However...  there are other types of coffee trees in different Indo-Pacific countries that have never been commercially grown.  One of these might suit Australian growing conditions, to produce a low-acid bean similar to Arabica, with Ag-Bots designed to keep labor costs low.  Or perhaps Robusta trees could be economically grown locally, and the green beans (they’re not really beans) steamed and rinsed to ‘decaffeinate’ them.  But the cost advantage of growing Robusta trees instead of Arabica is largely negated by the cost of the water-decaffeination process, which tends to also reduce the beans’ flavor...  not a bad thing for very strong-flavored Robusta beans.  Research into a more efficient, more variable, and more cost-effective decaffeination process is needed.

February ’22  Blending In:  I retired as an animator about 35 years ago, at the end of the hand-drawn cel animation on film era, as 3D CGI technology was just emerging in simple forms along with early personal computers!  The new equipment and software, back then in the 1980s, was too expensive for a free-lance animator to justify – I didn’t have a spare million to invest – so I turned my back on animation and struck out in new directions.  No regrets, but I have maintained an interest, and what used to be horrendously expensive is now becoming accessible on a ‘hobbyist’ scale.  PCs are now hundreds of times faster and more powerful than the primitive models of the 1980s, but another factor is the slow improvement of Open-Source 3D CGI platform blender, first released in 2010.  I have downloaded the new v3.0 of that and am starting to learn how to use it – both for the fairly-complex business of making 3D models of static objects (tables, chairs, household items, buildings) and the follow-up process of ‘rendering’ them in a 3D world with correct camera angles and lighting, along with 3D-modelled human characters.  My long-term goal now is to create a short animated story using this new-to-me technology...  and with 20 years as a professional animator, and 15 novels behind me, I can surely write a short film script!  Perhaps even several in time.  For an ex-animator, this is quite stimulating!

February ’22  Bold New Anime:  Japanese director Makoto Shinkai is completing his latest anime film due for release in ’Fall 2022’ – that’s about October.  It doesn’t have an English title yet, but looks to be extremely philosophical in nature.  He describes it as a ‘Road Film’ around Japan, with key characters finding doors that need to be SHUT after calamitous events or historic injustices.  This, he says, is to allow local people in many Japanese locations, now facing an uncertain future with new directions and priorities, a form of closure.  Wow!  That sounds like a documentary-style social commentary that must have religious and political implications, so a brave subject to tackle, and definitely an adult-themed story!  With any luck he will tell the story without magic and fantasy...  Japanese fixation with Shinto ‘Spirit World’ is one door that, in my opinion, NEEDS to be shut.  I recently heard it described as a ‘Metaphysical’ aspect of Japanese life.  Occam’s Razor suggests otherwise: that clinging to medieval delusions instead of abandoning them like other contries was a political power-play, and remnants of that still shape Japanese culture today.  It’s fine – even admirable – to show respect for one’s cultural heritage by NOT making fun of ancient beliefs.  But it’s quite wrong to insist on continued literal belief in long-disproven archaic mysticism.

January ’22  Slow Uptake:  I’m not a gardener!  Messy, dirty, unrewarding activity.  The closest I want to get is whatever I can do from the seat of a ride-on mower, but have been forced to accept that some minimal gardening is essential.  Trees and shrubs, for instance, just keep growing, and must be pruned back regularly to avoid becoming a jungle.  Landscape gardening, just changing the lay of the land for easier maintenance, is something I can accept.  I recently built a garden wall – really just a series of straight edges one garden sleeper high for tidy mowing – but I will back-fill the back yard area with soil and grow grass on it when finished to get rid of an annoying hollow along one edge that has been irritating me for a whole decade and making it hard to mow that area.  I’m slow, when it comes to activities that I don’t enjoy, but I do eventually get there.

November 2021  Mystic Madness:  Having now researched the screen-size of modern cellphones (not just assumed that my own phone was typical), I could get back into writing a sequel to computer game Mystic Towers WITHOUT resorting to intrusive modern marketing methods.  I would enjoy doing that, for the satisfaction of handling the animation, art, music, coding at high and low levels, game-play, sound recording and editing...  all the different aspects of game authoring that are now handled by TEAMS of specialists.  I would probably ‘sell’ very few copies of the game, but maybe writing a single-level alpha version of a retro game, for free download, would be sufficient.  Most likely for the huge Android cellphone market, with touch-screen game controls.  Hmmm...  thinking, thinking...  I have created an extra page to serve as a ‘log’ for progress on this project.

October 2021  Mystique a Mistake:  To better understand the recent anime film, Weathering With You, an historical perspective helps.  The invention of farming was humanity’s first global cultural change, replacing thousands of years of hunter-gatherer traditions, and led to towns and cities...  and, unfortunately, also to politics.  But despite this, humans everywhere believed all sorts of ridiculous ideas because there was no obvious way to prove or disprove any of them.  The next major cultural change was the development of ‘Scientific Method’ in the 18th Century – the end of the medieval period, and the start of the Industrial Revolution.  Scientific proof steadily disproved many long-established religious or political beliefs, often against violent resistance.

In very-traditional Japan, ancient mystical beliefs were not simply abandoned completely like they were in other countries – they were woven into traditional ceremonies and social standards.  Although no longer believed to be literally true, they are still respected for cultural reasons.  Shinto, more a social philosophy than a religion, is based on Spirit World concepts, with core ideas that are medieval and illogical.  But, being distinctively Japanese, these ancient ideas have never lost social favor, and are still used for writing anime film scripts.  For non-Japanese film audiences, sadly, they’re just centuries-old nonsense.

To make adult-themed films like Weathering With You, they need to change their scripting methods to make films with adult logic.  This is too complex to explain here, so I have made a small extra page to do that.

September 2021  Writing Milestone:  I just finished writing Quantum Heritage, the third book in the Vortex Evolution trilogy...  still just tweaking the ending to make it more definite, but basically a job completed, novel #15 for me.  Fiona completed the cover illustration, the eBook was built and has been edited and checked for errors, now about to be uploaded, which also means uploading all other 14 books as they all now have slight changes to include a reference to this new one.  Although it took only one year to write, I hope that this is my last novel.  I’m getting better at doing this, but enough is enough!

No doubt I wll be struck by some social, cultural or technical observation, and think, ‘Hmmm...  There’s a story there...’  But perhaps, this time, I could just splice that into some existing novel rather than write a whole new story.

August 2021  Anime Success:  As an ex-animator, I admire the work of Japanese director Makoto Shinkai, who uses anime-style animation to tell adult-themed stories.  He made the popular, but flawed film Your Name (see my 2019 review of that), and has released his new film Weathering With You, which, UNLIKE its predecessor, is artistically impressive AND easy to follow.  Emotional exchanges between story protagonists – a common failing with anime films – were well handled.  It did rely on loosely-interpreted Shinto mysticism, which ruined its adult appeal for non-Japanese audiences, but it is what it is.

During a worldwide weather shift (definitely NOT Global Warming!), continuous rain drenches all the artificial reclamation and building projects by mankind over the past 200 years until ground subsidence causes large chunks of Tokyo, over years, to slowly sink.  Tokyo Bay is steadily reverting to what it used to be like.  But there are ‘Sunshine Girls’ who can appeal – by prayer – to Shinto Spirits, and restore sunshine locally for a short time, but they pay a high price.  Every time they do that they lose some of their humanity, until they slowly ‘fade away’ and become a permanent part of the spirit world – they are ‘human sacrifices’.  This is the Shinto element that is very Japanese and hard for other adults to accept.  Apart from that, a very impressive film with amazingly detailed city scenes and a somewhat cynical portayal of authoritarian restriction of rights for minors, and a strict law enforcement system.  It takes animation in a healthy, mainstream story-telling direction, following the effects on human relationships at all social levels.

July 2021  Diet Plan:  When my wife was alive, and we had growing kids, with lots of friends and relatives visiting, I quite enjoyed sharing cooking duties, especially dinners for family and guests...  that’s a rewarding experience and I enjoyed being an adventurous cook.  Since she died and I moved to rural Maleny more than a decade ago, my focus has changed completely – I’m now old and a one-person household, with cooking for visitors extremely rare.  I just need to keep myself fed.  So my pantry and fridge look bare, as I want only bare essentials for the simplest, quickest, cheapest, most basic possible cooking.  I realize that this is probably very common for retired people but, somehow, it took me by surprise!

July 2021  Slow, but not steady:  I have had my second AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab with no ill effects.  The 90-day delay between first and second shots of the AZ vaccine is the main reason for the incredibly slow vaccine roll-out.  A delay of only 30 days for mRNA vaccines like Pfizer or Moderna makes them much quicker to reach full coverage.  But making mRNA locally on a commercial scale will demand taxpayer investment in that new technology.  Common sense won’t matter – there will have to be a political reason.  Either a gain for the ruling Party or a loss for its opposing Party.

July 2021  Supply-chain Reaction:  Post-pandemic, governments around the world will enact new laws to prevent densely-populated countries like China or India, with their cheap prices from low wages, dominating world supply-chains.  Just about every country will legislate for minimum local manufacturing levels for essential goods and services, even if they can’t match the prices from India or China.  Expect limits on firms selling online locally, but delivering goods directly from overseas – more ‘Buy Local’ encouragement.  The other main problem is manufacturers ignoring patents, trademarks or intellectual property, selling copy-cat items at HALF the cost of genuine items.  Expect tighter controls here, too.

June 2021  Too Many People:  Over-population – especially in densely-populated countries like China or India – is a world-wide problem.  But politicians know that planned population reduction means shrinking economies, with greatly-reduced political and economic controls.  They want perpetual population growth.  As with global problems like climate change or fossil-fuel dependence, politicians will have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into reluctant compliance.  The only hope for world-wide population reduction is by coordinated grass-roots action.  People-power.  Don’t hold your breath!

June 2021  Greener Grass:  My old ride-on mower will soon need a new engine (See: Planned Obsolescence, below).  A friend with the same make/model mower as me has welding equipment, so bought a new OHV engine and did his own modifications to the mower chassis, belt-guides, footrests, exhaust, fuel-tank, and drastic changes to the engine hood/bonnet to cover the new, much larger engine.  He has offered to modify my old machine, at about a third of the price of buying a whole new mower.  So when my old engine gets terminal, I can buy a new emission-compliant engine and keep my old mower running for several more years – a much greener option!

May 2021  The Aging Population:  Boomers are now all in their seventies and, although many more people live to 100 than ever before, the AVERAGE life-span remains at little more than 80 years.  So, within just a few more years, the great mass of our aging population will naturally disappear.  After decades of political arguments, blame-shifting and stalling, the government has reluctantly agreed to extra funding and staffing for Age Care, but cynically phased in s-l-o-w-l-y over the next few years...  by which time the problem will be – quite literally – dying away.  This ‘extravagant’ funding is then bound to be scaled back.

May 2021  Phone Harassment:  In my rural area, I do not have NBN internet.  When I receive calls on my old-school landline phone, I just hang up without answering if it’s an unknown number, as 95% of incoming calls are marketing messages, political surveys or scams – ‘nuisance calls’.  I also leave my mobile phone turned off unless I need to make an outbound call.  Every few days I turn it on, to get a rash of text messages – ALL of which are usually unwanted.

April 2021  Planned Obsolescence:  About the turn of the century small vertical-shaft motors used for ride-on mowers changed from side-valve to overhead-valve to meet stricter emission standards – a worthy environmental upgrade – but forcing a different engine shape, size and ‘footprint’.  My old mower cuts grass beautifully but the engine is getting tired, and I can’t legally have it reconditioned.  Chassis modifications would be required to fit a new, larger, low-emission OHV engine.  Mower shops make that work prohibitively expensive, so hundreds of thousands of owners have been persuaded to buy a whole new mower and just junk the old one...  a huge environmental waste!

April 2021  First Jab:  I have received my first Covid-19 jab, months later than expected.  With the very slow rollout of vaccine – made slower by cancelled EU deliveries and locally-made AstraZeneca blood-clotting issues – it was a relief to get any sort of jab, especially with no adverse reactions.  This is a good time NOT to be living in a city!  With the AZ, the delay between first and second jabs is 90 days (only 30 days for the Pfizer jab) so my second dose is due in three months, and maybe a third as a booster some time later.

March 2021  Online Delivery:  I am a firm supporter of online shopping, and think that it will continue to cause shrinkage in the traditional retail sector for years.  Parcel sorting and delivery is now incredibly reliable...  but still not perfect.  There is very little human oversight of the now fully-automated sorting system.  With millions of parcels sent every day, it’s inevitable that a few go astray.

I had a package go missing despite being too large to possibly be accidentally mislaid.  After a few weeks, the online vendor DID send a replacement item and it arrived here promptly.  Probably the vendor’s printed label on the missing parcel did not suit the automated parcel scanning system.  When you spend your money, but receive no goods, that is very annoying!

March 2021  Poll Toll:  I used to make animated TV ads that sometimes pushed ethical limits.  The heavily-regulated advertising industry generally stays inside legal limits, but the unregulated marketing industry often strays well into offensively manipulative.  Over time, they have exploited all public polls, surveys and questionnaires for personalized marketing.  Even when firms or official departments insist that strict privacy rules apply to all customer data, their marketing divisions or agencies WILL milk every last drop of benefit from any data you give them.  Political polls are particularly prone to abuse, followed closely by ‘How did we do?’ questionnaires.  Refusing to answer is not rude – it’s just sensible.  Don’t give marketeers ammunition to fire back at you!

February 2021  Misinterpretation:  The Impeachment Article presented to the US Senate charged Trump with inciting the insurrection at the Capitol.  Impeachment is a political judgment on the suitability of a sitting office-holder to hold public office, and to force them out of office if they do not uphold the principles of the Constitution.  Trump’s incitement of the insurrection is a legal matter.  It can’t be proven one way or another.  He certainly used his political rally oratory to suggest it, to encourage it, and did nothing to stop it once it started, but never said ‘Go and invade the Capitol.  Stop the counting of those fraudulent votes.  Kill a few political opponents while you’re there.’

Legal analysts will realize this but be unable to re-word the impeachment provisions in the Constitution.  Constitutional changes are rare, one of the vulnerabilities of any Constitution.  Legislators are reluctant to change foundation laws even after they become ‘stale’ and increasingly irrelevant to contemporary conditions or standards, or so dated that wildly-varied interpretations are possible.

February 2021  Face-off?   What is it about house-flies that makes them so keen to run exploratory missions up my nose or into my ears?  Even though I have fly-screens on all doors and windows and do use them during summer – making sure that no door is left open without a fly-screen covering it – I always seem to have house-flies very determined to buzz me.  I do use fly-spray but rarely manage to score a direct hit, or the flies seem to be impervious to the stuff.  Is it just my magnetic personality?

February 2021  Lame Duck:  An impeachment trial held by politicians, where they decide the trial rules, what evidence to consider or ignore, and vote along ultra-partisan political lines – what could possibly go wrong?  To nobody’s surprise, Trump was acquitted of the open-&-shut impeachment case.  Political partisanship ‘trumped’ evidence.

The US Impeachment process has been shown to be a lame duck.  It is just a ban on holding public office – yet the Senators ‘judging’ Trump focused on his legal liability for the insurrection, which is NOT what impeachment is about.  Trump carefully avoided directly instructing his followers to invade the Capitol, just urging them to ‘Fight like hell!’ for his victory.  A proper court case to consider whether an insurrection was provoked is specified by the 14th Amendment.  But that would require proving to Judges that Trump had specifically ‘ordered’ the invasion, not merely encouraged it with fiery rhetoric.  So he is NOT to be held accountable in any way for inciting that event.

Governments of other Constitutional Democracies around the world – such as Australia – will be looking very carefully at this public farce.  We had our own similar event with the dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, so it CAN happen anywhere.

January 2021  Pre-trial Chances:  If the February impeachment of Donald Trump fails, it will be the result of Republican die-hards refusing to censure a Republican President, seeing nothing but the need for partisan solidarity.  But Trump is a Republican for only as long as it suits his own purposes – if he stands as an independent, he would effectively split the right-wing vote to the benefit of the left-wing Democrats.  Sadly, extreme partisanship is considered normal in US politics, making any form of bipartisanship or neutrality difficult, and Trump does not appeal to moderates who value neutrality.  He appeals to extremists, and there are a lot of them – that is really the problem.

January 2021  Delusional?  A lot of US media commentators now describe Donald Trump as ‘delusional’ for persistently claiming that the presidential election was stolen from him by voter fraud.  They agree that he should be removed from office but, as delusional, treated humanely.  I can’t see the slightest evidence that he is delusional about this.  He knows that he lost, but saw whipping up support for violent action among his poorly-educated, over-emotive and white-supremacist supporters, as the only way he could hope to regain power.  It was coldly calculated and deliberate.  Impeaching him a second time is the only way to make sure that he can never run for public office again.  Because the Constitution is regarded as sacrosant, incoming President Biden can’t change it to prevent this happening again, but he might be able to add an interpretation of evidence to describe incitement to violent political tactics as an impeachable act.

January 2021  Fake News?  Remember before the 2016 US presidential elections?  Donald Trump was recorded claiming that he could shoot someone in the street or grab women any way he liked, and nobody would object.  At that time, everyone outside the USA thought, Well, that’s the end of HIM as a presidential candidate!  But his loyal base just assumed that, since the report was anti-Trump, it was therefore fake news.  It never really happened.

Now we have White House recordings of Donald Trump trying to persuade a Republican official to deliberately falsify election results.  More fake news? – can’t believe those White House crooks – or justifiable action to counter the widespread voter fraud that he insists happened in November, but which nobody else has been able to detect.  Then the unbelievable mob attack on Congress during the presidential vote certification joint session.  Some Trump supporters even claimed that the whole mob was far-left ‘Antifa’ radicals (Anti-fascists) sneakily waving Trump flags.  Supporters believe that any anti-Trump ‘News’ MUST be a lie.

It is really very simple.  Anywhere in the world, you can tell when a politician is lying – you can see their lips moving.  But, in the USA, politicians’ radically-partisan formulaic lies and exaggerations, so extreme that ANYONE can identify them as political hate-speech, are accepted as gospel truth by their supporters.  ALL Democrats are evil communists in disguise, ALL Republicans are evil fascists in disguise.  Huh?  People who actually BELIEVE what politicians say should not be surprised when others describe them as stupid, gullible, one-eyed fanatics!