New Year’s Eve Fireworks (Updated).

Fireworks began early today. It’s beyond the scope of this post to provide an extensive coverage. Here I offer only a few highlights.

Mallacoota, Victoria, at about 0733 AEDT:

(source)

A little later during the day:

(source)

Fires, Firies, and Fireworks (Updated).

Self employed and small and medium-sized business employees acting as volunteer firefighters for the NSW Rural Fire Services will receive up to $6,000 (tax free), at the rate of $300 per day, as compensation for income loss.

The announcement was made Sunday morning by Scott Morrison and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian during a press conference at the Sydney headquarters of the RFS. It comes after Morrison repeatedly dismissed calls to compensate firefighters for their losses. They were there because they wanted, Morrison said two weeks ago, to widespread criticism.

On Faith, Heroes, and Hope.

I have faith in humanity. Coming from a self-described cynic, that profession of faith may sound contradictory. Maybe it is. I am aware of that.

Let me explain.

That faith is not based on believing all people good or heroic, smart or wise. Some clearly are not and will never be. It would take too much self-delusion, I think, to deny that in this movie there really are “bad” guys (I use scare quotes deliberately).

The War of the End of the World (Updated).

(source)

That’s a good representation of the sky over Sydney on Friday, December 6. It’s artistically composed and faithful to reality. Temperature had not risen much yet: at 1600 AEDT that day it was 27.4º C in Sydney, according to my little weather station (humidity: 57%).

That red, luminous disk is not the full Moon, although one could be forgiven to think otherwise (as people I spoke to afterwards, as a matter of fact, did). It wasn’t the Moon, because, for one, the real Moon was midway between new and full.