© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Author: Greg Ray

This author has written 481 articles
Read more about the article Potatoes, sex and heredity

Potatoes, sex and heredity

Sir Francis Drake in 1580 (At least some people say so)Assured his name eternal fame by finding the potato.Old song I learnt at school Actually Drake didn’t find the potato at all. Peruvians had been cultivating potatoes in the Andes for thousands of years before Europeans turned up and took some home. And the Spanish certainly beat Drake to it, sometime in the late 1500s. Be that as it may, the humble spud certainly changed the world, as you can read in this book. And, while the potato changed the human world, humans also changed the…

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Read more about the article Empires, power, money and war

Empires, power, money and war

April 14, 2022 Opinion by Greg Ray Case number 1: Ukraine seeks to join NATO. Russia complains that this will bring US weapons bases to its very doorstep and that this is a security risk it can’t afford to tolerate. The US empire says Russia shouldn’t be so precious. Anyway, it’s all about freedom. Ukraine wants to join NATO and it should be allowed to. Result? A proxy war in Ukraine between Russia and the US empire. Case number 2: The Solomon Islands sign a security deal with China. Australia and the US complain that this…

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Read more about the article Art and Jean Mawson’s remarkable partnership

Art and Jean Mawson’s remarkable partnership

It's strange how quickly even the most colourful characters can be forgotten. Art Mawson is perhaps a case in point, and his wife Jean maybe even more so. In their heyday this power couple were noted fight promoters, controlled seven or eight NSW coalmines and a trucking business and looked set to leave their name as a legacy on the coastal subdivision they were creating south of Swansea, near Newcastle. But the suburb of Mawson was slow to take off and the locals ended up changing its name to Caves Beach, leaving the Mawson moniker to…

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