Michael Paine - Sydney Australia

Discoveries!

Automotive Safety

• Vehicle Design and Research Pty Limited engineering consultancy
• Road Safety Web links
• Stay Safe Rangers website (by Denise Paine - primary students monitoring driver behaviour at home time)
  
• Youtube videos

Astronomy & Science

• Australian Spaceguard Survey - the search for asteroids and comets which might threaten the Earth.
• Tsunami from asteroid impacts - plus Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 and risk to Sydney from tsunami + Tsunami Survival Guide for Australian coastal communities
  
• Index to my "Rocks in space" series of articles - now available for iPad as an iBook.
  
• Australian Planetary Science (formerly The Planetary Society Australian Volunteers)
• Science Conjecture - life on Mars and other topical science issues
• Greenhouse gases and climate change - links and news
•  Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit from the book Demon Haunted World and Carl Sagan's warning about the reptile within us
• I recommend the book Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto by Alan Stern and David Grinspoon - a lesson in perserverance and brilliang science and engineering. Also Sonic Wind: The Story of John Paul Stapp and How a Renegade Doctor Became the Fastest Man on Earth by Craig Ryan - Stapp was a pinoeer in astronaut safety as well as automotive safety (he pointed out that the Air Force lost more highly-trained pilots to road crashes than aircrasft crashes.
  

PCs & Internet

• PCs and the Year 2000+ old news but still interesting.
• Australian Open Access User Group  - DOS software users group with all sorts of PC tips and tricks - with a dig at Windows 
• Tips page for Apple Mac OS X. (hooked on Apple since 2003)
  
• A quick introduction to HTML (circa 1997)
  

Hobbies & local issues

• GreenTL (updated URL)
  
• Discovery Trail Boardwalk at Balgowlah Heights Public School (by Denise Paine)
  
• GEMFIND mapping shareware for Australian gemstone fossickers and Darwin's Natural Selection - simple, dynamic illustration of natural selection at work (competition for limited resouces) 
• Red Hill Preservation Society (1990s)
  
• Warringah's Environmental Hotspots (~1992)
  
• Urban Villages, SEPP5 retirement villages, Warringah's new LEP. (~1995)
• Treasure Our Lifestyle - 1999 Warringah Council Elections with Phil Colman
  
• Humpback whales perform migration spectacle [near Sydney] (BBC slideshow) - I have suggested that all Japanese tourists arriving in Sydney receive complimentary tickets for a whale-watching tour.
  
• Australian Snow Statistics for skiers - put the odds of good snow in your favour
  
• Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary, Northern Flinders Ranges, South Australia - magnificant scenery, geology and astronomy.
• Looking for one of the best Australian TV dramas - "Heartland" with Cate Blanchett and Ernie Dingo? It was re-marketed in North America as "Burned Bridge". Brilliant performances from a young Cate and Ernie. 2018 update: ABC has done it again with Mystery Road with some great "veteran" Australian actors, including Ernie.
• August 2018 SMH: Aboriginal archaeological discovery in Kakadu rewrites the history of Australia (and Mankind) - Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for a minimum of 65,000 years...
  
• My 1974 Engineering Thesis on surfboards
  



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Last update 15 May 2016.  Started in 1996.
email: mpaine aT tpgi.com.au
_{Background: Voyager image of Jupiter - NASA}