We have 108 guests and no members online
On February 16th 2024 Wendy and I set-forth on a 20 day trip, revisiting old haunts in SE Asia.
From Hong Kong we made a brief side-trip to Shenzhen in China then embarked on a Cruise, sailing down the east coast, south, to Singapore where we spent a few days, before returning home: [Hong Kong; Ha Long Bay/Hanoi; Hoi An; Ho Chi Min City (Saigon); Bangkok; Ko Samui; Singapore]
In July and August 2023 Wendy and I travelled to the United States again after a six-year gap. Back in 2007 we visited the east coast and west coast and in 2017 we visited 'the middle bits', travelling down from Chicago via Memphis to New Orleans then west across Texas, New Mexico, Nevada and California on our way home.
So, this time we went north from Los Angeles to Seattle, Washington, and then into Canada. From Vancouver we travelled by car, over the Rockies, then flew east to Toronto where we hired a car to travel to Ottawa and Montreal. Our next flight was all the way down to Miami, Florida, then to Fort Lauderdale, where we joined a western Caribbean cruise. At the end of the cruise, we flew all the way back up to Boston.
Seems crazy but that was the most economical option. From Boston we hired another car to drive, down the coast, to New York. After New York we flew to Salt Lake City then on to Los Angeles, before returning to OZ.
As usual, save for a couple of hotels and the cars, Wendy did all the booking.
Breakfast in the Qantas lounge on our way to Seattle
Wendy likes to use two devices at once
1963 was a pivotal year for me. It was the year I completed High School and matriculated to University; the year Bob Dylan became big in my life; and Beatlemania began; the year JFK was assassinated.
The year had started with a mystery the Bogle-Chandler deaths in Lane Cove National Park in Sydney that confounded Australia. Then came Buddhist immolations and a CIA supported coup and regime change in South Vietnam that was both the beginning and the begining of the end for the US effort there.
Suddenly the Great Train Robbery in Britain was headline news there and in Australia. One of the ringleaders, Ronnie Biggs was subsequently found in Australia but stayed one step of the authorities for many years.
The 'Space Race' was well underway with the USSR still holding their lead by putting Cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova into orbit for almost three days and returning her safely. The US was riven with inter-racial hostility and rioting. But the first nuclear test ban treaties were signed and Vatican 2 made early progress, the reforming Pope John 23 unfortunately dying midyear.
Towards year's end, on the 22nd of November, came the Kennedy assassination, the same day the terminally ill Aldous Huxley elected to put an end to it.
But for sex and scandal that year the Profumo Affair was unrivalled.
Carbon Sequestration Source: Wikimedia Commons
At the present state of technological development in NSW we have few (perhaps no) alternatives to burning coal. But there is a fundamental issue with the proposed underground sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a means of reducing the impact of coal burning on the atmosphere. This is the same issue that plagues the whole current energy debate. It is the issue of scale.
Disposal of liquid CO2: underground; below the seabed; in depleted oil or gas reservoirs; or in deep saline aquifers is technically possible and is already practiced in some oil fields to improve oil extraction. But the scale required for meaningful sequestration of coal sourced carbon dioxide is an enormous engineering and environmental challenge of quite a different magnitude.
It is one thing to land a man on the Moon; it is another to relocate the Great Pyramid (of Cheops) there.
