mike carey

This is an interesting map showing the population centres of each state in 1900 (blue) and 2010 (red). Most of them are surprisingly similar after 110 years, but three stand out, California, Nevada and Florida, with the centre of gravity shifting from SF to LA, Las Vegas growing from almost nothing and the growth of population in south Florida. The relative growth of the DC suburbs compared to the rest of Virginia also shows up clearly. It's one of heaps of maps a geographer/demographer in Melbourne tweets. You can see more of his stuff at

Not just a pretty face!

I haven't done it for years, although I had 30 years of my life when it was a regular occurrence, spit polished black leather uniform shoes and (at times) boots. Our combat boots went from black leather to a light tan with a suede-like finish late in my time. I still have a couple of pairs of leather shoes but I rarely wear them preferring sneakers. Shoe shine stands are not as much a thing here as they are in the US, so using them is not something that I've ever done (either here or when I've been in the US). The one time I remember having my shoes (boots to be precise) shined was by a kid who 'hassled' the guests in the hotel where I was staying in Cusco.

Vin Marco posted this on twitter, I can't say I'm affected by either dimension.

I'm due for a trip to Sydney but not before Christmas.

No, or at least not yet, noticed him a while back but haven't followed through. Now that I've read some of his reviews ......

There was a woman interviewed on the ABC this morning whose view was that the Christmas free pass should go ahead because people had planned for it and already bought food, so it would be 'unfair' to cancel it. FFS.

If you go to the 'contact me' tab in his ad, the 'call me now' option tells callers to ask for Jordan.

I think the sheriff meant to say a large boulder the size of a small car, but it didn't quite come out that way ...

I'd love to meet him whenever I can go to London next. No time soon, though.

As it says in the tweet, wait for it ... https://twitter.com/akkitwts/status/1337940595675807744?s=20

Raf Epstein is the Drive announcer on ABC Radio Melbourne, the local station that is talk, some music, news commentary and general life about town in its programming. Like ABC local radio around the country it has open phone lines, a text line and twitter account for the public to join it. What goes to air from the public contributions is managed so that it discusses the issues the stations are looking at, not any random thing that people want to say. Here's an article that Raf wrote for the ABC web site reflecting on the second wave of COVID-19 in Melbourne. https://www.abc.net.au/news/about/backstory/2020-12-13/abc-radio-melbourne-broadcaster-raf-epstein-on-coronavirus-covid/12976532 Melbourne endured about 120 days of tight restrictions, but there have been no community cases for about 45 days now and restrictions are minimal. There have been a few cases among travellers returned from overseas who are in supervised hotel quarantine. Overseas flights to Melbourne have only resumed in the last week or so after being stopped for several months.

Here's the link to submit a review - https://www.daddysreviews.com/submit And to the site home page - https://www.daddysreviews.com/news

And your enjoyment is obvious.

I think you proved the point you were contesting.. 'Outdoor dining' is not in the same category as 'everyday life' outdoors, it's far more like indoor dining. It breaches the natural social distancing, gathering density, circulation and size of gatherings that characterise other outdoor activities. As Josh noted, many 'outdoor' dining settings are tented in such a way that they eliminate air circulation and mimic indoor settings. Perhaps restrictions should be couched more in terms of numbers of people in a given area, spacing between patrons, length of time they are there, and the like rather than blanket approval/disapproval of whole classes of activities.

I restate my previous comments on my preferred images of Dallas. And no Gucci in sight.

There's a subtle distinction that needs to be made in this story. The conference was the source for all of these cases, but it's not to blame for the scope of the spread. That is down to the local preventative measures taken in the places to which the conference delegates returned. If their measures were good there would have been fewer cases, but conversely if the conference hadn't happened, the areas that it affected badly would most likely have been seeded by another source of infection. There has been a similar fallacy playing out here. Over 80% of Victoria's deaths in the second wave were in federally regulated aged care homes. The federal government blamed them on the state government, which managed the quarantine facilities from which the wave of infection had originated. It's true that that is where the infection came from, but the real problem was the failure of the federal government to ensure that measures to manage a wave of infection in the homes were in place. (There were no deaths in the smaller number of state regulated care homes.)

Probably counterfeit Gucci in many cases.

You paint an alluring picture.

There's no talk yet of when they will allow tourists in at all, much less without quarantine, from most countries. New Zealanders (or to be precise, people who have been in NZ for the previous 14 days) can come here now without quarantine, but they have to quarantine when they return home, so not many short term visitors. That may become a two-way bubble in the coming months. I somehow doubt that they will admit other visitors until they can do so without quarantine, possibly with some limited individual exceptions. NZ may ease its restrictions enabling people to do a NZ then Australia trip, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

That may be the image by which you characterise the city, and I cannot disagree, but I would prefer an image of Mr Nicholas.

Thanks @bigjoey, you reminded me of Robeson's having sung for the workers on the site of the Sydney Opera House in 1960.

It only seems like yesterday I received the e-mail from InnDulge cancelling my booking for this year's meeting. Last week, the Australian government extended the emergency ruling to keep our borders closed up to 17 March 2021. It could change before then, but I'm not confident. With no cases here, except for returning travellers in hotel quarantine, there isn't the urgency there is in the US and UK for rolling out the vaccines, and that is only likely to start in March (they aren't looking at emergency authorisations). I haven't bothered to renew my passport yet.

'Is not rat, Mr Fawlty, is hampster.'

Yeltsin was president of the Russian SFSR, one of the 15 union republics, at the time and the attempted coup was against Gorbachev who was president of the USSR. I was in the middle of my RAAF Staff College year and this was of obvious interest to a bunch of military officers.