mike carey

One of the things that has been conspicuous here has been the central role that the state public health authorities have played, and with that the role of the local area health services in the detail of the administration. Politicians have deferred to the chief health officers in their media conferences. Early in the pandemic the federal government effectively nationalised the private hospital system so the state public health authorities were able to manage the whole system holistically. Here, the state health systems have managed the pandemic with the federal government playing a coordination and back-stop role, including procurement of equipment and PPE. The feds also coordinated the provision of defence force personnel to support the states. That started out with medical personnel, but it has broadened into logistics and boots on the ground to assist in security and checkpoints on state borders and lock-down area perimeters, and most recently personnel to staff teams with state health department people door-knocking in the contact tracing processes. There have also been medical professionals and academic epidemiologists involved in the public debate reinforcing the health system messages, and the ABC has had medical reporters with long experience in health and medical issues providing informed reporting on the way the pandemic is progressing (I have previously posted some of their reporting in these forums). There have been mistakes made, and the current spike in cases and deaths in Victoria is most likely due to just a few errors in hotel quarantine for overseas arrivals in Melbourne. With that, some of the gloss has come off our previously good performance but so far we are still doing pretty well. (Touch wood.)

And one last comment, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jul/22/secrets-of-the-boeing-747-on-board-the-last-qantas-jumbo-jet

And this cute gesture on departure (in the embedded video). https://onemileatatime.com/qantas-draws-kangaroo-final-747-flight/

This is one that won't ever fly again. https://www.qantasnewsroom.com.au/media-releases/qantas-farewells-queen-of-the-skies/ Well, not commercially in QF livery. I didn't realise (or perhaps rather I didn't remember) that Qantas was the first airline to have a business class cabin. With the B747 retirement and the grounding of its A380s, for the moment Qantas doesn't have any first class cabins. (They do have flat-bed business class seats in wide body domestic and the remaining international fleet[ not flying now].)

An alternative approach is to move out of the US, but that's a little difficult at present. And doesn't help if the objects of your desires live in the US!

Bon anniversaire!

Binary numbers are base 2 rather than base 10. Binary numbers only have two options for the digits used, 1 and 0, rather than the ten (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0) that can be used in base 10. In a binary number, from the right, the digits are ones, twos, fours, eights and so on not ones, 10s, 100s and 1000s. The number '10' used in the tweet is a visual pun, because we automatically read it as 'ten'. '10' as a binary number is two. (11 is three, 100 is four, 1000 is eight.) So, the tweet is playing on the ambiguity created by the base of the number not being stated. If you had assumed it was in base 2 rather than base 10 (or any other base) it would have read as, 'There are two types of people ...'

In Australia and Aotearoa alcoholic beverages, whether beer, wine or spirits, are alcoholic beverages and sales rules are the same for all of them. In most of Australia they cannot be sold in grocery shops, and even when, like in the ACT they can, they are usually sold in separate shops. Aldi here is the exception. Often the separate bottle shop, run by the supermarket chain, is inside the same shop but with a separate sales areas and checkouts. In New Zealand, we saw alcohol was for sale in supermarkets.

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No, not necessarily, dialect can be regional or cultural. Swiss German, for example. Not standard doesn't necessarily mean substandard. I wouldn't call that southern usage a dialect variation, just usage and vocabulary. More broadly, I wouldn't call English as spoken in the UK at large, Canada, the US, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand distinct dialects, but rather distinct versions of standard English. (I'm not so sure about some of the UK regional variants, they might qualify.) Aboriginal English, by contrast, includes some grammatical structures from indigenous languages that differ from standard English.

When someone cited the 'I can speak jive' line my thoughts were exactly that. (There could be a reasonable argument that some African-American patterns of speech should be considered as a dialect version of English rather than substandard or stereotyping, but we're not there yet. English as spoken by indigenous Australians, particularly in remote communities, is considered as a distinct dialect, Aboriginal English. That way schools don't demonise its use, rather they teach students the differences between it and standard English. *ends diversion*)

.... Or for me, right click, click 'view image' and then the same deal with the acknowledgment, and the image opened in this tab. Page back to this page and both images were showing up. Thanks for the tip. (Windows 10 device using Firefox.)

You know you've definitively gone metric when the distances are in kilometres but there is just the number and no 'km' label after it on the road signs.

Lol, in 1966 we changed our currency to decimal, but it wasn't until 1974 that we went metric. I still have some rulers that are 12 inches long. Oh, and I still remember when peoples' weight was measured in stones (14 pounds).

Rather mild so far. One really cold night (-4.5C) but otherwise not bad. Around 12C on average most days. Friday was a glorious sunny day, over 14C, perfect day for [bear with me here] the final Boeing 747 passenger flight in Australia, a one hour scenic flight that sold out in eight minutes when tickets went on sale. There were crowds at Canberra airport to watch is take off and land, and people out watching it do a fly-past of central Canberra. [MEDIA=twitter]1283967932582830082[/MEDIA]

In The Atlantic I came across an article about the pandemic, how it spreads and the concept of herd immunity. It's complex, and I won't try to explain it in detail, but at the core of it is the idea that the spread of a novel virus is subject to wildly varied results as a result of very small variations in the conditions in which it's spreading. I won't try to describe the aspects of chaos theory and the butterfly effect that are used in the discussion. At the start of its spread there are variations in the transmission of the virus and the susceptibility of the people exposed to it. Things like nose hair or how loud people talk could affect it (nose hair helps filter the air people breathe—not by much—and talking more loudly projects droplets and aerosols further). These—the general differences not the two examples—mean that two separate outbreaks in broadly similar circumstances can go in radically different directions, and small interventions can be magnified in the subsequent spread of the virus. In summary the smooth graphs that appeared in some of the modelled predictions depend on homogeneity and the actual world is a heterogeneous system, and every variation has the potential to change the course of the epidemic, sometimes radically. Moving to the issue of herd immunity, the article quotes mathematicians and epidemiologists who have looked at the pandemic progression and seen that the heterogeneity of the system is likely to throw up little road blocks to the progress of the disease that can potentially disrupt its spread. In a vaccination model, everyone has the same exposure to the virus or viral protein so the result is more consistent, and that is the model from which the publicly cited herd immunity figures have been derived. In the disease path that we are seeing, the inconsistency of the way in which it develops is likely to mean that herd immunity, or more likely a stable level of disease in the population can be reached with a lower level of exposure to the disease, perhaps as low as 20%. A final point in the article is that the herd itself can influence the level at which this immunity or stability kicks in. So the things that we are doing now, distancing, masks, hand sanitising and washing, and cough and sneeze hygiene are part of what will reduce the level of exposure to the disease needed for the herd to be immune. The article is behind their paywall, but there is a free allowance and if you register you can see a few more articles per month. For those who are under their limit or who are subscribers, the full article is here. The podcast below it, which discusses the article, seems to be outside the paywall. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/herd-immunity-coronavirus/614035/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20200713&silverid-ref=Njc0NjY2MjkyNzExS0 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-will-it-take-to-get-to-herd-immunity/id1502770015?i=1000484135770

Haha, good move, 30 degrees is a lot. Meanwhile, we had a cold front go through, half a metre of snow in the ski-fields and more expected over night in the mountains outside Canberra. It won't be all that long before our weather narratives are reversed again, but I doubt the travel narrative at this end will change.

My sister works in retail and she always talks about it when I visit her. Inventory not being there when the 'computer says yes' can be a result of shoplifters, but it can also be that customers have picked items up and put them down in the wrong place or a box of items was brought onto inventory and is sitting in the corner of a storeroom somewhere. Sometimes a team member will notice something out of place or will be able to find something that is out the back somewhere, sometimes not. What Matt says is also one of the reasons. Not everything is automated, so human error can affect the accuracy of the stock holdings.

My immediate reaction was that I'd use preventative, but when you offered this, I realised I too would say preventive maintenance. I did a quick search and the Oxford listed both with the same definition and didn't comment in the dictionary on the etymology or which was preferred, or any difference in usage. Reading further, on one of the grammar sites it noted that preventive was used slightly more often in British English but was the most common usage in American English. Now I won't be able to stop myself from thinking about it every time I go to use the word/s.

I haven't been walking nearly enough during these times, not that I did enough beforehand of course. I really should because the irregular street patterns in Canberra and the extensive off-road cycle/walking paths here mean that you rarely have your rhythm interrupted by having to stop for a road crossing. I do walk from my house to my letter box every day, though. In contrast when I had been travelling in the US, in most cities I walked extensively. From my hotel in New York, usually around the Penn Station area to Battery Point; over the Brooklyn Bridge and around that area of Brooklyn; along the High Line; and one time from 30th to 156th up the path along the Hudson. Loved walking in Central Park. I also did a couple of long walks around San Francisco when I was there. Not much walking in Palm Springs though, only from the hotel to a Ralphs to buy beers.

It is winter, and I can't imagine living in the sort of temperatures Canadians have on the prairies or even in T'ranno or Montréal. What passes for winter here, even in a cold climate area (in our terms) can be as warm as some European and North American summers.

Absolutely, but we don't yet know what the new forever, or even the new next year will look like. Domestic aviation in large (physically) countries like the US and Australia may well recover, international aviation will do so, if it does, at a different rate. I can't see travel to or from the south-west Pacific happening in the forseeable future, but I hope I'm wrong.

I recall reading that in a dom/sub relationship it should be the sub who sets the limits. That should apply to findom as much as any other variety of domination. (I also don't get the concept, but I guess it happens.)