Christmas Tree Pick-Up

Bringing the Christmas Tree Home

Christmas is sneaking up on us with just 20 days to go!  It got me thinking about the Christmas tree.  My son has struggled to find any decent wild pine in his area or any pine that he can pinch a branch off for his Christmas tree this year.  Instead, his go to for this year has been a glitzy artificial $12 tree from Kmart, not that great for the environment.  Yes, it looks pretty cool, flashes and changes colour, showing off the star on top nicely, but there is fun lost in this plastic answer to what is a quintessential feature of Christmas.  There is, however, fun to be had making the effort to go out and choose a real tree.  Yes, that tangible, fragrance, with real leaves, real bark, and real spiders.  This is the classic scent of Christmas that matches the delicious ham and turkey, custard and Christmas pudding, way better than any fake alternative.

All around the more populated areas of Australia there are numerous places that sell gorgeous live Christmas trees.  From Tomalong Christmas Tree Farm, in New South Wales; to Chrissy Trees 4 You, in Queensland; to Adelaide Hills Christmas Trees, in South Australia; to Sunbury Christmas Tree Farm, in Victoria; to Santa’s Shaped Christmas Tree, in ACT; to Christmas Trees of Wanneroo, in Western Australia; or to Richmond Christmas Tree Farm, in Tasmania – these are just some of the places you can visit for bringing that perfect look and smell of Christmas back home for Christmas.  Now is the time to head out and find that tree to decorate.  Most places will offer a delivery service, but you can also do a pick-up of your own.  Picking the tree up yourself is the most entertaining way of getting the tree and taking the kids/family/friends with you makes for an enjoyable and often humorous excursion.

This leads me to answering the question: how does one best bring a Christmas tree home?  I mean they can be up to 12 ft tall, fat, and even a bit cumbersome.  If you do have a trailer or a ute, then these vehicles are the best for an easy diy for Christmas tree collection.  Take a rope or a tie down to make sure the tree is properly secured for the homeward journey.

But what about if you don’t have trailer, a ute, or even a truck or van?  Well, the next best thing is to secure the tree to the roof of your car.  If your car comes equipped with the roof rack, then you’re good to go.  If you don’t have a roof rack, then you can pop a soft sheet over the roof of your car and position the tree on top before tying it down using tie downs.  The tie downs can be anchored by lowering the windows enough for you to fasten the ends of the tie down to the grab handles inside the car or even on the lip protruding from the top of the door – if there is one.  Just make sure that you are legal and that the tree doesn’t have too much of an overhang past the ends of our vehicle.

The other thing to keep in mind is that your field of vision can’t be blocked.  Placing the tree trunk end at the front end of the car and the top of the tree pointing rearwards ensures that, as you travel back home, the wind drags neatly over the tree without whipping against the branches, potentially damaging the tree and the perfect look.

Most everyday hatchbacks, sedans, and wagons are good for carrying up to 75 kg on the roof.  Others can carry more.  SUVs, vans, and dual cab utes can usually handle 100 kg.  However, do check your manufacturers recommendations before trying to put a heavyweight monster on your little Toyota Yaris.  You can shrink the tree by lopping a bit of the bottom off the tree without losing out too much on the perfect shape.

Another way you can transport your freshly cut Christmas tree back to the house is inside the cabin of your car.  If you’re not too prissy about the interior of your sedan or small hatch getting bits in it, and not too dismayed with a 6 ft tree rather than a 12 ft one, then sliding the tree through the front passenger door, over the lowered backrest, and through onto the rear seat is possible.  Of course, a station wagon or hatchback can swallow a tree through the boot space and over the lowered rear seats.  If it’s a sedan, then the top of the tree may need to poke out through the lowered front passenger window, particularly if it’s tall.  Obviously, the smaller the tree, the easier it is for you to get the Christmas tree inside your car to transport home.

With Christmas just around the corner, it’s time to start decorating, and the first thing to go up has to be the tree!

Are You Being Misgendered By A Crash Test Dummy?

It may have come to your notice that not all car drivers are men. For most of us, this isn’t much of a staggering revelation, especially if you are a woman. Or if you were ever driven places by your mother. Or taught your daughter to drive. Or asked your wife or girlfriend to share the driving with you on a long-haul trip interstate. Or if… well, you get the picture. However, it seems as if car manufacturers, especially those responsible for the passive safety features, haven’t quite cottoned onto this yet, as a whole.  You’d think that Bertha Benz had never taken her husband’s prototype horseless carriage out for a long drive to demonstrate to the world that this new invention was easy to use.

The road safety analysts who collect facts on these sorts of things found, when they separated out the data for men and the data for women, found out that women are 73% more likely to be injured in a vehicle crash than men and 17% more likely to die in one. This isn’t because they’re crashing at a higher rate, either. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in the US, men still crash more and are more likely to do silly things like not wear seatbelts, drive too fast and drive drunk. However, if they do get into identical crashes, a man is more likely to survive it than a woman.

One has to ask why, given that most car manufacturers pride themselves on how good their safety features are. After all, they do all those crash tests with dummies, don’t they? Surely these should make cars safer for both men and women?

Well, yes. Lots of passive safety features such as airbags have become standard on just about every new vehicle thanks to these tests. But there’s a wee problem with these tests, as pointed out by investigator and social commentator Caroline Criado-Perez in her book Invisible Women. Ms Criado-Perez dug around a bit and found out a few things about the standard crash test dummies used in most tests by most manufacturers. In these tests, they tend to use three main ones for the frontal crash tests: one 95^th percentile male (in other words, a dummy representing a really big dude who’s bigger than 95% of other guys), a 50^th percentile male (an average guy) and a 5^th percentile female dummy (a teeny lady who’s shorter than 95% of the population). In other words, tests are carried out on twice as many male dummies as they are on female dummies. That’s a wee bit of a problem to begin with.

However, it gets worse. According to Ms Criado-Perez, during those frontal crash tests, the female dummy isn’t even tested in the driver’s seat – she goes into the front passenger seat. This makes you wonder what century these designers are living in. Surely, given that they’re putting all these electronic assistance gadgets, they know that this is the 21^st century and that women drive cars, don’t they? The good news here is that in Australia, the ANCAP tests do put that 5^th percentile female dummy in the driver’s seat during the frontal tests – good for them.

However, there’s one wee problem with that female dummy. OK, she’s smaller than the male ones and she’s got boobs, but when it comes to actual anatomy, that dummy doesn’t actually represent real female biology. What the designers did was to simply take the male dummy, scale it down and put boobs on it. The trouble is that nature doesn’t work like that. There are differences between male and female skeletons – that’s forensics 101 (yes, literally; it’s part of the basic undergraduate anatomy course). Take necks for example.  If a man and a woman have the same sized head, the woman will have thinner neck vertebrae and a thinner neck.  Now look down a bit to the other end of the spine, and look at the pelvis. The male pelvis is narrower and has a heap of different angles, which means that a guy’s legs are also straighter – and that’s just the start. The differences between male and female pelvises are as different as the soft bits found in and on the pelvis (yes, the bits you’re thinking of). And the list goes on: men have longer ribcages and denser long bones as well.

In short, using a smaller version of a male dummy doesn’t actually represent a female body. Women are being misgendered by crash test dummies, in effect.

Would you be surprised to learn that in one recent study on sex differences between injuries from car crashes, women were more likely to have injuries to their pelvises and spines – the places where female bodies are most different from male bodies? Those whiplash-protecting headrests do something, but they’re better at protecting male necks than female necks – because they’ve been tested on what are essentially male dummies.

However, this isn’t an excuse for men to hog the driver’s seat.  Volvo is one car manufacturer who has cottoned onto the fact that women have been driving since Bertha Benz took a road trip through the Schwartzwald, and they’re starting to work out how they can make cars safer for 100% of drivers.  What’s more, a more anthropomorphically correct female dummy has been invented, known as the THOR-5F.  The THOR-5F isn’t just a scaled-down male dummy but has been built to actually represent that dainty 5^th percentile female, pelvis, neck and all. This dummy even has a whole heap of sensors in the abdomen and the dummy looks like she’s in the second trimester of pregnancy.  A crash test mummy, if you like. Here’s hoping that ANCAP and the other safety testing authorities will insist that this dummy or other dummies based on real women must be used in crash tests.

In the meantime, keep on driving safely and always wear your seatbelt (even if arranging it around your boobs is awkward).

Stay Safe While Driving Home For Christmas

As I’m writing this, I’m listening to Chris Rea’s classic, “Driving Home For Christmas”. Quite a lot of us will be doing this during this holiday season – driving somewhere to celebrate, that is, not listening to Chris Rea. Whether we’re driving from one side of town to another to visit the relatives, or whether we’re taking the chance to make the most of the newly opened borders and head off on a long-awaited summer road trip, we want to have a happy summer holiday season that’s remembered for all the right reasons, rather than for a road tragedy.

If you’re planning a trip of any length during this Christmas, New Year and summer holiday season, then here’s a bunch of tips to keep in mind to make sure that things go smoothly and safely for everybody.

1. Allow more time for your journey. During the lead-up to Christmas, the roads are super-busy. Everybody’s travelling and/or doing their Christmas shopping, and taking the kids places now that school’s out for the summer. At the same time, it always feels like the road works crews are stepping things up, trying to get scheduled maintenance tasks done before the Christmas closedown. This means that you can expect the roads to be busy and that things will take longer. Save yourself some stress and allow for the extra time, rather than ending up stressed and under time pressure, which could cause you take silly risks.
2. Drive sober. You’d think that we shouldn’t need reminding about this, but every year, you hear about some idiot crashing thanks to having had a few too many bevvies. Yes, it’s party season and the time of year when we’re most likely to over-indulge, but the risk of driving drunk is still there. Play it safe and know your limits. Have a designated driver (take turns if needed). These days, it’s perfectly socially acceptable to not drink alcohol, and there are plenty of non-alcoholic cocktails that say “party” without getting you smashed (in both senses) – a Virgin Mary is rather seasonally appropriate, don’t you think? If you have overdone it, then don’t drive. Better to crash on a mate’s sofa than into a lamppost.
3. Stay hydrated. It’s summer, so things get hot. This means that our bodies need more liquid. What’s more, if you have a flask of something nice and cold (and non-alcoholic, of course) then you can help yourself chill down and avoid headaches with a nice cold drink. If you’ve got a long trip planned, then try freezing a plastic bottle of water overnight then taking this with you. It will slowly melt as the hours pass, giving you a deliciously cold drink.
4. Get yourself a good playlist. If you’re going to be stuck in the car for ages driving interstate with the kids, then a good playlist – of Christmas carols or otherwise – can help you get in the right mood and can help you stay calm. Create yourself a playlist of favourite Christmas carols then sing along with them as loud as you can with the windows down, especially if you’re stuck in road works. See how many smiles you can collect. Alternatively, if you’re fed up with twee jingly tunes, then put on your own playlist of bangers to listen to so that the annoying tune you heard in the store doesn’t stay on repeat in your brain.
5. Keep the speed down. If you’ve allowed more time for your trip, you should be OK here. However, if you haven’t it’s better to arrive later than never. It’s also better not to add to the Christmas expenses with a speeding ticket. The cops are usually out in force at this time of year, so keep the right foot light. This especially applies if you’re driving to a less familiar area where the speed limits may not be what your instincts are telling you.
6. Get your car summer-ready. It’s always wise to ensure that the fluids are topped up and that the windscreen is clean, and that everything else is as it should be in your car. It’s especially important to do this before a long trip if you haven’t had one for a while, which is likely to be the case in 2021 when the interstate borders have opened after having been closed for so long.
7. If you can, avoid the more congested routes and times. Smart use of maps and timing your travel for less popular times can help avoid clogged roads and being caught in a traffic jam. Driving at night or in the early morning can also be cooler. However, make sure that you don’t try do drive when tired. And if you do get caught in a stream of traffic that’s top to toe in tail lights, then don’t stew about it but just go with the flow. You will get there eventually, as long as you get there safely.

EV Revolution

Let’s ditch fossil fuels and crude oil for a while, since some say that oil is considered environmentally unclean and unfit for burning.  So, what about electric?  Which of our earth’s finite resources are needed to make electric vehicles (EVs)?  It will be Tanzania, Venezuela, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Canada or even Brazil who could be the providing the rest of the world with precious raw metals that the greener EV requires.

As electric cars appear to be going mainstream and all our main automotive manufactures look to ditch internal combustion engines (ICEs) by 2025-ish, these big automotive giants have to source and make investments into electric cars and their necessary componentry.  Countries like South Africa, Tanzania, China and even Australia have very mineral-rich and rare metal resources.  These countries and their mining industries are the world’s best environmentally friendly strategy to power EVs and their mass production.

There is a global race on that is driving the demand for countries, including quite a few in Africa, to mine as much of their precious metal resources to equip the world with a greener fleet of vehicles.  This clambering for sourcing all the right stuff for EV production en masse could soon provide billions of dollars into certain countries’ GDP rates.

Rare metals like copper, lithium, cobalt and nickel are some of the most discussed metals in EV production demands.  Other metals like neodymium (a rare earth metal), aluminium and zinc have emerged as some other new resources that will be needed in the rapid quest for a greener world. Statista, a German company specializing in market and consumer data, estimates that the demand for metals such as nickel, aluminium, and iron (all the critical components in EVs) will jump to as much as 14 times the rate that it is now by 2030.  This huge demand for environmentally friendly EV minerals for meeting the green EV car revolution will provide a great cash injection for a well-endowed African state.  Demand for metals like lithium and graphite are also expected to rise substantially, even by as much as 9-10 times by 2030.

The large estimated increase (14x) in demand for the clean EV minerals to meet the intended global EV production rates over the next ten years is accompanied by the need for vehicle battery outputs and infrastructure, which are expected to rise by millions of times over in the very near future.  Even Toyota recently announced a 13.6 billion US investment into electric cars and hybrids, with some 9 billion US dollars to be spent on battery production alone.  This is fantastic news for the environment and carbon zero.

The increase in demand for these rare and hard to obtain metals is pushing top mining and big investment companies around the globe to invest in the acquisition of key materials used in the production of EV batteries, EVs themselves, and their much needed electrical infrastructure.  Solar energy componentry, as well as the EV requirements, all point towards an enormous boom in demand for these rare and hard to reach resources, as well as creating an opportunity to make even more money than the awful and “dirty” fossil fuel endeavours.

It is expected that the sales and production of EVs will continue to accelerate quickly over the next five years.  Big automotive giants who are changing to larger-scale EV production have major mining countries like South Africa, Namibia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Botswana on their radar.  These are just some of the main African countries, let alone other countries around the world, who enjoy bountiful reserves of some of the world’s most precious metals and minerals: minerals such as gold, diamond, cobalt, iron ore, coal, and copper.  Meeting the demands by governing authorities and their growing appetite for better and greener EVs will be much better for the environment – and for special places like Africa, I’m sure.

President Hakainde Hichilema is the new president for Zambia, and he has recently announced plans to ramp up mining in particular, and to jump-start Zambia’s economy.  Part of his economic plan provides for the rapidly growing EV battery industry, with cobalt and copper identified as key components.  The workforce will be a great place for young men from the age of 15 years old, who will be able to work in the dangerous mining industry.  Countries like Zambia and Tanzania are working hard to supply the developed countries of the world with the rare metals. The developed countries are considered to have a higher status and economic standing, a better understanding of the environment, human ethics, health and emission standards.  Their demand for a green EV world is a good thing for all people and the environment.

As the big green machine, Tesla, and auto giant Toyota are joined by other larger EV-producing manufacturers, African mining countries are going to have to move faster than ever to meet the demand put on them by the governing authorities of the world and their ever-increasing and severe carbon emission goals and standards.  The president of Zambia, Mr. Hichilema, has wasted no time in announcing his administration’s hopes to quickly provide the clean EV battery supply chain and invest much of his country’s proceeds into its development.

Rare metals and their difficult and extensive underground extraction methods are needed in EV lithium ion battery technology and are critical for improving the driving range of electric vehicles so that they can compete with the best, most frugal, “archaic” ICE technology and emission-capturing methods. These rare metals are buried beneath the fields of African nations, ready to be harvested by economically sound, rich and developed countries with zero carbon emission goals and standards.

South Africa, a mining giant, has also announced plans to set up production plants to manufacture EVs of their own, including plants for the manufacture of EV components, such as EV batteries.  This could see South Africa as one of the multi-billion-dollar raw material producers of the world.  South Africa already has its raw material extraction industry, its capital markets, and its existing manufacturing and export infrastructure to build upon.

Environmentally friendly keywords that current governments, economists and greenies around the world are sharing with the public are words like carbon emissions, climate change, EVs, EV infrastructure, mining, metals, zero carbon, clean technology, investment and climate crisis.  All of these keywords correspond with the rising demand for the precious metals used in EV production.

As it stood in 2020, the total global nickel reserves amounted to approximately 94 million metric tons.  Of that amount, it was Indonesia that held the world’s largest share.  Following the tropical and beautiful Indonesia is Australia, with our nickel reserves estimated to be 20 million metric tons.  Best we get stuck in, then!