Just been looking out from my top floor window at the pretty-much dead lawns of the blocks of flats in my street.

It really has been a very dry couple of months here in Sydney. I had a look at the rainfall figures - the last decent rain we got was 13.8mm (half an inch) on August 4th. In the two months since then we've had just 1.6mm (about 1/20th of an inch) of rain. And there's nothing more than a very small chance of a millimetre or two falling predicted for the next week.

Definitely not looking good for the bushfire season with Summer still a couple of months away. I have a feeling that water restrictions mightn't be too far off either. The last time we had a major drought (the 12-year long Millennium Drought in 1997–2009) I think water usage restrictions were brought in when dam levels dropped to either 85% or 80% of full capacity. In the end they got down to about 30% if I recall correctly. Last week the dams were around 87% full, and have been dropping by about 0.5%-0.8% per week.

This (long) song always makes me think of a wonderful novel I read about 20 years ago - Nicholas Monsarrat's "The Master Mariner".

Grand Funk Railroad - I'm Your Captain/Closer To Home - YouTube

One from the vault:

AC/DC - Baby Please Don't Go (Official Video) HD - YouTube

Lineup:

Vocals - Ronald Belford "Bon" Scott
Lead guitar: Angus Young
Rhythm guitar: Malcolm Young
Bass guitar: Mark Evans
Drums: Phil Rudd

Clip was from Australia's weekly "Countdown" TV music show.

It's all just basic physics really. Nothing too complicated. Warm water contains more energy than cold water. The ocean is just a big heat-sink for the planet. That heat energy transfers to the air above it, causing it to expand & lose pressure, and start swirling. Warmer air holds more moisture, and warmer water evaporates more, so more clouds form & more rain will eventually fall. This means bigger & stronger hurricanes/cyclones/typhoons, and more rain when they hit land.

The unusual thing is the 3 hurricanes in a line. A big storm will cause turbulence in the ocean, and cold water from the deep will rise to the surface & cool it, thus removing the energy that feeds storms & hurricanes. That is why the one farthest to the west petered out in the Caribbean - it hit cold water churned up by the hurricane before it. That is one of the reasons why there may be fewer hurricanes in the years ahead, but the ones that do form will be very powerful.

Climate change? It's happening. No doubt about it. Again, basic physics. Just as microwaves are the right frequency to excite the water (H2O or dihydrogen-monoxide) molecules in your food & heat it up, infrared radiation is just the right frequency to excite carbon-dioxide (CO2) molecules. The more CO2 in the air, the more molecules to excite & heat the air up.

Most of us would have learned about basic spectroscopy in high school science - every atom absorbs & emits radiation/light at a different frequency. It's how they worked out what the sun is made of, what gases the atmospheres of all the planets in the solar system contain, and even the expansion of the universe (the red-shift in the spectrum).

Deep Purple - Child In Time (live) - 1970 - YouTube

Ian Gillan - vocals
Ritchie Blackmore - guitar
Jon Lord - Hammond organ
Roger Glover - bass
Ian Paice - drums

A bit of 60s psychedelia from Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce & Ginger Baker:

Cream - I Feel Free - YouTube

Fish Heads - Barnes & Barnes - YouTube

Was posted by Angry-me last October, but this is the original video clip with the fish heads bouncing along the words. The full clip with about 2 minutes of lead-in before the music starts is here: Barnes & Barnes - Fish Heads - YouTube

It would be a pretty hard job actually.

Imagine trying to find every meteorite that hits Earth (estimated to be between 36 & 166 each day), and then having to check them for any organic (carbon-based) compounds they may be carrying from the outer solar system or even interstellar space. If life on Earth was seeded by a meteorite (which many scientists believe highly possible), then there is nothing that says life on Earth cannot end the same way.

Of course, the real job is making sure that our space probes do not carry our germs to other worlds. It would be terrible to one day land on Mars or Titan & find that there had recently been extra-terrestrial life there, but it had been wiped out by a human germ or virus that had hitched a ride on an earlier probe. That is probably NASA's greatest fear - to commit genocide on an alien world before humans have even landed there.

This job application was quite funny (and sweet):

NASA responds to job application from 9yo 'guardian of the galaxy' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

I'm starting a petition for my bank to give me 1 million dollars. I'm sure that, with the support of all ClixSense members, I will be ultimately successful.

valerie wrote:
My mother and my sister including myself, all agreed that there was just too many to collect. My
sister had a very large aquarium that she no longer used for fish. At the start of her collection, the
beanies looked cute in the aquarium but it wasn't long and they were coming out the top. My
mother had various containers of them on display.

THAT really was the big issue, no matter what anyone says, I know for a fact it was.....too many
made, too fast. People ran out of space. I had a rather large curio cabinet full of beanie babies.

Sounds like they could actually be tribbles in disguise: Scene from The Trouble With Tribbles - Star Trek - YouTube

They might be on the soles of your shoes....

Paul Simon - Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes - YouTube

Just a really sweet song. Herb Alpert (of Tijuana Brass fame) does the trumpet solo.

Peter Allen - The More I See You

The Stone Poneys (with Linda Ronstadt) - Different Drum

Linda Ronstadt has a voice that just blows me away. A genuine American treasure.

Marcel-R6 wrote:
Reminds me about another aussie slang word,which I can't mention here the c word .
What is used as a compliment

If it is the 4-letter c-word, then I have never heard it used as a compliment in the 51 years since I was born here. If you compliment someone with that word, you will most likely get a smack in the mouth & find yourself out the door very quickly. The police might even be called if it was said to a woman. You can use the F-word on TV, you can use the S-word on TV, but you cannot use the C-word, except in the rarest of cases with strong warnings about offensive language before the program.

I just hate the word anyway, because it is extremely misogynistic.

Aussies will often tell foreigners that really offensive things are compliments in Australia, just for the fun of watching them get in a little bit of trouble. It is called "taking the p*ss" - a great Australian tradition.

A more commonly used compliment is the word "bastard", but you have to careful to say it the right way. It can be a compliment, but it can also be a strong insult. I'm afraid you come from a part of the world where the accent makes it sound like an insult. Scots, the Irish, and those from Yorkshire can easily get away with it though.

DannyChiarelli wrote: What about their funds from
previous months?

Are they that tight they only
budget 4 weeks ahead...

I assume so. All I know is that, apart from a few occasions over the past year or two, the last week & first couple of days of each month are notoriously slow for surveys.

Always like that at the end of the month when companies have spent their advertising/polling budgets & are waiting for the new month to tick over & funds to become available again.

lotoole wrote: You're probably not qualifying because of the country you live in.

Hmmm... I have a South African in my downline & he/she is still regularly contributing to my commissions via completed surveys. Made 40c from them on Friday via 2 surveys (26c & 14c commissions - means they must have done surveys worth $1.30 & $0.70).