HUMAN FOOD

Posted on July 6, 2015 by wp-admin

DIET is not a slimming or ‘health’ regime.

DIET is the list of everything that enters the mouth and goes down the gullet: never to come back out, so stop thinking ‘sex’.

DIETS can be good for humans, or very, very bad. The choice is entirely that of the ingester. Only fools are directed by advertising.

FOOD FOR HUMANS is a subject that clutters TV progams, magazines, newspapers, recipe books, dietary advice books, medical literature, and every cafe, restaurant and food outlet on the planet, and except for a minute minority, every offering is unsuitable as a human diet. Why is this so?

WHY IS MOST FOOD UNSUITABLE FOR HUMANS?

There are four basic problems concerning our diet.

1) We are susceptible to drugs of many kinds.

2) We are wealthy, with a huge choice of ingestibles.

3) We lack education regarding our own gut, and what it requires.

4) Cooking.

Of all diets, the so-called Palaeo diet is the most intelligent and relevant, though few understand why or use it consistently. Taking number 3 first: our gut……..

OUR GUT, the extremely complicated tube connecting the mouth to the arse, is of a design which has been the result of, say, 20 million years of natural selection which has left us with the most suitable digestive tract for the average diet throughout all that period, until about 4000 years ago, when farming became more popular than foraging. It’s all downhill from then.

No doubt the little furry creatures we were at the beginning had different guts, but the point is that the best guts survived throughout the changes to out morphology over the eons, but time was endless then. 4000 years is nothing. Our guts have not changed for at least five million years………but the stuff we put in them has.

The picture is now a common image from film and book: the small band of ‘primitive’ humans foraging through the landscape, gleaning seeds, roots, fruits, insects and the occasional dead creature, if they could get to it before the carnivores. (I put ‘primitive’ in quotes because the Neanderthals had bigger brains than us.)

The picture, the small band, foraging, must be fairly accurate. Many tribal folk ‘discovered’ within the last 200 years lived exactly that way, but we must not assume their intelligence was any less than our own, even a hundred thousand years ago, and surely they had the technology for fish- and animal-traps, and the enhancement of fruit and nut groves.

So for millions of years our guts adapted to the diet that was available, to make the optimum use of the nutrients and minerals, the times of plenty and dearth, and these are the guts we have inherited. Our present diet is most unsuitable, we make ourselves fat and ill.

There is a misconception that the primitive diet is the most suitable for us, and that may be so, but that diet often lacked in many ways. Often the small band of foragers would arrive at a once-reliable food source to find it empty. Their territory may lack vital nutrients. Available water may be polluted: lead, cadmium, salt, or radioactivity are frequently found in certain springs. In the early white settlement of Australia, the open-hearted governor Phillip encountered and looked after small bands of tribespeople which arrived close to starvation. Aborigines to this day, have the genetic capability to put on an enormous amount of weight when foraging and hunting is good, to tide them over the dearths: not a valuable attribute today.

Though the foragers’ diet is by far the best for us, our guts require a regular intake of the minimum volume, interspersed with short fasts. The author Claire Dunn, who has survived and written about twelve months in a bush environment, does not eat on Fridays: painful, but exactly what is good for us, from way back in time when unwanted fasting often occurred.

Compare, so far, the above information with the food we eat today.

A simple fact: rats given minimal food will live more than twice as long as those with unlimited food.

THE FIRST POINT: 1) We are susceptible to drugs of many kinds.

AS HUMANS, WE CRAVE MANY STRANGE FOODS, DRINKS AND EXPERIENCES, some of which are called drugs, and many that affect us like drugs and demand constant satisfaction. Even exercise can act as a drug to those deeply involved.

In a hunter-gatherer society the natural cravings of the body drive it to seek out food and drink and shelter. The intake particularly desired is usually the least available: sweet, fatty, salty, rich oily delicious food. But these foods have the most energy and nutrients, so obviously they will be sought at all times. Until they are found, anything edible must be taken: seeds, stringy roots, acidic tiny fruits, lizards, insects, etc. And water must be the only drink.

When there is an unlimited supply of anything we may crave, we tend to treat that craving as a drug.

Take shelter: at the least, waterproof, windproof and warm. As a drug, a twenty-million dollar ten-bedroom mansion for two people.

We still crave sugar, fat, and salt. Now we can get as much as we want, and more. A hundred different drinks are available instead of water. Coffee, alcohol, sweet fizzy liquids are now drugs. People are addicted to them.

ADVERTISERS PREY ON OUR WEAKNESS. We cannot resist their products, and their products are now addictions for those weak of will. Wealthy countries are now breeding gross, fat, sick giants with short life-spans, no willpower, low libido and sloth-like activity. The poor are most at risk, though only as a statistic; in reality it is the least-educated with the worst diet.

In Brisbane, on a Sunday morning at the Northey St organic markets, a place frequented by the food-concious, the faces and bodies of the shoppers are happy and healthy. It is rare to see an overweight person. In contrast, at the nearby Toombul centre, perhaps 10% are gross, 50% overweight, and most look unfit.

NUMBER 4) COOKING.

COOKING-SHOWS AND RECIPE INFORMATION make drugs out of simple foodstuffs. A piece of raw meat is tenderised, soaked in honey and spices, wrapped in salty bacon and fat-layered pastry, and roasted in oil. Of course it is delicious. But very toxic as food, especially if eaten often.

The raw meat, however, may be excellent food for humans, provided that it contains no anti-biotics, or fat with traces of farm chemicals, or parasitic cysts, or, most importantly, that it is not cooked.

COOKING, in most cases, destroys essential nutrients, and is exceptionally detrimental to our diet. There are some foods that may be indigestible or offensive without cooking: roots, tubers, grains, pulses etc., but the best food for humans is not cooked, including meat. Cooking meat renders it far less digestible, even slightly toxic if roasted in fats at high temperature, which in any case destroys the valuable enzymes and vitamins. The cooked fat and protein is also changed for the worse.

COOKING-SHOWS RUIN FOOD. Heating, roasting, boiling, braising, frying, baking, simmering, seething; all these treatments reduce the essential nutrients of the original ingredients, and serve only to make them more delicious and desirable. In fact, to turn valuable food into a drug.

Food in cans, packets, boxes and jars has been processed to oblivion as far as human sustenance is concerned, and supplies simple low-grade energy, except perhaps some canned ocean-fish and vinegar-pickled products. Supermarkets follow trends of taste, and most have a small selection of ‘organic’ produce now, but beware misuse of the term.

I once had a friend whose wife, with pride, insisted on giving him ‘three cooked meals a day’. Aside from the imbalance of tasks, he ate third-rate, nutrient-poor fatty, salty, sugary food for a decade or so before dying. Cooking spoils food.

RELATIVE FOOD-WEALTH.

It is all too obvious that the rare foods that hunter-gatherers craved are now available by the dirt-cheap bucket-load, but the cravings remain to tantalize us. Each year the proportion of the overweight population in wealthy countries grows: just look around. It takes great willpower to NOT eat: we are programmed to do it, like breathing.

A reversal has taken place in the food market: the fat-rich and sugar-rich products are now the cheapest, and are mass-produced on a huge scale, being available everywhere. On the other hand, fresh, unprocessed, organic (as everything was at one time) farm fruit, vegetables and meat and eggs are now the most expensive and in least supply, as is ocean-caught local fish and seafood.

Cultured, farmed, labour-intensively-produced fish with artificially-coloured and antibiotic-tainted flesh is now half the price of the real thing, swimming wild on the reef.

THE CONCLUSION;

The general idea of which foods benefit us, and which harm, if the requirements of our guts are understood, is simple:

BENEFICIAL

Uncooked food, where possible
Unprocessed food
Unblended food
Raw food whenever possible
Organic food

HARMFUL

Processed food in cans, bottles, jars, packets etc..
All sweeteners, including honey, except in tiny amounts
All salts, except during periods of heavy sweat-loss
Meat, fish and eggs tainted with antibiotics, growth hormones and farm chemicals
Cooking where food is palatable raw
Blending food to reduce its roughage
Oils and fats except in small amounts
Commercial bread: make your own without all the chemicals and gluten
Cooking, cooking, cooking.

THE GOOD DIET

No recipes here, just don’t let the rubbish near your mouth, and don’t gorge on the good stuff. Don’t make your food so delicious that it becomes a craving, a drug. Don’t buy irresistible things for the frige: gooey cheese-cakes and quiches…….if you don’t buy them you won’t eat them,

Try Claire’s regime: no food one day of the week: the pain is worth it for the way you feel next day. But drink water. Fat people: no food at all, ever.

It’s all very well to read all this stuff; with the best of intentions nobody can stick to a diet that is perfect for them. But at least knowing what is good and bad is a start, and cutting out the rubbish is the best start: do most of your shopping at the fruit shop.

AND HERE’S THE MOST VALUABLE TIP OF ALL, AND THE MOST DIFFICULT TO FOLLOW: go to bed hungry every night (not starving). Eat you last meal between 2 and 5o’clock. You will sleep well, not being burdened with the energetic business of digestion, and wake annoyingly bright and chatty.

BOAT PEOPLE

Posted on July 4, 2015 by wp-admin

Uncontrolled immigration into Australia, or anywhere, is a terribly difficult situation to write about. Kind hearts and well-meaning actions are not far-sighted.

Australia is a big place, and although everyone is crammed into the cities and centres, of necessity, the land being what it is, there is still room for thousands more people, perhaps millions more.

We know this, despite the cities becoming less livable and traffic-clogged: there is always room for more.

We know this, and it is true, and more immigrants will no doubt be welcomed. But the unthinking person, who with kindness and humanity will welcome all those who risk death and terrible hardship on the unforgiving oceans of the planet, forgets what their welcome will encourage. Their decision is not as easy as they think, for at some stage they themselves will be forced to to reverse their attitude, their humanity, and their kindness. A point will be reached when they too will have to say no, and true sympathy and forethought would say ‘no’ before the damage is done, no matter how cruel that sounds. Recent events (5-9-2015) are heading in that direction.

Why is this so? Simple numbers, statistics.

Think, and think hard. Yes, we are lucky to live in a civilised place like Australia, where for the most part there is democracy, food, land, work. Lucky, because of generations of fair-minded lawmakers. Lucky because of imposed education standards which keep ignorance and superstition at bay.

Do you suppose others, who are also educated, without religious or racial bigotry, but who live in fear in countries bereft of government, would not prefer to live here, in Australia, or France, or Denmark, or anywhere else? Have you considered how many folk would prefer to live in Australia than in their own land? Folk who would risk their lives to get here?

If it were thousands, we’d have them. Even millions, eventually. But conservatively, a hundred million? A hundred million would sign up for Australian citizenship in twelve months, if it was offered. For each boat welcomed today, there would be ten within a month, 100 within six months; word would spread throughout the world. If you could get off a plane in Sydney and receive an Australian passport at the checkout, how many would take advantage of that?

The sad position is that huge populations would come if they could, that is why we are so lucky. We are already here, and safe. All these would-be immigrants are people, like us, and none except the tiny few mean us any harm, and yet, despite our feelings of compassion and kindness, we can not welcome all of them, it simply is not possible; this time it really is not true: we really do not have room. Someone, some time, would be forced to say no, and the situation would become obvious within days, not years, if the door were announced to be open.

This is why, by thinking ahead, the consequences of even the smallest welcome to the smallest number of boat-people must be seen as a disastrous move. The very harsh treatment instigated within the last few years has nipped in the bud an explosion of immigrant shipping, despite the undeniable cruelty involved to those who have become the scapegoats. Their fate has prevented further boats; word soon gets round. If they are seen to be integrated into the community, as must at some stage happen, only their years of imprisonment will remain as a deterrent, and many will accept even that fate to get here.

So the situation is not being cruel to be kind, it is being cruel to survive, because someone, sometime, must say ‘no’, but by the time that happens the massive unemployment and breakdown in services, education, food supply, etc. may never be fixable.

How many immigrants, therefore, can we physically take? Some, of course. All: absolutely not. The question is: how many? Who could decide, and at what stage? Because somebody, sometime, would be forced to say no.

The only solution to this horrible question is ‘no boat people whatsoever, only legitimate entry’. And that, with all its inherent cruelty, is what is happening,

We are so, so lucky to be here, and not there. Never take democracy for granted.

By this attitude I am in danger of being labelled a far-right racist bastard, but I have always considered myself a lefty tree-hugger. I certainly find it surprising to agree with a policy of the present government, but hey, that’s just another facet of democracy.

EMIGRATION FROM PIRATED COUNTRIES INTO EUROPE, OVER LAND AND SEA.

As mentioned, recent escalation of would-be immigrants into Europe, heading mainly to Germany, overland from the East, (September 2015) is proving that the slightest relaxation of border control, the smallest hint of welcome, will provide a signal to millions that a new life in a civilised country is possible. Who would blame these people? We all want a life of quiet endeavour and family security, and these millions are fleeing a tiny minority of ultra-violent monsters, who with modern weapons and stolen cash are butchering all in their path, When the murder has ceased, as the perpetrators age, what will remain will be a wasteland of un-governed, un-farmed terrain.

The thousands flooding into Europe, to escape violent criminal sects in their own countries, will become millions, as soon as there is the slightest report of successful entry to any reasonably well-governed and prosperous community. Those fleeing have every reason to escape the horrors taking place, and every reason to seek out the best that democracy has to offer. The less democratic and less wealthy countries are being by-passed, or used as corridors of transit.

Welcoming democracies, such as Germany and, surprisingly Finland, have no idea of the staggering numbers that successful migration will encourage. This is a prediction that anyone could make, but few have. No news analysts are suggesting that pirated countries will literally lose the majority of their populations in an overwhelming surge of emigration, all headed for Europe initially, as first choice, then elsewhere.

The obvious solution to this looming situation is one that no democratic community is prepared to make. Pirated countries must be made safe, and the pirates driven out, and this can only be done at great expense and inevitable loss of life, and must be done with extreme investment in occupation of enemy territory. Any half-measures have been proved unsuccessful, time and time again.

All European governments will soon realise the necessity of this action as being the only long-term solution to a problem that has yet to become overwhelming. The populations that are fleeing their pirated countries must be able to return in safety, and must have help in forming true democracy under strict supervision to safeguard against dictatorship, nepotism, corruption etcetera, and help in establishing unfettered news agencies.

Massive ground force must establish secure bases at airports and seaports, supported by air defense. Attack of pirate enclaves by air has proved to endanger civilians in disastrous humanitarian and publicity situations. Attempts to establish peace in this way have proved most unsuccessful in the past, due to limited enthusiasm where overwhelming action is needed.

Once an areas are cleared of enemy weapons and obvious enemy fighters, expansion of peaceful territory can begin. The fact that the ‘enemy’ is unrecognisable is irrelevant, once weapons and organisation are dismantled. In fact no major enemy groups may ever be found, but will melt back into their individual towns and villages, where ringleaders and murderers will become pariahs and fodder for future tribunals.

A logical course of events would be for dedicated civilians to arm and fight back: they are the massive majority. This seldom happens. Some groups have a tribal bond capable of defense against insurgents, the Curds, for example, but whole countries often lack basic community values due to generations of mis-rule by dictators, religious sects or corrupt elites, and these countries tend to become wastelands of dereliction when control is dissipated.

A frightening but successful solution to a once-autonomous area in total dissolution is colonial control by a benevolent patriarchal agency. The essence is in the benevolence. Once a generation or two of the natives have become absorbed into the system of benevolent governance, the colonisers can leave.

Initially the colonisers are of course an invading army; there is no alternative.

As I write, this is actually happening ( 7th September 2015). Russia is apparently sending troops into Syria (I’ll check this), but with no benevolent aspirations, judging by past invasions: just domination.

Brisbane Suburban Roads: bad design, bad ergonomics.

Posted on July 4, 2015 by wp-admin

Do you get frustrated at the wheel?

I don’t mean lack of sex. I mean, do the constant checks to traffic-flow drive you mad? There’s absolutely no point in either being in a hurry, or attempting to keep to a schedule, if you are driving through Brisbane suburbia. The constant blockages, hold-ups, un-synchronised traffic-lights, arbitrary stop signs everywhere, lack of intelligent road-marking, a total excess of road-marking, et cetera, all are infuriating to the sentient driver who has experienced the best in traffic control, and sees the worst in Brisbane, for all its wealth.

There is, without doubt, a definite ploy on the part of road-designers in Brisbane suburbs, to deliberately slow traffic to the extent of jamming.

Bottle-necks are deliberately built in dozens, if not hundreds of locations. Many nearside lanes have concrete obstructions and signs built on them, to the extreme danger of two-wheel traffic particularly, and the tyre-marks show all the hits and near-misses.

Traffic lights, except for one or two locations, are not synchronised, or worse, timed to offer red at each junction. An extreme case is in the city itself, where, whichever is the route of travel, no consecutive lights are ever green. Most lights are on primitive timers, having no relation to conditions at any time, changing by clockwork all 24 hours.

No traffic lights flash ‘Give Way’ at night, but continue operating despite no traffic being present. Lights on sensors are very few, some even replaced by timers.

The whole road design is gridlock-oriented, with busy roads blocked for kilometers during morning and afternoon rush; soon gridlock will actually take place, not by accident-blockage, but by traffic density.

We need a new broom at Traffic Control, to sweep away all the bottlenecks, stop- signs, infantile road-markings, frighteningly dangerous so-called ‘bike lanes’, all the paraphernalia of the garden-gnome mentality.

On one two-kilometer stretch of road near Toombul, there are SIXTY signs for the attention of drivers. Count the insane excess in your suburb.

OK, I’ve had my rant, now, the details. Some technology is required, therefore expense, but most changes are simple and practical, needing nothing more than a left-turn lane at all intersections and lights, for example.

1) Stop signs: Almost all eliminated, replaced by ‘Give Way’. If a vigil is kept at a stop sign, it will be noticed that very few drivers actually come to a standstill, when they can see the road is clear. Why stop, when the meaning of ‘Give Way’ is perfectly clear? A classic case of police cunning is at a stop-sign in a bizarre left-turn lane in Nundah, where hundreds are booked for not stopping dead at the line. Those who know the trap stop dead, though the road may be clear, only to be run into from behind by the poor bugger who wonders why the hell you stopped. Broken glass constantly litters that intersection.

2) Intersections: ‘T’ junctions and crossroads. For some unfathomable reason, a few years ago some wowser of design attempted with much success to eliminate all multiple lanes exiting intersections. Kerbs have been extended onto the road surface on the left, and islands on the right. In other words, no left or extra right-turn lanes. One vehicle turning right blocks the road for all those wanting to turn left, and vice versa. Why were these bottlenecks ever instituted? Who gains? Where is the safety factor?

3) Mid-road pedestrian islands: A good idea generally, but they must always be sited on a through road at the FAR side of a right-turn intersection, otherwise they act as an obstruction to waiting right-turn traffic, blocking the flow for straight-through traffic and causing danger to pedestrians. A childish mistake of road-design seen in quite a few places; who is responsible for this lack of professionalism? Or is it another deliberate and dangerous ploy?

4) Extraneous line-marking and painted ‘bike lanes’: That is, not actual bike lanes, safely separated from the motorised traffic by kerbs and barriers, but simply designated and extending into main traffic-flow by a line-marking. This horrendously dangerous practice gives some unthinking cyclists the impression that they are somehow protected whilst within their white line, and serves only to increase the statistics regarding boastful kilometers of spurious and non-existent ‘bike lanes’.

Throughout Brisbane there are line-markings between the kerb and the centre-line, tending to reduce the driving width and forcing on-coming traffic closer. To the left of this extra line is the supposed ‘bike lane’, although parking is generally allowed within it, rendering such designation erroneous and a death-trap for cyclists. A cyclist riding in the narrow gap between the line-marking and parked cars, the designated ‘bike lane’, is facing two severe risks.

The first is when a driver opens the car door without looking behind: a door projects nearly a metre into the cyclist’s path and is unavoidable without extreme danger from already-squeezed traffic; either the cyclist hits the door or, second risk, the passing truck hits the cyclist. In any case, two large semi-trailers passing each other in opposite directions seldom leave room for any obstruction, and the trucks always win.

The commendable attitude of road-design in making it safer for cyclists has been hi-jacked by the race for purely imaginary kilometers of designated bike tracks. This falsification directly endangers cyclists and has caused deaths.

Cyclists in today’s traffic are all at risk of death or severe injury, no matter how careful and aware are other road-users. This is an undeniable fact, exacerbated by the inculcation in the minds of cyclists of their right-of-way and right to use the public roads.

A wise cyclist will take none of this for granted, but will look out for her own safety in a most dangerous environment, where nobody is necessarily at fault when an accident happens.

A wise cyclist will not wear headphones.

A wise cyclist will always look behind before pulling out to pass a parked vehicle.

Wise cyclists will never ride two-abreast: those days have gone 50 years ago.

A wise cyclist will never feel protected by road-markings. A supposed right-of-way is not a safe right-of-way.

Who the hell teaches cyclists safe road-use in today’s traffic? Anyone?
Could you imagine, if two-wheeled transport had never been invented, and had just become a circus-act, that trick of balance would ever be allowed on the public road?

5) Zebra Crossings: Here is a mystery. In order to accentuate the appearance of a pedestrian on a crossing, white lines must cross the road from side to side. Any interruption of those lines immediately signals something crossing. By having the stripes the zebra way leaves gaps to camoflage pedestrians. Any artist would offer that information: yet no-one has considered it. Furthermore, illuminating crossings from above rather from the side actually helps to render pedestrians invisible, an obvious fact any stage-lighting expert would know. Think dark, rainy nights.

Building out kerbs and signs into the road surface at crossings does not safeguard pedestrians but certainly does endanger two-wheel riders. All obstructions into traffic lanes must be considered un-necessary and dangereous, particularly and essentially in rain, darkness, and wind. The multiple tyre-marks attest to the danger.

One more remark on mad pedestrians with the indestructible god-syndrome: why do some pedestrians dress in black, walk on the road at night rather than the footpath, facing away from the oncoming traffic, whilst pushing prams. They and their babies WILL die.

Two remarks: Why do mothers push their prams and babies out into traffic, from behind parked cars, so that they can see if anything is coming?

Just outside our house, in the middle of the night, someone drove into a parked car, pushing it 50 metres down the road and onto the verge. Black-clad road-walkers beware.

Again, crossing-users now feel they have the right to safety, and many step off the kerb at speed with no awareness or concern. Where is the education?

6) Now, the costly fix: traffic lights: the bane of drivers in cities with no technology, like Brisbane. I say costly, but really the technology is cheap and has been available for over 50 years. The fix, to everyone’s happiness and contentment, is permanently synchronised lights in both directions, on all through roads, at all times, and linked to the speed limit, whatever that may be, and the limit may have to be slower.

How often have we, as responsible law-abiding drivers, sat fuming at a red light on a totally deserted cross-road, waiting, waiting, for the primitive clockwork to operate in our favour. How often have we stopped at a red light instigated by a solitary pedestrian, which light remains red even whilst the pedestrian has walked 100 metres and out of sight? All these irritations have been cleared away in other cities where traffic-flow is a science operated by professionals.

Admittedly, some small sections of roads do have lights synchronised at certain times, so the traffic controllers do know about the fix, apparently.

In case anyone is unsure as to what synchronised traffic-lights do……..imagine you have waited at lights from a side-road, and are turning onto a main road. You may also have to wait at the next red light on the main road, but from then on, if you stick to the speed limit, and drive neither too fast nor too slow, every traffic light will turn green for you, for ever, to the distant horizon, into the setting sun of permanent delight. A motorists paradise, here on Earth.

Imagine our main Brisbane arterial roads free of red lights. Sure there is a cost, but it’s nothing compared with building a freeway. When I was a kid, as an exchange student passing through Hamburg in my host’s car, I was astounded to see all the traffic lights miraculously changing to green as we approached them, for mile after mile. I thought it was magic, or co-incidence, more likely, and shouted in surprise at each green, Wow, another one. Vhy ze surprise, said my hosts, zey are synchronised, off course. That was in 1960.

Every traffic-light must have a ‘Left turn at any time’ sign, and lane, if possible.

7) Roundabouts. Brilliant. Invented 100 years ago, but virtually unknown in Brisbane; the few that exist are marvels of efficiency, and work so well even when overloaded, because they make sense. Drivers, most of them, understand the procedure, patience is not strained because there is no wasted road-space, everyone has their turn. Except…….the wowsers can not leave well-alone. Some of the few smaller roundabouts actually have bottlenecks built into them, the footpath deliberately widened to block off the left-turn lane. Deliberately. No possible explanation could be valid, and no doubt fatuous mumblings about ‘safety’ would be mouthed.

Roundabouts could satifactorily take the place of 90% of traffic lights. We have seen what happens when a functioning roundabout is replaced by a dozen traffic lights: endless waiting, queues of vehicles polluting the local businesses with exhaust-gas. See West End, a classic example. It can only be assumed that the department responsible for traffic lights relies on the proliferation of meddling to secure their existence.

The installation of each new set of lights guarantees that it will take more time to get through that intersection: Guarantees. A roundabout in the same place actually speeds flow. The examples are endless.

8) Parking. In this era of the vehicle, parking is at a premium, and all parallel-parking should be fazed out in favour of diagonal, drive-in. Not reverse-in. Reversing into a space necessarily holds up traffic, though it makes for a quick getaway. Backing out of a space is performed while the road is clear: no hold-up.

The wide space between the kerb and building-alignment is a hangover from pedestrian days and is wasted in cities, except as a place for dogs to shit. This space must now be used for parking and footpath.

9) SPEED LIMITS

A visitor to Brisbane, and a great proportion of residents, have no idea what the suburban speed limit is in any given location. Many assume that if they can not see a sign, it’s legal to do 60 km/hour, but no. If a speed sign can not be seen, and one has not been passed previously on that road, to avoid fines and point-loss one must drive at 50km/hour, no matter how ridiculous that sounds.

The fact is that there is no way of knowing what the speed limit is until a sign appears ahead, and signs are often two or more kilometers apart. Only local knowledge from previous trips will help, and strangers must be left in the dark.

Almost every driver on un-signed roads does 60 or more, though the limit on those roads is actually 50. The speed limit is 50 unless otherwise signed. Who knew that?

The policing of speed limits is now virtually without lee-way. Two km over will get you booked, even though many speedometers on modern cars are not accurate to within 5 km/hour. Not long ago the lee-way was about 9km/hr.

A consequence of this is that so many folk have been booked, losing licenses and cash, that traffic now flows at 10km below the speed limit, with dangerous bunching and frustration. It is not safe to drive with attention constantly on the speedometer, and cruise-control, if available, needs adjusting after every braking.

It may be an urban myth, but I recently heard that where the speed limit is, say, 100km/hr, to actually drive accurately at that speed is to break the law: 99km/hr is the legal maximum. Given that any speedometer is certain to be more than 5km/hr inaccurate, all this pettifogging is bullshit, my word against yours, an un-proveable situation biased on the side of outrageous fines, inflicting the heaviest penalties on those whose wages, if any, are breadline. So, depressing though it is, we all may well consider that all speed limits are 10km/hr LESS than signed, or risk our children’s food for a month.

Within the last month a remarkable thing happened. In my neighbourhood, a stop-sign was removed. This sign stopped the traffic for forty years on the main through-road, in favour of the little-used side road. It probably raised millions in fines. This action was taken out of sheer necessity: traffic was banking up for a kilometer, blocking many access roads and causing local gridlock. Now traffic flows freely even at the busiest times. The cost of a bit of road-marking and the removal of signs was minimal, and saved time and frustration for thousands of drivers. Why had it taken so long, and why aren’t all such bottlenecks removed immediately? There are hundreds throughout Brisbane. On your drive to work, count the number of unnecessary blockages which could be fixed by give-way signs, roundabouts, left-turn lanes et cetera.

By the constant work taking place on our suburban roads, for example, line-marking, new kerbing, new traffic-lights, it can be assumed that there is a department in charge of these operations. The principal aim of such operations should obviously be to speed traffic-flow safely, remove obstructions, and keep the road surface in good condition. These three specifics seem to come last on the list of projects. Why? Who is in charge?

ACU

Posted on July 2, 2015 by wp-admin

ACU

There’s one just down the road.

I can tell it’s ACU because of the big new sign out the front. Or back, in this case, by the car park. It says ‘Australian Catholic University’: An oxymoron, or at least, a misnomer.

Perhaps, with a small ‘c’, implying ‘universal’ or ‘whole’ education, I would be content to send a child there; but no, the capital ‘C’ refers to a religious institution, where one would be right in thinking there must be certain curbs to the scientific method, and also the inclusion of practices tending to instill superstition, false belief and the ceremonies of one particular sect; practices best kept away from education and locked in monastery or church.

‘Catholic’ does not even include other superstitions, and there are thousands, but is specific to the Roman variety, and is a successful business venture by a very successful clique notable for its pederast priests and child-beating nuns. I have it from good authority.

As for University, those establishment today are far from being universal, but are available only to the wealthy, or those able to submit to crippling debt.

Furthermore, those having been ground fine by the mill appear to exit clutching degrees but having little knowledge of any matters outside their specific inculcation, not even, in some cases, of their own language. Again, ‘University’ is a sad misrepresentation of the teaching offered.

If your child wishes a further education, and can read and write and go to school on its own back legs, that child would expect the truth pending further discovery, a rigorous scientific method, no obfuscation or unverified conclusions, and a broad knowledge of the world, pertaining to, and in addition to the child’s own selected field.

Though a modern university may be a simple fee-charging degree-provider, surely some broad education is a necessary adjunct to any specific course, and surely all superstitious peddling must be banished from within the walls, and preferably from the entire country, to safeguard our sanity, safety, and sentience.

ACU later, ok?

Mount Coot-tha Tracks

Posted on July 2, 2015 by wp-admin

THE BUSH AT BRISBANE’S DOORSTEP

Over forty years ago I started exploring Mt. Coot-tha; it’s forest, creeks and tracks.

It was and is a neglected area, ravaged by constant burn-offs and the consequent erosion, however, on my weekly visits I was sure to see wallabies and the occasional kangaroo, and massive lace monitors rending the eucalypt bark in their attempts to hide from my curiosity.

The place has changed little from my early visits, but the old barbed-wire fences that once criss-crossed the hills have now disappeared, and the mysterious concrete slabs, pads for long-forgotten buildings, are mostly obliterated by loose gravel and moss. Old gold workings also have mostly been smoothed-out by the years, and the permanent car-bodies sink lower each season as the steel turns to oxide, exposing the cast-iron and non-ferrous parts.

There are still small sanctuaries of rain-forest in the gullies and along the bigger creek-beds; rain-forest that would once have covered the entire hill were it not for the fire-crazed habits of human populations, continuing to this day. Fire seldom reaches these deep pockets of vegetation, as it always travels uphill. Even spindly hoop pines survive in places.

Near the old chip factory, which was busy producing not chips but crisps during my early visits, on the other side of the road by the car park, is a dell of turf surrounded by silky oaks, with a big bauhinnia and a few exotics: once a garden of some forgotten homestead perhaps. It is from here that it was and is my custom to walk and run a circuit of some five to ten kilometers, depending on enthusiasm. The accompanying dog has been gone for twenty years, but I’m now lucky to have my dear friend to discuss with and complain as we shake off the city roar and fume and climb up the little track through the trees watching the horizon get lower and Moreton Bay stretching out behind us. Soon the haze of traffic pollution hugging the city is below us and the air is clean, oxygenated, with nose-pleasing eucayptus, wattyl, greasy-grass, funghi, jequirity vine, and dozens of unseen plants. Until……..

Until walkers appear ahead, on the track, their presence often preceded by artificial industrial smells mis-called de-odorants, bad perfumes, hair-sprays, after-shave: all so unsuited and alien to the fresh forest. On a still day it may take a hundred metres before their stinkl dissipates, but then a new alien presence reveals its offensive mark: the small track, just the width of one or two pairs of legs, widens out to three, four, five metres, the trees and saplings removed, the ground excavated, torn, shaped and rolled, a new and un-necessary highway coils through the scrub, its smoothness waiting for the first tropical downpour to wash the surface into gullies and gutters.

Old footpaths are now deliberately blocked with rocks, tree-litter and plastic notices warning ‘Track Closed’. Fine outlooks are no longer available to new visitors, but regular hikers keep the way visible, stepping round the deposited rubbish and moving blockages.

Ten years or so ago, one tiny track I regularly used, along with many others, was the playground of a 1.2M Bobcat. The track was widened to two metres and advertised with cute wooden signs on posts. A couple of years later a change of heart ‘closed’ the track, for ‘revegetation’, though it wasn’t the walkers that had caused the erosion. The signs rotted away and the regulars ignored the ‘closure’, until another regime suddenly decided to put an even bigger machine in to wipe out any revegetation that had actually taken place. Old hikers see all the contradictions and laugh.

The prettiest place on the rounds, which was a favourite resting-stop after galloping through the bush like an idiot, was the nearly-always running creek and waterfall. There clear pools and wide rocks invited the walker to strip off shoes and sweaty socks and bathe red feet in the cool water. If the waterfall was active I’d float nude in the pool at the bottom, a most luxurious pleasure in the height of the Brisbane summer. I used to drink from the creek: crystal and icy, with a faint smokey taste. The water flowed from the watershed at the kiosk road, unpolluted by any human activity, until that is, they built a public toilet at the source, with a septic overflow. Fear of e. coli stopped my thirst-quenching, but I still chanced a swim after storms flushed the pool. But not any more.

That paradise has gone. Where once was picnic on the water-smoothed rocks of millions of seasonal storms, where the creek cascaded into the pool below, overhung by islanded calystomens, where sweaty walkers bathed feet in water that flowed between rounded boulders in a stream-bed carved from the solid rock, where there was often a family or two, with children scrambling in the water and down by the pool, now, now, is an industrial fibre-glass gantry overshadowing all with steps and landings, fences and balustrades and warning signs, springing from massive concrete footings in the creek itself. Not a delicate Japanese bridge upstream of the cascade, leaving the feature un-spoilt and the access free, but a factory fire-escape straddling the once-beautiful waterfall. Even the waterfall itself is now fenced with warnings and danger-signs. Brilliant. Perhaps the entire hill should be out of bounds as a danger threatening the life of anyone that ventures there.

There are projects on which money could be spent on Mt. Coot-Tha, but the garden-gnome syndrome is always uppermost in planners’ minds: litter an untouched space with toys and foibles unrelated to their surrounds. Someone with true vision stops the traffic, builds a pleasant mall with shady trees; the gnomers move in with junk to pack every space, never improving, just cluttering. The hill is one such garden which will not be left alone; every year sees one more eyesore, someone’s pet scheme, and yet still the car bodies remain, the eroded areas worsen, lantana proliferates, the preventable fires kill the saplings and further scar the ravaged, stunted trees where once stood giants. An old shipping-container wrapped with plastic barrier-fencing was dumped on one lovely picnic area; others were also left on the tracks where they stayed for years, and have just been removed.

Lantana, which normally is unsuited to the poor dry soils of the hill, is getting a hold in many places, and no attempt has ever been made to eradicate it, despite the constant tinkering with tracks and chainsawing and fatuous raking around: the real work never gets done. When it first appeared twenty years ago a couple of blokes could have kept it down: I doubt, now that it is common, that those policing the park even notice that it exists.

Some sensible works have been welcome; the barbeque fireplaces, a shelter or two, tapwater standpipes, the regular mowing of open ground, an occasional toilet. But all toilets must be dry-composting systems, not septic, and Round-up as an alternative to weeding has killed a fine bottle-tree and is not wild-life safe. New picnic places being built bristle with faults: lack of parking, accessability, situated on the busy traffic road, with no individual barbeques: all concrete, steel, car fumes.

The massive bulldozing of forest tracks is continuing, though. For whose benefit? Burn-offs are still threatened, just when the previous few years’ good rain has grown an excellent crop of fine saplings now of 100mm diameter and unspoilt by fire: these new trees could be the future magnificent forest replacing the poor stunted trees of 100 deliberately-lit destructions. The hill is easily managed for dousing accidental fire, being minutes from the city and airport. Fifty years fire-free would see rain-forest climbing out of its sheltered enclaves, fine tall eucalypts, ground mulch cover preserving soil and moisture, and possibly the return of marsupials, if machinery is kept out.

Leave well alone. But we know that’s too much to ask of the gnomers.

Mt. Coot-Tha forest park is a place where like-minded people visit to exercise, rehearse for bigger adventures in Nepal, walk the dog, or simply have a break in high, clear air amongst the gums and wattyls, away from traffic, industry, and the constant earthmoving of the city. Every person queried on council activities up there has been upset by the invasive crass interference of our small, wild area.

andyjenner.com

Monthly Archives: July 2015

HUMAN FOOD

BOAT PEOPLE

Brisbane Suburban Roads: bad design, bad ergonomics.

ACU

Mount Coot-tha Tracks