Man removes baby with a bag

How to open a can without an opener!

by with No Comment DisastershumourPersonal

Imagine the cliche

Disaster strikes, people are starving but you have prepared. You have a room filled of canned food but your tin openers break.

Being prepared for life’s curve balls is way more compolicated than a cupboard of canned food but there could be a time in your life when you are hungry and have a can you want to open. All you need now to get your food from the can is a slab of concrete. Watch the video below its quite ingenious.

This video is from the self proclaimed “Crazy Russian Hacker”. On the same channel I also found another video which was truly amazing. Eight guys that made 16 coke bottle rockets and threw them in the air causing 10 seconds of rocket fueled mayhem. This was filmed with very, very high speed cameras in high definition. What was produced was a remarkable, beautiful, slow motion video that looks amazing on my home theater.

So what was I doing on youtube anyway?

Well I was investigating a news story about a guy who created an invention to assist with childbirth based on a youtube video. After watching it I then linked found the other videos above. The man invented the item in the picture below

Man removes baby with a bagThe video that inspired him is below

finacial-collapse

Financial Collapse?

by with No Comment DisastersEconomicsMaths

 
I have been of the opinion for about 3 years that the troubles with the financial economy are terminal and none of the bailout nonsense is going to do anything apart from make it worse. I expect people in the UK and US to see there savings and investments being wiped out (after devaluation and collapse of the euro). Currently Australia is looking pretty good compared to elswhere however if (when) the banks fail I would expect that to cause either a bailout (therefore currency devaluation) or bank faliure here too.

A friend of mine from my finance club sent me the video below – its dynamite. When the BBC interviewed this bond trader they got what they didn’t expect!

Also on the subject of the ecionomy theres a new video by juice media out

If you want to know more about things finanical then you can find alot of stuff on The real Truth about money

Shadow stats is also a great place to dig into economic data if your interested

The crash course video course is also an excellent film that explains the basics of all things economic

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Downloading the internet

by with No Comment DisastersProductivity

Having local copies of useful stuff on the internet is handy when your not online. The internet is also constantly changing which means that just because something useful is on there now doesn’t mean it always be as useful in the future. For this reason I like local copies of some key items 1. How to download the wikipedia I used okiwiki 2. How to Download all your google docs You can now download all your google docs in one go easily. Click Actions -> Download -> All items 3. How to download maps onto your iphone I use offmaps but its a bit annoying. I also tryto zoom around on my iphone in the maps application to put the maps in cache (although is teduios)

floods

Floods in Castlemaine

by with No Comment DisastersPersonal

Australia has been devastated this last few months. The flooding has been on a massive scale affecting most of the east side of the country in one way or another. QLD has been most badly affected but NSW and VIC have also taken a pounding close to home Castlemaine has been affected. We spent last Sunday preserving fruits to donate to the guys that had their homes flooded in Castlemaine. Part of the growing ambundance project. Below is a video showing the the water. It is incredible after all the drought all the resiviors around castlemaine are now full. However the flooding has caused significant flooding and personal disasters.

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Banks need no money to lend you money

by with No Comment Behind the NewsDisastersEconomics

I went to my bank to get some money to by my new car the other day. I needed $4000. They told me that officially I needed to give 24 hours notice for cash withdrawl over $2,000 however they had enough today so they could give me my $4000. Now my bank is probably a bit smaller than ANZ but I found this quite startling. It got me wondering about how much money banks have in reserve.

A note about Reserve banking . Banks don't need $100
dollars to lend you $100.The US has a requirement that
the banks have to at least own equity worth 10% of the
total loans outstanding. So if Citibank only actually
owned $10 then the sum of all the loans they could
make could not exceed $100.

So I did a little investigation and what I found (with a quick look on wikipedia) concearned me somewhat. I knew that the US had a 10% requirement I didn’t know though that the UK and Australia does not require any reserve requirement whatsoever. So they can make money loaning money they don’t have. I wish I could do that. A tabe showing the reserve requirements by country can be found here wikipedia.

australia

Australia to Double Population

by with No Comment Behind the NewsDisastersEconomicsMathsPermaculture & GardenPersonal

Politicians (both labour and opposition) have been talking about immigration policies that would see the Australian population to almost double from 22 to 36million by 2050. Australia currently has the fastest growing population in the world.

The Australian citizens have never been asked about this.

Yesterday I watched a video from Dick Smith that basically debunked most of the widely used reasons for a “Large Australia”. He is campaigning to have the politicians actually consult the the people about the population strategy and come up with a sensible plan.

Intro Video

Long Video


“Dick Smith is one of Australia’s most recognised individuals. After a successful business career in retailing and publishing, Dick has become well known as a restless adventurer, making many pioneering and record breaking flights by helicopter, aeroplane and balloon.” More info and complete text on Dick Smiths full website here.

World Growth
Dick also broaches the subject of world population growth and the predicted increase in population from 6.7 to just over 9 billion by 2050. World food production over the last 9 years has remained flat and is looking likely to decrease as more soil becomes infertile. Concern about food availability in the future is one of the drivers that got me interested in permaculture. To see more about me and permaculture go to my permaculture page.

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The Cathedral Ranges National Park & Fire

by with No Comment DisastersPersonal

I have just got back from the cathedral ranges National Park. We bought a new canvas tent. The tent was good and easy to put up although the bag has ripped allready hmm.

From Catherdral Ranges 5/04/10 11:15 AM

Cathedral Ranges national Park last year 98% of it was burnt by the fire.

We were close to the town of Taggerty which had an exhibition and a sausage sizzle on the fire from the previous year which included small books written by the survivors. We went to the town of Alexandra (Which has a statue of Princess Alexandra of Denmark shipped from the UK).

We also went to Marysville – a town that was burnt down in one of the 400 fires that raged during the the Black Saturday bush fires. We both found it quite  sombre but also positive as the town is starting to be rebuilt. (Details here )

A short video of Marysville before the fire

Marysville after the fire