An open thread where, at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
[Except federal election stuff which should go here.]
49 Responses to “Saturday Salon”
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Frist!
(And a first-time fristing at that - that explains the lower-case, timid young me!)
I feel like poo. Stupid flu.
It’s quiet. Too quiet.
Is Darwin a great town or what!?
Me battle shark!
So what I want to know is, did the school kids get to do their big anti-Bush number at the big rock show as planned, or did the wicked curmudgeons shut them down or re-schedule it, thereby setting an incredibly bad example and teaching the kids a really dumb, backwards lesson?
Also, I was reading this thing about Australian currency on the internet. Is it actually true that you guys have plastic money? Cool. Can it travel back and forth in time, too?
As you can see, I’m kind of like the guy in the old song… “Don’t get around much, anymore…”
Yep, we replaced our ‘paper’ bills (which were actually a paper-woven-fabric-with-bits-of-metal-thread thing) with polymer notes about ten years ago. The first of the mass-circulation placky notes, for $5, caused a bit of a stir when first released - not so much because of the material used (and the usual tabloid stories of notes ruined when they were inevitably ironed - we don’t get it either), but because of the inclusion of an image of The Queen on the note at a time when the republican movement was on the rise.
the usual tabloid stories of notes ruined when they were inevitably ironed - we don’t get it either
I can tell you a $50 will shrink down to about half size when you give them a really good go in one of those heavy duty Laundrette dryers. In a shameless example of money laundering, I took it to the bank to exchange as I didn’t think retailers would approve of it. (They still gave me $50, not 25)
j-p-s,
Our local constabulary was threatening to charge said kids with truancy. Think its next week. Seen no news reports.
Fellow bloggers, this might be a little out of date, but is anybody else pissed off about channel 10 moving Torchwood from 9.40 on Monday nights to midnight on Tuesdays. Or am I the lone Dr.Who and spin-off freak around here? Only the first 5 episodes of Torchwood are avasilable on DVD in shops in Armidale, and Video Ezy hasn’t got it.
Can’t go to Civic. I owe them too many fines, and besides, they abuse young workers with Howard’s AWA’s so I’m boycotting them.
People interested in numismatics might like to peruse this site of the “Museum of Australian Currency Notes” at the RBA - http://www.rba.gov.au/Museum/index_static.html
You know I walked past the RBA building nearly every day for 10 years and didn’t know there was a currency museum in it.
Thanks for that Tyro Rex, I’m nuts about numismatics. Next time I’m in Sydney (if Sydney still exists after APEC), I’ll take a look.
You are not Ozzi JPZ?
There are a couple of websites which may explain the stuff rather well to you. We have been exporting the technology to lots of countries. Not sure if we should be proud or embarrassed by it.
http://www.securency.com.au/
http://www.csiro.au/science/ps4e.html
The old money was paper made from cotton, thus it was easy to smooth out when wrinkled, very absorbent, easy to dry, and quite durable (compared to regular paper).
The polymer notes .. er.. they take quite a bit of getting used to. Some of their drawbacks, when compared to the old paper notes, are:
Once creased, they remain so, it is VERY difficult and time consuming to smooth out creases. In Newcastle a “blue light” disco for children charged $5 entry. Most of the kids paid with a $5 plastic note they had been carrying scrunched up in their pocket. About 1,000 kids attended. Counting the admission money was like counting a pile of loose piano accordions!
The corners become bent and creased quite easily, making stacks of notes appear untidy. Thus while the notes are more durable and last longer, they do appear quite “well used” and “third world treasury” looking by the time they are ready for recycling
If not already creased they do not fold easily and will try to expand back to their original flat shape. Thus carrying a handful of them loose in your pocket can result (if you do not pay attention) to them creeping up & out as you walk.
They are not absorbent. This is particularly noticeable in my industry, where notes are handled with wet hands. Beer, or liqueurs, spilled on notes which are then stacked in a cash drawer will result in them sticking together, sometimes quite firmly. While they can be separated painstakingly, counting by hand of “sticky” notes is unreliable.
Putting “sticky” notes through a note dispenser sucsh as an ATM can result in the machine jamming, or in the undetected dispensation of either a note or two extra, or a note or two less.
The old paper notes when damp and stacked would simply absorb the spilled liquid and be dry by the next morning.
I never thought about the sticky notes thing Steve. I can imagine that’s a total pain in the arse in your business.
Still, the nites in the US are pretty nasty. Whenever I’ve been there I’ve been terrified of accidently tearing them or putting them through the wash or something.
Oh, and has anyone else ever torn and Australian note by accident. Once they are really old they get really weak along the lines where they’ve been creased. I’ve seen one or two tear pretty easily that way.
Take pile of sticky plastic notes. Dump in clean water. Separate.
It pays to go through your gold coin change. Several $1 coins are scarce and some quite valuable. Look out for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games Women in Sport specimen (there is an image of a female javelin thrower on the reverse), in abt. uncirculated condition it could be worth up to $40 – there are quite a few about. The pick of the bunch is the 2000 Victoria Cross specimen (there is an image of the Victoria Cross on the reverse), worth well over $100 in unc. condition. Some mis-strikes and mint marks are also worth a bit.
I picked up some colonial era Portuguese Timor escudos one time I was Dili. Guys sell them on the street.
Must qualify among the world most useless cool shit.
Here’s one for Numismatists (a real question too, as I dont know)- is there anymore continuously employed currency than the Macau Pataca?
It blew me away, when I went there a couple of years ago, that the Pataca was still in force. This was the Portuguese colonial currency from at least the 1600s, possibly late 1500s.
Can anyone do better? Does the British pound stack up?
j_p_z……[ Is it actually true that you guys have plastic money? Cool. Can it travel back and forth in time, too?]
j_p_z, a fistful of Aussie folding is a good way to queue-jump in busy American restaurants. So it can definitely save you time, although I’m not so sure about the travel bit.
We were lined up at a popular crab house in Nawlins during jazzfest expecting a half hour wait, maybe more. Too knackered to seek a feed elsewhere we nodded resignedly and were ushered by boss waiter to an adjacent holding-bar.
“OMG, I SO love your accents”, he gald-handled, “please, just say something…anything…..”
* Fuck. Me. Dead.*
“Sure, mate, have you seen the way Aussie money is self-correcting?”
Puzzlement arched his brow.
I reached for my kick and produced a mauve Betty Windsor($5 bill), a blue swimmer(10), a lobster(20) and commenced to crush them into a compact ball between palms. Like a seasoned carny I did shtick about why the notes were “nick-named” so aptly, after all, it was a seafood joint, then dropped the bundle of downunder dosh on the bar with attendant flourish. As if by wizzardry, the notes began to unfold and creep towards their original flatness.
“Wow! you guys are amazing”, he said as he picked up the shape-shifting tender and showed us to a freshly laid table without furthur ado.
Mick: Indeed, polymer notes don’t tear easily, but once a tear begins it can’t be stopped, the note tears in half.
They do stand up very well to washing, it won’t hurt them a bit.
Tyro Rex: Haha, good point, but for bulk quantities that cure is worse than the disease. Unless a bundle of notes has been immersed in liquorice which has since solidified, it isn’t feasible to go through the process of washing and drying notes.
http://the-public-house.blogspot.com/2007/09/hay-bale-eternal-chore.html
It can’t be done in the open, in public areas, or where people (including other staff) are going to learn what is going on.
I keep notes which come from the bar separate from all others, and make sure they don’t end up anywhere near a cash dispenser or note acceptor.
The bank staff don’t seem to give a hoot. Their ATM jams all the time from using sticky notes, but they refuse to quarantine sticky or roughed up notes.
Be warned bloggers, if you do tear a note and its missing more than a quarter you will find banks posting it off to the Reserve and yourself filling in form(s) stating how it came to be in this state etcetera. The RBA takes its time with the bureaucratic assessment of what to refund you, but it basically comes down to that percentage of note that you submitted to the bank.
So, only half a note, probably only half the face value and so it goes up to 75 percent whereupon you will get full value. Don’t you love the reasoning even if you can’t explain it. And the bank will actually measure the note on a board to assess if its missing more than 25% to see if they should bother the RBA with the paperwork. I got $38 back from a damaged $50. It took approximately four months.
Pablo: Indeed. I insist that anybody who accepts cash on my behalf ensures there are two serial numbers on it ($5 has one serial number). I am most unforgiving.
Some notes have the serial no. neatly excised with a razor blade or something. At casual glance in a hurry the note appears undamaged.
“Their ATM jams all the time from using sticky notes, but they refuse to quarantine sticky or roughed up notes.”
Never had a problem using ATMs in 20 odd years. Always get the right money. Only once or twice have they been out of cash.
Except…
Once my card was kept by the machine, forcing me to go inside the bank to find out why. Apparently someone standing behind me in an ATM queue a few days previously had used stolen cards and the bank wondered if I could give them any details about that person (I couldn’t).
As I had tried withdrawing the money at 11pm on a Friday, holding my (only) card meant I had no cash over the weekend. The bank couldn’t be bothered contacting me by any other way except holding my card, and then chose to only do it late on a Friday, despite their being closed over the weekend. Needless to say, by the time Monday rolled around I was seriously pissed me off, and I let them know if it happened again they would lose my business (for what it is worth). Hasn’t happened again.
Thanks to all and sundry for the fascinating background info on amazing space-age plastic Oz money. So… does this mean that your credit cards are made of paper?
I was looking up some info, and it seems that the early prototype Aus-nationalist currency (once you’d decided to ditch the pound) was something called the “Australian Royal.” Apparently a batch of sample bills were printed up etc. etc., which I bet are worth a small fortune if you have some. Guess they weren’t popular, and the Aus Dollar then became the standard. Handsome-looking stuff, royals and dollahs alike, in the grand Euro tradition, looking stately and splendid — unlike US currency which, though I nonetheless dig it, is kind of amusingly crackpot-looking, like it was designed in a basement by some pimply guy who lives with his mother and publishes a zine.
SATP — well I’m flattered to be mistaken for an Aussie, but no, I’m not. If one ever heard my old-skool NY accent, which wilts flowers on contact and frightens cute furry animals, there’d be no confusion. And Enemy Combatant, (funny story btw!), be thankful for small graces… nobody EVER said “OMG! Your Brooklyn accent is so cute! Have some free drinks, and please don’t stab us to death!”
mick — US currency, which is made of linen, actually comes through washing machines extremely well, with all its bizarre, charming ugliness fully intact. And as for tearing it, well, it’s funny how many people around the globe are eager to burn the US flag, but you never see them tearing the greenback in half. Huh.
Damn, it’s a holiday weekend over here, but I’m stuck working, finishing a project, like some stoopid post-modern Bob Cratchit. Ah well. Thank Heaven for DVD players, webcast radio, and the amazing Doc Watson. Like a man once said,
Some people like to go out dancing,
There’s other people like us, we gotta work.
And there’s even some evil muthas,
They’re gonna tell you life is just made out of dirt.
Well I’m here to tell you that life is made out of neither dirt, nor plastic, nor vinyl, nor linen. But perhaps some lucky combination of all these. Rock on, Aussies, as the great Earth rocks on!
How Americans get by when the only way to tell the denomination of a note is to read the number on it is beyond me. No wonder so many yanks don’t like drinking to excess.
BTW did you know they still have ‘dry’ counties and the Jack Daniels distillery is in one of them?
Just saying.
j-p-z,
About the Royal. At the time of the introduction of decimal currency (1966)we had as Liberal PN, Sir Robert Menzies, who was an avowed monarchist. Among other things he was famous for reciting the following to Queen Liz on her visit in 1954.
“I did but see her passing by,
And I will love her til I die.”
A lot of people, even back then, stuck their fingers down their throats and gagged in embarrassment.
Move forward ten or so years and we decide to cut the apron springs just a little bit. Menzies, despite having his foreign Minister sign the ANZUS Pact, couldn’t bear to hasve us being too separated from Home. Hence the Royal, which was fortunately never printed. The idea was laughed out of existence on the front pages of the tabloids.
j-p-z:
Royals? Prototype decimal currency; seen specimens in the museum in Melbourne; looked nice, a bit like very much upmarket Latin American banknotes.
The name “Royals” went over like a lead balloon with the citizenry [can you imagine when the early United States went to decimal currency calling the unit of currency a “George”?]: the name “Royal” came from the then Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, who was such a brown-nosing crawler to the British Royal family that he embarrassed even them. So, because we were also America’s bestest nicest friend, we ended up with the compromise of our currency being called a “Dollar” too …. simply decimalizing the Australian Pound and maybe calling it something distinctively Australian just didn’t occur to our blessed ever-wise lords-and-masters.
The polymer banknotes are good but they are slippery so don’t put them in your back pocket because they can almost spring out as you get a handkerchief or car-keys out of there. Still prefer them to the old paper&linen banknotes.
Channel Ten have now completely disappeared ‘Torchwood’ without notice.
At least I won’t have some idiot tennis player disrupting Stargate next week.
KeftyE - Must qualify among the world most useless cool shit.
Way back when, the backrooms of Kabuli pushteen (fur/wool & leather coats) shops were stuffed with Tzarist rubles. Huge sheets of artwork, (tho’ I’ve never seen anything to compare to French 5th Republic notes - they could have been hung in the Louvre), the larger denominations twice the size of my palm, they could be had for a cent each, ie 100 notes of any denomination for a US dollar. I bought a couple of hundred but gave most away over the next 40yrs.
The last were sold at a mart in Ornage and the buyer went weak at the knees.
World’s most boring currency, the Danish kroner before they went for the euro - even it is less bhoring
Re Ming and his favoured 1966 preference for “Royal” currency, I remember some wag on radio saying that Menzies was thinking about calling it the Castor-Royal.
Hunh?
“Yeah, that way he’s really gonna give Australia the shits.”
Menzies quickly saw the light and it’s been a buck ever since.
Amphibious, please post here the date on which Denmark converted from the Kroner to the Euro.
Nice to see you again Steve at the Pub. I’m still on the dole doing volunteer work that johnny don’t fund, hope this don’t offend you. See the kids and sudanese need me more than the economy does. The dole is my political protest against ir. Don’t hate me, well not so much anyway.
Just a little offering for the deluded and insane http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,22345761-948,00.html
LOL did Kimbo say a drover’s dog could beat Howard?
kimbo is full of it…he had too much baggage and was way too egotistical and bombastic…weighed down by ballooning grandiosity. Rudd working the people on the ground is far more effective than Beazley waving from above…floating by flatulence. He needs to find a decent rocking chair and book and retire to the porch before he implodes over Labor again to the benefit of King John.
Jah Teh,
Glad to see I’m not alone out here festering about the disappearance of Torchwood.
The best description I have heard of Kimbo is that he is “a zepellin in search of a breeze”. Seems like he is living up to this. And he hasn’t heard the proverb about making your own luck. I wonder if Garrett will go the same way, sputtering out on the backbench?
I hate coffee that is too hot.
I hate coffee that is too cold.
Enemy Combatant:
Liked your yarn about Menzies and the “Royal” …. ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
Tim:
Glad to hear you are applying your time far more purposefully than are some of the over-subsidized, over-protected, under-worked and out-of-touch duds who are passing themselves off as CEOs of major corporations in Australia.
Ken Lovell, Nasking and Peterc:
Actually …. despite his image, Kim Beazley would have been an excellent prime minister …. pity about all the ALP dunderheads he had to carry around on his back ….
What part of election stuff goes on a dedicated thread don’t people understand? This thread is for stuff not related to the bloody endless election…
Sorry Kim. Please don’t beat me.
Heh!
Kim:
Yeah. Alright. But Kim Beazley isn’t standing for election, is he? [maybe I should have prefixed my 3rd sentence “what if” or “speculative history”]
[back on thread - sort of]
j-p-z:
So we got ourselves brand-new banknote technology then stuffed it up with our clunker coinage. The Euro coins and Singapore’s newest coins are a dream to use compared with ours.
‘Transit’ One of the best animated shorts. The story is told backwards.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602081&sid=aTbIhOtky4CI&refer=benchmark_currency_rates
The beginning of the end?
Perhaps Chavez will need to replace his hotline to Cuba with one to the office of that other big man of international socialism Mr Mugabe.
Responsibility for this impending melt down in the economy ? Please don’t all line up to blame everyone else for once.
I don’t think he is the only person with a balance of trade problem that has imports running higher than exports BoredinHK.
Steve,
I hope the people of Venezuela receive great and improving health care and housing.
The assets of the country belong to them.
Their administration is denying them any chance to use the current commodities boom to secure a sound economy which will deliver these outcomes.
Tipping into hyperinflation will be consequences of the actions of the government .
Other countries can run negative trade balances as long as they can afford to secure funding .
Venezuela won’t be able to do that soon.
It’s economy is truly a house of cards.
Remember it will be the people who suffer not so to be ruler for life Chavez.
that should be “soon to be ruler for life”
Chavez.
http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=887
This article is from Dissent Magazine and is about the problem of aging .More specifically it describes the seventy year olds who are going to have to work to look after their parents who are surviving into their 90’s.
This quote gives you some idea-”“Boy, life’s a crapshoot, isn’t it. They tell you to prepare, and we did, but now what? It really pisses me off. You get here, and you can’t enjoy your life because you’re going to live so long.â€? He stops talking again, then makes a noise that’s somewhere between a laugh and a cry. “Christ, this is nuts; here I am complaining about living so long. “
Thanks for that. Been thinking pretty much about the same about the assets in OZ myself, as opposed to, say, those in Honk Kong which we all know are owned in one way or another by the ChiCom govt or the Red Army.
Way to go capitalism, you twit.
Sorry Ms Keeler
Can’t understand your reply .