The Daily Good News
Good news today: got myself excused from jury duty, so should be able to get amongst that east swell next week. Fingers crossed there's a bank!
How does one get excused from jury duty pops ?
Pumping here all week, and I felt totally in tune with my Russ Short Bonzer.
Very happy.
It’s good news when you can just sit and watch the ocean , spotting whales and enjoying a coffee , without tearing your hair out thinking of the waves you’re missing.
Hope everyone else is getting a few on this fine winter’s day.
Bunch of possible reasons, Udo - for me it was pre-booked OS flights that would have taken place during the trial. Apparently they won't always accept that, but did for me.
Thing is, if you get excused, you go straight to the top of the call-up list again, so not always worth it.
I just watched “ The runaway Jury “ last night. Based on the John Grisham novel, it’s a story of a young couple imposing themselves into a jury and influencing the outcome of a trial for their own advantage.
It could be worth looking into if you’re given another opportunity to serve , Pops.
Appears very lucrative and quite possible if the movie is any realistic guide . And I can’t see why it wouldn’t be, Hollywood doesn’t lie.
Ha thanks Blowin, I'll check it out. And nah, I can't think of a single instance of hollywood ever being misleading...
Though having done jury duty once before, I'd say it really wouldn't be too hard for a juror to influence the outcome of a trial... not sure how convincing others to vote "murder" over "manslaughter" would lead to personal gain, though!
You’ll have to watch the movie or read the book.
I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending.
Funny thing jury duty selection. It's meant to be random selection yet me and my young bloke both got a call up on exactly the same date and ticket number (or whatever they call it).
Someone forgot to scramble their voters list I reckon!!!
It's a weird game for jury selection. I got called up 3 times in 18 months before 23 and my father who is 30 years older had never been called up at all. I sent a letter to the Sheriff or whatever they call the position that covers Jury jury pointing this out and and it was getting beyond a joke (especially for my employer). I got excused and been only called up once since (8 years later). Been 17+ years now without a call-up. Must have used up all of my invitations.
Yeah, but how many times have you FRONTED a jury? That's the real question.
Those sarongs didn't steal themselves.
Never fronted a jury brother, and to think otherwise is an affront (never affronted about the sarong).
And the prices I pick up the sarong's for in Bali, they are a steal.
I’m dying to shoehorn in my favourite joke about someone being charged with receiving swollen goods here guys.
Maybe somehow tie it in with Izzy’s appearance on the Star Observer ?
Well, now that you've brought it up, it'd be rude not to share, Blowin
I got done for stealing kitchen utensils.
But I just had to take that whisk.
I remember when you stole that giant spoon. It caused quite a stir.
Palms forehead.
At least there has been no a-salt and battering..... Now you can palm your forehead.
Well the Good News is that there's a few laughs on the The Daily Good News thread, which is always a good thing.
Also, it's gonna be pumping from this weekend to next!
Hope you get a few Swellnet crew.
E
Hahaha he's got a nose for a good surf tale
Good morning East Coast Swellnetonians check out your Epic Sunrise
The good news isn’t that I am on the train heading to Sydney for work for the rest of the week, watching beautiful clean lines marching in to the coal coast.
The good news is my son heading off on a ten day road trip up to the north coast. Chasing waves and sleeping in his van wherever he pleases. Walking in the footsteps of many before him is great to see.
Tom Gleeson winning gold and upsetting all the tinsel and plastic.
O night in Kiama. Tired and hungry. Local eatery Silico serving take away locally caught Blackish (Luderick) and chips . Delicious.
Word Warning! Don't refer to this fish by its old fashioned nickname to anyone under 35 (esp man bun types) or risk an indignant lecture about .............................
Great score.
Harder to come by locally caught fish meals these days than you’d think was possible.
How can it be cheaper to serve a shit fish from 7000kms away than a cheap local fish ? Bassa from Thailand is cheaper than mullet from the creek down the road .....how ?
"benefits" of globalisation.
but if I stand on the wrong side of a rock down here I'm a criminal for catching a tailor that swam into a marine park.
The worst ever was sitting at the Co-op at Illuka waiting for our fish and chips to cook , watching hundreds of wild , healthy fish swim around in the river at my feet and then being served defrosted shit from God knows where.
You’ve always got to ask if the fish is local , even when it seems ridiculous to do so.
Anyway, good news.....ate a delicious bit of self caught Coral trout for dinner myself. Last few pieces in the freezer.....which ain’t such good news.
The fight back against 'influencers' begins!
"I hope it inspires small businesses to hold their own and tell people to fuck off,” says the righteous Whippy dude.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/03/ice-cream-los-angeles-instagram-influencers
go the prawns from the Iluka co-op, you pay big bucks for them but nothing beats those kings from the Clarence.
fresh white bread, lettuce and mayo .....bingo.
Along the same lines:
“In 2014, chef Davide Cerretini advertised a special that would forever change his fate: Anyone who left his restaurant a 1-star review on Yelp would get 25% off a pizza.”
How awesome is this :
“At times, the requests were particularly offensive. He said an assistant to a famous actor – a woman on a television show who he declined to name – recently asked if he would donate ice-cream to the cast and crew. In exchange, the actor offered to take a photo at his truck.
His response: “As much as I’d love to do that, I don’t think my kid’s school accepts celebrity photos as a form of tuition payment.””
Classic.
Freeride- If only I’d eaten the prawns . That was one of the worst dining experiences of my life . Not so much just the poor quality of the food , but the discrepancy between it and what I’d been expecting.
Utter disappointment.
Normally I’d go ballistic, but instead I was just deflated. Such a perfect arvo after good waves and then......battered dogshit from Egypt.
Quick stroll across to road for a beer at the cool little fisho’s pub turned things around.
PS Just remember trying Clarence prawns in Yamba a couple of years ago . Surfed Snapper, then your joint , then Angourie in consecutive days and celebrated with a longneck and prawns as you say.....fresh rolls with butter.
My mouth is watering now thinking about sweet , meaty prawns ....
Not being very social media savvy those two articles are jaw dropping to a tech idiot like myself. HTF have we got to this evolutionary point in time as a human race that this kind of social behaviour is acceptable (except for an ice cream truck owner and pizza guy)
On the subject of plugging good seafood Skippers on the wharf at St Helens in Tasmania - Good News for your stomach all round!!!
And then there is this! Pretty vacant?
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/jul/04/meet-the-...
Sad that people buy into that shit.
Makes you wonder what daily problems the world dishes up to the murfing community!!! Be a hard life when the kombucha supply runs out.
Letters page from Surfing World, December 1963 (right click to enlarge):
In short...
Fish eye photos are a gas.
Surfers want more exposure of surf spots.
Chook searches for a 20 pound jalopy
More exposure of the Gold Coast.
More exposure of Vicco (to complete the mag)
Kid gets called a kook.
Midget is already old news in '63.
Classic. Everything's a gas (including Jumping Jack Flash - are you hip to my jive?).
Dennis Desmond from Brisbane and the Wilson brothers from Mexico, however... not so much of a gas (although Nat Young obviously thought it was a good idea and ran with it years later).
The contributors list is worth a look too.
The last article in the mag is about the 1963 Australian Championships with 15-year old Nat Young winning. Not hard to join the dots.
"the local surfing fraternity refer to me as a kook"
Hah ha ha
Fist and foremost, thank you ED.
Having started reading Don Quixote de La Mancha, I was pondering the migration of language.
This article is a really good example of literacy levels of that time. Yes, there are (fad) colloquialisms, euphemisms that are funny because the context changes over time, but I wonder: are there deeper insights that this literature can provide -can we predict the future by looking at the past?
What do you think Stu? Has the average level of English deteriorated since 63?
Ayp
From Sydney Uni website. You may have read similar in the MSM as the tech develops.
'Plastic pollution and the technology to beat it'
Perhaps the only time Professor Thomas Maschmeyer (BSc(Hons) ’91 PhD ’95) doesn’t have his head full of research questions is when he’s mountain biking. “Trying not to come off a mountain bike as you scream down a hill is a pretty good way to keep your mind away from work,” he says.
Maschmeyer’s work is both fascinating and important. One aspect is based on a distressing premise: there are beaches in the world where no human has ever set foot that are covered in our garbage.
Most of it is plastic that spews from the rivers where it’s been dumped, often on an industrial scale. If you think things are bad now, it’s estimated that by 2050, there will be more weight of plastic in the oceans than fish.
But this article isn’t about the problem of plastic waste. It’s about a potential technological solution, which is already leading to the construction of a new kind of plastic recycling plant in the UK.
The technology is based on what’s called a catalytic hydrothermal reactor (Cat‐HTR), an idea originated by Maschmeyer and developed through his start‐up company, Licella. The process was and continues to be strongly supported by the University of Sydney and a highly skilled team of academics, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs.
“People are excited by work that could make a real difference,” says Maschmeyer. “With my students, sometimes we have to tell them to go home because they’re working too much.”
What makes the Cat‐HTR process exciting isn’t that it can recycle plastic. It’s that it can recycle mixed plastics, often referred to as contaminated, end‐of‐life plastics. This is the material the Chinese recycling industry no longer accepts from the rest of the world because it is so hard to deal with.
To understand why mixed plastics are difficult to recycle, it helps to understand some basics about plastic itself.
The starting point for most plastic is crude oil, which is rich in carbon atoms linked as rings and chains. Each of the carbon atoms is connected to one or more hydrogen atoms. Collectively, these molecules are called hydrocarbons.
When the bonds between the carbon atoms or between the carbon and hydrogen atoms are broken, radicals are generated. By their nature, these radicals are exceptionally eager to bond with other molecules.
On the plus side, inventing new ways for these hydrocarbons to break and recombine has led to the dizzying array of fuels, chemicals and materials that underpin much of modern life, including a huge range of plastics with qualities like transparency, opaqueness, rigidity, squeezability, toughness, delicacy and all the other features that make plastic so endlessly useful.
Imagine if all our containers were still made of glass, pottery or metal. And how would electricity work if there were no non‐conductive plastics?
Now the downside. In conventional, ie, mechanical recycling, plastics can only be processed with other waste made of the same or very well‐defined mixtures of plastic. Using unsorted, random compositions of plastics gives unpredictable results, producing materials of no use to anyone.
That’s why plastics are sorted strictly into their six classes for recycling, and why most contaminated, end‐of‐life plastic, which makes up about 50 percent of the world’s waste plastic, is burned, sent to landfill or indeed dumped into rivers. Things would be so much easier if all types of plastic could be recycled together using a chemical route.
The questions has always been: how? For Maschmeyer, the answer is water.
As Cat‐HTR Technology breaks plastics down into smaller hydrocarbon components, the system uses water and a mix of catalysts to prevent the intermediate radicals from reacting with each other. The resulting liquid is a stew of stable, distillable molecules that can be easily separated into high value components, ready for reuse.
Of all the current recycling methods, this ease of distillation – enabled by Cat‐HTR’s stable product mix – makes the process uniquely efficient.
Maschmeyer’s method also transforms waste plastic in another hugely significant way.
By converting it into saleable products like waxes, lubrication oils, fuels and gases, which can be used to make new plastics, the waste plastic itself is given monetary value. As Maschmeyer says, “Once you give something value, people look after it. They don’t toss it into rivers; they’ll try and do something with it.”
Considering the sheer volume of waste plastic choking the world that can now be monetised, it’s not surprising Maschmeyer’s work has attracted commercial interest. The plant in the UK is being built through an infrastructure investor, Armstrong Energy, and when it comes online, it will convert 20,000 tonnes of waste plastic annually.
And that’s only the beginning. Oil multinationals have expressed strong interest in the oil products the process can produce, and partnerships are being negotiated for more and bigger plants to open around the world, with the Finnish multinational and renewables leader, NESTE Oil, being the first official partner.
It’s an amazing place to be for Maschmeyer, especially considering where he started.
“People realise plastics are entering the food chain and we have a substantial problem,” says Maschmeyer.
Growing up in what was then the rough side of post‐Second World War Hamburg, Maschmeyer was the only youngster in his street to finish ‘Gymnasium’, Germany’s senior‐tier of schooling, topping most years. Following his Australian wife to Sydney, he started a double degree at the University of Sydney in science and engineering, later focusing entirely on science.
After his PhD, Maschmeyer worked in London, then Cambridge. He progressed quickly, which he credits to his Lutheran world view and protestant work ethic. By the age of 31 he was in the Netherlands and Head of the Department of Applied Organic Chemistry and Catalysis at the Delft Institute of Chemical Technology. He became Vice Chair of the whole institute a couple of years later.
Missing the hands‐on research he had enjoyed before his appointment to these senior roles, he decided to return to Sydney as a Federation Fellow.
“Also the kids started to support Dutch soccer teams. I had to put a stop to that,” he says laughing.
He hasn’t fully avoided senior university postings (until recently he was the Founding Director of the University of Sydney’s Nano Institute), but he now happily runs a research team, doing work that just earned him the “Australian Science Oscar” – the 2018 Eureka Prize.
“I have around 15 students doing work in all sorts of areas,” he says. “I think I’m quite good at spotting talent and getting people hooked on a particular journey. And of course, if they’re successful, I’m successful. So, it’s enlightened self‐interest, really.”
With the Cat‐HTR initiative well underway, Maschmeyer is pursuing numerous other high‐impact projects. His current research focus is on another revolutionary technology – a new generation of batteries for storing renewable energy. But that’s a whole other story.
Another aussie initiative dealing with another environmental issue - old tyres.
"Green Distillation Technologies is an unlisted Australian public company formed to solve the problem of dealing with billions of old tyres. GDT has developed innovative technology that converts tyres back into carbon, oil and steel, without producing emissions."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-02/recycling-australias-tyre-piles/1...
It’s no stretch to imagine a world where people are scrounging to discover the remnant plastics strewn through remote corners of the world following the initial gold rush of salvaging plastics as the technology is developed to reuse it.
Personally, I consider the current plastic problem to be as much aesthetic as anything else. No doubt whatsoever that the short - medium term future will not see plastic waste being an issue.
It’ll eventually come to the point of the microscopic particles being sieved from the oceans and soil in a similar manner to modern miners reworking the tailings of the mines from previous eras.
No doubt this voracious commercial hunt for remnant plastics will be detrimental to the inhabitants of the oceans , but that’s another problem for another set of eggheads to solve.
Interesting part of that Maschmeyer article is the "strong interest" of the oil multinationals. Seems they don't give 2 hoots about the damage their by-products are causing past & present, but as soon as those pesky by-products can be monetsied they start circling like a bunch of vultures. Sort of like someone taking a dump on your BBQ plate, getting someone else to turn it into a tasty rump steak then selling it to your neighbour.
Recently spent a few days down the south coast, including an arvo with a mate who, after twenty years living OS and elsewhere in Oz, has moved back down the coast. Not to the same town he's from, in fact where he lives now doesn't even register as a town, more a hamlet, but it is surrounded by an array of great waves so who cares about classifications. Paid way under Sydney's median house price for a 1.5 acre block with a creek as a boundary, big enough to fish in or paddle all the way to the coast if you didn't want to make the 5 minute walk.
Needs a bit of work to get it tip top, and he pointed that out to me during an inspection, though he also showed me the best places to catch the arvo sun, where he's putting the board racks, the beer fridge, not to mention the couches to sit and drink the contents of the beer fridge in the arvo sun as the roos hop across the backyard while the kids fish in the creek.
Might take a while to get all the work finished.
Sounds awful.
hahaha!! "got lost for a couple of hours"
Reminds me of the time I got really pissed in Hobart on the second day there and made friends with some local girls. Went back to their house, managed to offend one of them by saying that the nude art she'd made looked androgynous. Got kicked out in the middle of the night, totally lost, freezing cold and spent a couple of hours following ridgelines and valleys, faint lights of the city and my nose back into town where I stopped a bakery van on the side of the road at 4 am and he took me back into the city. Still disoriented and very cold, I found a band leaving a music venue and they then took me back to the hostel. A couple of hours rest later the fire alarm sounded and the hostel was on fire. We got hurried out and I was so drunk that I fell asleep on a bench outside until woken by the cold. Then, went looking for my car later that morning, had decided it was stolen and reported it as such to the police and insurance company. A little more wandering around the city and I found it, exactly in the place I left it.... Thought, man, you really gotta cut down on the hooch.
Dedicated to good news ....