Sunday, April 6, 2014

Those Three Little Words

Hello Germany, Nigeria, France, and Indonesia and welcome to the blog...and I've just lost the first 2 paragraphs of today's post so's it looks like another long day of the blog dropping out, not saving, etc...(yay...you sure you're not being hacked or some't similar?-Ed)...well I don't know, wouldn't be surprised, but I think it's just the joy of Mt Gambier's limited Interweb accessibility...if there's a bit of bandwidth pressure or some other issue, the whole thing spits the dummy and says 'not today champ'...but I digress...

(I Love You?-Ed): gee thanks Ed, um, me too...(no, no, I'm guessing what the 3 words are-Ed)...ah right...(conquer and divide?...cut and run?...what the f-Ed)...okay, thanks, I think I'll just tell you...'old bus shelters'...(old bus shelters'?...what the heck does that mean?-Ed)...exactly what it says...Council had a 'surplus to requirement' auction and some of the stuff for sale was old bus shelters...more later...

Malaysian Airlines MH370: I know that I like many people have had my say about what might have happened to the missing flight, but the constant barrage of conflicting information and unsettling sense that there is something about this that authorities know but won't disclose, must be an absolute nightmare for the families involved...there has been a perpetual avalanche of 'Debris Spotted' headlines.

This morning it was reported that a Chinese ship, searching for some reason well outside the official search area, had picked up a "ping'" for a period of approx 90 seconds and had picked it up again a bit later but again only for 1-2 minutes...and another ship has picked up a "ping" somewhere inside the search zone...and that these were thought to be at a frequency consistent with the Flight Data Recorders of an aircraft...(well that sounds reasonably positive news, albeit about a terrible situation-Ed)...true... 

Unfortunately, these reports also stated that it was this 'ping frequency' could also have come from a whale who's calls can fall in that range, or a submarine (possibly tracking the Chinese ship), or some other cause...(so it could be anything-Ed)...pretty much...and I had a brief and distant glimpse of what it must be like for the families of the passengers and crew because I was 'pleased' to hear that there might finally be some resolution, only to have it almost immediately removed again...why say anything? why not just wait until you know something definitive?

Ahhhhhh: I just got caught out whilst channel surfing, dropped the remote, and accidentally watched 5 seconds of an Andrew Bolt diatribe denouncing Global Warming as an un-proven non-reality, "where's the evidence"...(and doesn't he have that wonderful slavering air of the fundamentalist lunatic coupled with the drooling arrogance of deliberate pig ignorance-Ed)...he should do a blog...(hey, that's my line...but you're right, he is a gold-plated moron-Ed)...that's 3 albeit hyphenated words - gold-plated moron.

Maybe Mr Bolt needs to look at the world's shrinking glaciers and the problems this is causing in many places across Asia and Asia Minor...last week there was yet another long program on the ABC/BBC Radio covering the drastic drops in Hydro-electric production in countries like Bhutan that rely on regular glacial melt from the Himalayas for their water...this has been coupled with drastic flooding events from glacial lakes forming then collapsing, increased melting across summer, and then because of the much reduced glacier, much lower flows in Winter.

Theses rivers of course flow down through numerous other countries, eg, India, Pakistan, etc, and Bangladesh is essentially the river delta/ocean outflow of the Ganges River...flooding upstream is devastating in the lower reaches, reduced flows means drought, etc...perhaps Mr Bolt should look at the data re the melt run-off from the Siberian Tundra and Greenland into the North Sea that is causing a measurable decrease in salinity which therefore reduces the motion of the North Atlantic section of the current that runs up from the Equator past Ireland, etc, and is responsible for the relatively mild climate in some of those very Northern latitudes...

Basically the current runs North, cools and becomes 'extra-saline' (cold water can hold more dissolved solids*), sinks, runs South, and the process repeats...the last time that stopped it caused an 'Ice Age'...it's a relatively simple equation...if the current stops and there's no warm water getting dragged North, then the cold will quickly move South and there'll be another 'Ice Age' across Europe and North America, Russia, China, etc...and if the Northern Hemisphere stuffs up its a matter of time before we all here in the very deep South is livin' in the Antarctic...it's happened before...

(*The Blue Lake in Mt Gambier is a perfect example of this...the entire South East is under-laid with a thick belt of Limestone, basically animal bones laid down on the floor of a prehistoric ocean, and now holding a massive freshwater Aquifer...(please don't go off on a tangent about the lunacy of Shale Gas Fracking that threatens such a wonderful asset-Ed)...don't need to now...and this Limestone (Calcium Carbonate or Chalk) readily dissolves in water...and as the cold, Calcium Carbonate saturated water warms through Spring into Summer it cannot hold as much dissolved solid which crystalises and sinks, hence the blue colour.)  

The Bass Strait is such a treacherous section of water because it's so shallow and subject to Southern storms...and not so long ago, roughly 30,000 years, Bass Strait was a grassy plain as the world's oceans withdrew as water became locked up in Northern glaciers across Europe, etc, and a massively increased Antarctic...these are natural cycles that ebb and flow, coastlines come and go, etc, but there's just no way that our polluting influence isn't affecting climate.

If you don't know where Mt Gambier is...(and why would you?-Ed)...check us out on a map or some such and see where in the Southern Heck we is...(Google Earth it matey, this is the 21st Century-Ed)...yeah, yeah...we is in the Southern latitude of 38degrees...(you have a bad latitude young man-Ed)...I'm 47...and I digress... 

I know I bang on relentlessly about the Bus Issue in Mt Gambier, but there's a raft of issues that make up that bangage...now I couldn't get to City Council's "monster auction of surplus material" because it was 5kms from my home, a $30-$40 round trip by taxi, and there's no public transport on weekends...(or public holidays...yeah, yeah, heard it all before-Ed)...well it's a fact...so I couldn't get to the Auction, even if just for interests sake...but fortunately I've managed to hear a little bit about it...

Apparently these 'old bus shelters' were in fairly crap condition, but unfortunately having not seen them myself I can't compare them to the bus shelters in our area that haven't seen any maintenance in probably 10 years, most likely longer...(and don't forget the stops that don't have any shelters at all-Ed)...ah yes, hooray...can't help wondering if anybody on City Council has ever caught the local bus, let alone had to rely on it...

My experience of Council is that this is one of those issues that Mt Gambier City Councillors consider to be beneath them and of no import...and so sorry, just realised how far off the topic I've strayed yet again today, so;

Tomorrow: Just More Of The Same

And just seen another shreckin' ad  about 'no violence against women and no sexism', etc, from the Limestone Coast Violence Against Women (Collaboration? Coalition?-sorry)...and I'm still waiting for the police to get back to me about the 'domestic violence' incident I stepped into a month ago where I was also threatened...(do you ever wonder if it's because it's you?-Ed)...yeah I do...well you heard that police officers tone of voice immediately change when I gave my name...(yeah, I wasn't going to mention it but yeah I did hear that-Ed).

I am Nick Fletcher and apparently I continue to be the problem...cheers and laters...

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