Disaster has befallen the two Golden Bowerbirds whose bowers were easy to find.  One bower was less than 100m from the homestead but the essential horizontal branch where the male hopes to lure the female has rotted away.  5 years work went into making his bower and the heart of it was the horizontal stick around which the sticks were most carefully arranged, and where he puts his trophies of lime-green lichen.

The other bower just off the red track, was even more impressive in the classic shape of two towers.  That one had a tree fall directly across the horizontal branch and mostly demolished one tower.  Of all the rotten luck.  It must be like having a bachelor pad, but the bed destroyed and no hope of replacing it.  The male plays no part in nest making or rearing the young.  His sole purpose in life is to lure a female and have his wicked way with her.  But she will give his life-long efforts the closest scrutiny, and canvass all available bowers before bestowing her favours.

Like trying to woo Cinderella, but instead of a glittering palace, all you have to offer is a tent and a bed of hay.  I think both bower birds have accepted the total loss of their lifelong assets, and with the best spirit they can muster, have started again.  The bird with the rotten stick in his bower has not added any of the lichen trophies.  I think the season has started but the old bower has been abandoned.  He has started to build a bower about 15m away though I think he has a long way to go before being able to impress a female.  I don’t think he will be able to explain “I had this really great pad, but it fell down”.  Wouldn’t even work in the human context.  I feel his pain.  If he has the tenacity to keep plugging away, he might have a presentable bower after about 3 years of celibacy.  In the animal kingdom, I don’t think there is such a thing as a ‘charity fuck’.

 

I think he has learned the importance of the horizontal stick.  It is stout, nearly as thick as your wrist, and it is a live vine.  It will not rot away.  These vines can trail 500m through the trees.  Bowerbirds certainly do have instincts to build to a bower, but I think from my observations, it takes refinements through experience and checking out the opposition.  I have followed science through my education and inclination, and I am aware that reality is always more complex than the scientific models constructed to explain them.  Assumptions and simplifications are made all along the way to make the models susceptible to mathematical analysis.  Real life is just too messy.  And I think the behaviour of birds is more involved than I had imagined.  The other male whose bower was destroyed by a fallen tree took another tack.

Instead of relocating,  The other bird decided to build on existing assets and use the remaining tower and start a twin tower beside it.  He had the fortune that the all important horizontal stick extended past his bower.  Smart choice.

Half the reconstruction effort required by our first bird.  The tower on the right is the remaining structure and he has started another tower on the left..  I think he fancies his chances because he has decorated the new bower with the prized green lichen.

I wish both these beautiful birds success with their different strategies.  If they have no luck, I doubt it will materially effect the population.  I know there are several more males with bowers on the property, though I would be hard pressed to locate them again.  I doubt the females have such difficulties.

So the tragedy I alluded to in the title was a personal tragedy for the males.  Not a threat to the species.  Those of us with failed relationships in human affairs are prone to grasp some defining theme or moment, and a fallen tree, quite beyond our control, would be a convenient excuse to explain our failings.  Birds don’t do that.  They pick up the pieces and try again.

I receive daily newsletters from “The Daily Reckoning”.  It is a libertarian inclined economics/share pundit/wealth advisor.  It can be quite technical, but this reposted quote is more philosophical.

“This ‘Wealth Confession’ Will Probably Shock You

By Bill Bonner in Delray Beach, Florida

Dow down 116 points yesterday. Why?

Airstrikes against ISIS…Ebola…inversion crackdown…housing slowdown…record stock high prices…Alibaba?

The smart money knows what to do. From Bloomberg:

‘American companies have seldom spent more money than they are now buying back shares. The same can’t be said for their executives.

‘A total of 7,181 insiders bought their own stock this year through Sept. 12 and 23,323 sold shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Washington Service. The ratio of buys to sells is near the lowest since 2000.

‘At the same time, corporate repurchases reached $275 billion in the first half of the year, the second busiest since S&P Dow Jones Indices began tracking the data in 1998.

‘Share purchases by executives are becoming rarer after seven straight quarters of advances pushed valuations in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to a four-year high.

‘While companies are pouring money into their own stock because they have nothing better to do with it, officers and directors aren’t – and that’s a bearish signal for share prices, said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer at Commonwealth Financial Network.

‘“It doesn’t say anything very good about the growth prospect for the business,” McMillan, whose firm oversees $86 billion, said in a phone interview on Sept. 18 from Waltham, Massachusetts.

‘“Who would know the business better than an executive in the middle of it? Even though executives are buying on the corporate level, their hearts are not in it personally.”

‘Insiders buying stock have dropped 8% from a year ago, poised for the fewest in more than a decade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Bethesda, Maryland-based Washington Service. Monsanto Co. and Cisco Systems Inc. are among companies whose executives have done less buying even as corporate repurchases increased.’

They say they don’t ring a bell at the top of a market. But we hear alarms going off all over the place.

Corporations are buying back shares with borrowed money…pumping up prices. Then the pumped-up shares are awarded to managers as performance bonuses.

What do the managers do with them? They dump them.

Pump the market with zero-cost credit… Push up share prices, shifting trillions of dollars in wealth to the richest people in the country… Draw more naïve Mom and Pop into the stock market…

 

 

Homage to poverty

But let us put that to the side and continue with our series on ‘How to Get Rich’.

We’re still in the first part, titled ‘Homage to Poverty’.

Yesterday, we pointed out that often a person gets rich and finds he is no longer doing what he likes doing.

We talked about a chef who likes cooking. His restaurant is packed every night. So he opens a chain of restaurants. Now he’s really making money. But he’s no longer cooking.

In other cases, he simply retires…or sells out. Now, it’s even worse. He has nothing to do!

In our case, we have continued working. But our avocations have suffered.

An amateur builder for the last 40 years, we got the most pleasure from scavenging for building materials and creating nice living spaces with little money. We did so because we liked it. But we also had little choice; we had to ‘make do’ with what we could find.

Now, we don’t have to ‘make do’, so it is hard to justify poking into dumpsters or picking up discarded furniture on the sidewalk. It’s hard to do the work ourselves, too, when we know we can hire a professional who will do it better.

We still build things…but some of the fun has gone out of it.

A few years ago, for example, we decided to build a gypsy wagon. They are delightful and fanciful antique versions of today’s Winnebago.

Built of wood, which you can decorate as elaborately as you want, they are fun to look at. And they can be very charming and comfortable inside, depending on how much work you put into them.

You use one in your garden as an ornament…or put it to work as an office or a guest bedroom.

I found an abandoned hay wagon to use as the foundation. But before I started work, the question inevitably came up: Why not just buy one instead?

But buying one would have deprived us of the pleasure of building it. So we went ahead and built it ourselves (we got the children to help). And we’re glad we did.

Still, without necessity driving us onward, we felt a little frivolous. It was just a hobby.

Money frees you from the need to do anything. But when you ditch Mother Necessity you become an orphan. You are alone in the world…with no one to tell you to get up in the morning, stand up straight and polish your shoes.

Pretty soon, you can look like a homeless person.

When you have no one to answer to but yourself, your boss can be a moron. Then you can slip into the existential abyss. When you don’t have to do anything, it can feel as though you have done nothing worth doing. Life can see pointless and empty.

Then what?

You can make a life out of being wealthy. You can hang out with other rich people…buy a big house in Aspen…give money to the arts and charities…and eventually blow your brains out.

Aspen has a suicide rate four times the national average.

Regards,

Bill Bonner
For The Daily Reckoning Australia”

There is a note of nostalgia in the article, back to a time when satisfaction was the just rewards of achieving something out of necessity.  This piece struck a chord with me because I realise there is every reason to avoid poverty, but there is no reason to pursue wealth as an end in itself.  Many wealthy people are game addicts I think.  They are so wealthy they realise there is no point in adding to it.  Warren Buffet and Rupert Murdoch come to mind.  Rich beyond the dreams of avarice, they labour still to increase their empire.  I don’t do games, but I am sure there is a game on the net called ‘Empire’.  I think they are the lucky rich people who have found purpose in the process of money making rather than the results.

I prefer to battle on.  Thankfully far from poverty and far from riches.  With necessity still my master, and satisfaction still my reward.  Creating value from little input.  Solving problems with meagre resources.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is that time of the year again when Possum Valley is in the grip of drought.  36 days without rain!   Dust behind cars!  Having to water pot plants!  Well, I’ve got one.  Not being able to wash the car!  Well I could, but as I’ve never done it before, this seems not the time to start.  In the picture you will notice the grass has gone from its usual emerald colour to a faded green.  Come back leeches, all is forgiven!

I am aware that I am whinging over nothing and deserve no sympathy.  In the next week or two I will suffer the minor inconvenience of having to fit a smaller nozzle on the hydro as the creek dries up, and I will get a bit less power.  It wont make much difference as I have a large surplus.  I wont ever run out of drinking and washing water.  I know that most of Oz suffers horrors of devastation from drought that denude the country and has the bony stock collapsing from starvation.  Other parts are ravaged by fires I have seen on the television, and I have to admit would scare the shit out of me if I ever found myself in one.

I have been to the central part of Oz, middle east, India and east Africa and seen the hardship and suffering from the constant struggle to get enough water.  Try to imagine how sparingly you would use water if you had to send your 9 year old daughter 5km to queue up at a well then carry it home.  Have you ever tried to carry 20 litres of water 5km each and every day?  Me neither and I’m not 9 years old.  I bet it hurts.  It would take half your day.

And here in Cairns we have the G20 economists trying to inflate the rich world’s trade with hot air, by passing memorandums of understanding and policy initiatives, contracts and bilateral trade agreements that are directly intended to keep the money and power in the hands of the established elites.  That is what the G20 is about in the first place.  Are they there to distribute wealth to the most needy?  I don’t think so.

I am getting increasingly frustrated and angry with the steady accumulation of power and wealth by first the developed countries, and within them by the powerful elite.  Even as it being touted worldwide as the paradigm of state governance, democracy is falling apart due to the stealthy takeover by old money.

Personally, I think I have come to terms with the concept of ‘enough’.   I have no debts, and I have good food on the table every night.  Apparently, this is not enough for some who’s boundless ambitions for wealth have corrupted governments, democratic and otherwise, around the world.

So while those elite and highly protected captains of finance try to jawbone the world economy into top gear to benefit the elite, I personalise it down to a girl in Africa who has to labour for her family to survive.

So this ‘drought’ reminds me that I have a wealth of fresh clean water that is literally on my doorstep.  It is wealth that can’t be created in a computer by some central banker in the G20, and is not governed by them.  Yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following my recent blog “How to Weld”, on the realities of welding when you’ve never been taught, haven’t got a clue and have dodgy equipment, I thought I’d offer a few insights into metal lathe-work.

First thing to note is that a metal lathe is finely engineered, geared movement of the tool for smooth cutting, with many automatic features for thread cutting etc, has a tool-post graduated to fractions of a millimetre, is substantially built to close tolerances, and is expensive with an average lathe costing thousands.  A wood lathe on the other hand just rotates the wood and has a tool-rest where the tool is hand held and controlled.  Its greatest virtue is that it is cheap.  I got my wood lathe from a second-hand store for $50 I think.  No mount and no motor.  From another second-hand shop I got an old washing-machine motor for $20 and I built a substantial trestle of wood to mount the lathe.  The main tool used for the mount was a chain-saw and I rather like that rough-hewn look.

One of the great (and scary) features of a wood lathe, is that it has a built-in instruction manual.  Not that it has detailed procedures engraved on it, no of course not.  It’s just that if you do anything wrong, it throws the tool or the wood at you , and sometimes both.  After you have sought medical attention and repaired the equipment, it is unlikely you will repeat that mistake.  Instead you will find another mistake until you exhaust your repertoire of blunders, and your medical supplies.  Pain aversion therapy really focuses the mind.

Turning metal on a wood lathe has added challenges, and should only be attempted if you have personal protection wear obtained from the bomb squad.  Having got that disclaimer out of the way, of course I didn’t.  I just blundered in wearing singlet and thongs.  For any reader in the northern hemisphere, thongs are rudimentary footwear. Wouldn’t want you to get the wrong impression.

First of all, put away any wood cutting tools.  You won’t have streams of shavings streaming over your shoulder, you’ll have mangled metal, blood and bone in under half a second.  The only tools to use are scrapers, drills, grinders, abrasives and hacksaws.  If you are turning steel or harder materials, don’t use scrapers.  For brass, aluminium etc, scrapers will work fine, but need frequent sharpening.  My scrapers are made from old worn out files.

In the picture above, the pulley wheel was refurbished after about 5 years of service, as the ‘v’ grooves wear to ‘u’ grooves and lose grip.  The angle grinder was steadied on the tool-post and a little cut-out of plywood used to check the angle.  The pulley is good for a few more years now.

The nozzles were turned from a 3 inch diameter bar of brass with drill mounted in the tail-stock and scrapers, and I have a few different sizes to allow for seasonal flow rates in the creek.

The slip rings assembly has been refurbished after rings 1 and 4 burnt out when they started sparking, which quickly erodes the rings.  I found I had some spare metal on the end of some nozzles, so cut them off to 9mm thick with a hacksaw on the lathe.  It is quite easy to part them off with an accurate thickness.  I then bored the holes out with a scraper until I got an interference fit.  That means tight, but can bang them on with a hammer.  A bit of superglue for good luck and whack it together.  The slip rings currently on the generator have been going about 7 years and were made from scratch.  1 inch shaft (yes, ancient machine and ancient units), so I started with 1 inch poly pipe for insulation.  The rings were turned from the 3 inch brass bar and the insulation between them was rings of laminex I had come by when my mother upgraded her shower.  Some internal wiring and bolts for terminals were all clamped together with construction glue.

I think I have explored every possible way of having the brushes sparking in the 30 plus years it has been in continuous operation. The brushes wear out, the springs pushing them onto the rings rust away or break, the rear bearing is worn and though no discernible vibration can be seen or felt but causes the brushes to bounce and spark.  The last problem following its most recent dumping in the creek during a cyclone, was hard to diagnose.  30 years and 24,440,400,000 rotations later, had caused the rotor to have about 4mm of end-play.  That is the rotor could flop back and forth and move the rings off the brushes.  I used a couple of old piston rings to take up the slack.

If you ever need a generator to do hard and continuous service, do yourself a favour and get a brushless one.

In case you didn’t know, I like bodging.  Fixing things with whatever is at hand, reusing discarded resources and not consuming future supplies.  It is easy to fix things with a cheque book.  Open your wallet and get an expert.  It is satisfying to use tools and junk to get what you need.  It is empowering to acquire skills and become less dependant on the ‘system’.  Not to mention hugely cheaper.  In my travels in Africa, I can assure you the craft of ‘bodging’ is alive and well with many clever and skilful practitioners.  Alas, the people of the more developed countries have become more and more dependant on other people to fix a problem.  Avagoyamug!

The weather down on the fungus farm is foul.  Strong winds driving the drizzle in horizontal sheets and the temp peaking out today at 14C.  The clouds are clamped on to the hills so I can barely see the next ridge.  The grass isn’t growing but the fungus is, with patches of toadstools appearing on the ground.  This is allegedly the ‘Dry’ season.  I have yet to be convinced.  The one consolation I have is a hot shower.

Not just any hot shower.  The most luxurious, satisfying, steaming, endless hot shower that anyone has ever enjoyed.  I will have to justify that remark.  It is luxurious the in ample water it provides at any temperature from icy  cold to stingingly hot (thermostat set at 70C).  I have it steaming at the moment to counter the chill weather.  It is endless in that I am the sole user of a 200L tank.  That is a long, long shower.  The satisfying bit takes a bit more explaining.

I have with my own labour provided every input to this most enjoyable experience.  I built the house which contains it, and the walls which enclose the shower.  Much later on the in-laws from England tiled it for me.  They are dead now, but their work still finds a use, as they would want.  I designed and built the water system that provides the water for the shower.  Pumped from the creek by a ram pump which uses the water itself to lift the water to a tank on the hill.  I designed and built the hydro power system which dumps the unused electrical power into the hot water system to give me the free steaming hot water.  I designed and built the drainage system which takes the water from the shower to a drainage trench which after  six months or a year, seeps the ground-filtered water back to the creek it came from.  Each shower I take reminds me of the laborious achievements in the past.  If this sounds like self-congratulation ….. well it is.  We should all look back sometimes and reward ourselves by recognising where hard work and stamina have brought us.

My example was a shower.  Far more important is the long and consistent effort parents put into raising kids.  Step by step, putting things in place to achieve financial security, to build a loving home, to share the time for fun, stories and experiences that will help the kids grow.  The hard yards are now, out in the muddy paddock.  The hot shower comes later.

I feel sorry for Vladimir.  He is copping a lot of flak (anti-aircraft defence) over MH17.  I might offer him a gift voucher for Possum Valley.  I think he could use a little time out.

The last thing Putin wanted was for some ill-trained cowboy, ego-tripping on the new toy he had been given, to shoot down a civilian aircraft.  In his sharp, cold, calculating mind, he can see the PR disaster of 100 children and droves of Dutch people whose worst international crime in recent years has been the appallingly bland gouda cheese.  I dare say that he has already identified the culprits, I mean how many of these expensive missile toys has he given out?  I don’t think the western press will ever be satisfied with the perpetrators being brought to trial.  But it wouldn’t surprise me if they are are already totally naked, hanging by the thumbs and being treated to some electro convulsive therapy in a Moscow dungeon.  This will sharpen their minds and assist in their education, if they survive.

I think I can detect Putin’s fingerprints on the assertion that there were Ukrainian fighter jets just buzzing round the downed airliner.  Typical KGB obfuscation.  If it can’t be disproved, muddy the waters.  In the US this is called ‘plausible deniability”.

Please forgive this harsh cold analysis.  I did shed some tears as you did when shown the pictures of children who would never have the opportunity to live a full life and realise their potential.   Now in grandparent mode, I could make an easy decision to trade my limited remaining life for their bright future.

To bring this to a conclusion, Putin did instigate this covert invasion.  He doesn’t care about ‘collateral damage’.  He does care about foreign perceptions which might cause his allies to back away.  He is now in damage control.  Expect nothing from the air investigation except it was hit by a missile.

The weather is perfect today 10-20C  and sparkling blue sky.  A perfect winters day.  The rainforest residents like it too and are most active.  A little while ago there was a little white-browed scrub wren in the house and it perched on my hand for a while before flying out.  The platypus have been active, the possums cheeky, and the wallabies hopping.  The social life of the animals perks up noticeably in the fine weather.  If you don’t know birds and animals have a social life, you haven’t been paying attention.  I have seen love affairs, tender child rearing, home building, hideous fights, fornication in my lounge room, gang turf wars, bullying, gender identity issues, inter-species cooperation and wars and all manner of behaviour you would find in …… well …. your average soap opera.  I am in no doubt that birds and animals feel the same emotions as us and at a similar intensity.  Far from being perfectly adapted to their environment and knowing precisely what to do, they make blunders and have much to learn.

As an example of complex behaviour I hadn’t guessed at, one day I was attracted by a huge racket from birds up the hill.  It turned out to be a flock of about 70 currawongs and about the same number of crimson rosellas and they were having a scrap.  One lot in one tree and the other lot in another screaming abuse at each other (my interpretation).  Every now and then 5-10 birds would fly out of their tree to a tird tree about in the middle,  Soon after they would be matched by the same number from the rival gang.  I couldn’t see much of what went on, but there was much noise and they were being cheered on by the partisan spectators.  Then suddenly they would all return to the gang headquarters.  Several times this cycle repeated and always the birds second to fly into the tree matched the number of the challenging champions.  I gathered that there were rules to this stoush, and that they could count at least as well as I could in the melee.  After about half an hour I left them to it.  I had no idea before that bird behaviour could be so determined and complex.

Many of my recent guest have seen tree kangaroos, some by diligent and patient observation, but most by chance.  Two sightings right next to Maple Cottage.  Several others near the sauna.

Just a couple of hours ago I was showing newly arrived guest around and discovered one was a herpetologist.  What brilliant timing!  How often have you thought “there is never a herpetologist around when you need one”?  You see my froggy mate Cedric, referred to and pictured in a previous blog ‘Indoor Zoo’, had reappeared in the kitchen after a two week absence.  We had been shower buddies for some time and I missed him.  He jumped out of the cutlery holder as I was doing the washing-up.  He was very lucky I didn’t stab him with a knife.  I hadn’t been able to identify him despite being given a book by the authors of “Rainforest Frogs of the Wet Tropics” who came to Possum Valley.  You see I am overrun by herpetologists.  Not being one to miss an opportunity, I press-ganged this scholar and gentleman into coming to identify and photograph my little friend after just an hour after arriving at what he thought might be a relaxing weekend.  He came to a definite conclusion.  He didn’t know what it was.  He explained that the appearance of frogs varied widely.  Not only that, they could change appearance to suit the environment not by evolutionary drift, but in weeks like a slow-motion chameleon.  And it was only possible to tell sex (in a non-destructive way), when they were mating when it was presumed the male was on top.  We know how stereotypes can be misleading.  I have seen pictures of a three-high stack of frogs, which puts doubt on even that methodology.  He will e-mail of his very detailed pics of Cedric to a high-ranking chief in the clan of herpetologists in the hope of receiving a pronouncement.  Stay tuned to this channel for more nail-biting updates.

For the third time today nearly tripped over a black snake.  As usual, it took off like I was poisonous or something.  I really can’t understand their morbid fear of humans.  Can’t we all get along together?