were named after US Army officers killed in the Modoc War less than ten years after the Civil War. It was little different than genocide though the Modoc put up a good fight in lava fields where all the infantry, cavalry and field artillery of the US Army was ineffective.

Watched a version of the film Gallipoli (young Mel Gibson before he was famous enough to be odious) dubbed in Spanish. "G'day mate" became "Buenos Dias Amigo". This is funny.

We have a Cape Disappointment here. For once, not named by the plucky Yorkshireman (though he did name Cape Foulweather in his particularly prosaic style). It was named by one John Meares, disappointed not to have found the Columbia River. (He actually had, but thought it a bay.) He also named Cape Lookout on the Oregon coast. We have a Cape Meares named for him.

From 2014. The passenger's glasses were knocked off - by a propeller blade. No fatalities.

They are not the only ones. The LDS practice of baptizing 'ancestors' deeply offended Jewish organizations in the US, particularly as it pertained to baptizing holocaust victims.

I have not looked up any recent crossing of floors but in the abstract, MPs should represent their constituency. They should vote for what their constituents want - not what the party whips want them to do. That is what representative democracy is about. There is way to much partisan politics today with representatives deliberately following party orthodoxy over what the people actually want.

Swiss Army not-knife anyone? CNN: The new Swiss Army Knife will be missing a key feature I travelled by air recently - on Alaska Airlines (the same airline where I flew a 737-Max 9 in December and no doors fell off, though this time it was a Embraer 175, technically operated by SkyWest Airlines). On my return leg the eagle-eyed TSA spotted contraband - a mini Swiss Army knife (34mm blade) in the bottom of my briefcase. I don't even know how it got there, or how long it was there, but the passengers were saved from any attempt at mini-mayhem by its confiscation.