No longer in its first flush

 

There hasn't been much rain over the last few months but even with what little there was I had not expected the level in the watertank to drop so rapidly. As we do depend on rain for our water, there was only one solution: drink more beer and wash less.

Today came the first good rain - some 10 mm - and I knocked on the tank to check if there was enough water for my first shower since Christmas (only kidding! I had a short one at Easter ☺)

According to the formula of 1mm of rainfall on 1 square metre of roof area putting 1 litre of water into the tank, this short downpour should have added at least a thousand litres to the tank but there had been none. Then I discovered the problem : a leak in the diverter.

When I had bought the tank all those years ago from RAPIDPLAS, I bought it with one of those 'First Flush' thingos which fills up with the first seventy-or-so litres of 'dirty' water washed down from the roof before then overflowing into the main tank. Well, this one never overflowed because it had sprung a leak and instead of diverting just the first seventy litres, it diverted the lot - through the leak.

I have now 'jury-rigged' the downpipe directly into the main tank, dirty water or not, while I think of how to fix the 'First Flush' thingo which clearly is no longer in its first flush.

 

Our Sydney Opera House

To open video clip in separate window, click here

 

We all own a tiny bit of the famous Sydney Opera House - LITERALLY! To finance the building of the Sydney Opera House, tickets in the Opera House Lottery went on sale in November 1957 and continued until 1986.

The sale of altogether 86.7 million Opera House Lottery tickets raised approx. $105 million, almost the entire construction cost of the Sydney Opera House.

Construction started in March 1959. Fourteen years and the peeling of an orange later - Utzon said his design of those famous 'sails' was inspired by the simple act of peeling an orange - it was officially opened in October 1973. For more information, go to wikipedia.org

By the way, my bit is that top-most tile on the left side of the tallest 'sail'.

If you missed out on the Opera House Lottery, you can still buy your own tile by clicking here.

 

Bali's Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

This beautiful Boutique Hotel is located in the cool foothills of Lovina in the peaceful north of Bali, overlooking the sparkling Java Sea across to the peacefully smoldering volcanoes of Java.

The moment you arrive here, you won't be able to stop yourself from saying 'Wow' and 'Oh my God'. As you relax and unwind by the pool with its sparkling water spilling over the edge, and feast your eyes on the breathtaking view, you think you've died and gone to heaven. For more pictures, click here.

I have had my eyes on it for over ten years during which time I have stayed there on numerous occasions. It is now for sale at a very good price and I am looking for nine other 'shareholders' to purchase a 1/10th share, equal to approx. AUS$25,000, in this enchanting little hotel.

If you are interested in this fantastic lifestyle opportunity, email me at riverbend[AT]hotkey.net.au and I will send you further details.

 

The start to another weekend

 

Waiting for Padma to finish her shopping last night, I made a quick dash for the local pub but somehow found it difficult to mix with the crowd. My hell-raising days are definitely over!

So I went and cleared my mailbox which, predictably, only contained bills. One was the monthly VISA card statement. Judging by the closing balance, Padma must've used the card for more than just scraping the frost off the windscreen.

Anyway, the friendly VISA people quite pleasantly suggested that my "minimum payment due" was a mere $25. And helpfully added, "if you make no additional charges using this card and each month you pay only the minimum payment, you will pay off the closing balance shown on this statement in about 9 years and you will end up paying estimated total interest charges of $1,493.29". I am told that some people actually follow that advice!

And this morning, something called 'WINDOWS 10' insidiously and totally uninvited installed itself on my laptop. So far so good but I'm a bit peeved by this constant greeting, "I'm Cortana. Ask me anything."

C-o-r-t-a-n-a ? Who the hell is Cortana? Where did we meet? I guess I have the whole weekend to figure it out.

 

Ctrl-H

 

My computer has been grinding along ever so slowly and I thought it was about time to clear some of the browsing and download history and cached images.

I pressed Ctrl-H and was prompted with "Obliterate the following items from the beginning of time / the past hour / the past day / the past week / the last 4 weeks". I chose "from the beginning of time" and everything runs so much better now.

After having lived a full and eventful life spanning the biblical three-score years and ten, wouldn't it be nice if we could sometimes do the same with our own memories?

Lighten up! Press Ctrl-H! (Of course, Ctrl-Z would be even better! ☺)

 

BREXIT the Evil Union

 

No-one really knows what Britain outside the EU would look like. And no one knows whether this would be the first domino to fall. A vote to leave could spark other countries to reclaim their sovereignty from the growing monster of European bureaucracy. And a long and slow disintegration of the EU would mean the end of the euro, one of the world’s major currencies.

Immigration — taking control of their borders — and restoring the British legal system, as opposed to being dictated to by Brussels, are the major issues being used to persuade people to vote LEAVE.

The REMAIN side’s major argument focuses on the prospects of an economic Armageddon should Britain leave. The REMAIN camp is receiving donations from — the multinationals. JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs et al are very much in favour of the EU because the Eurocrats create more regulation. The greater the amount of red tape, the higher the barrier to entry. The last thing multinationals want is competition. There was no valid counter to this point from the REMAIN side.

If Australia joined an economic union with Asia, how would we like being told what to do by Beijing, Tokyo or Seoul — by people we had no clue about?

Remember George Soros' famous bet against the Bank of England in 1992? He won that one and I wouldn't be surprised if he isn't already placing his bets on a falling euro. Watch out for Soros!

 

On 2nd July give your $2.63 to the Breakers Party

 

On 2nd July we will see the whites of their lies! Mind you, most Australians no longer think it matters which major party is in government because they all serve only their own and other vested interests rather than those of the majority. There isn't even a real difference between the two major parties anymore because they all lie and cheat the same.

There are currently 15,468,329 enrolled voters and each vote is worth $2.63, or a total of well over $40 million. And that's just to fund the election campaign!

Once we've given them our $2.63, they put their collective snouts in for the real money because Australian politicians are amongst the most highly-paid elected representatives in the world.

As of 1 July 2014, the base salary for backbenchers is $195,130. According to the Parliamentary Superannuation Remuneration Tribunal, the average base salary for each Senator and Member of the House of Representatives is $199,040. Ministers receive $307,329, Cabinet Ministers $336,599, the PM’s salary is $507,338, the Deputy PM gets $400,016, whilst the Opposition Leader receives an annual salary of $360,990.

However, the perks they can claim on top of their extremely generous salaries border on scandalous.

• On top of their generous pay packages, MPs receive an electorate allowance of between $32,000 and $46,000 per year to cover the costs incurred when performing official duties, but any unspent amount is treated as taxable income.
• Travel allowance for official business ranges from $273 per night for Canberra stays, to $472 for stays in Perth. The PM can claim up to $564 per night for stays away from his home or government residences.
• An official tax ruling allows ministers to claim up to $1000 per week as travel allowance, even if they stay in homes they own. On top of that, they receive deductions on all expenses for their second residence, for things such as electricity, insurance and property maintenance. Then, if they were to sell that property, it would be capital gains tax-free.
• MPs receive unlimited business class domestic flights and a car with driver for official purposes. They can also claim their own private vehicle for both work and personal use if their electorate is 10,000 square km or larger. All overseas transport, accommodation, meals and associated travel costs with ministerial and official visits, delegations and study are also at the expense of the taxpayer.
• Up to nine business class return trips to Canberra for the minister and their partner are covered, along with three trips for each child and three business class interstate trips for partners and children. Ministers on official business also receive unlimited travel for their partners.
• A minister is allowed to keep gifts from industry and private benefactors, so long as they are not worth more than $300. Gifts valued at up to $750 are allowed to be kept so long as they are from a government source. Up to $50,000 is allowed for office facilities with another $100,000 allowable for administration costs.
• As far as superannuation goes, MPs who signed up prior to 2004 receive 11.5 per cent of their salary paid into super (for up to 18 years), then 5.75 per cent after. Add to that the ‘golden handshake lump-sum payments and generous pensions based on years of service. Any politician who joined after 2004 receives 15.4 per cent of their salary paid into super for 18 years.
• Once an MP who joined Parliament before 2012 retires, they receive a Life Gold Pass for unlimited travel within Australia. Those who joined after 2012 receive severance travel allowances for up to 10 trips per year.
• MPs who retire involuntarily get a resettlement allowance of three months’ salary plus another three months if they served for more than a full term in government.
• And former PMs receive a multitude of allowances at the discretion of the current PM.

How much did your local MP spent last financial year? Choose from the drop-down menu below to find out (and, by the way, the names are not in alphabetical order but in descending order of total expenditure claimed, with the highest claim of $1,073,988 going to ex-accountant Barnaby Joyce. Congratulations, Barnaby; the Australian Society of Accountants must've coined the slogan 'Not Your Average Accountant' just for you!)

What is it with these 'Office Fit Outs'? Is there no limit on them? The first half-dozen claimants managed to spent a massive $2.3 million in just one year. Presumably, they had an office before, so this is just a top-up on previous years. And what happens to all these 'Office Fit Outs' when the MPs gets voted out? Are they passed on to the next MPs? Methinks not as that lot will have their own vision of self-aggrandizement. It reminds me of that man who had worked at a factory for twenty years. Every night when he left the plant, he would push a wheelbarrow full of straw to the guard at the gate. The guard would look through the straw, and find nothing and pass the man through. On the day of his retirement the man came to the guard as usual but without the wheelbarrow. Having become friends over the years, the guard asked him, "Charlie, I've seen you walk out of here every night for twenty years. I know you've been stealing something. Now that you're retired, tell me what it is. It's driving me crazy." Charlie simply smiled and replied, "Okay, wheelbarrows!" In the case of all these office wheelbarrows - sorry! - 'Office Fit Outs', it seems the Australian taxpayer is the 'Charlie'.

The Government preaching that we should all “live within our means” and that the “age of entitlement is over” seems rather hypocritical. Isn’t it time our politicians put our money where their snouts are?

Serving the nation? No-one is thinking what they can do for their country ... it’s all about what their country can do for them. They serve themselves first, then their party, and the nation very much last, if indeed at all.

Give us a break!

E = mc2 Einstein developed this remarkable theory: Energy = Mass x Speed of Light squared A brilliant genius as we all know. A lesser known application of Einstein's formula determined: If you were to strip naked and run around in a circle at the speed of 298 KM/sec (the speed of light) it could be possible for you to sodomize yourself! Should you determine that you are not physically capable of achieving that speed at your age, you can easily achieve the same result by voting ALP in the 2016 election. I pass this on as a community service. Hope you do too.

P.S. To get you even more excited, click here.

 

A father told his three sons when he sent them to the university, "I feel it's my duty to provide you with the best possible education. You do not owe me anything for that. However, I want you to appreciate it. As a gesture of appreciation, please each put $1,000 into my coffin when I die." And so it happened. His sons became a doctor, a lawyer and a financial planner, each very successful financially. When their father’s time had come and they saw their father in the coffin, they remembered his wish. First, it was the doctor who put ten $100 bills onto the chest of the deceased. Then came the financial planner who also placed $1,000 there. Finally, it was the heartbroken lawyer's turn. He dipped into his pocket, took out his cheque book, wrote a cheque for $3,000, put it into his father's coffin, and took the $2,000 cash. He later went on to become a politician.

If a man alone in the woods speaks, and his Indonesian wife cannot hear him, is he still wrong?

 

Pondering this led me to Ken Robinson and, having heard him pose the question "Do schools kill creativity?", I could listen to him for hours.

In fact, I am going to order some of his books - see here.

 

Consider this as you amble into the sunset on your Zimmer frame

 

I've only just heard about the Singularity University. Their recent Berlin summit brought up some interesting points:

In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they were bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next ten years – and most people don’t see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that three years later you would never take pictures on paper film again?

Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore’s law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a long time, before it became superior and mainstream in only a few short years. This will now happen with artificial intelligence, health, self-driving and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs.

Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Welcome to the Exponential Age. Software and operating platforms will disrupt most traditional industries in the next five to ten years.

Uber is just a software tool. They don’t own any cars, but they are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Airbnb is the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don’t own one single property.

Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, ten years earlier than expected.

In the US, young lawyers already don’t get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice within seconds. With 90% accuracy, compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. So if you are studying law, stop immediately. There will be 90% fewer generalist lawyers in the future; only specialists will be needed. IBM Watson already helps nurses diagnose cancer four times more accurately than doctors.

Facebook now has pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. By 2030, computers will have become ‘more intelligent’ than humans.

In 2018 the first self-driving cars will be offered to the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don’t want to own a car anymore. You will call a car on your phone; it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and you can be productive whilst driving. Our kids will never get a driver’s licence and will never own a car. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars for our future needs. We can transform former parking spaces into parks.

At present, 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 100,000 kilometres. With autonomous driving, that will drop to one accident in 10 million kilometres. That will save a million lives each year. Insurance companies will have massive trouble, because without accidents, the insurance will become 100 times cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

Electric cars will become mainstream around and after 2020. Cities will be cleaner and much less noisy because all cars will run on electricity, which will become much cheaper.

Most traditional car companies may become bankrupt by taking the evolutionary approach and just building better cars while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will take the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels. A lot of engineers at Volkswagen and Audi are terrified of Tesla.

Real estate values based on proximities to workplaces, schools, etc. will change, because if you can work effectively from anywhere or be productive while you commute, people will move out of cities to live in a more rural surroundings.

Solar energy production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but only now is having a big impact. Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. The price for solar will drop so much that almost all coal mining companies will be out of business by 2025.

With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water because desalination now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter. We don’t have scarce water in most places; we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if everyone can have as much clean water as they want for virtually no cost.

The Tricorder X prize will be announced this year. It's a medical device (called the “Tricorder” from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and your breath. It then analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any diseases. It will be so cheap that in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class, low cost, medicine.

The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 within ten years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies started printing 3D shoes. Spare airplane parts are already 3D-printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to need in the past.

At the end of this year, new smart phones will have 3D scanning possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home. In China, they have already 3D-printed a complete 6-storey office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that’s being produced will be 3D-printed.

If you think of a niche you want to enter, ask yourself: “In the future, do you think we will have that?” And if the answer is yes, then work on how you can make that happen sooner. If it doesn’t work via your phone, forget the idea. And any idea that was designed for success in the 20th century is probably doomed to fail in the 21st century.

70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear that there will be enough new jobs in such a short time.

There will be $100-agricultural robots in the future. Farmers in 3rd-world countries can then become managers of their fields instead of working in them all day. Aeroponics will need much less water. The first veal produced in a petri dish is now available. It will be cheaper than cow- produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces are used for rearing cattle. Imagine if we don’t need that space anymore.

There are several start-ups which will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labelled as “alternative protein source” (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

There is already an app called “moodies” which can tell the mood you are in. By 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where we know whether the participants are telling the truth and when not!

Many currencies will be abandoned. Bitcoin will become mainstream this year and might even become the future default reserve currency.

Right now, the average life span increases by three months each year. Four years ago, the life span was 79 years; now it is 80 years. The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more than a one-year increase each year. So we all might live for a long, long time, probably way beyond 100.

The cheapest smartphones already sell at $10 in Africa and Asia. By 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smartphone. That means everyone will have much the same access to world class education. Every child can use Khan Academy for everything they need to learn at schools in First World countries.

Here's an example of one of their YouTube-lessons on algebra:

Welcome to the Brave New World!

 

Title IX

 

All you Obama voters will be happy to finally have something that will define his Administration for all times - How to take a shit aka the Title IX Directive (isn't it good to know what we're fighting for in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria?):

 

Click here to open in separate window

Helpfully, it begins with, "If you have difficulty understanding English". (Methinks, the addition of the word "English" is somewhat redundant.)

Anyway, now that Obama is on his way out, potential Hillary voters are already crowding the airwaves - click here.

 

Another speck on the ocean

to view newspaper cuttings of the day, click here

 

While my school mates got their kicks from reading Karl May's fictitious adventure stories of the Wild West, my own heroes were of real flesh and blood: Dr Albert Schweitzer who in 1913 established a hospital at Lambaréné in what is now Gabon; and Heinz Helfgen who in 1951 set out from Germany to cycle around the world.

I would have added Oskar Speck to my list of heroes had I known about him then; however, I only heard about him while preparing for my return visit to Thursday Island in Australia's Torres Strait where I had lived and worked in 1977 - see here.

This almost forgotten epic also caught the attention of Sandy Robson, an Australian kayaker, who is right now retracing the seven-year voyage taken by Oskar Speck in the 1930s. She is expected to reach the tip of Australia and complete her five-year expedition by September 2016 - click here.

Another speck on the ocean.

 

ADULT: A person who has stopped growing at both ends and is now growing in the middle.

Greetings from a grumpy old man

I plan to upgrade my cap to a new inscription,
with the first adjective still ending in a 'Y' but starting with a 'D"

 

During yesterday's trip to Ulladulla I lost two things: my reading glasses and my political innocence. I don't know where I lost my glasses but I know I lost my political innocence when quite by chance I picked up Bob Ellis's book "First Abolish the Customer - 202 Arguments Against Economic Rationalism".

Already the backcover blurb had me hooked: "Economic rationalism at its heart is a refusal to spend money on the unnecessary... But what is unnecessary - and who decides? With eloquence, passion, wit and humour, Bob Ellis explodes the myths of economic rationalism. In this incendiary, life-affirming book, he reveals it to be, at best, little more than an empty fantasy which, as a guiding principle, has more flaws than a factory second. And, at worst, a self-serving and destructive strategy of greed. Along the way, he demonstrates: why the economy of unemployment simply doesn't work; why it is better to spend than save; why a level playing field won't help; and why economic rationalists never practise what they preach. With all this and much more, 'First Abolish the Customer' is a sweeping, swashbuckling account of why economic rationalism is not the answer for Australia."

Bob Ellis, who died last month from liver cancer at the age of 73, was a provocative left-wing author, political commentator and screen-writer. Unlike him, I have never been a "True Believer" and always eschewed Labor politics in favour of the Liberals but Bob's little book - one of more than twenty he wrote, including such bestsellers as "Goodbye Jerusalem" - makes such a convincing case against economic rationalism that I found it impossible not to agree with him. Go ahead and get your own copy and have your view of the world completely changed!

Indeed, on any number of topics your view of the world is likely to be challenged by Bob's long list of essays - see here - starting at the top of the list with "Why are we in Afghanistan?".

Having lost so much, I was in urgent need of some serious cheering up and what better way than to watch "George & Mildred" and "Grumpy Old Women", both on offer at my favourite op-shop for a gold coin.

 

Jerome K. Jerome

 

The 'K.' stands for 'Klapka', after the exiled Hungarian general György Klapka. I just wanted you to know. I also wanted you to know that Jerome 'Klapka' Jerome wrote, beside his best-known comic travelogue 'Three Men in a Boat', some rather insightful stuff.

Like The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow.

Click on the above links and idle away your Sunday!

 

It's been a full day

It's time to sit on the verandah and watch the sunset with a glass of wine in a matching colour. Visited the Moruya Markets in the morning, had lunch at the club, and picked up a pile of books at the local op-shop just before they closed their doors.

Now I'm spoilt for choice because each of the eight books is better than the next, starting with Bill Bryson's "Made in America" and Paul Theroux's "Sunrise with Sea Monsters", and continuing with "Freakonomics - A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything", "Moonwalking with Einstein", and "The Island of Lost Maps - A True Story of Cartographic Crime" (you may've gathered by now that I prefer non- to fiction).

That's five books = five days which gets me close to next weekend when I may start on "A Spectator's Guide to World Religions - An Introduction to the Big Five" and "The Book Club Companion - An Indispensable Reading List from Classics to Literary Respites".

Now let me get back to watching the sunset while snatching the odd pondering from "Snippets of Truth - Ponderings from a Word Watcher". I told you I'd picked up eight books! You weren't counting, were you?

 

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

 

Here's an interesting bit of history about New Zealand: in 1802 the Kiwis invented the condom using a sheep's lower intestine. In 1822 the Aussies somewhat refined the idea by taking the intestine out of the sheep first.

A lot of Kiwi jokes that Aussies tell are based on the (never officially proven) theory that New Zealand men have sex with their sheep and that they (the men, not the sheep) come over to Australia only to go on the dole.

Australians also think that Kiwis are dumb and less intelligent, even though Rob Muldoon, New Zealand's Prime Minister in the 1980s, once quipped that the exodus of Kiwis to Australia raised the average IQ of both countries.

The latest import from New Zealand, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, has certainly raised the standard of movies in this country. It stars Sam Neill who also acted in "The Hunt for Red October", so the "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" must've been a shoe-in for him. ☺

I am a Barry Crump fan (who could ever forget "There and Back"?) and as this movie is based on his book "Wild Pork and Watercress", I hope it will be shown in the Bay's cinema not too long after its official release on 26 May.

P.S. Well, two months on and the movie still hasn't come to the Bay's cinema - in fact, the Bay's cinema has just shut its doors permanently; click here - but the movie is now available on ebay, so here goes a bit more of retail therapy:

 

Doug Wasmuth, are you still in Tonga?

Doug, an American from Hawai'i, with his young son Sam

 

Doug, we met in 2006 at the Puataukanave International Hotel where you were staying with your family while your house on Fofoa Island was still being built.

 

I've just discovered these photos on your Picasa Web Album but there have been no further updates and I wonder if you still own your little hide-away overlooking Hunga Lagoon?

If you read this, please email me at riverbendnelligen[AT]mail.com . Alternatively, I may try and contact you via support@doubletwist.com subject line "Doug Wasmuth Twitter".

 

BEAUTY PARLOR: A place where women curl up and dye.

I'll live!

 

Well, I just did my stress test while all wired up and then went through that scanner again, and I got the all clear. It seems I'm in pretty good shape for the shape I'm in!

Of course, the reason Australians are living longer is because of what we’ve done over the past 200 years. Growing scientific knowledge has underpinned improvements to living conditions (e.g. sewers, clean water and safe transport) and medicine (antibiotics, other pharmaceuticals, X-rays, etc.).

These changes have more than doubled the average lifespan at birth from around 35 at colonisation to 82 years. We know evolution has played little, if any, part in this: it doesn’t work that fast. Besides, evolution was only ‘interested’ in protecting successful genes through survival of offspring to maturity – around the time we reached our 30s.

If communities can influence their longevity, individuals can do the same. In the 1980s, research began to identify what was associated with people living longer. Studies take about 20 years to determine which group members survive and why. Publications from the early 2000s revealed expected and unexpected factors associated with longevity. We can group these loosely into five categories: Surroundings, Health, Attitude, Parents and Eating (SHAPE).

Check out the SHAPE Analyser and, whatever the result, do as the mayfly does and live every day as if it is your last. One day it will be.

 

CHICKENS: The only animals you eat before they are born and after they are dead.