I find that playing the ClixGrid is a great way of seeing the numerous countries that ClixSense members are clicking from. Every time someone wins a prize, you see where they live. I just looked at the latest winners: Taiwan, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Trinidad and Tobago, Portugal, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Philippines, Brazil & United States.

Lots currently from the Americas (because it is evening there), just one from Europe (because it is well past midnight & they're all in bed), and a couple from Asia (where it is late morning/early afternoon).

Useless adjectives, especially in news reports that nowadays have to include "unimaginable" or "unbearable" every single time they mention the words "grief" or "tragedy". As in: "Now the family members are left to deal with the unbearable grief of this unimaginable tragedy". One news channel in Sydney has a couple of young reporters who uses a variation of that line at least 3 times a week. You don't need to add adjectives to every single noun. Grief is grief & a tragedy is a tragedy. They don't need further embellishment.

wombatqueen wrote: NOT really an annoying saying, or action, but.....

WHY are pants worn with the waist down at bottom of buttcheeks, and many inches of big fluffy undies showing over the top of the pants??
Why is this considered to be a good look by anyone? I don't get it.

The quickest way to make me ignore everything someone just said or wrote is for them to add "just sayin'".

To me it means that they have no real belief or confidence in what they have just opined, so why should I take them seriously? Sort of like saying "I know my opinion doesn't matter, and I probably don't know much about the subject, but here's my five-cents worth anyway".

valerie wrote:
Look at the woodpecker. There is no possible evolution there.

The woodpecker can be explained a lot more simply by evolution than it can by design.

I think evolution shows the absolute magnificence of the 13+ billion years that our universe has existed. It would be terrible if the universe had been around for all that time and nothing amazing had happened just by chance. And the resilience of life is amazing too.

Each of our lives is an unbroken string that stretches back to the 1st single-celled creatures. Just as our parents made us from their living cells, their parents made them from their living cells, and that goes all the way back through homo sapiens, homo erectus & all of the predecessors of the human line, and all of the predecessors of those predecessors, all the way back to the first mammals, and even then back through the reptiles they formed from, and even then back through the amphibians they evolved from, and back through the fish that preceded them, and back to the ultimate cells that first worked out how to divide and thus reproduce a new generation.

The spark of life in each of us is one that has been been constantly burning & passed down through the millions of generations that precede us. All of us are very, very old. The parts that make us are over 13 billion years old, and the spark of life in each of us has been burning continuously for at least a couple of billion years. That is what I find awe-inspiring.

tasman1 wrote: more time for drinking

And watching Australia play New Zealand in the cricket

tasman1 wrote:
At one point in the past 48 hours, the figures showed air quality at New Norfolk near Hobart reached the same level as industrial areas of India and China.

Hobart's PM2.5 was higher than New York, London and Paris.

Launceston's measure was slightly lower than the southern part of the state, but still higher than Melbourne.

Perhaps you should choose an article that is not written about pollution caused by annual bushfire fuel reduction burns:

Global air quality tracker shows parts of Tasmania worse than big cities - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Quote:A global index shows air quality in Tasmania's Derwent Valley reached levels deemed unhealthy in the past two days, as authorities carry out autumn fuel reduction burns.

The World Air Quality Index publishes data measuring pollution in units called PM10 and PM2.5, which track particles in the atmosphere.

At one point in the past 48 hours, the figures showed air quality at New Norfolk near Hobart reached the same level as industrial areas of India and China.

Of course, when you do not have forest fires burning around you, the air is usually a lot cleaner.

This article might have been better as it is from an official govt site:

Air quality | Public Health - www.dhhs.tas.gov.au/

Quote:Tasmania has some of the cleanest air in the world. But we do have periods each year when it can get smoky outside. Smoke reduces the quality of the air we breathe and it also affects our health.

I told my mother that when I die, I want to be recycled back to the Earth (much like BouldRake). Just stick me in a cardboard box that will break down into the soil, or put me through an industrial mincer & feed me to the fish in the Tasman Sea (though I don't think that is actually allowed). She was horrified!

Since we are all just recycled star matter that has been going round & round & round for more then 10 billion years, I would like to contribute to the next generation of life on this unique planet by passing on the carbon, phosphorus & all the other nutrients contained within my body to the next generation of life. What is the use of locking all of those valuable elements that can only be made inside a star inside a lead coffin for millennia? Or turning them into polluting smoke? Let me be of some use when I die.

Life after death for me is my components being absorbed into other life, whether it be bacteria, plankton, earthworms, beetles, plants or fungi.

valerie wrote:
It can't be good to take any foreign material into your lungs.

That's becoming the major concern with "vaping" - what are all of those flavours when vaporised doing to your lungs, bloodstream & cells?

Food & flavour molecules are supposed to go down your oesophagus into your stomach to be broken down, not down your windpipe into your lungs to be absorbed into your body's cells.

Best just giving up nicotine inhalation altogether & trying to keep the air going into your lungs as clean and pure as possible.

That's the most ironic thing about tasman1's posts. He lives in a spot on the Earth where the air is purer than almost anywhere else on the entire planet, and yet he chooses to deliberately suck the dirtiest & unhealthiest air into his lungs.

I think smoking will be banned in Australia within the next 5 to 10 years. Our smoking rate is already extremely low at around 13% of adults, so a ban would only impact a small minority of the population. And many of those hardcore smokers would probably be relieved to have the decision taken out of their hands & be forced to quit. Might be a few who decide to go down the path of illegal tobacco imports, but that would only be a few as smoking is a difficult activity to keep secret unless you want to remain housebound & have no visitors.

Aside from your very harrowing description valerie, I think the one thing that has stuck most in my mind was a doctor on the radio I heard earlier this year talking about visiting a cancer ward when she was studying and deciding what she was going to specialise in.

The doctor described a ward full of smokers with "fish-eye" - lying in bed motionless with their eyes wide open like they were in a state of constant terror (probably were), and their mouths silently opening and closing as they gasped vainly for air & failed to get enough into their clogged lungs. They were in a state of constant suffocation.

I also remember the video recorded by Yul Brynner (The King and I, The Magnificent Seven) & released after he died from smoking in 1985. His words were something like "Don't smoke - just don't smoke". I wish I had heeded his advice all of those years ago.

I finally kicked my 40-a-day habit nearly five years ago & it is probably the best thing I have done in the last 20 years. I now have plenty of money to do the things I enjoy, my health has improved out-of-sight, and I can afford to buy the good steak at the supermarket instead of the budget packs.

Nowadays, with all of the options available to quit smoking here in Australia (stop-smoking aids such as patches and tablets are subsidised by the govt), I think anyone who continues to smoke is a stubborn fool. I should know - I used to be one of them!

Smoking is just a very, very long suicide attempt.

The biggest problem I would have with traveling back in time is what I would use for money.

Here in Australia we have changed our money so much over the years that most of today's coins & notes could not be used if going back more than a decade or two. In 1966 we went from pounds & pence to dollars & cents, so none of today's money would work if I went back to when I was born in 1965. And since then we have have gone from paper to polymer banknotes, so a $10 bill from today would be laughed at if I took it back to even the 1980s. 1 & 2 cent coins haven't existed for a quarter of a century, the $1 note was replaced by a coin over 30 years ago, and $2 notes were also replaced by coins half-a-decade later. Trying to pass off a current $100 note would probably land me in jail, as they have only existed since ~1984 (got my first one from the bank the day I had to enroll in university).

The only cash from today that would still work all the way back to 1966 are 3 coins: the 5 cent, 10 cent & 20 cent piece. Even the 50 cent piece couldn't be used pre-1969. None of today's money would work before then.

I couldn't use an ATM card as they haven't been invented, credit cards look very different so merchants would refuse modern ones, no such thing as online banking, PayPal or Bitcoin. To travel back in time I would first have to collect as many old banknotes & coins from numismatists as I could for the specific year that I plan to go back to.

Alternatively, I could take a modern piece of technology back with me & sell it for a huge amount of money, but I don't know if I would like to have that major impact on the future. Imagine if I took an iPhone or iPad back to the early 1980s & sold it to Samsung? They could patent the iPhone before Steve Jobs has even thought of a portable phone, and Apple would probably end up going the way of Nokia.

I've always thought that a person going back more than a couple of decades in time would have to either rely on charity, or bring a suitcase full of very old banknotes. Though I guess you could also install a modern printer/replicator in the time machine & print out the relevant (counterfeit) money as you need it.

tasman1 wrote: yes, it's summer

Nearly - still just over a week to go until the official start (though it is already like Summer here in Sydney).

I'm 51, and I've never seen snow fall. Went to the Snowy Mountains in winter when I was a teenager, but it didn't snow the 3 days I was there. I don't like the cold - would much rather head up to the tropics than down to the snow.

tasman1 wrote: I am in Tasmania, we are not far from South Pole

Weren't you guys down there in severe drought less than a year ago? Dorothea Mackellar really was spot on about this vast nation that stretches from the tropics almost to Antarctica:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.

-- Dorothea Mackellar - "My Country"

Marcel-R6 wrote:
I used to work in shifts for a Tobacco company and that is what probably messed me up.

I worked rotating shifts for many years too & I felt that my body clock was set at about 26 hours instead of 24, so each day I could stay up a little later than the previous day. But now I think that my system was messed up by the constantly changing work hours. Now that I am out of the workforce I try to discipline myself to go to bed at about the same time every night (give or take an hour or two), and have a strict rule of no more all-nighters on the Internet. The regular bedtime has really helped my sleeping habits - I actually start yawning & feeling like it is time to go to bed half an hour beforehand.

I used to take at least an hour or two to drop off to sleep, but about 3 months ago I stopped drinking any caffeine within 6-8 hours of going to bed (apart from a cup of tea after dinner occasionally). No coffee, no cola, no energy drinks. I also cut down on sugary stuff in the evening, as that can get me a little revved up when I should be winding down.

Since giving up the evening stimulants, I usually now go to sleep within 20 minutes of going to bed. I also find that I am sleeping better. When I was loading up with caffeine & sugar, I would be in bed for 8-10 hours & still wake up tired. Now, I sleep for around 6-7 hours & wake up refreshed & ready to start the day.

If I do feel like a hot drink in the evening, I have a herbal infusion such as Spearmint & Camomile Twinings. An added bonus is that, because I don't need to add sugar or milk, the change is helping me lose a little bit of weight.

I had a stamp collection that my great uncle initially started for me when I was a very young child that would be worth at least a hundred thousand dollars today (possibly even a quarter of a million dollars). I had a huge number of first issue stamps, and many complete sets such as every Christmas stamp issued by Australia up until 1980, all the "Kangaroo" stamps from my nation's earliest days, and the entire King George V collection, plus many other rarities from Australia & overseas. My great uncle sent me a lot of valuable stamps from his extensive collection every Christmas, and I also bought new issues with my own savings when the Post Office released them. So it really was a top-class collection for a schoolboy.

But my older brother gave my entire stamp collection to a drug dealer in exchange for marijuana back when I was 16 (35 years ago), and I was so heart-broken that I decided I would never commit to collecting anything of value ever again.

tasman1 wrote:
7 min for steak ??? must be still full of blood ??/ not for me , I am Croat , min 25 min or I vomit

A steak grilled for 25 minutes??? Must be like eating leather

Though, by the time I finish doing everything the steak has probably cooked for closer to 8-10 minutes. Just a little bit of pinkness in the middle is perfect.

I grew up with the Aussie tradition of cooking pork until it was as dry as a bone (and about as tasty), but over the past few years have discovered that the taste buds really love it when a bit of juice is left in the meat.