© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Why I’m a nuclear skeptic

You can feel the pressure building, from a number of directions. For a start, the mad Murdoch media empire getting oddly on board with the rhetoric of climate change action - something it has frantically opposed for years. Then there's AUKUS, the Australian Government's new plan to stick Aussie flags on nuclear submarines as part of the US plan to suppress China in the Indo-Pacific region. As soon as that announcement was made people started talking, right on cue, about Australia's lamentable lack of a domestic nuclear industry, and how the subs would be a better…

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Read more about the article Hello hansom! Cabs in old Newcastle
Hansom cab on the corner of King and Perkins Streets, Newcastle. Photo by Ralph Snowball.

Hello hansom! Cabs in old Newcastle

At first hearing, in the 21st Century, you might imagine that "hansom cab" is a name for a pleasant-looking taxi. In fact, hansom cabs were the horse-drawn forerunners of more modern motorised taxis, and in the mid to late 1800s and early 1900s, the presence of hansom cabs in your city or town was a good sign of civilisation. Where did the name come from? Well, "cab" just meant "cabrioloet", which was a type of carriage designed to be pulled by a single horse. It usually had a retractable roof, making it a convertible. Some modern…

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Putting a label on it: ephemera from all over

Pretty pieces of paper. I like them. So I've made a collection of them, gathered from all sorts of places. I like the artistry of them. Sometimes I see some humour or something peculiar in them that makes me collect them and put them in albums, occasionally to look at. Here's a selection of some of my paper ephemera. Beer labels - all Australian. Some older iterations of products that are still around, and some others not so much. My Dad was a KB drinker, in longnecks and later in those gold cans. Back in the…

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