We have always entertained the notion of having chickens running around the yard and finally we have the ability. The plans have been modified though. Anyone with a garden using wood chips as a water saving method will know where I’m coming from here.
Chooks live to scratch and have no concept of how a garden should look.
But behind a chook wire fence, they have made a brilliant addition to the yard. Got leftover veggies or indeed the scraps left over from their preparation? Into the chook pen. Pulled out a few weeds and want to turn them into compost? In they go too.
After having the chooks for just on a year, the sandy soil in their yard is looking a lot more healthy. Between the chook poo and the weeds, the soil has really built up. We even have worms in there although it’s risky for them to reveal themselves. Nothing gets the excitement levels soaring like turning over a few shovel loads of dirt and a worm or two turning up.
Egg production is a real eye opener too. The eggs are big. And the yokes so yellow. Nothing like their pale cousins in the supermarket. The laying process is a sociable event too. We have 4 chooks and they take it in turns to produce an egg. After one has laid an egg it comes out of the coup and loudly declares success. Then another will walk up the ramp and lay her egg right beside the first one. Out she comes and the process continues.
The actual chicken coup sits right in the back corner of the yard under a huge gum tree. It’s shaded from about 10 am so the chooks have cool conditions throughout the day. Never the less the curent heat wave has dropped production from 4 eggs to 1 per day. I don’t blame them at all. We have had such a mild opening to the warmer weather that the 100 degree F days have been a bit of a shock to the system.
So that’s how chooks have entered our lives. Even more fun than I thought they would be and great little recyclers to boot. A welcome addition to the homestead.
So, I've been using my Typepad account instead of VOX, and whenever I come back over this way I have shit loads of spam comments to delete. Surely, VOX, if you delete a spam account, it should automatically delete all of the spam comments they've left as well?
Have a crack at it. 24 out of 30 is regarded as a pass and plenty of Americans don't reach that level. It goes without saying that Aussies would struggle with an Aussie flavoured version of the same thing.
For the record I scored a paltry 16. I think a few family members who have travelled there regularly would breeze through it.
Independence Day Quiz.
By the way I selected Alberta Canada as my home state because the quiz doesn't know about the rest of the world. Sorry to those Canadians who's stats I have weakened.
How's this for an elegant put down of the current plan by the Victorian government to base our future on "Clean Coal" technology.
It has been submitted to a few papers, by Noel, to see if it gets a run.
I'll also be writing a piece myself over the cheapest option for our aging coal plants in the next day or two.
Nice work Noel. Blogging should be your next career advancement. No Editors to get past!!
_Business Opportunity_!
Following the successful promotion of the "Clean Coal" technology study to the Victorian Government, "Oxymorons Inc" is now seeking interested parties to join with us in Phase 2 of the project.
This vertically integrated Phase 2 will be titled "Dry Water".
Our basic business model is to capture and dehydrate the huge water surpluses in the nation's northern river systems, using (of course) solar energy.
We will then refine and package the product in cardboard boxes which can readily be transported by air, rail or road (at minor cost) to Victoria’s brown coal plants It is then just a simple matter of adding tap water to reconstitute and apply the resource.
As a further revenue stream, surplus ‘Dry Water” packages could be sold to the State’s . drought-affected areas.
Applicants with some technical capacities could be useful, but essential skills required will include the abilities to write successful Government grant applications, and to lobby vigorously the progress of same.
N.L.Matthews
One
day, while going to the store, I passed by a nursing home. On the front lawn
were six old ladies lying naked on the grass.
I thought this was a bit unusual, but continued on my way to the store.
On my return trip, I passed the same nursing home with the same six old ladies lying naked on the lawn. This time my curiosity got the best of me, & I went inside to talk to the Nursing Home Administrator.
'Do
you know there are six ladies lying naked on your front lawn?'
'Yes,'
she said. 'They're retired prostitutes, - they're having a garage sale.'
The current unhappiness with uninvited guests refusing to leave an Australian vessel in an Indonesian port has stirred up the old race hate fans like Wilson Tuckey and Barnaby Joyce with a view to scoring some cheap political points.
Notionally it is better news for the Opposition and has given them a breather from the damaging infighting but it’s not all beer and skittles for them just yet. The problem stems from firstly not having a policy to follow and secondly a lack of logical thinking on the part of their Leader.
In the first instance. chaps like Iron bar Tuckey have no set rules to follow (assuming he actually would) and he gets a bit excited. In Iron bar’s case it led to the bizarre demand that Aussie soldiers should throw the asylum seekers off the vessel.
Now either Tuckey doesn’t have much of a grip of geography or he is running a bit shy of how diplomacy works but sending troops into another country to throw their weight around is not likely to go down especially well with very many people and in all likelyhood is illegal in the International court. (Policy fail)
Secondly, if you do want to score political points as Turnbull
wishes to do, it’s a good idea to try making the statement out loud in
front of your advisers but in private. This way you can check your
statement for logic without it going on record. Clearly young Malcolm
didn’t think it through this time when he claimed the current boat load
of asylum seekers having originated from Indonesia “completely
destroyed Kevin Rudd’s argument about political pressure in Sri Lanka.” That's right up there with the struggling logic displayed by his Deputy Julie Bishop.
News reports from Sri Lanka make it perfectly clear there is a very unsympathetic Government dealing with the surviving Tamil Tigers and for that matter ordinary Sri Lankans who disagree with them. Conciliation is not on the agenda. One boat load can hardly be claimed to be representative of the whole problem.
This really points to Turnbull’s ongoing problem in front of the media. He seems to get over excited and forget to leave himself some wriggle room. Yes, he could make some mileage out of the current problem but he has to be a bit more thoughtful. Blowing his credibility at the opening of an attack gets the focus on him instead of the point he wants to make. It’s not the first time he has made a dill of himself and I think it stems from his attitude that he is always right. Some Press Conferences seem to show him thinking on his feet rather than being prepared.
Can he fix it? Well yes, but does he know he has a problem? I think
his attitude suggests he thinks he is without blame in the current
despair gripping the party room and unless he takes a “good hard look
at himself” he will probably leave the job feeling he was never given a
fair go.
He has been given fairly good support but when he drops the easy ball like this you can’t blame the Libs looking for a better player.
Firstly he lost his two best recruitment officers in Bush and Cheney, then the US Treasury suggested he has cash flow problems. Now the top little earner of the opium harvest is struggling to hold it's price levels.
In the early years of this century (2001) the Taliban felt drugs were evil and almost eradicated the harvest reducing the cultivation by an impressive 91% under their regime. They must have then hired an Economic Rationalist because they have since had a rethink and these days take a cut of the harvest calculated at around 10 %. On current figures this is supposed to come in at around $200M to $400M per year. That's one heck of a lot of explosive in anyone's book.
In 2008 NATO and the Afghan government spent hundreds of millions of dollars to destroy an estimated 3% of the opium harvest. An expensive operation which basically had no effect because the oversupply has driven the price way down. The World consumes about 5,000 tonnes a year but Afghanistan alone grows far more than this level. The upshot of the oversupply was a 33% drop in the price last year.
The Taliban have become rather attached to the previous price levels so now NATO forces are uncovering stockpiles of the crop when raiding Taliban hangouts. Like the drug users themselves, they are addicted to their biggest revenue raiser.
Hopefully the forces of light will reconsider the previous program of eradication (which cost many lives as well as dollars) and try something a bit more innovative like promoting legal crops.
This wins on so many different levels.
- The Afghan government doesn't have to irritate the farmers by destroying their income.
- The Taliban have an even bigger problem of oversupply to deal with.
- The cost in lives and dollars to the Afghan government is significantly reduced.
- NATO forces are less obvious in the negative sense in their interaction with the locals.
- The opium affect on GDP which currently stands at 3% can be replaced by other crops.
Good job too. It's high time they were put on the back foot. Let's hope this opportunity to destabilise the Taliban is embraced.
Two old guys, one 80 and one 87 were sitting on the 1st tee bench waiting for their turn to tee off one morning.
The 87 year old had just finished his morning jog and wasn't even short of breath. The 80 year old was amazed at his friend's stamina and asked him what he did to have so much energy?
The 87 year old said, "Well, I eat rye bread every day. It keeps your energy level high and you'll have great stamina with the ladies."
So, on the way home the 80 year old stopped at the bakery. As he was looking around the lady asked if he needed any help. He asked, "Do you have any rye bread?"
She said, "Yes, there's a whole shelf of it. Would you like some?"
He said, "I want 5 loaves."
She said, "My goodness, 5 loaves...by the time you get to the 5th loaf, it'll be hard."
He replied, "I can't believe it, everybody knows about this shit but me..............!
Wiremu, a New
Zealander, was in Australia to watch the upcoming Rugby World Cup and was not
feeling well, so he decided to see a doctor. "Hey doc, I dun't feel so good,
ey" said Wiremu.
The doctor gave him a thorough examination and informed
Wiremu that he had long existing and advanced prostate problems and that the
only cure was testicular removal. "No way doc" replied Wiremu
"I'm gitting a sicond opinion ey!"
The second Aussie
doctor gave Wiremu the same diagnosis and also advised him that testicular
removal was the only cure. Not surprisingly, Wiremu refused the treatment.
Wiremu was devastated, but with the Rugby World Cup just around the corner he
found an expat Kiwi doctor and decided to get one last opinion from someone he
could trust.
The Kiwi doctor examined him and said: "Wiremu Cuzzy Bro, you huv Prostate suckness ey" "What's the cure thin doc?" asked Wiremu hoping for a different answer. "Wull, Wiremu", said the Kiwi doctor "Wi're gonna huv to cut off your balls."
"Phew, thunk god for thut!" said Wiremu, "those Aussie bastards wanted to take my tist tuckets off me!"
The first stunning fact was how many aircraft are deployed over Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US operates these craft out of 2 bases in the States. Creech in Nevada and Davis-Monthan in Arizona. The amazing number of 250 pilots piloting around the clock gives a hint of the size of the enterprise but add to this figure that pilots can handle 4 drones at any one time and the numbers really start to climb.
Impressive logistics must be involved when you think of contractors launching closer to the action then control being managed from the continental USA.
Currently the high priority targets for this force is leadership figures standing against the US and they have had some success. But here's the rub. According to Aussie counter insurgency expert, David Kilcullen, who actually works for the State Department in the US, for every al-Qa'eda or Taliban leader killed, 50 civvies also die.
Is that a net gain or loss in the overall picture? You can insert your own bias here as to if you think it's worth the effort.
What is beyond doubt though, is this is an expensive operation in both dollars and human lives and not especially clear cut in its advantages when you factor in the negative effect killing civilians has on boosting Taliban recruitment.
To make matters even worse from where I'm viewing it from, the so called "good guys" feel the need to cheat in elections so they are not as confident of public support as we were led to believe. Add to that the rule changes made against their women folk and the ramping up of protection for the churches with strengthened blasphemy laws, and I start to wonder exactly why we are even involved.
Americans might call it Democracy but its a pretty generous definition under normal standards. How many lives should be sacrificed for such an imperfect result?
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