This week's compendium

Here’s this week’s compendium. This week…

1. the Zephyr unmanned solar plane set a record of 14 days 24 minutes aloft, thanks to its photovoltaic panels and lithium-sulphur batteries [1]. Go, Zephyr.

2. Blade Electric Vehicles [2a], Australia’s leading electric car manufacturer blasted the federal government for choosing an imported model to be our first electric trial fleet – even though Blade’s car’s better, cheaper and had been developed with federal government funding [2b]. Ho hum.

3. the effectiveness of so-called Hands-Only CPR, i.e. with heart compression only, was found no less than CPR that also includes respiratory assistance [3a, 3b]. It’s easier too, of course.

4. I learnt of the GrowFood website that matches farmers with potential paid or volunteer farmworkers [4a, 4b]. Pity it’s currently limited to US farms.

5. Nutrition Diva told us how to store half an avocado [5]. Yep.

6. Get-It-Done Guy offered advice on how to respond to important emails [6]. You’ve no excuses from now on.

7. Australian airlines said they have no policy to deal with overweight or obese passengers – even though the public wanted one [7]. As weight affects aircraft fuel consumption, lighter passengers should get a bigger baggage allowance – and vice versa.

8. the Age’s Jason Koutsoukis wrote that ‘Israeli troops removed several trees on the Lebanese side of the border fence that separates the two countries without incident’ [8]. The fence’s 200-300 metres on the Israeli side of the border. Even UNIFIL said so – as Koutsoukis wrote at the end of his article. Yet again Koutsoukis didn’t let the truth spoil a good story. He’s an apologist – not a journalist.

Finally, I wish you, dear Farmdoc’s Blog readers, a wonderful week.

In bed with cultural dissonance

In my 63-year lifetime so far, there’s been major technological advancement. It’s been massive. Monumental. Unprecedented, too. Arguably the era of greatest and fastest tech advancement ever. When I was a nipper no-one would’ve believed that in 2010 I’d be able to wake up, turn on a portable electronic device smaller than a sardine tin, and within 10 seconds be reading something called email, and be linked to the world by something called the internet. But yesterday I did exactly this. And via the internet I read an item about telegrams [1]. This week is Back to Morse Week [2] – the 20th – marking the completion in 1872 of the 3,200 km Overland Telegraph Line between Adelaide and Darwin [3]. To celebrate, this week Darwin residents can send free telegrams nation-wide. Do you remember telegrams? They were used to send good and bad news; congratulations and commiserations. Best Men read them at weddings. And the Queen sent them to her centenarian subjects. The world’s first telegram was in 1844 – in the USA. Australia’s first one was in 1854, and the last one was in 1993 [4]. Technologically speaking, 1993 seems like an eon ago. (I didn’t send, or receive, my first email until 1998.) I don’t know if the current tech flourish’s increased people’s happiness. It’s an interesting question. But that doesn’t, and shouldn’t, stop us marvelling at it. Or suffering cultural dissonance [5] when one lies in bed surfing the net on one’s iPod, reading of telegrams. Ho hum.