mike carey

In related news:

I'm hesitant to engage in a three way but the idea is attractive. For me, the other two being ready to play would be important. Two random players sounds like a recipe for disaster. Of course, if it involved meeting a hot couple like @TylerandAce I'd be in there in a NY minute.

I can relate to this. It's been around for a while, but I decided it needed posting here, even if that's again.

If you hold the shift key down while you hit Enter it works as a carriage return inside the one message instead of sending the message. The same hack works in WhatsApp.

Haha, very good!

*Takes mental note, 'How not to contact Mr Nicholas'.*

Thanks for canvassing this important issue, @Oliver, no one is unaffected by the pandemic and for the most part people's reactions have been understandable. I exclude those who have sought to deny it, who claim to have greater insight than the medical experts and who seem to regard the economy as being more important than our lives. I too am of a certain age, although not as certain as some other forum members. I am lucky to live in a country that has largely been spared the harsher effects of the pandemic, and the restrictions I've had to endure have not been particularly burdensome. I have managed the last six months reasonably well and coped with the spending most of my time inside my house. The internet has made it easier, as it brings so many things into my bubble, this forum not the least of them, as has the 'serious' network of our public broadcaster. There are things I cannot do, but I didn't feel constrained by it. That said, I am aware that I won't live forever, so the time I have to do things isn't unlimited. Even now, as I think about travel, i don't feel resentment at those or any other limitations, although I have the beginnings of a degree of frustration. I can travel to most of the country but not overseas, and I am looking at places around Australia with new eyes. Last night in a current affairs piece about the impact of the pandemic restriction on various communities around the country they covered a flash hotel that was at 10 to 20% occupancy and rather than just think 'That's interesting' I immediately thought about a short break there. (No, I haven't booked. Yet.) The possibility of travel to New Zealand seems to be tantalisingly close, and I'll be on a plane there pretty soon after it becomes possible. I recognise that if our restrictions were harsher I'd be more likely to feel oppressed by them and perhaps resentful, so I'm in no position to criticise others who are. Are they being selfish? Maybe, but to me wishing restrictions away is natural, it's not really being selfish unless you convert your frustrations into flouting the restrictions. For now, I'm content to count my blessings, plan on taking up opportunities as they arise and hoping for there to be more of them. And even to dare to hope that Palm Springs 2021 will be a thing, and one that I can travel for!

I second this, a class act indeed.

Oh, sorry, I misunderstood, By moving south I thought they meant PV of somewhere like that. Valparaiso in April could have been nice, although perhaps less pool-friendly than PS. It would be well into autumn, after all. But they meant that South!

'Cute' might not be the first word that comes to mind in relation to professional rugby players, but I'm sure some might attract my attention.

My travelling companions and I (and all of us are forum members) missed Christchurch this year, but it is a delightful city, my only reservation about living there would be that I would have to become a fan of the Canterbury Crusaders rugby team.

I have read Jeremy's blog. Unrelated to that, I would hire him in a heartbeat.

I watched a number of episodes when it was on the ABC here, and enjoyed it. I really must rewatch the whole series. I love this new world where Australian TV series have a wider audience, I've seen posters here comment on other shows like Miss Fischer's mysteries.

I met Mike briefly at the 2019 Palm Springs event, and was impressed but didn't take the opportunity to hire him. The lesson I take is, don't think 'maybe next year', as next year may not present an opportunity.

Thanks for this elucidation of my comment. I wasn't aware that this FT graph was available to illustrate what I was trying to say. Although it does represent total cases not those per million or per 100k. Regardless of that, it illustrates how a linear scale can downplay numbers in some contexts.

And an engaging set of photos they are.

Don't you live in Los Angeles?

Logarithmic scales on y-axes are pretty standard over the course of the epidemic. They make it possible to illustrate the variation over days in jurisdictions where numbers are low. With a numerically scaled y-axis you run the risk (note I am saying risk, not certainty in this case) of a meaningful graph of the higher figures and a flat line across the base of the graph for the lower figures. I agree that at a glance this gives a misleading initial impression, but a closer look makes it clear.

By the time you factor in currency rates, it's worse for those of us with lower valued currencies. I suspect most Canadians are, like me, painfully aware that in our home currencies it's a lot more dollars. But that said, we realise that everything is priced in local currency, so we have to live with that and not fixate on the converted price. I've found that there is a certain convergence of the ticket price for many goods and services in AUD, CAD, NZD and USD in the respective countries regardless of the conversion rate. When I'm travelling I tend not to convert prices to AUD, just think about them in whatever currency they're quoted (it was different in the 70s when I first went to Europe). (As an aside though, I would hesitate to pay a rate here that was the AUD equivalent of one that I might be happy to pay in the US.)

Haha, I know I can't afford you, but I also know you're a sweet guy who's happy to chat. That's a win.

Here in my part of Canberra very few people are wearing masks at the shopping centre (the only 'crowded' place I've been recently), even the staff in the branch of a national supermarket chain that 'encourages' its staff and customers to do so. Understandable, in a territory that has had zero cases in over two months. I haven't noticed a pattern in the age of those wearing them. I wear one, but now carry it on the 300m walk to the shops. Today, I forgot to put it on until I was inside. Metro Melbourne is the only place in the country where there is a mandate, a[though they are encouraged on public transport in Sydney and on flights everywhere. On a tangential issue, when I went to pay cash for a mask I bought a few weeks ago at the chemist shop, their reaction was an almost panicky 'what do we do with that', followed by what seemed to be profound relief when I told them I could pay with a card. I haven't used cash since this started, but from what I've seen, no other merchant seems to have been concerned when others did (public transport doesn't accept cash, you have to use a transit card).

Um, no (I know I'm not the first) single and double quotation marks are both valid, and which you chose is a question of style. (Organisations and institutions can have a style guide that mandates on over the other, the Australian DOD specified single quotes.) The exception to this is if there is a quotation within a quotation you use the single marks for one and double for the other. And where punctuation marks go depends on the meaning, and in this case the question mark relates to the whole sentence not the work 'wreak'. Basically, if the punctuation mark is part of the quotation it's inside the inverted commas, and it's outside if it's not. (Generally you only have one punctuation mark, but if a quotation ends with an exclamation mark inside the inverted comma, you could have a question mark outside it if you were using the quotation in a question that you were posing.) Well, I would say they were flat wrong!! But you were the one writing the paper and arguing with them, not me. *Rant over.*

There's a very good chance that it will, if a huge experiment that's been conducted in the southern hemisphere over the last six months is any guide. You're welcome! I had commented in the past about a huge reduction in respiratory disease in general and in the incidence of influenza in particular in Australia this winter. Covid-19 precautionary measures seem to have reduced other diseases as well. I've had colds every year of my life, until this year. The Economist crunched WHO data from the six southern hemisphere countries for which it was available (Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand), and in the article it published it noted: Data from Australia tell a remarkable tale. From May to mid-August of 2015-19, an average of 86,000 Australians tested positive for the flu each year, and around 130 died of it. This winter the government has registered only 627 influenza infections and just a single death. Tests were only down 20%. It's the second of three items in this podcast. https://play.acast.com/s/theintelligencepodcast/homework-thefutureoftheoffice There is even a chance that there will be a minimal flu season in the northern hemisphere because it has to come from somewhere, and the south is far less a source this year than usual, and travel, by which much of its spread occurs is minimal. That is not to say that influenza won't be an issue this northern winter, so it's no reason not to have the shot.

Reading all the plans and bookings people have made is great, and I hope I will be able to be there. At the moment, though, I don't know if I'll be able to leave the country, and even if I can, whether I'd be happy to travel to the US. God, I hope I can.