Deal of the Century

Dear reader(s), My proposal for the generation of electricity at our commercial place of business involves selling the electricity excess to our daytime needs back to the grid. Our price is not the exorbitant feed-in prices that the evil Bligh government set at 44c/KWh I would refuse on principle to partake in any such outrageous out of market contract. Our price is not the 1:1 favoured by the ignorant majority - After all that would be selling the electricity back at around 21c/KWh which is about as much as the utility can get retail and doesn't allow for the costs of upgrading, maintaining etc. required on the grid, which far outweighs the marginal cost of generating a unit of electricity. Our price is not 8c/KWh which is the fallback wholesale cost estimated to be the cost of a utility purchasing electricity on the wholesale market. The excess electricity is fed back into the grid at ZERO cost to the utitilility. That's right Zip Zilch Gratis. It is unclear whether this is still a better deal for me than the utility, but certainly, if electricity prices do not drop from their current level, our solar plant will pay itself off within 3 years. Our use is virtually all daytime, and greater in summer and less when it is cloudy/rainy or dark. 30 KW ought to do it, plus a 2 KW off grid unit for emergencies. Regards

Where I'm at with evolution and science

First of all science - To me the gold standard on science and scientific theories is "the prediction of new facts". Not to be confused with model fitting the data, this predicts what future data will be. If a climate model predicts global temperatures correctly in advance, then it is of a gold standard compared to if it would have predicted current temperatures correctly given past data.

The basis of modern technology is this ability to know that a design will work before going to the effort of building it. 

Modern evolutionary synthesis of itself does not predict new facts. It has been built from a consensus of scientists to explain how evolution works, but is not a basis in itself for predicting new facts. It does show that surviving species will be more adapted to an environment than species in which the environment causes them to become extinct or depleted. However, a teleological approach to genetic variation will lead to the same new facts, ie. species, than an approach based on random variation. Thus, the modern evolutionary synthesis has not reached the gold standard by me. This makes me very impatient with some types of evolutionary articles and theses.

Astrobiology - ie. the research and study of organics and biology in space allows us a unique opportunity to test competing theories on abiogenesis and evolution. The "strong" version of panspermia espoused by Wickramasinghe etc. will predict different future facts than geogenesis or other alternative theories on the origin and distribution of life. Whether a prediction about what a robotic spaceship's experiments will show in advance of that experiment being made will give credence to the narrative behind that prediction.

Predictions about what spacecraft would find looking at comets up close have been very wrong based on the narrative that they are pristine and unchanged from the birth of the solar system. The narrative won't change, however, as it is too entrenched. It is more convenient to fit unexpected facts into the same narrative than to think of a new narrative that would have predicted these facts. The narrative is very vague on details anyway. Virtually any new discovery can be fitted into it - It is, for the most part unfalsifiable. I can see why Wickramasinghe prefers to be on the fringe, and outside of the consensus. He is not disputing any of the data from say NASA scientists. For the most part, other scientists are not  disputing his data and rigour. It is a battle of narratives, and the prediction of future facts should be the gold standard in the battle of narratives.

Has Alien Life Been Found in Earth's Atmosphere?

Unlike the bad astronomy blog

I'm going to go with yes. The main arguments against Wickramasinghe's panspermia related "science", "research" and "discoveries" are essentially that the detection of alien life in various papers submitted to the Journal of Cosmology are "false positives". This assumes "a priori" that alien life is very rare (almost certainly non-existent), and Earthly life is extremely flexible at getting anywhere it wants to, including into the Stratosphere at any time. Thus, the statistical calculations to work out a false positive depend on how prevalent alien life is in the first place. I don't think it is helpful for NASA to collect dust from the Stratosphere, and assume that if there is life that also exists on Earth, that it must have come from Earth. Don't bother - just go to planets, asteroids and comets and bring back samples. Otherwise you just can never rule out contamination.

I've Turned

Back in 07, I was all for Kevin. I was not disappointed in the Government that ensued, nor the policies it came up with. In 2010, I supported Labor primarily on the NBN policy. I was happy with most policy of the Gillard Government, and satisfied with all policy bar one particular policy decision regarding live export. 

The policy advantages of Labor that I have leant towards have been virtually neutralised. For one, the NBN is going to happen, and it is hard to believe that the LNP could make a mess of it now. 

Secondly, the economic cycle has shifted enough that conservative instincts are likely to be the most beneficial to the country.

DNA is a substrate storing an algorithm for a Turing machine

I'm not really sure why this is controversial and I'm not sure why it is routinely "denied" by biologists. It is not much of a stretch to go from saying that DNA is a blueprint for an organism's form, function and reproduction, to saying it is an algorithm encompassing all that and doing a whole lot more, which is what the whole point of "decoding" it is all about.

I think the issues around higher level functions, self modifying code, debugging, the creative process of new programs, etc. is deniable to the extent that these things are only recognisable from the point of view of the programmer being separate from the program, rather than one part of the software as they appear to be in DNA of living things. Just the fact that it "sounds" like it implies outside intelligence, is enough to make any naturalist worth their salt to deny any such analogy with a Turing machine, regardless of the evidence.

Given enough Caffeine, I could rule the world!

Caffeine is the key to therapeutic cloning.

Coffee Saves Lives

link

2014 will be the year of the comet

I can't believe "my" luck. First there is the Rosetta mission, which is perfectly designed to test "my" admittedly ridicule-worthy theories. Then in October 2014 a nearly hyperbolic comet makes a perilously close encounter to Mars within the telescopic range of not one but several Mars robotic craft. See Comet 2013 A1 Siding Spring

I have more predictions (I won't call them prophecies) about this one. There will be multiple nuclei, they will be black like the observed periodic comets - They will separate due to tidal forces and result in new comets, some of which will be periodic.

Six impossible things before breakfast

Occam's razor is involved in the following assertions being protected from the burden of proof:

1) Random mutations and natural selection is necessary and sufficient to explain the origin of species from other species.

2) Abiogenesis occurred on Earth

3) Abiogenesis requires the conditions of a Planet (We don't know how abiogenesis happens, we haven't demonstrated it happening, so how can we presume what it needs?)

4) Pre-life is more fragile than life

5) pre life has been extincted by life because life is superior ( we don't yet know what came before life and see 2 through 4 we have no gnosis of where that might be, so we cannot possibly know the results of the two coexisting)

6) pre life has an x need for mass flux/energy flux/reproduction.....  We do not know of the process, so we certainly cannot know quantitatively of the need for any particular feature of the process.

Definition of Marcomony

Marcomony is the replacement of parsimony in science, where the burden of proof would normally be shifted away from a solution deemed as "simpler", by simply *not* shifting the burden of proof.

Thus competing hypotheses given the same evidence are on essentially a level playing field. A multitude of makhO's disposable razors rather than Okham' s individual razor.

I have listed in my head every case I could think of where parsimony is used in science, and I cannot think of a single one (yet), where I believe parsimony has benefitted science.

I believe models *must* necessarily be simpler than reality - eg Newtonian mechanics doesn't take into account relativistic effects. It is not true that the simplest solution is the most likely to be true. The point of simpler models is to fit better into our (perhaps prejudiced) world view, and to be able to be explained to a lay or more naive public.

Show me the metabolism, marconomics, part 3

"Kauffman is chiefly concerned with reproduction as the defining feature of life. He makes only a superficial discussion of metabolism that does not consider its central thermodynamic requirements. But ultimately, metabolism is what is most important."

This reminded me of an "alien life" forum that was discussing, among other things, how we would recognise life as we don't know it. There was a consensus that at a minimum, reproduction AND metabolism would need to be observed. However, when we are talking about abiogenesis, the conundrum is more about how they have to simultaneously come about. Meaningful reproduction is impossible without metabolism to generate the work energy that reproduces something. Metabolism is pretty useless if the system that metabolises is a one off that cannot be reproduced faithfully and it's important features "locked away" for future use. The blueprint of "the system" doesn't need metabolism to exist, it needs metabolism to perform work and reproduce.

"Without petrol, the most splendidly engineered automobile will just sit there. Without a plausible metabolism, the most elegant net of autocatalytic reactions is an empty exercise in symbol manipulation."

Why can't a car be considered a living thing for the purpose of this exercise? For that matter why can't a primitive stone axe head? They perform work and can be reproduced. The system graph and energy transfers is what is important in defining what metabolism and reproduction is, not our experience of how extremely complex things that we have studied intimately perform these same system graph characteristics. Thus things like, "mass flux", "high energy flux", "vesicles", "Proto-metabolism" etc. are not particular requirements when talking about the "system" before life as we know it. The energy graph is important for when metabolism is occurring, and that the system is locked away with reproducible features when the energy/reactants source is depleted. Thus if an axe head lies in the ground undisturbed for millions of years, it would be easy to reproduce. If it was being constantly bombarded by energy flux, ie. people using it, it would just wear away until it was no longer useful. Thus, an extremely encapsulated system, with persistent, naturally reproducible features is more relevant than looking at the amount of energy flux a motorcar needs to keep going, and applying it to the needs of an axe head.

"(1) Through a long and complicated process of prebiotic development containing all the most interesting parts of the story of the origin of life.

(2) As a system created by someone or something.

I don’t intend this as an argument in favour of intelligent design [see definition 1], still less of Intelligent Design [see definition 2]. Ockham’s razor suggests we should stick with explanation (1) unless we should find some very compelling evidence for (2). At any rate, the essential requirements of the pre-biotic processes leading to life based on the chemistry we know are going to be the same as the requirements of pre-biotic processes leading to life based on different chemistry."

Ockham s razor is a lie perpetrated by scientists to make out they have gnosis when they have none. Anyway, have you considered dust cloud life? Or plasma physics life?

We don't know that life that could create chemical life is based on chemistry. We have no gnosis on the requirements of life that may have generated biochemical life through an evolutionary prebiotic process of design. All we have is human experience of design as an evolutionary process with intelligent input. The intelligence is not enough to design something complicated from scratch, and thus the sequence of precedents from transistor to computer may be accessible to historians a million years into the future. Equally, whether intelligently designed or not, we should have confidence in the possibility of precedent biological life "designs" for us to discover.

"What I am arguing is that both the ‘RNA world’ and the ‘Protein world’ are historically late phenomena, and that the critical events for the origin of life lie much deeper."

I absolutely agree with this.

"There is no reason to expect that living systems today preserve the same chemistry of the first living systems. "

I absolutely *disagree* with this. Evolution and evolutionary design processes build on what is known to work. No point changing from silicon to something else.

Show me the Metabolism, Marcomony Part 2.

"What are the requirements a catalytic system of complex polymers (CSCP) must have in order to be relevant to the origin of life?
The CSCP must be secured from the overwhelming tendency of matter and energy to become more randomly distributed in the universe. "

Already here we can see the erosive characteristics of parsimony in action starting to create poisoned fruit. Having rejected Kauffman's model of the origin of life based on CSCP due to not being able to demonstrate metabolism or how it would self generate, it becomes the assumed system for the rest of the post. I would change it to thus: The CSCP or whatever other system relevant to the start of life, must be secured...

In fact when I read it, I had automatically added that to the sentence because a CSCP has a vanishingly small chance of being a descriptive model of what actually hapened. Thus, I agreed with the sentence with a proviso that it does not validate CSCP in any way as a transitionary proto life form.

Thus Marcomony would dictate that we look this as a systems problem rather than as a CSCP problem.

The minimum requirement from a systems perspective is that energy finds its way in, and that the inside can be made less random by making the outside more random. Although that does require at least some "food" or reactants matter to get in and some "waste" or products matter to get out, the minimalist in me is saying that the in could be mainly light, and the out mainly heat, as something non-living that could exist in nature.


Thus a CSCP may or may not be something that comes between non-life and life, or may have been skipped for something that could actually happen, rather than being a wish myth.

When I saw the diagram, I got all excited. When I read about specific chemistry, I got all confused. Not because I didn't understand, but because I was thinking purely in abstract terms of the following.

Condition 1: An Edge.
Condition 2:A Proto-metabolism.
Condition 3: A Selectively Permeable Edge.
Condition 4: A Complexifiable Proto-Metabolism.

Systems we have designed ourselves with a great deal of effort.


 in all this, all it had proved to me that CSCP to do all this is impossible in terms of all the pieces that are required to just come together for no reason.

This is why, about this time last year, I had decided that a comet could provide the required edge to the system, and a catalytic species X would be the resultant more complex, less random thing being generated within the comet(s). The comet surface makes a natural, non-living edge.

Of course, we will have opportunities to see what is in comets now, as an indication of what may have been happening 4 billion years ago.

Show Me the Metabolism, Marcomony! Part one

This is in response to History of life posts by my arch nemesis Herr Fellows of Parsimony fame.

"My thesis is that the network of catalytic polymers and substrates that Kauffman postulates as an initial self-organising complex system which can give rise to more lifelike systems is so inordinately complex and unlikely that it in no way addresses the crucial problem of the origin of life."

Completely agree. I would even extend that to say that it is probably impossible.

"Any chemist would ask: 'What is driving this cycle of reactions? Where is the energy coming from? What is preventing this system from dissipating?'

There is no such thing as 'Order for Free'. That is the Law. If you want order at point A, you need to dump your disorder at points not-A. Should anyone claim there is such a thing as 'Order for Free', let them be unto you even as the homeopaths and the creationists."

 

Absolutely. It is a very contrived system that is required, and a plausible natural mechanism is required that would probably  generate it (Not *possibly* generate it - it needs a contrived repeatable mechanism that we would think hah! that just could work if I could repeat the conditions precisely)

 

Metabolism is the key. My thought is that any systems which generates copies of something is showing metabolism anyway. You can see energy being burned in the suns in the sky and emanating from the hot cores of planets and dumped randomly into the rest of the universe. There are not just a few planets and suns - They have imperfect copies of themselves all over the universe. It is a loose use of metabolism and reproduction, but the universe is full of things that make their outside more random and are reproduced somehow.

 

 

Food Nazi's gone nuts

I did some research on my own diet and possible deficiencies and I decided that I probably was a little deficient in Selenium. Selenium is required in trace amounts, especially to help remove heavy metals, such as mercury from the body. It is also toxic in larger, non-natural quantities. Knowing I was on the low side, and wanting to get my selenium from natural sources. The best natural source of Selenium is Brasil nuts. But there is a twist, as I found out that un-shelled brasil nuts come from a part of South America that has a very high soil Selenium content, and thus unshelled nuts that you can buy are up to 10 times higher in Selenium than than shelled nuts. I figured I could buy nuts in shell on the Internet. Ironically, I bought some from a parrot food and toy specialist.

Comet origins

Assertion 1 - A broad section of "science" needs a complete overhaul due to unecessary assumptions. These assumptions poison entire scientific narratives and lines of research.

The main crux of this assertion is that certain scientific narratives (eg.evolution) implicitly rely on assumptions (eg. about mutations) which rely on Occam's razor to *shift the burden of proof*. Alternative non-scientific narratives (eg. creation) more explicitly rely on assumptions (about God) in a way doubly damaging to science, because it affirms the faulty method (to use Occam's razor) while dismissing rock solid observations (the transformation over time of species from simpler species)

Thus the overhaul of science that I'm proposing involves accross the board  reversal of incorrect usage of Occam's razor and a distancing of science from the narratives that rely on this incorrect usage. They can be kept on as disposable narratives, no more special than alternative narratives that match observations and experiments.


  From wikepedia Occam's razor In practice, the application of the principle often shifts the burden of proof in a discussion.[a] The razor states that one should proceed to simpler theories until simplicity can be traded for greater explanatory power. The simplest available theory need not be most accurate. Philosophers point out also that the exact meaning of simplest may be nuanced.

Assertion 2 - The usage of Occam's razor in science is pernicious - ie. Scientists who propogate a narrative or engage in research will deny that it relies on a shifting of the burden of proof. They will deny that science is biased against narratives and research that takes opposing razors. They will, however imply that opposing razors require proof, which they will freely accept if presented, while ignoring the unprovability of the razors, and ignoring the possibility that the consensus razor may have been simplified to something that is in fact impossible.

Occam's razor is involved in the following assertions being protected from the burden of proof:

1) Random mutations and natural selection is necessary and sufficient to explain the origin of species from other species.

2) Abiogenesis occurred on Earth, or an earth like planet.

3) Abiogenesis was the origin of life on Earth, rather than biotic life being designed by a completely different life form, which could have formed through abiogenesis, in a more provable way , and with intermediate forms.

4) Comets are pristine and relatively unchanged from when they were formed in a molecular cloud.

5) Comets originate from the Oort Cloud.

6) Randomly occurring non-gravitational forces and close planetary fly-bies account for the evolution of cometary orbits from semi-stable orbit eg. Kepler, eventually to other semi-stable orbits, eg. Sun grazer.

7) Natural non living processes account for the observed features of comets, even though, in the main, the observed features were substantially different to that predicted before observation.

Excerpt from Wickramasinghe's book - regarding role of comets in abiogenesis.

Though the presence of a sentient cloud of gas may seem unlikely, the story is grounded in hard science

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud

My assertion is that there is sentient life in forms completely different to life on Earth, in a similar way to the black cloud, that had a hand in the design of life as we know it. The only reason scientists stick to the assertion that life started from non-life with random natural processes is purely because of Occam's razor. Asserting forms of life we have not seen, nor have any direct evidence for, is generating more entities that need explanation, and also plays into the hands of Intelligent Design. However, what is wrong in believing in intelligent design where the designer evolved through natural processes not involving magic? It seems to me to expain why there is so little evidence of abiogenesis, better than the explanation starting from Darwin, that life is so superior to its predecessors that all evidence has been absorbed into life. Abiogenesis appears to be a singularity in the fossil record. Generally, that should always imply that life transferred from somewhere else, rather than evolving here to that stage, much like when a species is found in a particular geographic location without obvious precedents in that location.

In a letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker on February 1, 1871,^[9] Charles Darwin addressed the question, suggesting that the original spark of life may have begun in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, so that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes". He went on to explain that "at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed."^[10] In other words, the presence of life itself makes the search for the origin of life dependent on the sterile conditions of the laboratory.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#Pasteur_and_Darwin

From this, it appears prebiotic evolution has been imbued with particular properties that do not exist with postbiotic evolution. ie. that intermediate forms are destroyed. I find that intermediate forms being hypothesised without any evidence of them existing, with a "just so" story, such as Darwin's as being completely unscientific.

A hypothesis with no evidence has a vanishingly small probability of being correct.

If we were looking for life on other bodies, one of the techniques suggested is to look at the night side and see if there is light.

http://www.space.com/13514-alien-city-artificial-lights-extraterrestrial-planets.html

This has mainly been put forward looking at planets. However, I don't see why we shouldn't apply the same argument to asteroids and comets. The only comet that has been photographed up close while in its active state, appears to have emissions emanating from both the sun side and the other side.


http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch/newsfeatures.cfm?release=2010-387

Not much has been mentioned about discrete jets, but although ostensibly powered by direct solar radiation, the jets on comets are not a predictable function of solar radiation. There appears to be jets emanating light as well as matter, from looking at the night side of the comet. This could be the reflective emissions when they get past the shadow, but it is plausible that radiation is also emanating.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1968AJ.....73..367M


Non-gravitational forces on comets are quite substantial, and the biggest in magnitude are due to rotation of the comet and are heavily dependent on the shape of the comet. In turn the rotation of the comet is influenced by the jets. Thus a fairly small amount of energy from the jets, can give a non-gravitational force many orders of magnitude greater than what a jet could. Also, the topography of comets, unlike asteroids, are not determined by impact craters, but are also apparently determined by internal forces, probably jets. Thus both the rotation and shape, thus total thrust is potentially determined by jet emissions.

http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC-DPS2011/EPSC-DPS2011-156.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSIRIS-REx


NASA mission OSIRIS-REX - Mission to go to an "asteroid". This is classed as a caronaceous and has very low Albedo. It may have a lot of properties similar to comets, and thus possibly jets, outgassing, etc. Dependig on the results in 2014 of ROSETTA, it may add some information about whether there is life on comets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(spacecraft)


Rosetta mission link.

Conclusion: biotic life was designed in comets' image, by comets.

Comet's Surface

I have had a think about what a space probe would find at the surface of a comet (nucleus). I am thinking it would be made up of a biosynthetic petroleum gel. Long chain chiral - similar in chemical consistency to tar. The function of this skin of at least several metres would be to absorb the sun's heat (being black) and of absorbing meteoric impact. The functional interior organs of the comet need to be protected, and an energy source is required.

What I think is happening with Assange

I think it is quite clear that Assange is a high value person of interest in the legal sense. Usually, when sexual assault is the crime which is of interest, high value is when the alleged sexual assaults involve violence, predation and notoriety. This is not the reason in this case, but the full extent of the international legal tools at disposal are being used within proper discretionary limits. Also with his defense against these legal tools, Assange is using all legal tools properly at his discretion.

While the current standoff continues, Assange is, in a reduced but still powerful way, able to continue to lead Wikileaks, and the Syria files proves that the organization is still functionally sourcing and publishing leaks. Client states of the US which were nasty dictatorships have the most to lose with these leaks. Of course, the US also likely loses them as a client states as well, which may or may not be a bad thing for the West.

As far as the risk to "informants" goes which is a highly publicized issue, I think it is a fairly long bow to draw. The war(s) are grinding ones of attrition and a large scale leaks makes both sides extremely jumpy, because they have the same access to the same information, with enough of it with parts deleted or changed that they cannot be be confident of exactly who is the informant. Most terrorists just make a wholesale slaughter of all possible informants, quite regularly.

Asylum Seeker

Whistleblowers, traditionally are given the shaft, and I accept that it is part of life that if you transmit verifiable conspiratorial information to the public domain, you are vulnerable to the wrath of powerful forces that may be available to the parties of the conspiracy.

This is different to information that is secretly passed or sold to the enemy in their private domain. This is the principal difference between whistle blowing and treason. Sure, if you have access to some confidential or secret information, you can sit on it, publish it or sell it secretly.

Either way, with the situation in progress under way in London, it resembles more a diplomatic game of chess than a series of past and possible future court cases. It is even plausible that some parties are playing to lose. People that had put up bail, seemed quite content in losing it, and the British may be playing to lose now. It would be face saving if diplomatic priorities means that Assange would require safe passage to Ecuador to avoid setting a dangerous diplomatic precedent.

Life Lessons From the Better Half

Life Lessons from the Pandemonious Parigi Palace.
1. I keep hearing things about how you shouldn't eat or drink, or put on make up while driving the car, because it's too much of a distraction. I could eat, drink and put on make up, all at the same time while driving the car, and it would be less distracting that having 3 kids in the back.
2. When a plaintive voice from behind the drivers seat says "Mummy, I made splashyou!", you need to say "God Bless You". And just be thankful that this time she didn't actually splash you.
3. The Lalaloopsy dolls now come in 2 packs, with a big sister and a little sister, we know this because we saw them in the shops. Apparently they are "Just like Abi and Mieki". I know this because Abi told me, and I guess she is right, apart from the pink/purple/orange/blue hair.
4. When Daddy is preparing to change a nappy, and the 18mo who rarely uses actual words, is laying on the change table very clearly saying, "It's baaaad", take her word for it. And that is why it's Daddy's turn to change the nappies on the weekend.
5. When 5 o'clock comes, and the bus drives away with the almost 13yo, who has driven you crazy for the last 3 days shopping and packing for a Music Tour to Brisvegas, you can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that if anything is forgotton now she will just have to do without it, or the teachers will have to sort it out. That is, you can if you are the Mummy who now has a week of peace before all the dirty washing comes home. If you are the Daddy however, who suffers from seperation anxiety, you can now prepare to torment your wife by being stressed and miserable for the next 7 days, for NO GOOD REASON. Learn to let go a bit so your kids can have a life, and get one of your own in the process. Besides, there are 5 other kids in the house you can lavish you attention on.
Unlike · · 16 June at 20:26 ·

1. As torturous as shopping and packing for your 13yo to go to Brisbane for a week is, it is far worse to go through it with a 19yo with the flu going to Thredbo for 10 days. It will probably take me 10 days to recover from the ordeal.
2. As much fun as it has been to tease Marco about his separation anxiety from Felicia, he can expect even less sympathy if he is missing Belinda. I plan to enjoy the next 10 days without an adult child tormenting her younger siblings until they scream and wake the baby, blaming her parents for every imaginable thing, (including the fact that Ray's Outdoors advertise thermal underwear as up to 60% off, but don't give the actual price, because I obviously have control of that), and either manipulating, sweet talking or just plain whinging to get other people to pay for everything for her.
3. If you tell your cardiologist that you are a poor uni student, with 5 younger siblings who sap your parents dry of all the money they should have kept to spend on you, and can't afford to come for a follow up test, he will not only offer to do the test "for gratis", he will also bulk bill you for the current appointment.
4. Gen Y's do not know what "for gratis" means, and getting them to shut up while they're ahead, without actually explaining it in front of the doctor or his receptionist is not that easy. Somewhere along the line I have failed as a parent, because "the look" does not work on my first born.
5. The scariest thing about taking your child for tests with a heart specialist, is the thought that he will discover that she doesn't have one. Turns out she does, and for the past week she has just been using it for pumping blood, and not much else. Here's hoping a holiday in the snow will thaw her out a bit.
Unlike · · 22 June at 23:00 ·


1. When you can't find Tamieka, who is small, so easy to lose, she will always be in the last place you look. According to Marco this is because once you find her, you stop looking. It's not really true though. Once you find her, you go looking for the trail of destruction she has left in her wake.
2. If you want to get flowers for the garden, tell your husband that you want to go to Bunnings to get herbs to plant. It fits in with the Food Nazi code of conduct. You will have to buy herbs as well, just so that you can slip the flower seedlings in between them so he doesn't notice just how many you have. And if all else fails, tell him they have edible flowers. Just be careful not to buy any poisonous ones. He may feed them to the kids. (That might explain all the throwing up.)
3. Some people might think that I have an excessive amount of cot/toddler bed sheets, if they knew how many I had. But if they had been here last night and today, when four seperate lots of bedding went into the wash, from two tiny people throwing up on them, they would not begrudge me my extra sheets, or blankets, or cloth nappies.
4. You know your teenage son doesn't get further away from his bedroom than the bathroom or the fridge during school holidays, when he's going to his friends for an all day and night computer game marathon (broken only by a few hours at lazer tag in the middle), and as he walks past the front garden bed that you just spent the whole weekend weeding and replanting, asks "Did you go on a weed masacre or something?".
5. Morning people are strange creatures. Getting up at 6am to start work at 7, is not that fun. Especially in June. I just don't understand why some people get up this early just because they like it, and say it's the best time of the day. It's cold and dark and normal people just want to be in bed sleeping. I'm going to write to the tax office and ask them to change the end of the financial year to September. It won't clash with Christmas, it won't be in winter, and it won't feel so awful when I have to get up early to do PAYG statements.
Like · · 25 June at 22:58 ·

1. If Dad is home, it is his duty to help Abi go to the toilet. It doesn't matter that she can do it herself, and does when he's not here. When she says "Dad, come on", he'd just better come. And as soon as she is on the toilet, he should "Get out and shut the door, Dad".
2. In desperation at being told to hurry up and drive, when stopped at red lights, Mummy taught Abi all about red lights and green lights, and policemen and jail. When Dad is driving now, and goes through orange lights, "NO DAD, you have to STOP! You need to wait for the green light to go. You are so naughty Dad, you didn't wait for the green light!"
3. When Tamieka gets her head stuck in the arm of the chair, you shouldn't pull her out and say "Oh you poor thing." "She's not a THING Dad, she's a Mieka! Don't call her a thing."
4. When Dad has a headache, a cat or dinosaur sticker on his forehead will fix it. Stangely it seems to work. Makes me think Marco is either secretly taking anelgesics, or was just faking the headache for sympathy. Either sympathy or he thinks he looks good with a kids sticker on his forehead.
5. And for the greatest wisdom of all, when the Food Nazi is trying to make you feel guilty for eating ice-cream, and tells you that he will be so disappointed if you eat it, this is the answer I intend to use in the future. "You won't DIE, Dad.", said in a tone of exasperation meant to infer that she is entirely over his attempts to use emotional blackmail to control her diet.
Unlike · · 1 July at 17:40 ·

1. Parenting is all about bedtime and dire consequences. You spend the morning threatening dire consequences if teenagers don't get out of bed, and the evening(and often well into the night) threatening dire consequences if they don't get back into bed. And I would very much like to know why the parents of the teenagers talking to mine on vent in the middle of the night aren't making their sons go to bed.
2. It would be better if all the kids in the house were either morning people, or night owls. I wouldn't mind getting up a 6am, if I had gotten to bed before 1am. As much as I like school holidays, I look forward to much better sleeping patterns once school restarts.
3. Townsville seems to be having winter with a vengence. I think it must be because all the expats who moved south are coming home for the high school reunion, and bringing the cold weather with them. Just make sure you take it back with you when you leave.
4. Cars should be serviced in summer, not winter. It's not right having to leave the house at 7am when the temperature is 10 degrees. Try to remember this for next year Marco Parigi.
5. I am not a fan of car racing, and would rather watch grass grow than watch cars drive round and round a track to see who goes the fastest. Normally I have "you live your life your way, and I'll live mine" policy, but frankly when a ridiculous sport puts up road blocks over half the CBD, and has ugly buildings erected, which get used one weekend a year, I become less tolerant. If the V8 organisers were to decide that there is a better place to hold their race at the end of the 5 year contract, I would not be unhappy.
Unlike · · 4 July at 18:59 ·

1. We won't need to water the garden for a while, now that the winter monsoons have set in. Those are the monsoons you get without risk of a cyclone, although it has been a bit windy.
2. Men should stop writing lists of instructions on how to be good housewives, or women may start writing lists of instructions on how to be good husbands. They will be headed up "How to be a real Man". That one is for you Jia Zhang.
3. A really good day is the day when your house is reasonably clean (we could stop there and that would do it, but not today), and both your toddlers take a nap at the same time, and so does the uni student on holidays, enabling you to take a nap too. And yes, I've been a mother long enough to know, when miracles happen, go with them.
4. A really bad day is when the fan belt in your dryer breaks, and the kids at one of the highschools started a rumour, which spread like wildfire, that school is cancelled today because of all the rain. Now my reasonably clean house has washing hanging all over it, trying to get dry.
5. Crazy Clarks sell really good, cheap rain guages. Only $2. Don't bother getting one. They don't hold enough rain. I would like to tell you just how much it rained last night, but the rain guage overflowed, so you'll just have to look in up on the net. Or go with my very accurate measurement of "lots".
Unlike · · 10 July at 22:24 ·

1. You know kids these days are growing up too fast when your 3yo rolls her eyes at you, with the same level of skill as your 19yo.
2. You know kids these days have less respect for their elders when your 3yo says "Dad listen to me!" and after Dad says, "ok I'm listening", responds "I told you to SHUT UP DAD!"
3. You know kids these days watch too much TV (or IView in this case), when your 3yo goes around all day snorting, just like Peppa Pig.
4. You know why kids these days have all these character flaws when your listen to the example being set to them by their teenage siblings.
5. You realise that you can forgive them anything when your 3yo and 19mo get up in the morning, and seeing each other for the first time since they were forced apart the night before, throw their arms around each other and start kissing as if they thought they might never see one other again.
Life Lessons from the Pandemonious Parigi Palace. (I've been putting this one off as sometimes you don't want to admit to all the lessons you've needed to learn.)
1. Drinking too much alcohol is bad. It's bad for your liver. Bad for your brain cells. Bad for your blemish free reputation. It may however be good for your husbands reputation. If you hear any rumours about mine, I may be responsible for starting them, and they may just be true. But don't anyone out there get any ideas. I've been putting up with the out-laws for 20 plus years, so ladies, he's mine!
2. 25 years ago, Marco and I were blessed to go to school with some really wonderful people, and we are really thankful for that. But don't let any of them tell you they are grown up mature people. In fact some of them are downright ratbags and degenerates. Those are the one's we like the best.
3. Sometimes in life, when we least expect it, we get the opportunity to meet new people who will make an enoumous difference in our lives for the better. We should grab those opportunities with both hands and not let go. Life is short, and some of us hide behind our own fears and insecurities. I have done this for most of my life. (until you add alcohol and stir - then anything's possible). On the weekend I made a new friend, and some new old friends. If it looks like I'm creeping back behind my wall, someone knock it down and drag me out.
4. There is a reason people our age don't go clubbing. Young people look at you funny at first, and then with a growing level of annoyance. The noise level in clubs is way too high, and bar staff don't really want to serve us. I did meet the most diplomatic bouncer at Flynns though. When I asked if he wanted to see ID, he told me it wasn't necessary, I had an honest face. Honest = wrinkled.
5. We should all aim to be the cool, non-judgemental type of parents, who willingly pick their kids up at all hours of the night from where ever they happen to be during their growing up turning into adult years. That way, when we regress back to those years ourselves, they will be the cool, non-judgemental type of kids, who willingly come to pick us up at all hours of the night from where ever we happen to be. And if you are as lucky as me, they won't even lecture you on your behaviour, or lack of shoes.

Mad Monday and all that.

Monday the 9th was dubbed mad Monday due to the solar tariff reduction deadline. It was the biggest test of my principled stance against solar tariffs. My only way of personal protest is to avoid taking advantage of them, but the bombardment of ads leading up to Monday was incessant. Half the population lined up to get their applications in before the midnight deadline. I failed to get a valid application in, and last night I had nightmares about having missed out. It's still just a type of investment, and my instincts are always to zag when everybody zigs, so I may get solar when nobody else is, without need for subsidy.

I definitely think that a sudden reduction was not the way to reduce the financial burden of the scheme. The main risk is from the long guaranteed tariff amount. It would have been a much smoother ride if the term of contract were reduced in stages from 15 years down to 5 years, thus reducing the long term risk.