August, the coldest, most unpleasant month of the year, in my opinion. Thank goodness it’s nearly over. It hasn’t been all that wet, but it’s been too cold for my liking. Of course, compared to northern hemisphere winters, as I’ve remarked before, it’s nothing. I’ve been watching the TV series Alone, plus a few Youtube clips recently about Canadians battling through blizzards and snowbanks. I could not bear it! I don’t understand why people choose to live in such cold. Why? Why?!

Anyway, although my fingers get a bit cold and stiff at times, it’s fine. My house is well insulated and only goes as low as an inside temperature of 16-17degC, at which point I turn on the reverse cycle air conditioning for great wafts of warm air. Lovely.

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I must admit to feeling very poorly in the past few weeks. Weak and tired. I’ve been getting a bit of angina and puffs of breathlessness. I saw the cardiologist last week and he wants to do an angiogram (I call it an angrygram 🙂 ), so that’s going to happen on Tuesday 22nd, Tuesday week. I don’t like these procedures (probe up through an arm vein into the heart!), but last time he did one on 26 January 2021, he found a 90% blocked vein. Lucky! So it needs to be done.

But he wants me at Hollywood Private Hospital at 7.30am! Holy mackerel, it’s an hour’s drive even without any traffic problems and traffic at that time of the day will be awful. I’ve booked an Uber driver for 5.30am. I’m assuming that will be sufficient time. It’s going to cost $73 one way. Ouch.

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I’m reading an article about whether the USA should go to war to defend Taiwan if China decides to invade, and it includes this paragraph:

“The past half-century is littered with conflicts the United States chose to wage without weighing the cost of fighting versus the cost of not engaging. A list of such conflicts includes the Vietnam War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the 20-year fiasco in Afghanistan, the 2011 attack on Libya, the 2014 excursion into Syria, the support of Saudi Arabia in its war with Yemen, and a perpetual military engagement on the African continent. 

“None of these conflicts was forced on Washington. All were chosen, and the cost to the United States has been astronomical. Benefits have been paltry, or, as I argue, entirely absent.” (1945)

Exactly. All these wars have been unnecessary and disastrous, and Australia has been involved in the first three (Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan) without any parliamentary debate or popular discussion. All have been initiated by Liberal Party governments and usually by the prime minister alone, without even involving his ministers!! Amazing and egregiously bad.

They have cost hundreds of Australian soldiers’ lives and billions of dollars, for no benefit whatever! They have achieved nothing! My blood boils, as you can tell.

So what if China tries to take Taiwan by force? The big factor is that Taiwan houses TSMC, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s biggest semiconductor (integrated circuit) manufacturing plant. They make up to 90% of the world’s “chips” and naturally, this is HUGELY important to the world. If China gained control of this plant, assuming it survived a war intact, they would have us by the throat. They could dictate the supply of semiconductors to the world and throttle our industries.

The USA are working frantically to (re)build their own IC production facilities, which they foolishly allowed to wither and move overseas (to Taiwan, mainly, but also to Korea and China), but it takes years to build an IC fabrication factory. Luckily Holland are the makers of these giant “machines” and obviously they would supply any Western country that could afford the huge cost.

The workings of these are a fascinating story, too much for this blog, but the gist is that they etch lines on the silicon base disc which are as narrow as 4nm – that’s 4 nano metres. That’s far smaller than a human hair and so tiny that the slightest vibration would ruin the etch. It’s done using X-ray lasers which are so precise as to be at the limit of mechanics and physics. They are a triumph of engineering. You’ll pay a couple of $billion for one of these. And wait years for delivery.

Anyway, what should Australia do if China invades Taiwan? In my opinion, this would be one case where we should intervene in any way we can, because our interests are very much at stake. We cannot allow China to (a) use force to subjugate the Taiwanese; and (b) gain complete control of most of the world’s semiconductor manufacturing facilities. The article I read suggests that loss of control would cause a worldwide recession of at least 10%, amounting to a depression, with widespread hardship.

Unfortunately, a war with China would be very, very costly. It would be a fight to the death, literally. I think it would almost certainly involve nuclear weapons very early in any conflict. China would put their prestige on the line. They would take the attitude that they must not lose, so they would use any means to win, including nuclear wepons. This is very, very bad and I am in fear it will happen.

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I’ve been watching a lot of Youtube lately, and one thing in particular. That’s a US company called Copart, which takes cars that have been damaged, either by accidents or water damaged by flooding. They take cars that insurance companies have written off and sell to anyone who’ll buy, so as to recoup some of their cost of paying out the claimants.

The thing is, there are thousands upon thousands of cars in giant yards, all damaged to some degree, often far too much to repair, but some are not too bad. The Youtube guys scour these yards for bargains and when they find cars they think can be resurrected, they put in low bids in an on-line auction. Often, they win.

I’m talking $50,000 – $150,000 cars being sold for $5,000 or even less. Two guys in particular are Porsche fanatics. They’ve got a Porsche Boxster for $2,500 and got it going for the cost of a new oil pan, costing $600. Plus fitting, oil change and cleaning and detailing. Amazing.

I can’t get over the number and range of all these damaged cars in the Copart lots. There are the usual boring small cars, but the number of Ferraris, Porsches, Audis, Bentleys, Rolls Royces, Aston Martins and so on is amazing. If only, if only …….

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It’s dawn and the sun has come up. I awoke about 4am and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I’m at the PC as usual. The birds are chirping. Lovely. Cheers.

I’m working frantically on my Croft History Volume 3 photobook. I have two prepaid vouchers that I bought seven months ago and they expire on the 17th. As usual, I’ve been procrastinating, but I’m more than half way finished. It will only take a few more hours’ work and then I can send them off for printing.