Did you know?

[noirua]

...that potato starch was the main constituent in making the first colour photographs known as autochromes, produced by Augustus and Louis Lumiere. However, James Clerk Maxwell made the first permanent colour photograph in 1961, but his method was not continued with.

 

[bunyip]

...that the common garden plant, Nasturtium, is edible?
Nasturtiums are members of the watercress family.....the flowers make a colourful addition to salads and are completely edible, as is the rest of the plant.

 

[bunyip]

...that if you always stop eating when you are 80% full, you will, on average, live a much longer life.

....that after you've eaten sufficient food, the stomach sends a message to the brain saying "stop eating - I'm full".
But this message takes 15 or 20 minutes to cover the distance between stomach and brain. That's why, if you keep eating until you feel full, you'll often feel over-full and bloated 15 minutes or so later.
A simple and effective way to lose weight is by reducing the size of your meals by 30 to 50%. You'll leave the table feeling hungry, but within 15 or 20 minutes your stomach will have had time to get its 'I'm full' message to the brain, and you'll no longer feel hungry, just comfortably satisfied.
I learnt this trick many years ago from an article in the Readers Digest. I tried it and it works.

 

[roland]

....that after you've eaten sufficient food, the stomach sends a message to the brain saying "stop eating - I'm full".
But this message takes 15 or 20 minutes to cover the distance between stomach and brain. That's why, if you keep eating until you feel full, you'll often feel over-full and bloated 15 minutes or so later.
A simple and effective way to lose weight is by reducing the size of your meals by 30 to 50%. You'll leave the table feeling hungry, but within 15 or 20 minutes your stomach will have had time to get its 'I'm full' message to the brain, and you'll no longer feel hungry, just comfortably satisfied.
I learnt this trick many years ago from an article in the Readers Digest. I tried it and it works.

It doesn't work with pizza and beer, I've tried many times - but there has got to be some chemical reaction or something. I tried again tonight - and low and behold, that last piece of pizza just 'aint no good getting all cold and lonely on the plate!

 

[bunyip]

....that in aboriginal legend a bunyip was a fearsome beast that inhabited water holes after dark, and could be heard making spine-chilling moaning, shrieking, wailing sounds in the dead of night. Aborigines were terrified of bunyips and would keep well away from water holes at night time. It was common knowledge that anyone foolhardy enough to venture into a billabong after dark would be eaten by the resident bunyip.

Ion L. Idriess, better known as Jack to his mates, was a prolific author who wrote extensively of his experiences in living and wandering among the aborigines of northern Australia in the early 1900's.
In one of his books, Jack gave an interesting account of a bunyip.

He and his travelling companion were camped with aborigines on a low ridge, about half a mile from a billabong.
After dark a breeze starting blowing, and next thing they heard a peculiar moaning, shrieking, grating sound coming from the direction of the billabong. The aboriginals huddled and trembled with fear, rolled their eyes, and repeatedly muttered ''bunyip, bunyip."

Next day Jack and his mate, together with the aborigines, went down to the billabong to catch fish and turtles while the women dug for water lily roots, were which highly prized as 'good fella tucker' by aboriginals.
Interestingly, the blackfellas had no fear of venturing into the billabong during the day. When quizzed about this, they told Jack that bunyips weren't in billabongs during day time, only at night.
The day was calm, no wind, but later in the morning a breeze starting blowing and Jack heard the same moaning, shrieking, grating sound they'd heard the night before. It turned out to be two tree branches rubbing against each other as the tree swayed in the breeze.
The blackfellas took no notice. In day time they accepted the noise as just a couple of branches rubbing together. At night time, their superstitions took over and the noise from the tree branches became the spine-chilling wailing and moaning of the dreaded bunyip.

The following link should take you to some interesting information on Jack Idriess. Or just do a Google search for Ion L. Idriess

http://reviews.ebay.com.au/Collecting-Ion-L-Idriess-Books_W0QQugidZ10000000001244436

 

[2020hindsight]

Ion L. Idriess

Nemarluk was a good read as I recall.
The skill of the black tracker, and the skill of an Ad to beat the tracker at his own game. - lifting divits of moss with their toes, stepping on the ground beneath the divot, and replacing the flipped divot etc
(working from memory here - must have read it 40 years ago )

 

[Julia]

From today's "Sunday Mail":]
"Never have so many known so little. Recent poll found that a quarter of Britons thought that Winston Churchill was a fictional character. Many respondents also thought that Florence Nightingale and Sir Waler Raleigh were also just characters dreamed up in books and films. Ironically, they believed the Three Musketeers and Sherlock Holmes really existed."

 

[Julia]

Not sure if this is the appropriate thread but I liked this definition of vegetarian, also taken from today's "Sunday Mail":

"Caloundra woman on an overseas flight recently asked for a vegetarian meal and was duly presented with a chicken dish. When she complained the flight attendant assured her it was indeed a vegetarian meal, pointint to the chicken proclaiming: 'It only eats grain.' "

 

[noirua]

Not sure if this is the appropriate thread but I liked this definition of vegetarian, also taken from today's "Sunday Mail":

"Caloundra woman on an overseas flight recently asked for a vegetarian meal and was duly presented with a chicken dish. When she complained the flight attendant assured her it was indeed a vegetarian meal, pointint to the chicken proclaiming: 'It only eats grain.' "

Hi Julia, We did buy a corn fed free range chicken and like human vegans they are truly vegetarians, and tasted very good indeed.

 

[korrupt_1]

Hi Julia, We did buy a corn fed free range chicken and like human vegans they are truly vegetarians, and tasted very good indeed.

dont know if it's true - could be a myth - but i heard that chicken feed pellets have chicken as part of the mix.

but i agree with you noirua... a corn fed free range chicken is fantastic... it's the way chicken was meant to taste...

 

[noirua]

...in 1752, the day after 2nd September was 14th September as the World switched from a Julian to a Gregorian Calendar.

 

[noirua]

...butterflies taste with their feet.

 

[noirua]

...that experts say that green tea and black tea, together, help prevent diabetes and prostate cancer. You may need to drink at least 1 litre a day.

 

[noirua]

...25% of Australian kids are overweight or obese. As the figures rise, so is the coincidence of associated health problems such as heart disease and childhood diabetes: http://www.abc.net.au/quantum/s203808.htm

 

[noirua]

...we're all most knowledgeably about things we know nothing about.

 

[2020hindsight]

The Dow when adjusted for inflation ....

"shows that the 1982 bear market was almost as severe as the early 30's"

http://www.dogsofthedow.com/dow1925cpilog.htm

Brilliant interview with Marc Faber on 7.30 Report ( Kerry OBrien) - and very pessimistic btw.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s2193110.htm

KERRY O'BRIEN: Do you think there is scope for a real panic, a dangerous panic?

MARC FABER: Well, I think yes there is scope for a real panic and I think one of the time bombs we have and not too much has surfaced yet in that area is essentially derivatives, because I cannot believe that the financial sector declines as much as it has and so many companies or financial service companies go bust or are essentially out of business and that none of the derivatives player is badly affected. So I think that's something to keep an eye on.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Do you think America is already in recession?

MARC FABER: It's very difficult to interpret statistics that are doctored by the Government. But if you take the US economy and you take nominal GDP growth and then instead of taking say a consumer price index or a personal consumption expenditure index, as compiled by the US Government, if instead you take cost of living increases of a typical family then in real terms the economy has been in recession since last October. You can, for instance, look at the trade deficit it has been shrinking because it produced imports into the United States. You can look at the number of inbound containers into the US, it's down year on year, on the trucking index, rail loadings, so on and so forth. These are indicators you cannot cheat with and they all signal essentially that the US is already in recession.

KERRY O'BRIEN: How long do you believe that recession will last? How severe do you think it might be and how do you think it'll impact on the rest of the world including China?

MARC FABER: In general, I would say the economy in the US would be very sluggish and hardly any growth for a number of years.

KERRY O'BRIEN: And how do you think that will impact on the rest of the world?

MARC FABER: You know we can talk about the economies. The financial markets will move very different than the economies. You could have a strong economy in China and stocks tumbling, you could have a weak economy and stock going up. In general, I think that the emerging stock markets are actually quite vulnerable at the present time.

KERRY O'BRIEN: You've been to Australia recently which has its own market volatility and yet our economy inflation aside, is in pretty good shape. Can you understand why the market here has actually dropped significantly more than the market in the US which one might have thought would be more vulnerable?

MARC FABER: Yes, I agree. I mean in Australia we had huge declines in shares and if it hadn't been for BHP and Rio Tinto and some companies with a very heavy weight in the index, the indecision would probably be down 40 to 50 per cent. I mean I looked at several Australian stocks when I was in Australia. I was amazed how many stocks had dropped by more than 50 per cent.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Well can you understand why?

MARC FABER: Yes, I can understand why because markets are volatile and when they go up people pile in and they borrow money and they
leverage themselves on the up side and when the process of reversal comes and de-leveraging, people sell and they sell indiscriminately and also in Australia we had some players that were highly leveraged to the US real estate market and to all kinds of other asset markets around the world. And so when asset prices started to no longer go up, and the cost of borrowing went up, and lending standards tightened, shares got hit very hard.... etc

 

[2020hindsight]

......

KERRY O'BRIEN: Without being a total pessimist, without being complete doctor doom and gloom, what is your worst case scenario?

MARC FABER: The worst case scenario is that, and I would not rule out this to be the case. Essentially the last 20 years we have this expansion of the financial sector and we have accelerating debt growth, the US has a large trade and current account deficit that throws at the present time roughly $800 billion into the world and that this has created what we call the global excess liquidity. Let's say the US consumer retrenches badly, the trade and current account deficit shrink, then international liquidity will shrink and that is very bad for all asset markets, not just for stock, it will also be bad for commodities.

Once commodity prices would decline it would obviously lead to some problems in the commodity producers of the world and also if the US consumer retrenches potentially it can lead to a slow down in production overseas in China, if combined with a slow down in China oil prices decline, it leads to a depression in the Middle East and in oil producing regions and after the global boom we had 2001 to 2007 during which essentially every country was growing except for Zimbabwe and that this global synchronised boom, which is unique in the history of capitalist, it never happened before that every country's growing rapidly, that this global boom is followed by a colossal global bust. That is the worst case scenario.

KERRY O'BRIEN: I do hope we're well short of that, Marc Faber. Thanks very much for talking with us.

MARC FABER: My pleasure.

 

[noirua]

Why are Aussie stock markets falling so much?
Did you know?
That U.K. investors have been taking profits accumalated since 2003 due to capital gains tax changes that come into effect on 6th April 2008.
Up to 5th April 2008 the original cost of shares can be raised by 5% each year and all this is abolished on 6th April 2008.
Thus there has been a scramble to take profits and dump the ASX.

 

[derty]

A solid state fan has been invented!

It's got no moving parts and it blows air! It blows air and it's got NO moving parts!

We really are in the 21st Century.

Solid-state fan uses a proprietry technology which is based on the principle of electro-aerodynamic pumping. Electro-aerodynamic pumping is based on corona discharge which is the underlying technology in many consumer and industrial products, from silent household air purifiers and photocopiers to electrostatic precipitators and some lasers. It involves application of a voltage difference between two electrodes; a geometrically sharp electrode and a blunt electrode. This creates an intense electric field in the region near the sharp electrode and breaks down the air locally. Ions produced in this discharge are attracted to the distant blunt electrode. As they traverse the gap between the electrodes, the ions collide with neutral air molecules creating a body force and a pressure head in the air. This pressure head causes the desired air flow.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/72400,silent-microchip-fan-has-no-moving-parts.aspx
http://www.thorrn.com/technology.html

 

[Doris]

The Big Question: How is the date of Easter determined, and why is it so early this year?

Why does the date of Easter vary by more than a month?

Because the ancient Egyptians and Hebrews used different calendars. The Egyptians had one based on the movement of the sun, which was passed on through the Romans and Christian culture to become the modern world's standard. The Jews had one based on the phases of the moon – as Islam does, which is why the month of Ramadan moves round the calendar and takes places at different times of the year each year, with Muslims waiting for sightings of the moon before they know what day it will begin.

Easter is one of the festivals which tries to harmonise the solar and lunar calendars.

As a general rule, Easter falls on the first Sunday, following the first full moon after 21 March. But not always.

Why do we still have to use both solar and lunar calendars?

Easter is the time when Christians celebrate the Resurrection of Christ. According to the gospels he was killed three days before the Resurrection, around the time of the Jewish Passover. So Christians wanted to have their feast day around the same time as the Jewish festival which was fixed by the first full moon following the vernal equinox – the spring day when night and day are exactly the same length.

The problem comes because a solar year (the length of time it takes the earth to move round the sun) is 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds whereas a lunar year is 354.37 days. Calculating one against another is seriously complicated.

There have been various attempts to reconcile this, including the famous saltus lunae (the moon's jump) whereby one of the 30-day months in the lunar cycle gets arbitrarily shortened to 29 days. But the solar and lunar years diverge by 11 days every year. Scores of formulae have been devised to try to reconcile the two as a method of marking time.


So is this the earliest Easter can get?

No. It can be on 22 March, as it was in 1761 and 1818, but that won't happen until 2285. Its latest possible date is 25 April but we haven't had that since 1943 and won't again until 2038. The commonest date is 19 April though the full cycle of Easter dates only repeats after 5,700,000 years.


...Can't we just pluck a fixed date out of the air and agree on it?

Both governments and churches have tried to do that. Secularists have suggested that Easter should fall on the second Sunday of April each year. The World Council of Churches in 1997 suggested replacing the current equation-based system with direct astronomical observation.

Even where there is notional agreement, implementation is another matter. In Britain, an Easter Act was passed in 1928 fixing the holiday as "the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April". The law remains on the statute book but it has never been enforced. There are too many contradictory influences brought to bear. It seems that Easter is set to remain the original moveable feast.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-and-why-is-it-so-early-this-year-798980.html