Hmmm
Not the best look when you are coming up to 54. So much for mopping the kitchen floor.
Archive for the 'miscellaneous' Category
Aww, thanks Amy
My dear friend Amy has linked me into Ken Newsome’s experimental rebuilding of his reading list. Thanks, Amy. It’s strange to think its just coming up to 9 years – 9 years! – since I was setting off with such overwhelming excitement and sense of adventure to visit Amy and other online friends in the US. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. These days Amy’s blog is usually the first stop in my daily online reading.
Breakfast reading 5.05
- Turnbull says IPCC report backs government position: The government asserts black is white (again). Breathtaking. Peter Garret, the Opposition Environment Minister, is not hitting back hard enough with things like this. I’m not sure why, because he is articulate and knows his stuff. On present form his predecessor, Anthony Albanese would be better. I was quite impressed with how well Albanese had a handle on global warming before he was replaced.
- Turnbull’s hypocrisy on climate: Ian Dunlop (formerly a senior international oil, gas and coal industry executive; Chair of the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88; and the Australian Greenhouse Office Experts Group on Emissions Trading from 1998-2000) pulls no punches.
- Schwarzenegger signs a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Victoria to share environmental expertise. “Sometimes if the federal government is a little slower than the states are, then we have to step up to the plate and we have to create the leadership. It is common that a lot of times the states provide the leadership and then eventually the federal government picks up with it and carries it on. So, what we are doing basically is in California we want to show the leadership and we want other states to join us in the United States, but also overseas.”
- To treat the dead: An intriguing new theory that after a heart attack people don’t die from irreversible cell damage due to lack of oxygen, but rather from an active biochemical event triggered by the resumption of oxygen supply. The cellular surveillance mechanism cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and a cell being reperfused with
oxygen, and triggers the death of the cell. - In a flat world imagination is the key: edited version of a speech by Thomas Friedman (from The New York
Times) to the Sydney Institute. “The world is flat – it has been flattened. We are going from a
world of vertical silos of command and control to a world where value is created horizontally by who you connect and collaborate with… In this new flat world, there is one iron rule of business and one rule only. When The World is Flat, whatever can be done will be done. The only question is will it be done by you or to you.” - Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace: Danah Boyd (2006) looks at how and why kids use MySpace, a welcome voice of reason amid the hyped MSM coverage of MySpace following the tragedy of the Victorian girls. I like her analysis that relates it to public and private space.
Breakfast reading 4.22
- Dickens World will open in May. I wonder how it will pan out? And what the state-of-the-art animatronic show is? Wasn’t there someone developing a virtual world, a la Second Life, based on Dickens, or did I dream it up? I can’t find it on Google.
- Amy gives us an interpretive reading of a 1907 text on novelty, fads and herd mentality. I’m sure I’m one of the ‘social derelicts’! Isn’t it noticeable how patriachal the writing is? Maybe I will record a reciprocal reading from Christina Hardyment’s book Dream Babies: Childcare from Locke to Spock, which traces the fashions in childcare over the last few centuries, based on her theory that ‘what we are told to do with our children is very much a reflection of the times we live in, and the prevailing social and psychological theories’. This book influenced me greatly: I can remember being quite shaken that something as fundamental as how one brings up children could be so deeply subject to fads (and again, often in the past generated by ‘knowledgable’ men), but it’s really worth knowing. I should read some of Hardyment’s newer books, as they look interesting, too.
- Princess Mary of Denmark, (our Mary ;P), has given birth to a daughter. She and Frederick have all the sense, joy and grace that is lacking in the English royals; wouldn’t it be nice if we could swap? His wedding speech was worthy of a Darcy.
Breakfast reading 4.21
- Doctor making her mark: an encouraging piece about a program that is creating awareness and a platform for culture change in attitudes towards women within the Australian Footbal League. A similar program has been implemented by National Rugby League:
KAREN WILLIS: The NRL has said, “We don’t accept violence against women, and we think this is wrong,” and they are a large male dominated organisation who’s stepped up to the mark and said quite clearly, “We will be doing something about this, we will be changing our culture. We will be educating our players. We will be setting protocols in place, and we will do everything we can to stop violence against women within our game.”
- Bush’s Shadow Army: a scary look at the privatization of the military by the US in Iraq. Private contractors are also becoming active domestically.
“Private contractors like Blackwater work outside the scope of the military’s chain of command and can literally do whatever they please without any liability or accountability from the US government,” Katy Helvenston, whose son Scott was one of the Blackwater contractors killed, told the committee. “Therefore, Blackwater can continue accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money from the government without having to answer a single question about its security operators.”
- Australia’s Own Mount Olympus: the discovery of ‘the most amazing rock engraving site in the whole of south-eastern Australia’ in the Wollemi wilderness region of NSW.
Don’t know much biology
Here are three biology-related stories that I have found interesting in the last few days.
Great Turtle Race: up-beat site championing action to save the critically endangered leatherback turtles. The turtles have been tagged and you can monitor online their swim from Costa Rica to The Galapagos Islands. Only 59 turtles came to the beach this year as compared to 1,500 in 1988… shocking! Sand temperature determines the gender ratio in turtle nest: the warmer the sand the more females, the cooler the sand the more males. Bring in global warming… if the sand temperature goes over 89.5 degrees, they will all be female…
Bee Hive Colony Collapse Disorder: A comprehensive run-down on possible causes for the worrying disappearance of bees from hives resulting in deaths of whole hives on a large scale. The suggestion that its likely to be the impact of imidacloprid, a nicotine-based pesticide marketed under the names Admire, Provado, Merit, Marathon and Gaucho, looks more plausible
than most to me. Apparently its designed to make termites disoriented and lose memory, among other things, so maybe it does the same with bees.
G Spot and related matters: The ABC’s Health Report has audio download and transcript of a great interview with Professor Beverly Whipple of the College of Nursing at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She is a pioneer in the scientific study of female sexual physiology and in particular the female orgasm.
First transistor radios
Waxing sentimental over first transistor radios and other devices.
What a beat up!
The Fairfax papers are running a curious 3-page story today saying Justice Michael Kirby ‘has been vilified and defamed by fraudsters who have stolen his identity to post offensive material on the popular internet site MySpace,” and implying it is a first case scenario. Good grief, what a beat up!
Is this just lazy or out-of-touch MSM journalism? A very quick perusal of My Space gives you hosts of fake identity pages, and sometimes more than one for people with high profiles. There are numerous bogus identity pages for many of Australia’s political players, and if you care to look further afield, identities such as the Pope, the Queen, and Rupert Murdock himself. Most of them are crude and lame attempts at satire. The jabs on the fake Kirby page are not much different to ones on the fakes for Amanda Vanstone, or Alexander Downer, for example. It sounds as if MySpace will take the Kirby page down if approached. The comparison to real cases of stolen identity at the end of the article is nonsense.
If it’s not laziness, why highlight Kirby? Is it another instance of smearing Kirby (while appearing to do otherwise)?
The article also says ‘The case… underlines the flimsy or fraudulent nature of much of the internet’s so-called “citizen journalism”.’ The MySpace pages are attempted spoofs within a social networking site rather than citizen journalism. While there is plenty of lively discussion about issues surrounding citizen journalism, this appears to be an uninformed and broadsweeping (or flimsy and fraudulent?) smear on new media.
My feeling is that the only thing to be trusted here is that Michael Kirby will deal with the issue with his usual dignity, intelligence, and allegiance to free speech.
Satellite image of fire fronts in Victoria
This is a satellite image of the Victorian bushfires from the satellite NOAH/AVHRR at 10.15 am ESDT, on Dec 7 2006 (click on the image to see it full size). It was processed by Edward King from CSIRO’s Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research. The colours indicate green for forest, blue for smoke and cloud, and red for heat of 45 degrees Celsius and above. The squiggly red lines just to the left of centre are the actual fire fronts – amazing!
The fires were started by lightning over a week ago, and there is a lot of worry that in the extreme weather conditions expected this weekend, they will merge into a 100 km front. It’s scary stuff.
This all reminds me of Doc’s idea for a river of news site for bushfires. He was talking about California, but we could surely benefit from a similar site here. But I’m not sure how you go about setting up an aggregator like that.
A couple of other links:
Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment’s Statewide Map of Current Fire Incidents
NASA’s Earth Observatory satellite coverage
Smoke plumes: NASA satellite image : this was why it was so hazy in Canberra yesterday – the smoke was swept around and back over us at high altitudes
Sentinel Hotspots
Plea for a fingertip bandaid
You would think that we cut our finger tips enough for someone to have brought out a bandaid that fits over the top of one’s finger without little raggy ears at the corners, and without having to wrap a second bandaid around the finger to prevent the first one coming off. It’s easy. Here is the necessary design:
The bit at the top comes down over your finger, and the bits at the sides wrap over it and around. The cut-away sides in the middle mean no raggy ears.
Simple. You read about it first here.
