Issues In Australian Environments: Fill & Download for Free

I have seen plenty of documentaries where Americans are interviewed and shown to be the most ignorant dumb-arse people in the world. Which we both know is not true, but the point I am making is that no country has a shortage of ignorant people, and documentaries rate much better when they show the views of the ignorant that we can all rail against, than the moderate and enlightened, which is just boring.The impact of European settlement in Australia was far greater for the indigenous people than in any other country because they were far more isolated and to an extent the Australian environment was far harsher than any other colonized land.At the time the Europeans began to settle in Australia, the Aboriginals were still a lower paleolithic people. A gulf of perhaps 50,000 years separated their culture from that of Europeans, and something like 45,000 years from the closest comparable indigenous population.That sort of gulf is not bridged in a couple, or even 10 generations. The questions and issues are difficult, and no one really knows the right answers. Progress is made by trial and error, and often the errors may result in significant setbacks.What I can tell you though, is that every reasonable person in Australia wishes for the best outcome with our indigenous brothers and sisters. We can't go back and change things, what is is, and the facts are the facts. An enormous amount of effort goes into trying to do the best going forward.

The Owen GunThe Owen Gun was an Australian WW2 submachine-gun that was exceptionally crude and simple yet had a remarkable design and performance.It’s so simple an emu could probably operate it, tho God help us all if that ever happens…In my personal opinion, the Owen Gun is one of the most underrated weapons in WW2 as it had both a simplicity and reliability that would give the famous Sten a run for its money.The Owen Gun was an automatic blowback open-bolt gun with a two-chambered receiver. This meant that the bolt was in a separate compartment in the receiver, where dirt or mud wouldn’t be able to jam it. The most unconventional design of the gun, however, would be its 32-round top-mounted magazine. Reliability wise, it was an ingenious idea as the top-mounted magazine with the cartridge ejection port on the bottom would prevent dirt or grime from collecting in the gun as they would simply fall right through.Internal Design of the Owen GunHistorically though, the Owen Gun likely would never had been manufactured or even heard of if it weren’t for a few lucky coincidences and the neverending persistence and patience of its inventor and namesake: Evelyn Owen.Evelyn Owen with a batch of his own “Owen” gunsConsidering the Owen Gun’s crude look, one could be forgiven for thinking that it was designed in a garage and yet strangely enough, it was. Despite having no training or education in engineering or even firearm design, Evelyn Owen regularly tinkered with metal, designing his own bombs and guns from car parts. Trying to design a compact machine-gun that was as simple as possible, he eventually created a prototype chambered in .22 LR, which he submitted to the Australian Army in 1939. However, the Army rejected it as the gun wasn’t designed with a magazine at the time, instead firing from a cylinder like a revolver.Prototype of the Owen Gun with its revolving cylinderOwen then enlisted in the Australian Army and likely would have abandoned his project until his neighbor, Vincent Wardell, the manager of a nearby Steelworks plant, accidentally discovered the gun in a bag that Owen had left on his garden fence. Intrigued, Wardell submitted the gun to the Central Inventions Board of the Australian Department of Defense. The government was impressed with the gun’s low cost and simplicity, and Owen was transferred out of duty to continue working on his gun.All of the parts of the Owen GunDespite the government’s support, the Australian military decided not to manufacture a prototype due to “requisite time, money, and monetary costs”. This would be the first obstacle of many that the Army would throw in Owen’s way, which ranged from refusing to supply parts or rounds for a firing demonstration to ordering Wardell to rechamber the guns several times, first in .32 ACP, then .45 ACP, and finally .38 S&W.The Australian military had their own reasons for dismissing the Owen Gun. First of all, senior Australian Army officials were simply not interested in submachine-guns, believing that only rifles and machine-guns would be adequate for fighting a war. Second, the Australian Army believed that the shipped SMGs from their allies, such as the Sten and Thompson, would be enough to arm the Australia Army. As a result, they didn’t want to waste valuable time and resources on a new SMG. Finally, the Owen gun’s ungainly look gained it the derision of Army officials, with a colonel even saying to Owen himself, “That is an American gangster gun. The Army has no use for those.”[1] (Quite an ironic statement, since the Army favored the Thompson which you know…was an actual American Gangster gun…)British Sten Gun (top) and American Thompson (bottom)It wasn’t until September 1941 when Wardell and Owen sent an angry letter to the Director of Munitions and threatened to bring the whole affair to the newspapers that the Army finally relented and approved the manufacture of the Owen Gun.A few days later, the Australian military held endurance tests of the Owen Gun alongside the Sten and Thompson, which included completely submerging all of the guns in wet sand and mud. In all of these tests, the Owen Gun not only proved to be more reliable than both guns (The Owen Gun didn’t jam once despite firing almost 3000 rounds), it also had a better firing range of around 200m compared to the Sten’s 100–150m. These tests finally convinced the Australian Military that the Owen Gun “had distinct possibilities as a suitable and efficient weapon” and placed an initial order for 2,000 guns per month. Eventually, it was decided for the Owen Gun to fire the 9mm Parabellum cartridge, the same round that the Sten also used.A Papuan New Guinea native enlisted by the Australians with his own Owen Gun (11 hits out of 15 shots at 100 yards)In combat, the Owen Gun was a great success. Being both compact and reliable, it proved to be an ideal weapon for the Australian troops in the jungles of the Pacific. One problem with the gun was that its iron sights were offset to the side due to the top-mounted magazine. However, the Owen Gun was mostly fired from the hip, so this was a minor issue. In fact, both Australian and New Zealander troops commonly swapped out their issued Thompsons for available Owen Guns, as they were much more reliable in the dirty environments that they fought in.Australian troops with the Owen Gun in New Britain, 1945Designed to be as simple as possible, the Owen Gun only cost around $30 at the time to manufacture during the war. On the other hand, the Thompson cost $225 at the same time. Eventually, almost 50,000 Owen Guns were made until the war’s end when production was halted. However, due to its durability, the Owen Gun was still used by Australian troops up until the 1960s and even in the Vietnam War.Sources:Australia’s Owen GunOwen SMGFootnotes[1] Australia’s Owen Gun

It is the rarest consonantal phone in most dialects of English, but it is a marginal phoneme.Most phonologists say it is a phoneme because it is consistently pronounced in lots of lexemes, and in environments which aren’t obviously an allophone of something else.“Although I know the minimal pair of “BEIGE” and “BAYZ”, here BEIGE is a french loanword, and an alternative pronunciation is /beɪdʒ/. Besides this, in most cases, the /ʒ/ occurs as an onset, e.g. vision, usual, etc, where it seems more like an allophone of /zj/.”There are obvious phonemes between /ʒ/ and /z/, that is not what phonologists have difficulty with.[bejz] [bejʒ] (bays beige)[ɹu:z] [ɹu:ʒ] (ruse~rouge)The issue is /ʒ/ vs /dʒ/ vs /ʃ/. It is genuinely hard to find minimal pairs between /ʒ/ and there is often dialectal and social class variation where, say lower class, older, or speakers, say [ejʃə] instead of [ejʒə] for ‘Asia.’As for [zj]… My dialect of English does not even allow *[zj] *[nj] *[dj] *[tj] *[sj] as sequences of sounds, and nor do any other contemporary North American English dialects. Often when people ask questions about things like ‘why is attitude a different vowel than ruse?’ Americans and Canadians answer saying they are the same vowel.It is difficult to universally prove /zj/ is the underlying phoneme. Historically, it was, but native speakers definitely don’t view it as /zj/.I imagine if you told most native speakers please and pleasure were from the same root, they would be initially surprised.Edit:For some dialects of English, but not my native dialect, leisure and ledger for a minimal pair.In Australian English, for example:liesure [leʒa] ledger [led͡ʒa]RP:[lɛʒə] [lɛd͡ʒə]So yes, there is some stronger evidence that they are phonemes.In my dialect, pleasure and pledger are contrastive, as Daniel Ross points out:[plɛʒɹ̩] [plɛd͡ʒɹ̩]