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2013
Feb 11, 2013 6:14:33 GMT 10
Post by angra on Feb 11, 2013 6:14:33 GMT 10
Have you noticed Packer's blitz on the media over the last week? Can't be anything to do with a new casino being launched without any competitive tendering could it?
And he loved his dad at the final moment. Channel 7 did the most grovelling, but News and Fairfax aren't far behind. At least Pascoe in the SMH raises some questions and eyebrows.
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2013
Feb 15, 2013 13:39:24 GMT 10
Post by angra on Feb 15, 2013 13:39:24 GMT 10
Nothing in the Australian press about this.
This dispute is about repeated incursions by Indonesians into PNG territory in the West Sepik (Sandaun province), and the building of shops, harbour facilities and a military post within PNG territory.
"Border call-out
THE National Executive Council (of PNG) has approved the deployment of the Papua New Guinea Defence Force personnel to the PNG-Indonesia border...Mr O’Neill said the current situation requires immediate national government intervention for appropriate strategies to be adopted to ease the tension at the border.
Last month Wutung villagers forcefully pulled down the Indonesian flag in protest against Indonesia, compelling Waigani to dispatch a team of officials led by the PNG Foreign Affairs department to the border region." (Post Courier)
PNG has also issued a formal protest note to the Indonesians.
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2013
Feb 16, 2013 8:49:02 GMT 10
Post by Matthew Of Canberra on Feb 16, 2013 8:49:02 GMT 10
Angra ... if we had more coverage of what actually goes on in our neighbours to the north then we'd ... well, I guess we'd realise how much we didn't know. This is cute: tonyabbottlookingatthings.tumblr.com/Read the captions, then look at the pictures. After a couple of pages I got a bit giggly ...
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2013
Feb 16, 2013 8:50:11 GMT 10
Post by Matthew Of Canberra on Feb 16, 2013 8:50:11 GMT 10
I don't want to the know the full story behind the "looking at a bovine" on page 10 ...
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2013
Feb 16, 2013 10:15:11 GMT 10
Post by Matthew Of Canberra on Feb 16, 2013 10:15:11 GMT 10
"we'd also have to augment our deep space tracking capabilities so that next time we could get a good pot shot with our super new rockets"
And ignore any possible EMP effects, not worry too much about where the radiation ends up etc. Also ... and this is the important part ... beyond a certain size of rock, it actually just wouldn't work anyway - we ain't gonna vaporise it, at best we'll just break it up, so there are still going to be big chunks of fast-moving rock. The odds of being able to exert enough energy to change its orbit (a) enough, and (b) in the right direction to make it miss the earth aren't quite as good as hollywood thinks.
There was a good series of "center stage" podcasts at the CFI a while back, where phill plait actually discusses this particular movie plot. To do what they did in armageddon would have taken more energy than we currently have in our entire global nuclear arsenal. Yep.
But hey - I'm sure that's a better investment that looking into a problem that the human race is going to face - like it or not - sometine in the next few hundred years. Because fossil fuel is finite. It's big, sure. But it's still finite. And finite means ... it'll run out eventually.
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2013
Feb 16, 2013 12:21:03 GMT 10
Post by Matthew Of Canberra on Feb 16, 2013 12:21:03 GMT 10
Aaah, that explains it www.wired.com/autopia/2013/02/russian-dash-cams/An article about why there was so much video footage of this meteorite. I once had a binge session watching the "russian road rage" videos on youtube, but it never occured to me to ask why so many people had video cameras set up to record the insanity (and there is a lot of insanity) that occurs on russian roads. It's because they pretty much have to. Nobody trusts the law to deliver justice if there's an accident. So everyone has a video camera set up. A couple of years ago I investigated putting a camera in my car. I actually tried a couple of little ones out, but decided that to get any decent sort of footage would require more effort and money than I cared about. This was after I'd seen a string of really, REALLY appalling driving happening around canberra. Cars casually doing u-turns into traffic (including me), cars casually changing lanes at well below the posted speed, causing faster-moving cars to have to avoid a collision. Cars dawdling in the right hand lane - there was even one car I saw once that didn't seem to understand that there WERE lanes - she was just all over the place (DC plates, too). Two of us were trying to get past her on parkes way without getting hit - I went first, at maximum acceleration. Occasionally (thankfully rarely) I'd see people run over animals - not because they couldn't avoid them, but because they just couldn't be arsed not running them over. I watched a row of ducks out by glenlock get hit once by somebody who didn't even brake, and could have avoided doing so merely by changing lanes. They were visible for about a kilometer, and there was no traffic. I'd have dearly loved to have put a video of that on the internet for all to see - including the license plates. I watched a galah get run over in o'connor once. There was no reason for it - it was just sitting on the road, and the car didn't feel like slowing down. Didn't brake, nothing. As it happened, it was actually ok - I picked it up and took it to an animal carer. The sheer bloody-mindedness of people knows no bounds. There was so much of this stuff going on that I figured I had to start recording it and putting it online. But russia appears to be a whole other thing. Check out the russian road rage vids. But it means we get awesome footage of meteorites.
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2013
Feb 16, 2013 12:31:44 GMT 10
Post by angra on Feb 16, 2013 12:31:44 GMT 10
If you want an example of how much prejudice is still around look at the comments on ABC's The Drum to Melissa Lucashenko's article "They used to be the 'happiest people on the earth'".
And these are just those deemed fit to be published by the ABC moderators.
At least there seems to be a sprinkling of supportive comments in response to those from the Boltites, which I doubt you'd see on a News Very Limited blog.
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2013
Feb 16, 2013 13:31:12 GMT 10
Post by jack on Feb 16, 2013 13:31:12 GMT 10
"at best we'll just break it up, so there are still going to be big chunks of fast-moving rock"
Yep, these will be remarkably complex scenarios. So, for example, you'd have to make, hopefully, informed decisions like whether laying waste to a given finite area is preferable to indiscriminate carnage across a wider area, etc.
But it's a challenge that must be met, because someone is all of a sudden very worried that a space rock might fall on his head and affect him personally.
Whereas food security for a limited sub-set of the global population under a range of scenarios is kind of, you know, out there.
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2013
Feb 16, 2013 18:54:09 GMT 10
Post by jack on Feb 16, 2013 18:54:09 GMT 10
From Chapter 1 of Arthur C Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama... At 09.46 GMT on the morning of 11 September, in the exceptionally beautiful summer of the year 2077, most of the inhabitants of Europe saw a dazzling fireball appear in the eastern sky. Within seconds it was brighter than the sun, and as it moved across the heavens - at first in utter silence - it left behind it a churning column of dust and smoke.
Somewhere above Austria it began to disintegrate, producing a series of concussions so violent that more than a million people had their hearing permanently damaged.
They were the lucky ones.
Moving at fifty kilometres a second, a thousand tons of rock and metal impacted on the plains of northern Italy, destroying in a few flaming moments the labour of centuries.
The cities of Padua and Verona were wiped from the face of the earth; and the last glories of Venice sank for ever beneath the sea as the waters of the Adriatic came thundering landwards after the hammer-blow from space.
Six hundred thousand people died, and the total damage was more than a trillion dollars. But the loss to art, to history, to science - to the whole human race, for the rest of time - was beyond all computation. It was as if a great war had been fought and lost in a single morning; and few could draw much pleasure from the fact that, as the dust of destruction slowly settled, for months the whole world witnessed the most splendid dawns and sunsets since Krakatoa.
After the initial shock, mankind reacted with a determination and a unity that no earlier age could have shown. Such a disaster, it was realized, might not occur again for a thousand years - but it might occur tomorrow. And the next time, the consequences could be even worse.
Very well; there would be no next time.
A hundred years earlier a much poorer world, with far feebler resources, had squandered its wealth attempting to destroy weapons launched, suicidally, by mankind against itself. The effort had never been successful, but the skills acquired then had not been forgotten. Now they could be used for a far nobler purpose, and on an infinitely vaster stage. No meteorite large enough to cause catastrophe would ever again be allowed to breach the defences of Earth.
So began Project SPACEGUARD. Fifty years later - and in a way that none of its designers could ever have anticipated - it justified its existence.
ebookbrowse.com/arthur-c-clarke-rama-1-rendez-vous-with-rama-pdf-d423261383 ...for which you'll have to read the book. I dare say the damage bill of a trillion dollars would be in 1972 money, when Clarke wrote the novel.
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2013
Feb 17, 2013 11:41:19 GMT 10
Post by Matthew Of Canberra on Feb 17, 2013 11:41:19 GMT 10
Re the space-bomb: www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-17/russia-cleans-up-after-meteor-blast/4523446Officials say the meteor exploded about 10,000 metres above the city of Chelyabinsk, releasing nearly 500 kilotons of energy - about 30 times the size of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb.
The explosion sent numerous fireballs crashing into the ground, followed by a shockwave that knocked people off their feet. I now understand why injuries were reported.
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2013
Feb 18, 2013 8:25:18 GMT 10
Post by Matthew Of Canberra on Feb 18, 2013 8:25:18 GMT 10
Random thoughts before getting on with reality ...
This "precincts" thing is a bad idea. I don't think they work. Adelaide's technology park / MFP is now a housing development - being basically a chunk of land that was held back for a couple of decades.
That "pacific century cyberworks" thing that telstra took a bath on was only ever (I believe) a housing development - that being the most profitable use of any available land in hong kong.
I'm all for making life easier for start-ups, but I think the focus on "technology" is arbitrary, and there are probably better ways to do it anyway - brisbane's efforts at providing cheap office space (back in the 90's - last time I looked) seems like a better idea.
As for the 100 dams thing ... ain't gonna happen. It's not up to the feds anyway - they don't have a heck of a lot of rivers in their jurisdiction. As the ACT has discovered ... dams also cost money (not that I'm whacking the ACT for extending that dam - I think it was a good idea, and the problems, well, that's just life).
I think it's just a thought-bubble, and not only is it not going to happen ... it's not even supposed to happen.
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2013
Feb 18, 2013 9:24:09 GMT 10
Post by angra on Feb 18, 2013 9:24:09 GMT 10
Two blows for the Libs (well CLP to be exact) today in the NT.
First Bess Price, darling of the right, and member for Stuart, told the NT Parliament "that some Aboriginal people like prison because it helps them get sober and stay fed". Bit of a gaffe there Bess.
Second Labor wins convincingly at the Wanguri by election. Nicole Manison won 69.7 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. The seat was previously held by Paul Henderson.
The Country Liberals' Rhianna Harker won 30.3 per cent.
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2013
Feb 19, 2013 20:04:25 GMT 10
Post by Matthew Of Canberra on Feb 19, 2013 20:04:25 GMT 10
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2013
Feb 19, 2013 21:50:18 GMT 10
Post by angra on Feb 19, 2013 21:50:18 GMT 10
Compare and contrast - on the Wilderbeests' speech tonight...
Fairfax - "Fifty police, some on horseback, separated about 100 vocal but peaceful protesters standing on the Hume Highway verge outside the venue."
News - "PROTESTERS clashed violently with police and guests tonight before a speech by controversial anti-Muslim Dutch MP Geert Wilders.
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2013
Feb 23, 2013 21:04:37 GMT 10
Post by Matthew Of Canberra on Feb 23, 2013 21:04:37 GMT 10
Holey moley. Homeless guy finds an engagement ring in his collection cup, gives it back to lady who lost it. Lady's husband sets up a donation page for the guy on the internets ... check this out: www.giveforward.com/billyray
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