I'm giving up hating Abbott for Lent.

Yeah, right, I'm lying after reading this.

"Mr Abbott says that with only just over 1 per cent of disability pensioners moving back into the workforce each year and nearly 60 per cent of recipients having potentially treatable mental health or muscular-skeletal conditions, it is time for reform."

My mental health does a bunk every time I see this fool spout more nonsense.

My muscular-skeletal condition crumbles when I think how many people voted for this this this this, oh for Heaven's sake whatever he is.

Not human.

OMG, what if he's an alien and they're all like him and we're invaded?

We'd be safe, if they're all as belligerent as he is, they'll fight each other to the death to get to the top.

Creep!

There'll be an exam on this!

The albatross was immortalized in Samual Taylor Coleridge's famous poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner but these birds have always been watched by sailors. They don't so much as fly as soar across the waves in a swoopping flight pattern upwind in wind speeds of 10 to 20 knots.

Albatrosses spend the majority of their long lives above the ocean. By the age of 50, an albatross has typically flown at least 1.5 million miles. The adults routinely fly hundreds of miles to gether food before returning to feed their chicks. The lucky ones make it, the unlucky die trying to grab the bait on the miles of long hooked fishing lines. Their wingspans can reach up to 12 feet but they rarely flap their wings

Phil Richardson, a retired oceanographer but still at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has studied the aerodynamics of the birds which can fly in any direction including into the wind without losing speed or steadiness in flight and with no wing flapping.

With his knowledge of sailing, gliding and his work with the movement of ocean currents, he began to look closely at the albatross.

Richardson came up with a theory involving the interaction between wind and ocean. In the trough of waves, there is little wind, because the waves block it. But above the waves and their troughs, winds blow briskly across the ocean in thin layers. Lower layers are slowed by air-sea friction near the ocean surface, but winds speeds increase as you go farther from the surface and higher up.

He concluded that albatrosses needed a minimum wind speed of 7 knots to soar and calculated that they could soar upwind at a speed of 12 knots. An albatross ascending from a wave trough at an angle would encounter progressively faster winds increasing its speed in the air as a burst of kinetic energy that enables it to climb to heights of 10 to 15 metres. (Hello, are you still with me) It then makes a tight turn downwind and swoops into another wave trough, adding airspeed as it descends through the wind sheer into progressively slower winds. Each addition of airspeed balances the loss of energy caused by drag on the bird. The albatross keeps up this cycle and each swoop cycle takes about 10 seconds. (a heck of a lot shorter than it took me to understand this).

This phenomenon is called dynamic soaring and glider pilots know it well. Richardson still didn't know how they flew upwind but being a sailor it came to him that the birds were tacking as ship's sails do. He went back to his model and calculated that the fastest course upwind for an albatross is to tack about 30 degrees to the right and left of the wind. He observed that the birds climb upwind but often dive perpendicular to the wind to maximize their average velocity in an upwind direction. (WAKE UP, this is interesting)

Of course the military are interested in all forms of flight dynamics at a small scale, using bird, bat and insect flight as models for the development of autonomous drones for use in war zones. They already have them but want better ones, don't they always?

"Great albatross! The meanest birds

Spring up and flit away,

While thou must toil to gain a flight,

And spread those pinions gray;

But when they once are fairly poised,

Far o'er each chirping thing

Thour sailest wide to other lands,

E'en sleeping on the wing."

Perserverando by Charles Godfrey Leland

Now for Easter

SOTHEBY'S WILL SELL THE MOST VALUABLE EMERALD AND DIAMOND TIARA TO HAVE APPEARED AT AUCTION IN OVER 30 YEARS IN ITS SALE OF MAGNIFICENT AND NOBLE JEWELS IN GENEVA ON 17.MAY.

ESTIMATED TO SELL FOR A RECORD £3.1-6.2 MILLION, THE HIGHLY IMPORTANT AND EXTREMELY RARE EMERALD AND DIAMOND TIARA IS COMPOSED OF 11 EXCEPTIONALLY RARE COLOMBIAN EMERALD PEAR-SHAPED DROPS WHICH WEIGH OVER 500 CARATS IN TOTAL.

THE EMERALDS ARE ALSO BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN IN THE PERSONAL COLLECTION OF EMPRESS EUGENIE.

THE SUPERB TIARA WAS COMMISSIONED, POSSIBLY FROM THE RENOWNED JEWELERS CHAUMET, BY GUIDO COUNT VON HENCKEL, FIRST PRINCE VON DONNERSMARCK FOR HIS SECOND WIFE PRINCESS KATHARINA. THE JEWELRY COLLECTION OF THE DONNERSCARCKS WAS KNOWN TO BE ON PAR WITH, OR EVEN TO HAVE EXCEEDED, THOSE OF MANY OF THE CROWNED HEADS OF EUROPE.

Now since I'm off chocolate, this would make a very nice Easter present. I have two green velvet gowns and a four strand pearl necklace with an emerald and diamond clasp. I could just see me sitting in the drawing room wearing this, downing a bottle of Cristal Champagne and watching "The Wedding". My invitation must have been mislaid in the mail.

It's been a long week.

This should be me, dressed in my favourite velvet, out in the garden, calm, peaceful, at one with nature without the garden crawlers. Damn millipedes are everywhere and I hate them.
My computer monitor decided it had had enough of life and was shrinking rapidly inwards and it would have lasted another month or two. Monday morning the BrickOutHouse, went out and came home with a flat screen monitor for me. Well, that's been fun. I've gone from a TV to an IMAX and being not technical at all, it's taken until today to get the resolution right even with reading the instructions. You know what I'm like with instructions, dyslexic. I had the fonts on standard type which was fine for the small monitor but this monster needed clear type and I think I'm right now.
The other is sitting on the floor behind me. I feel sorry that I didn't have time to tell him he was being disassembled. The flat screen is letting in so much light from the window that I can see how filthy with dust the keyboard is. Great, more vac'ing with the attachments that go over the the front of the hand held vac.
For months I've been telling BOH to bring in his clothes from the car. That would be the small car that is now belonging to someone else and he has a silver station wagon because I was having trouble getting in and out of the small car. You've all seen the 20 clowns getting out of a VW, so you get the picture. So the clothes, filled a double bed and how he had them in a small car would compare to protein folding. I've even washed his hammock and by the time all the socks were dried and put together, I only had 4 orphans left. Anything with more holes than T-shirt went to the bin, quietly, in a black plastic bag where he couldn't see them. Of course, being male he didn't bring them in on the first sunny days of the week, it was on the first rain day we had. There's nothing like blankets and jumpers that have been out in the rain and sun for days, lovely smell.
Now my sister and I have been telling him for ages about the chemicals he works with and how they get into his clothes and to get overalls. Never took a gnat's notice, hence the burn holes in shirts from welding and horrible chemical smells in fabric. Luckily for me, Woolies had a 3kg container of Oxyaction on sale this week. After all the washing was finished I hauled him out to look in the stainless steel sink, at the layer of chemical sludge on the bottom. Thank you Oxyaction. His clothes are neatly stacked in a bookcase and his very good clothes are in the wardrobe where he'd never think to look. I highly recommend putting men's clothes in bookcases, where they don't have to expend energy opening and shutting doors, even his shoes are stacked on the bottom shelf. His back op was a great success but he still can't bend over to tie his shoelaces, that's a no-no.
In the middle of this was shopping, two days with mother and a lovely time at the Optus shop with a salesman who was in great danger of having a mobile phone shoved down his throat. This is a shop, it sells Optus stuff, it has customers who pay for sales, it does not need a patronising imbecile behind the new shiny counter. Yes, I could have done all this by phone or internet but I wanted it done instore and on the spot. No, I didn't care that there was a queue out the door because Optus is too cheap to put on more salespeople. The new sim card is in the phone, credits are on the phone but the calls go straight to mailbox so I believe the little creep has done it deliberately. Now I have to go down to the home and fix it or I'll have her sisters ringing me thinking she's dead.
And the vacuum cleaner is still sitting in the middle of the lounge but it has been used for 10 minutes. I got the dust out of the fire, lit the pilot light without a hitch and managed to shut the door without breaking anything. Now that I've been so brilliant with this monitor, I'm going to have a shot at hooking up the DVD to the big TV, something the BOH would do in five minutes and he'll probably have to.

He knows me so well.

But not well enough Sedgwick.

How dare you sully

my Bombay Sapphire

with lemon!

But it is true that there is

one ripening lime

on my tree.

One more day of sun

should do it.

Jewells for No-one

Plique-a-jour dragonfly with a few diamonds, aquamarine and gold.
Another dragonfly but with rubies and gold.

And just one more, diamonds, platinum, rubies, gold and Peridots.

No fighting, it's not ladylike but when was this blog ladylike.

Now this is really weird

I've been de-cluttering, again, again and more but this article is only June 2010.
I don't know about other bloggers but I have my blog, sign on password and how to get to blogger written down for my executor. After all I don't want you lot to wonder where I am and I would like lots of wailing and rending of clothes and virtual roses if I happen fall in a hole permanently.

But there are sites on Teh Interwebs that will do it all for you.

mylastemail.com enables you to leave letters, photos or video messages for friends and family, as well as write your own obituary. (What a work of fiction I could write)

deathswitch.com. Imagine you die with a secret that you longed to reveal. (OMG who was on the grassy knoll?) Deathswitch is an automated system that prompts you for your password on a regular basis. If you repeatedly fail to respond, it assumes you have died and emails pre-scripted messages to nominated addresses.

legacylocker.com lets you create a master list of usernames and passwords for all your online accounts and social networking sites. Once your death has been verified by Legacy Locker, the list will be emailed to a named beneficiary.

seppukoo.com. Samurai warriors preferred to commit ritual suicide rather than allow themselves to be captured by enemies. Seppukoo.com enables you to commit "virtual suicide" by deleting your facebook account - or at least it did until a legal wrangle with Facebook, though the service hopes to be up and running again soon.

slightlymorbid.com. Now this is for me considering my executor is totally computer illiterate.
This service enables users to consolidate all their online contacts, allowing a trusted third party to contact them in the event of your demise.

Doesn't mention virtual roses. I can see it now, site after site of my devoted blog pals displaying virtual roses for my virtual glory and by the time I leave I expect they'll have virtual perfume.
I wonder how much to start a website?

I'm trying to ignore the earthquake in the room

Somehow I'm often disappointed in how Argyle Pink diamonds are set but here I think they got it right. This is the Shalimar Ring which features 4.86 Carats of Argyle Pink diamonds with a 1.25 carat pink round diamond centrepiece. It was last valued at $2 million but as they say, if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it. It's my favourite flower shape for a ring. I have a birthday in July, if you're interested.

Stylish, moi?

Poor Elephant's Child won't think of me as stylish by the time I've finished with her elegant meme, the rules of which I've forgotten already.
Link back to EC, done.

Next was 7 things about me. Bwahahahahha.
1. I lie about my weight, age and hair colour.
2. I swear theraputically which means I swear a lot.
3. Naked men in love scenes at the movies make me hysterical with laughter. As dear Sir Robert Helpman once said, some things just don't stop swinging.
4. With the scars and wrinkles I have, you could play snakes and ladders on my body and you wouldn't even lose the counter in my navel, I don't have one.
5. I cannot be hypnotised. I meant by persons, the hypnotic siren call of a magnum dark chocolate ice-cream is an entirely different proposition.
6. I was an alibi for an underbelly style of debt collection by a smooth operator in a 3 piece Italian suit.
7. I'm not particularly fond of babies, lethal weapons that fire at both ends. I don't know why the CIA needed rendition, when anyone stuck in a room full of screaming babies would confess to anything.

15 blogs, you're kidding! Now everyone knows I never do these things the right way so come on my magical mystery tour.
Oh dear, River I remember from my dial-up days that this blog has waiting time but worth for the genius of the artist.
Kath, because of the rotten year she had, this site is for Sapphire .
For the crafties, wander around here and save yourself the price of their magazines.
Jayne, the feral beast will just love this and you will want to break my fingers.
How about a bit of X-File type fun with the spooky and mysterious .
Most of us wouldn't have a blog if we didn't like reading so a visit to the Queen of mystery writers dear Aggie herself. This is a treat to catch up on the not on TV series.
A walk down memory lane for Elephant's Child and the rest of us can just dream about it.
There's always someone in our life that we'd love to blow up, smother or bury so hurry here and do it. You know you want to.
After that you'll need to settle back and contemplate the universe and open a beer, make mine a Cascade Light.
Another site that doesn't relate to Australia but is an ignored era of history in the United States. Don't miss a post of this blog.
Have a feel for the world at large, then here's a new way of looking at it.
Miss O'Dyne would never forgive me if I missed putting in the ultimate eccentric Gavin P-P.
Like to go back in time (I wouldn't, no dunnies, pfft) but reading about it is just as good , actually better.
Lordy, is that the time? I must go, the sun is over the yardarm somewhere.

Wild sharks

Is that a mouth or what? Now down to the scientific, sharks follow their noses to find prey but they only use one nostril at a time. They head in the direction of the first nostril that copped a whiff of noms even if the other nostril detects a higher concentration of the odor.

The problem of hunting by odor is that odors do not travel through the ocean in a straight line like me to Donut King. The scent breaks up into pieces, floating to different levels, being mixed by water currents so timing is all. The shark hits an odor trail at an angle rather than straight on so by turning in the direction of the 'first whiff nostril' the shark will automatically steer into the ordor patch. And the timing? The difference in timing when each nostril catches a scent can be as small as a tenth of a second.

So if you're hoping their timing is off, here comes the second line of nom finding. They have a sensitive organ called a lateral line, which runs the length of their bodies and picks up vibrations in the water. Functioning in a similar way to the hairs on our skin (are yours standing up right now) but more sensitive, it measures minuscule water flow differences and combined with sense of smell allows the shark to track the odor patches straight to the source.


And even if you think you can out swim those teeth and make it to the boat, look at this photo carefully. The Great White is out of the water and in flight so you could be halfway up the outboard ladder and crunchlunch. This photo was taken at False Bay near Cape Town and it was hard finding one that didn't have a seal, porpoise or bloke in its gob. It brings to mind the immortal words of Chief Brody, "We're gunna need a bigger boat".

Bears in the wild

Don't ever google for photos of a Kodiak or any other bear. It's bad enough that idiots want to go out and shoot them for fun but do they have to post photos of their moronic delight. I only went one page in case I came across Sarah Palin wearing that Stars and Stripes bikini cradling her shotgun.

He's sweet though, the one I found for this post although I do hope he might have had a chomp or two on a hunter like a Blue Whale nudging a "research vessel".

Chris Palmer was a producer of wildlife programmes but he's now dumped the bucket on the behind the scenes of such shows. Wild wolves are just as likely to be rented from a game farm.
And the bears. Scenes of bears feeding on a dead elk....looks great but the bears were probably rented and the frenzy over the elk, well that was probably due to the fact that stuffing an elk carcass with jelly beans was sure to attract attention. A bit like putting our Kath in the middle of a chocolate factory.

Even (you may start swearing now Miss O'Dyne) David Attenborough had to admit that film of a polar bear supposedly giving birth in the wild was shot in a zoo.

I think that those shots of huge sharks leaping out of the ocean off the coast of South Africa would have to be legit unless a few sticks of gelignite got tossed around. Next thing you know someone will be telling me that people on Facebook tell lies. I'm an innocent in this world.

I wonder how many jelly beans can be stuffed in an elk?

Memo to self: don't take jelly beans to Alaska.

Language

Say 'Skyscraper' and everyone thinks of the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building but it started life as something completely different.
It was an English naval term - a high light sail to catch the breeze in calm conditions.
It was the name of the Derby winner in 1788, after which tall houses became generally called skyscrapers.
Later it was a kind of hat, then slang for a very tall person. The word arrived in America as a baseball term, meaning a ball hit high in the air.
Now its world meaning is a very tall building.

And why am I giving you all these trivia winning facts? I'm trying to keep my brain active. According to health experts (blows loud disgusting raspberry sound) (nomm, raspberries) being obese could not only lead to the usual blah blah conditions costing all the healthy people a zillion zlotniks to keep us alive but now the fatty bombahs are first in line for Alzheimers. I swear if a damn big meteorite hit earth, the last words we'd hear would be, "The fatties did it, the fatties did it!"

Holiday in Hawaii

This is the Pu'u O'o crater on Kilauea where a fissure eruption started when the floor of the crater collapsed. The fissure is approximately 1,605 feet long. There were 150 small earth quakes recorded within Kilauea in the last 24 hours.



Along with the lava fountains 65 feet in the air, there is the danger of lethal sulphar dioxide gas around the eruption area. The best way to see the eruption is from someone else's photographs.

A Stylist's work is never done

Now this is what I like. Lovely lace, colour will go with the shoes, pink diamond will shine and the whole outfit can be upsized from this stick insect to bloggerbums. Forget the flowing white silk River , this is it, the one.

Don't you love it when it all comes together.

Yes, Yes, I've found the perfect shoes for the clutch

but now I'll have to find a bloke because clutching

is what I'd be doing trying to walk in these

but aren't they divine

and they have bows.

I'm in love.

I couldn't find the bloke.

But I did find a bit o' bling to go with the clutch. I'm a sucker for teardrop shape gems but the Rose of Dubai diamond is quite sweet. It's a Fancy Pink internally-flawless diamond of 25.05 carats. It was last sold at Christie's New York for US$6,008,00.00 in 2005 but how much is it worth 5 years later. Enough to hold its own with the bag I'd say, clutch I meant not this bag.

All I need is a party.

And the shoes to go with this but I can't think of one bloke that would come up to this standard.

The legendary house of Mouawad (remember that jewelled bra for Victoria's Secret) that is famous for its jewels and diamonds has yet again made news with its diamond studded handbag that has been claimed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive handbag.

Priced at $3.8 million this clutch has 4517 diamonds (105 yellow, 56 pink and 4356 and is crafted in 18k Gold. It's called the 1001 Nights Diamond purse and took artisans 1,100 hours and 4 months to create and weighs in with 381.92 carats on a base of 18 Karat gold.

Jayne, River, would you like to borrow it for the Sydney Bloggers Conference?