Festive Season Space News

Titan Has A Halo



The thick distended atmosphere gives Titan a halo effect.

Images taken using blue, green and red spectral filters were used to create this enhanced-color view; the color images were combined with an ultraviolet view that makes the high-altitude, detached layer of haze visible. The ultraviolet part of the composite image was given a purplish hue to match the bluish-purple color of the upper atmospheric haze seen in visible light.

Small particles that populate high hazes in Titan's atmosphere scatter short wavelengths more efficiently than longer visible or infrared wavelengths, so the best possible observations of the detached layer are made in ultraviolet light.

The images in this view were taken by the Cassini narrow-angle camera on May 5, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Titan and at a sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 137 degrees. Image scale is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.

So that's the Cassini update of the month. A picture.

These Are The Rules
The rules for Space Tourism, that is.

More than 120 pages of proposed rules, released by the government Thursday, regulate the future of space tourism. This don't-forget list touches on everything from passenger medical standards to preflight training for the crew.

Before taking a trip that literally is out of this world, companies would be required to inform the "space flight participant" — known in more earthly settings as simply a passenger — of the risks. Passengers also would be required to provide written consent before boarding a vehicle for takeoff.

Legislation signed a year ago by President Bush and designed to help the space industry flourish prohibits the Federal Aviation Administration from issuing safety regulations for passengers and crew for eight years, unless specific design features or operating practices cause a serious or fatal injury.

"This means that the FAA has to wait for harm to occur or almost occur before it can impose restrictions, even against foreseeable harm," the proposal says. "Instead, Congress requires that space flight participants be informed of the risks."

Physical exams for passengers are recommended, but will not be required, "unless a clear public safety need is identified," the FAA says in the proposed regulations.

Passengers also would have to be trained on how to respond during emergencies, including the loss of cabin pressure, fire and smoke, as well as how to get out of the vehicle safely.

Pilots, meanwhile, must have an FAA pilot certificate and be able to show that they know how to operate the vehicle. Student or sport pilot licenses would not qualify.

Each member of the crew must have a medical certificate issued within a year of the flight, and a crew member's physical and mental state must "be sufficient to perform safety-related roles," the rules say.

The FAA also would require each crew member to be trained to ensure that the vehicle will not harm the public, such as if it had to be abandoned during a flight emergency.

The legislation that Bush signed last year tasked the FAA with coming up with rules to regulate the commercial space flight industry, which has been slowly getting off the ground.

Laws governing private sector space endeavors, such as satellite launches, have existed for some time. But there previously has been no legal jurisdiction for regulating commercial human spaceflight.

In 2001, California businessman Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist when he rode a Russian Soyuz capsule to the international space station. Mark Shuttleworth, a South African Internet magnate, followed a year later on a similar trip, also paying $20 million for the ride.

Last year, in a feat considered a breakthrough for the future of private spaceflight, Burt Rutan won the $10 million Ansari X Prize by rocketing his SpaceShipOne to the edge of space twice in five days.

Two months ago, Greg Olsen, who made millions at a Princeton, N.J., technology company, became the world's third paying space tourist, also on a jaunt to the international space station.

The 123-page proposal was published Thursday in the Federal Register, the government's daily publication of rules and regulations, and will be subject to public comment for 60 days, through Feb. 27.

Final regulations are expected by June 23.

Anyway, you have to be a millinaire at this point to indulge in space tourism.


Galileo Satellite Launched



I've been slack with the festive season. The ESA has luacnhed its Galileo GPS satellite using Russia's Soyuz rockets.

The launch marked the start of Galileo, €3.8 billion ($A6 billion) European challenge to the monopoly of the US military-based Global Positioning System.

GPS is the only worldwide system offering services ranging from driver navigation to aid for search-and-rescue missions. But the GPS service offers civilians less precision than for military or intelligence purposes, and it is controlled by the US military, which has the power to degrade or switch off the signal.

Galileo will be a highly accurate civilian system, run by a private consortium. It is expected to go into operation in 2010.

Because it has a more penetrating signal that can work indoors (which GPS rarely does), offers better coverage of northern Europe and assesses its own accuracy, supporters believe it will usher in a new range of safety-critical services, such as aircraft and emergency vehicle guidance systems.

Galileo, which can pinpoint positions to within a metre, is designed for a host of new satnav applications, including ones from mobile phones. With the help of Galileo, it will be possible to find local theatres, shops, restaurants and cash machines on a mobile.

Tourists will be less likely to get lost with multimedia maps and directions delivered to their phones. Other services may locate children separated from their parents.

Galileo will also improve air traffic control and it could pave the way to nationwide road tolls.

Backers say it could create more than 140,000 jobs in Europe by 2013. But there are doubters, with one sceptic famously dubbing Galileo the "common agricultural policy of the sky".

The most important items in the rocket's payload are two rubidium atomic clocks and a navigation signal generator capable of transmitting codes and frequencies to be used by the 30 satellites that will eventually make up the Galileo network.

Great. More ways to extract tolls from moving around.

Belated Review - AVP

Alien Versus Predator

From a long, dubious questionable tradition of monster movie combos such as 'Godzilla Versus King Kong' (well, Godzilla versus anybody, really) comes this little entry in the annals of monster cinema. I have to admit, I gave the film a clean miss when it opened in cinemas. People who saw it unanimously canned it. I even avoided it after it got its DVD release. Then, just as fast as you can say 'H.R Geiger', the price of the DVDs fell to $20, then $17, then 15 dollars. This was because they released the 2-Disc special edition. So the decision became, "Do I buy the less expensive standard version or the special edition 2-dsic version for full price?" - by the way I don't rent DVDs. I don't know why, but I just don't. Call it a character flaw.
Anyway, this X-mas, the special edition was being flogged off at $12.98 so I figured it was time to buy. If anything, this shows how unpopular this movie has been and how it has contributed to the falling box office receipts. Or is it buyers like me?

Anyway, I have to report that the second disc is a total and utter waste of time and not worth the extra bucks if it was still priced that way. If ever there was a garni-du-jour exercise in packaging, this 'Special Edition' is it. It's crap. I don't know what they were thinking in putting more marketing guff on the disc when you've already bought the cruddy DVD of the movie. I'm so glad I didn't pay a dime more.

What's Good About It?
There's a certain kind of pathetic pleasure in knowing what you're going to get. I order a Big Mac, I get a Big Mac. This film isn't called 'Pride and Predation', it's 'AVP: Aliens Versus Predator', and that's what you get. The Geiger Alien and the Predator going toe-to-toe, beating the green-glowing snot out of one another. The human characters are vaguely interesting, but mostly you're there to see the green-glowing snot fly.

Both the Alien and Predator behave as we've seen in their respective films, so most of the visuals are predictable, but satsifying because they're so familiar. The camouflage suit blur of the Predator, the face-hugger coming out of the eggs, all of it is nicely familiar; so familiar it elicits a yawn. Not that that is such a bad thing, just that anything this predictable is almost a cheat. Naturally, the best bits are when the Aliens and the Predators tussle. It's the point of the film.

What's Bad About It?
The way I see it, there's too much of the story that doesn't go anywhere and once the action starts, the humans cease to have a meaningful stake in the outcome. They're there to die; which may be the appeal of the AVP comic books, but this is the movies. Ripley was up to the alien Challenge. Major Dutch was up to the Predeator challenge. These characters seem to just be there to get whacked. It's not quite horror/suspense because you know full well what's going on, and it's not good action because the humans don't get enough volition other than to fire the occasional gun. In some ways, the most intriguing thing should be how evil and dangerous humans are in comparison to these monsters, and that idea never comes up - which is a shame because all the Alien films and the Predator films are imbued with that ironic notion.

There's also an impersonal quality to the story-telling.
They spend time setting up a character who has family back home and pretty much promptly kill him. It's sort of sad, but in the wrong way. If they were killing just another guy, you'd think, oh extra 1 through 6 just got killed. When this guy dies you think, "why did they bother wasting time setting up this guy's story when all that happens to him is the same, usual Alien face-hugger scene? Are we supposed to care about any of these people? In 'Aliens', like it or lump it, Ripley goes to save Newt and brings her back. It's a very important part of the story. In this film, there's never a moment in which the human characters have to rise to a similar challenge. The action is unfolding too fast to even get to important decisions, let alone spend screen time investing in character through-lines. In that sense, it's a really bad film.

Also bad is the setting: Antarctica. To me the combination of Antarctica and horror will always be 'The Thing'. This just isn't in that league of that ambient horror classic. If anything, all the efforts to portray Antarctica as a frightening environment only serve to lessen the impact of having the Predators and Geiger Alien on the loose. For all the hostility of the environment, the weather seems almost ideal, it's on a pretty isolated island. The threat to all humanity isn't as visually evident; and I don't think the film makers counted on that to happen.

Other Thoughts On The Film
The funny thing is, when I forked over my $12.98 against the information at hand, I really wanted to like this film on the level of being a fan of the source text movies. The disappointment really comes from the degree to which the actual story and themes are under-baked.



The way the Predators are portrayed in this film with the their interstellar hunting trips, one has to conclude that Predators are really dumb. I'm sorry, but they're dumb aliens. They're like a tribe of Ernest Hemmingways without the novel-writing skills. Or John Huston without the movie-making pedigree, off to shoot an elephant.
Who are they?
They're just fast and strong bipedal aliens that can attack with camouflage suits and mechanical spears and bladed frisbees, but in essence, they have about the same intelligence as the rioters down in Cronulla. As villains in a film, they're pretty impressive physical specimens, but on the whole they really aren't much intellectual whack. Sure, they kill lots of humans we hardly know in this film but they're monsters. It's almost obligatory to the genre. The thing is, if you can describe their MO with one word and it's 'predation', then it really is too easily comprehensible to be a truly alien culture.



On the other hand, the Geiger Alien is a truly sick creation. There is no conversing or communicating with these beasties. Nothing is negotiable. Dealing with it opens up a chasm of irrational fear and lack of comprehension. The machine-like repetitive procedures remind us of bugs, but that's inadequate to the horror of these beasties. The Alien is a scary-ass beast from the nether regions of our collective imagination. It's brutal, it's nasty, it's big-black-and-wrong and even slightly sexual the way it keeps dripping fluids. As a creation, it hits upon something in us, so much so that it's probably scarier than all the Terminators and Predators combined.

When these two beasties meet, it forces us to reckon with the quality of our own collective nightmare, for here in the frame are two archetypal anxieties: savagery and biological death. It's a bit like the climax of T2 where we are forced to contemplate Evil versus Death, and of course Death (Arnie) beats Evil (Robert Patrick) and casts it into the Lake of Fire. However things go a little more pedestrian in this encounter between Predator and Alien. The Aliens continue their programme of corridor ambushes while the Predators sort of mindlessly kill stuff they come across without much reason, until the last one finds it's in a bit of a bind and chooses not to kill a human. And we say to ourselves "Oh so he' not a TOTAL Savage? What a relief."

The upshot is that the Alien (rightly) remains an aloof entity beyond comprehension and stays as 'the other' while the Predator drifts back into an almost euro-centric anthropomorphic paradigm. The Predator is sort of like a big head-hunting Samoan with space-dreadlocks. Indeed it becomes evident that the strengths of the Predator is not that greatly in excess of our own, while its weaknesses are exactly of our own if not worse; and because of this it must negotiate with a human.

This is exactly at the point in which we find the weakness of the film. What is explained about the Predator interstellar civilization is so dumb and inadequate to being called a civilization, we're left with the sense that this film is hardly adequate in explaining the conflict we're witnessing on the screen. You know the feeling: "why am I watching this stuff?'

In turn, if Alien-hunting is a ritualistic game for the Predators, the human struggle gets devalued so quickly it's not worth investing our emotions with them at all. There's hardly anything at stake for the audience when in fact every Alien film and Predator film before it was explicit in this threat-to-the species angle. Indeed, there are miles of ideas to be mined in an universe that has Aliens, Predators and Humans, but not even 1% gets explored. What a damn shame.
Could I have done better? With all due respect, you better you bet. :)

I'd Better Post This Before I Forget...

John Lydon, Likes Prog Rock?
Well, he says he sees no distinctions in Rock so it's mostly moot. However, this bit is interesting:

Ozzy Osbourne?

Ozzy's hilarious, but I felt sorry for him when his wife orchestrated that terrible, terrible MTV production, because I thought it was humiliating for him. It was like a Victorian mental asylum where you pay a penny to prod the loony with a stick.

Did you listen to Black Sabbath when you were younger?

Very much so. Paranoid was one of the best records ever made, a stonker from start to finish. Every single bit of it is a powerhouse.

Led Zeppelin?

You can't knock Led Zeppelin. They took R&B as their influence but you wouldn't fucking know it when you listened to it. They carved their own place in history so firmly that you have to acknowledge it.

Deep Purple?

(sings) "Fire on the water, smoke in the hole!" (sic) Great song, but they did nothing else. It wasn't quite my world. There's bits of Yes I used to love, and Atomic Rooster too. Crimson? Yes - the artwork of In The Court Of The Crimson King grabbed me first. They understood that when you're young, these records cost a lot of money and that you couldn't go out that week when you'd bought them. But you had a record that sounded different and challenging and made you say, 'Fucking hell, you don't hear that on Top Of The Pops!' And great artwork with a full concept that made you feel privileged to buy it. A CD cover doesn't do it for me.

Wasn't prog-rock supposed to be the antithesis of punk?

What? Oh, progressive rock. What a stupid term. And punk rock was a stupid term too. A lot of bands I know, like AC/DC and so on, they're the same-they don't see the distinction between heavy metal, progressive rock and punk, really. You know, it's music. What two bands are supposed to be the same? And how can you be happy to be in a category like that? The good blokes don't understand those limitations. Lemmy's always been ferociously puzzled about which bag he's supposed to be in.

There you go. A young Johnny Rotten intently tuning into '21st Century Schizoid Man'; now there's an image hat would've been inconceivable in the heyday of the Sex Pistols. There's also this gem:

Wasn't it said of Glen Matlock that he was fired from the Pistols because he was a Beatles fan?

No, that's silly press nonsense. Although Steve might have said it... he's a bit of a dummy. Glen was very much a Beatles fan, but he's also a Kinks fan, and they wrote some of the greatest lyrics ever written. And the Small Faces too, they were a hilarious band live. Just fantastic energy, although I never liked it on record. I liked Rod Stewart live very much when he went solo, but he was much better in The Faces. Again, live was so much better. Recording is so difficult.

Why?

Because the deadly dull atmosphere of the studio can destroy the energy levels of the music. I do one or two takes and bang, it's done. I spoke to Miles Davis years ago about a solo he used on Bitches Brew, and he told me it was a mistake. They used the wrong take! But it was the right one to use, even though it had the wrong notes. It was wrong but it was right, see?
You see, you can overwork music, like Mike Oldfield did with Tubular Bells. He killed the project dead. I remember seeing him crying at Manor Studios in Oxfordshire because he'd overworked it so much that he'd erased half the original music! He'd. worn the tapes down.

He told RC that he loves the mistakes in it.

Oh, bullshit! He wore the tapes out and he had to redo it. I'm an analogue man myself, which means that when you make a mistake it's a risk, because it'll be there for the rest of your life! But you have to take the risk. When I use digital, I use it properly. And you mustn't record a song to release as a single, because if you do, you won't have a song - you'll have a shallow, empty old boot.

You tell'em Johnny. :)

Letting Ourselves Down

Stateless In Serbia Part 3
Here's an update on the Robert Jovicic situation. He's still out there but a lawyer, Ms. Michaela Byers has taken up his cause, taking the case to the high court. It turns out Ms. Byers is also representing the case of one Ali Tastan.

The lawyer for Robert Jovicic, a former Australian resident deported to Serbia last year, is seeking a hearing in the Federal Court in an effort to have him returned to Australia.

After serving jail time for drug-related burglaries, Mr Jovicic was stripped of his residency and deported to Serbia in June last year by former immigration minister Philip Ruddock.

The 39-year-old, who was born in Paris to Yugoslavian parents, had never lived in Serbia prior to being deported.

His lawyer, Michaela Byers, is hopeful the court will make a decision on the case by the end of the week.

"This time of the year is not a good time of the year to get quick action," she said.

"We're hoping we can get it by the end of the week."

Ms Byers is also asking for the return of a second long-term Australian resident, who was deported to Turkey.

Ali Tastan was deported in January 2003, after he served seven years in jail for malicious wounding, arson and drug offences.

Mr Tastan, who had lived in Australia for close to 30 years, has paranoid schizophrenia.

He is now homeless and is wandering the streets of Ankara.

"He has nowhere to live, no source of income other than his old age pension, [his] parents [are] saving $30 a fortnight from their pensions to send to him," Ms Byers said.

This 'policy of deportation' is really disturbing in as much as it renders people stateless, it also drops them in some part of the world where they have no means of support or survival. Let's look at Mr. Tastan for a moment. He's mentally ill. To say that Australia does not want this man, let him rot and die on the streets of Ankara, is akin to the Nazi party rounding up mental patient inmates for extermination - only, it costs less. It's fascist, and appeals to the worst instincts in us all.

Ethically speaking, this is so beneath who we are or what we purport to be as a nation, it's embarrassing. Since when did Australia become this sadistic entity that lets mental patients die of starvation and cold on foreign streets? This is a total and utter fiasco and I'm surprised the Federal Labor Party isn't running harder with this case. There should be a public furore about this, but there's only moderate interest. Instead we're looking on at these so-called 'Cronulla race riots' as the media story of the month. Xenophobia is the flavour of the month How pathetic.

Being a marginal economic entity I can't really support Mr. Jovicic's fight or Mr. Tastan's fight; the best I can do is just talk about it here and keep it in the eye of people who read this blog. However, I do applaud Ms. Michaela Byers, who clearly is a good citizen of Australia who represents the best in us all. I wish her well in the court case.

It Mightn't Have Been Water

Volcanoes Or Impacts?

Two scientific teams are claiming it might not have been water that gave rise to the features seen on the surface of Mars. Here's the Link.

Rather than abundant surface water over significant stretches of planet's history, as has been widely reported, Opportunity's observations might represent the results of a meteor impact or volcanic activity on an otherwise very dry world.

The counterarguments, presented in two papers in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, go to the very heart of the ultimate question about Mars: Was it ever warm and wet enough to support life?

The new reports, however, are based on the initial data from the Opportunity rover during its first 45 days on Mars.

The Mars rover mission’s principal investigator, Steven Squyres of Cornell University, said both of the new studies could not take into account more recent data from Opportunity that were not available to the researchers.

So the stage is set for more arguments.

Cargoship Sent To ISS

In all the shuffle we tend to forget there's an International Space Station up there which is still under construction. Well, here's the update.

Russian engineers want to use the additional time to stow additional garbage and unused equipment on the unpiloted cargo carrier. That Progress and its contents will be destroyed as it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere in early March.
The Progress 20 cargo craft is scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Dec. 21 and dock with the station on Dec. 23. The new Progress will bring supplies of food, water, fuel and air to the station as well as holiday gifts for the crew.

Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev wrapped up last week with more stowage of items in the Progress 19 cargo ship. McArthur also assisted Tokarev as he began Lower Body Negative Pressure testing, using special garments to draw blood down to his lower extremities to counteract the effects of weightlessness.

Life in space goes on. It's amazing how mundane this seems.

The Price Of Christmas

'Tis The Season To be Spend-Happy
GK sent in this notion.

PNC Advisors, which has charted the cost of the gifts laid out in the song for the last 21 years, put the price of the items this year at $18,348 in 2005, a 6.1 percent increase over last year.

Some presents will be difficult to get at any price this year. The threat of avian flu has restricted the international shipment of birds, thus preventing the purchase of three French hens from France, although there are domestic breeders of French hens which helped keep that gift's cost in line. But all the fowl mentioned in the song cost substantially more this year due to the increased delivery costs from higher energy prices.

Oil isn't the only commodity raising the gift buying prices this year. The "five golden rings" given on the fifth day now cost $325, up 27.5 percent due to rising gold prices.

Even the good news on pricing is a troubling sign for gift givers, as the salaries of most of the workers detailed in the song -- the maids-a-milking, lords-a-leaping, pipers piping and drummers drumming are the only gifts for which prices are holding steady. The maids-a-milking each got paid only the $5.15 minimum wage, making an hour of their time the cheapest gift on the list.

The only workers in the song to see increased pay is a modest 4 percent gain for the "nine ladies dancing," based upon information given to PNC by Philadanco, the Philadelphia Dance Company. They also were the best-paid service providers on the list, earning $508.46 each.

Ordering the gifts over the Internet will cost true love shoppers a premium, again due to the increased delivery costs this year. The overall Internet cost is estimated at $29,322.80, up 5.7 percent from 2004 and a premium of $10,973.93, or nearly 60 percent, from shopping in the more traditional manner.

For the gift giver who goes all out and gives the repeated gifts for each day as detailed in the verses of the song will pay $72,608 for all 364 items, up 9.5 percent from the $66,334 price tag in 2004. That's a much bigger increase than the 1.6 percent increase last year.

That's tough love, not true love. :)
In other personal news, an old school friend 'HD' who I've not seen in over 20 years got in touch with me through e-mail. It's the Christmas Spirit thing I guess. Very cool news of the day.

Speaking Of Spree Buying
The Yankees have signed Johnny Damon to be their CF for the next 4 years. It's a $52mill contract.

Damon fills a double void for the Yankees, giving them a speedy center fielder who can cover ground and a leadoff hitter to top a star-studded lineup that also includes Derek Jeter, Gary Sheffield, AL MVP Alex Rodriguez, Hideki Matsui and Jason Giambi.

Bernie Williams' defense declined significantly over the past four seasons. And while Damon's arm is not much better, he does cover a lot of ground, which is important in Yankee Stadium.

Agent Scott Boras had been seeking a seven-year contract for Damon. The offer Damon accepted was essentially the same as the deal Matsui agreed to with the Yankees last month.

Are we supposed to take it as consolation that the Yanks didn't sign him to 7 years/84mil?
There really is no positive spin to be put on this signing.
After all the speculation about the clever moves they might have made including: trading Strutze and Henn/Proctor for Jason Michaels from the Phillies; or trading Pavano for Jeremy Reed from Seattle; or wait and see who gets non-tendered; ultimately, it's so stick-in-the-mud unimaginative it's depressing. They just threw money at the problem; after all the clever moves to fill in the bullpen holes, avoiding the temptation to trade for carcasses like Juan Pierre, the Yankees then go out and bust the bank for Johnny Damon. He probably was the best option remaining out there in the Free Agent market, but this is just depressing.

I just don't buy Damon's .350-ish OBP being worthy of being a lead-off hitter in comparison to Jeter's .380-ish OBP. I know who I'd rather give the Plate Appearances to. Seriously
I'd feel better if they hit him later down in the 7-9holes than earlier in the lineup.
- i.e. "Let Jeter lead off, damnit!"
*Ugh*

Operation Restore Sanity

Judge Throws Out The IDiots



Here's what is hopefully the final instalment on the Dover PA Monkey trial saga. Predictably where sanity prevails, the US District court judge John Jones found in favour of science and sanity.

During the trial, the board argued that it was trying improve science education by exposing students to alternatives to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection.

The policy required students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade lessons on evolution. The statement said Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps." It referred students to an intelligent-design textbook, "Of Pandas and People."

But the judge said: "We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom."

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states cannot require public schools to balance evolution lessons by teaching creationism.

Eric Rothschild, an attorney for the families who challenged the policy, called the ruling "a real vindication for the parents who had the courage to stand up and say there was something wrong in their school district."

Judge Jones, I do not know you from a bar of soap, but I know one thing. You are a fine upstanding member of the civilised world! And to the parents who did contest the case against the crazy board, well done. It really is the case that evil happens when good people do nothing.

This bit in the article is both good, but also scary...

In his ruling, Jones said that while intelligent design, or ID, arguments "may be true, a proposition on which the court takes no position, ID is not science." Among other things, he said intelligent design "violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation"; it relies on "flawed and illogical" arguments; and its attacks on evolution "have been refuted by the scientific community."

"The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources," he wrote.

The judge also said: "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

Former school board member William Buckingham, who advanced the policy, said from his new home in Mt. Airy, N.C., that he still feels the board did the right thing.

"I'm still waiting for a judge or anyone to show me anywhere in the Constitution where there's a separation of church and state," he said. "We didn't lose; we were robbed."

Hooray Judge Jones.
As for this William Buckingham moron? What a floating turd on the sea of humanity. Goodness. You'd think these crazies would pull their heasds out of their asses and take a look at the world. This business of trying to obfuscate the line between Church annd State that is taking place in the US and Australia is just retrogressive and disgusting.
This is from the doyen of WASP sensibility, TIME:

"Breathtaking inanity" is how U.S. District Judge John Jones characterized the Dover, PA school board's attempt to cast doubt on the theory of evolution—but in fairness, the recently ousted members of that board were relative unsophisticates, snookered by the intellectual scam that calls itself "intelligent design," or ID.

Where to begin? Well, first of all, proponents of ID point to what they insist are serious flaws in Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. The truth is that the theory is not only an overwhelmingly powerful explanation for how life on Earth manages to come in such a bewildering array of different types, but the only such theory in science. Like any scientific theory, it can't explain how every aspect of every organism came to be, but each time scientists find new evidence—fossils of dinosaurs bearing feathers; fossils of the mammals whose descendants are whales; the molecular structure DNA that carries traits from one generation to the next; the mutations that can alter DNA to introduce new traits—the case for Darwin's theory has gotten stronger.

Do any gaps remain? Sure. Shall we throw up our hands and say "Since we don't know all the details at this moment, God"—oops, I mean, "an Intelligent Designer must be invoked?" The Discovery Institute, a pro-ID think tank favors teaching the controversy over evolution, but that's the scam. There is no controversy, or at least, not the scientific controversy Discovery says there is..

That's not to say there isn't a tiny handful of actual scientists who back ID. Yes, evolution explains a lot, they say, but some things—the eye, for example, or the whiplike tails on some bacteria—are just too complex to have evolved. To which the vast majority of biologists say nonsense. We don't have remotely enough information to make such a statement. Moreover, if ID is a valid theory on its own, it has to make testable predictions. "It's too complex to explain" is not a prediction.

So ID isn't science, and by that measure alone the Dover school board's attempts to make it so were indeed inane. But beyond that the board insisted that by leaving out the G-word you remove the religious connotation from ID, thus evading a 1987 Supreme Court ban on religion in science classrooms. Again, the board bought the story of people like Lehigh University biologist Michael Behe, an ID proponent, who says that ID doesn't assume the existence of God (although Behe admitted he thinks the Intelligent Designer is God). Judge Jones didn't buy that loophole (and for that matter the Discovery Institute stayed out of this case entirely, evidently realizing that it was a legal stinker).

Alas, ID isn't going away. The Kansas school board recently endorsed new educational standards that downplay evolution, and new assaults on Darwin's brilliant and unsettling idea are sure to continue. Meanwhile, there are still gaps in Einstein's theory of relativity and the germ theory of disease and the theory of plate tectonics. However, none of these contradict the sacred text of any religion—and so no school board is likely to be looking for some way to counter them.

Oh yes. Next we'll be trying to disprove the world is round. More Monkey-Trial Business to come in Kanasa and Georgia.

The Beagle Has Crash Landed

The Beagle 2 Probe, That Is...



Here's the link.

A sophisticated analysis of grainy images from a Nasa spacecraft has convinced the Beagle 2 team that the lander met its end in a small crater, into which it touched down in the early hours of Christmas Day 2003 with little chance of survival.

The pictures from Mars Global Surveyor, which have been pored over by an expert who once interpreted spy satellite images for the RAF, show an impact point in the crater and several objects that appear to be Beagle 2’s protective gas bags and, perhaps, the lander itself.

They suggest that the probe was lost because of cruel luck as it touched down in one of the worst possible places for a soft and successful landing. Rather than dropping to the surface on a flat plain, it appears to have first struck the downslope of a small crater about 18.5m (60ft) in diameter, before crashing into its opposite wall, bouncing several times around the rim and eventually coming to rest at the bottom. Even if the gas bags that were meant to cushion its impact were fully inflated, and there is some evidence that they were not, their design would not have allowed them to protect the probe properly under these unlikely circumstances.

“It’s a bit like hitting the side of the pocket in snooker,” said Professor Colin Pillinger, of the Open University, who led the mission. “The plan was for it to bounce along a flat surface, but instead it seems to have hit the wall of the crater and that messed up the bounce sequence, damaging the lander. If this is all true we were very unlucky. A sideswipe like this was just what we didn’t want.”

The fate of Beagle 2 has been pieced together from two images taken in February and April last year, each of which showed anomalous dark patches inside a small crater inside the ellipse where the probe is known to have landed. Guy Rennie, of Virtual Analytics, has analysed the pictures to make sense of the grainy blotches. One dark patch stands out exceptionally clearly, and almost certainly shows the disturbance of Beagle 2 ’s first bounce to the ground.

Mr Rennie said that the evidence points firmly towards the crater as Beagle 2’s final resting place. “There are objects in the crater, and there are not numerous craters all with objects inside them,” he said.

“These are features that are very, very unusual and are not seen anywhere else. When you add to that the features that look like bags and a lander, then it’s very, very compelling evidence. If we’re right, this was terrible luck.”

So bad luck sunk the Beagle 2 probe. Where were the redundancies in the planning for this?
Beagle 2 was of course supposed to search for signs of life on Mars. What a drag, but at least we know what happened to it.

The Woolly Mammoth On Comeback Trail



About a year before 'Jurasic Park' came out, I wrote about this possibility, so I'm happy to spot this article.

A portion of the genetic code of the mammoth has been reconstructed and, to the surprise of scientists, the team that carried out the feat believes that it will be possible to decode the entire genetic make-up.

The tusked beast stood 12-feet tall, weighed up to seven tons and had a shaggy dark brown coat that hung from its belly.

DNA was extracted from a well-preserved 27,000-year-old specimen found in the Siberian permafrost. So far, about 30 million "letters" of the genetic code have been read, albeit in small pieces, representing around one percent of the entire code.

The team says it could take as little as a year to finish the estimated 2.8 billion-letter code that provides the genetic wherewithal to create the animal.

Scientists in Japan and Russia have announced plans to attempt to clone woolly mammoths with the help of living relatives and, despite scepticism that they will be successful, today's work will renew interest in the idea.

Dr Stephan Schuster of Pennsylvania State University, one of the team that announced the new work in the journal Science, said last night that it may also be possible to genetically alter an elephant to turn it into a mammoth.

The work is described by an international team of researchers, including one from Oxford University, who sequenced a chunk of ancient DNA belonging to the mammoth and "fellow travellers" from its remains, including bacteria, fungi, viruses and plants that lived at the same time as the mammoth.

The team extracted nuclear DNA from the mammoth's jawbone, concentrating it before it was amplified and sequenced by a relatively new technique called pyrosequencing.

It's very close to the Asian Elephant so it's feasible, they say.
So, one of these days we'll probably see a mammoth after all.

Meanwhile Another Species Heads For Trouble
You gotta like this - not.

As if criticism over its stance on the Kyoto Protocol wasn't enough, the United States' government is now facing a lawsuit by three environmental groups over the possibility of extinction of polar bears due to global warming. The suit was filed in the US District Court in San Francisco on Thursday.

The three groups, Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Greenpeace, have sought protection for the bears under the Endangered Species Act and have demanded that the species be designated as 'threatened'.

“As global warming continues, more bears are going to die. This is very predictable, it's common sense. Their habitat is sea ice. They don't hunt from land, they don't hunt from water. They can't survive if their habitat disappears,” said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. “To ensure these bears survive, we need to reduce the pollution that is melting their habitat. The Endangered Species Act is a safety net for plants and animals facing extinction. Listing will provide important protections for this majestic animal,” she added.

These are the bear facts: they're not waving, they're drowning.

View Along The Watchtower

Even Kong Can't Stop The Box Office Decline

Peter Jackson's version of 'King Kong' opened and took US$66million dollars at the Box Office. Still, it's not all cheery.

Director Peter Jackson's widely-hyped "King Kong" movie earned a less-than-expected $66 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices in its five-day debut, highlighting film industry woes and changing audience habits in a year when ticket revenues are now expected to fall more than 5 percent.

Hollywood executives have been racking their brains this year trying to determine if the popularity of DVDs, video games and the Web have combined with bad movies and complaints about a poor theater experience to send the industry into its slump.

The answer is not clear, and "Kong" was seen as a key test for box offices. The $200 million-plus movie is a major event of the holidays -- the second biggest movie-going season behind the summer -- and the film has been strongly reviewed.

Its backer Universal Pictures expected "Kong" to earn about $75 million for the five days, which is roughly equal to Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," the first of his Oscar-winning trilogy.

For some time now, Box Office receipts have been declining for movies. It's getting to the point that studios are thinking of releasing the DVD of the picture at the same time as the theatrical release; and that's a move that would really leave exhibitors out to hanging dry. There are many factors contributing to the decline: DVDs and the proliferation of Home Cinema phenomenon where people would rather buy the DVD and own the picture than stand in line at the cinema with people they would rather not share time, just to see it once.

I can name 10 blockbusters in the last year I've simply waited for DVDs, and then waited even longer fo those DVDs to fall in prices. It simply doesn't matter to me that I'm watching it on my screen at home, 12months afte the cinema release because most of these blockbusters, frankly, suck and aren't worth considering as conversation fodder. Indeed, the number of times I've had people tell me that they "saw [insert big budget film title here], and it was crap" is staggering. And when you do get to see them, indeed it's none too great either. I caught up with the Matrix sequels paying bargain bin prices for the discs, watching them at home. They were so bad I wanted that time of my life back.

Kids are moving on too. They have computer games with which they can interact. Sitting through 90minutes to 120minutes, just passivley watching a movie just isn't going to be as appealing as playing the latest computer game on he X-box360 or Sony PS3 (when it arrives). People want to participate. It's exactly the factor that brought about the rise of dance music and the demise of rock music; In the long run, games will be the demise of blockbuster cinema - unless of course the story is good.

Then there is the ever-present pirates who provide 'free' copies to the market place, but that's another topic I've already covered.

Let Them Play Games I Say
I don't know if I've posted this idea up before. It's so banal, I probably already have.
Once of the things that kids in Iraq don't have and kids in the first world is computer games. Really, the first thing the US military should have done in Iraq after the initial conflict was to hand out Sony PS2s and MS Xboxes to every kid under 18.
What would this achieve?

1) Take the will away from the Iraqi children to particpiate in even thinking about political issues or activities.
2) ideologically indoctrinate them into accepting a Pro-US/Pro-Western view of the world. If they don't like it, they can develop their own computer games, but they have to learn how to first.
3) It would give them a reason not to blow up infrastructure. You need electricity to play this stuff.
4) They won't feel so poor and deprived if they have something with which to kill time.

It would be an investment into the cultural enlightening of the future Iraqis.
How much more expensive could this be than the constant fighting they're doing now? It's a country with a population of about 20 million, Had they done so, we're still talking about 10million kids. Hand them out games that take a long time to play through. That's 400bucks per unit with 3 games each, let's say. You buy bulk so knock off a huge margin. and say $250 er unit with the games. It's only 2.5billion and that's an inflated guesstimate of handing out 10 million sets. That's peanuts compared to what they pay Halliburtons. :)

Preparing To Send Cargo To Pluto



The fastest space vessel yet is set to go on a 10 year trip to Pluto.

Pluto is the only planet that has never yet had a human-engineered visitor, but if all goes well, New Horizons, a piano-size spacecraft wrapped in thermal blankets, will spend five months in close flyby, taking pictures and gathering data on features such as the planet's atmosphere, its surface geology and its temperature.

"We really expect the mission to be transformational," said New Horizons lead scientist Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado. "This is the capstone of the original visits to the planets. It takes us 4 billion miles away and 4 billion years back in time."

The $700 million mission is the first space expedition aimed specifically at a celestial body beyond Neptune in the Kuiper Belt, a remote region filled with debris from the creation of the solar system. Pluto is also the solar system's only known "binary planet," orbiting the sun in tandem with a moon, Charon, that is more than half as big as Pluto itself. Two other tiny moons were discovered earlier this year.

So what's Goofy?

So Much For That Idea

Nomar Is A Dodger
Can't blame him really. He rejoins his old team mates Derek Lowe, Bill Mueller and manager Grady Little from the 2003 Bosox. So much for that really cool 'supersub' idea. It also makes Torre's calls 1 for 4 this year.

The Yankees had wanted to sign Garciaparra, floating the idea of a $3 million deal, plus incentives. They would probably have increased that offer, but talks never intensified and the Yankees came to believe that Garciaparra would choose the Dodgers, the team he rooted for as a child growing up in Southern California.

Garciaparra has a home near Los Angeles with his wife, Mia Hamm, and he apparently did not relish the idea of returning to the East Coast, where the news media's scrutiny sometimes bothered him in Boston.

Now that Garciaparra is off the market, the Yankees may sign Miguel Cairo to be a backup infielder. Cairo, a free agent who played well for the Yankees in 2004, said last week that the Yankees were his first choice.

The Yankees also hope soon to complete a one-year contract for about $2 million, plus incentives, with center-fielder Bernie Williams, who wants to return to the Yankees in a lesser role.

Garciaparra played in 81 games in 2004, and just 62 games for the Chicago Cubs last season, when he missed three months because of a torn left groin. The successive injury-marred seasons reduced his marketability, and Garciaparra sought a short-term deal in the hopes of reestablishing himself as an elite hitter.

Well, my sourgrape-o-scope tell me he's still a big injury risk to play as a starter these days. :)

Bucking The Trend

They Say Patriotism Is The Last Refuge Of The Scoundrel
Here's a piece of news for the day: The US Senate has decided not to go with the extension for the Patriot Act.

The Senate on Friday blocked reauthorization of the broad antiterrorism bill known as the USA Patriot Act, pushing Congress into a game of brinksmanship with President Bush, who has said the nation will be left vulnerable to attack if the measure is not quickly renewed.

With many Democrats and some Republicans saying the bill does not go far enough in protecting civil liberties, the Republican leadership fell short of the 60 votes required to break a filibuster. Now the future of the law, which greatly expanded the government's surveillance and investigative powers in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, is in doubt.

The debate, a passionate fight about the balance between national security and personal privacy, became a touchstone for repercussions after the disclosure on Thursday night that Mr. Bush had secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for terrorist activity.

There's even more juicy stuff in all of this. You'd think that the lawmakers in this country would sit up and take notice of this decision. In the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, they're not going to let go of those freedoms without a bit of a fight.
Stay tuned.

Waiting For Nomar
It was supposed to happen late in the week and it didn't. Nomar is still pondering his options between playing for the Yanks, Dodgers, Indians or Astros. In the mean time, he visited the Dodgers to check them out.

"Both were great meetings," Colletti said, "at least from my perspective."

The New York Yankees, Cleveland Indians and Houston Astros also have courted Garciaparra, a five-time All-Star beset the last two seasons by wrist, Achilles and groin injuries. By Friday night, none of those organizations had been notified that Garciaparra was off the market.

Once among the elite shortstops in the game, Garciaparra, 32, played more games at third base than shortstop with the Chicago Cubs last season and has told the Dodgers he would be willing to play first base or left field.

The Dodgers signed shortstop Rafael Furcal and third baseman Bill Mueller in the last two weeks, and have been looking to upgrade over Hee-Seop Choi at first base and a variety of candidates in left.

Cesar Izturis, the Dodger shortstop for much of the last four seasons, had Tommy John surgery on his right elbow and is not expected to return until June or July. When he signed Furcal, Colletti suggested Izturis, when healthy, would play second base and Jeff Kent would move to first base.

It is unclear what a Garciaparra signing would do to that plan, though it is unlikely the Dodgers would ask Garciaparra to learn two new positions in a three-month span, and likely they would prefer not to have him test his Achilles' tendon and groin in left field every night.

Among the four teams vying for his services, one would think that the Dodgers who signed Bill Mueller last week have filled their 3B needs without Nomar. In other words, he's got just as little space on the Dodgers as he does with the Yanks, and of course the Dodgers don't play a DH.

Walk-off HBP put me onto this magnificent recording by Ry Cooder called Chavez Ravine.


Since reading the liner notes and learning the story of how a vibrant Mexican community was wiped out and sold down the river in order to build Dodger Stadium, I kind of lost my sentimental regard for the Dodgers. I don't even know if it's fair blaming the Dodgers for stuff the ownership of 50 years ago carried out; but it's repellent stuff and I for one don't really want to like the Dodgers any more - and this is the club that broke the race barrier and even broke Hideo Nomo into the MLB.

Well Mr. Garciaparra, you might want to check out the Ry Cooder album before you sign with the Dodgers to play at Chavez Ravine.
Oh yes, of course there's also the fact that Yankee pinstripes would you suit you very well Mr. G.

Space Spiders And New Mexico Space Base

Robot Assembly In Orbit



Spider shaped robots could be used to build satellites in orbit. well, so goes the headline.

A mission to determine whether spider-like robots could construct complex structures in space is set to launch in January 2006. The spider bots could build large structures by crawling over a "web" released from a larger spacecraft.

The engineers behind the project hope the robots will eventually be used to construct colossal solar panels for satellites that will transmit solar energy back to Earth. The satellites could reflect and concentrate the Sun's rays to a receiving station on Earth or perhaps beam energy down in the form of microwaves.

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency will launch a satellite called Furoshiki on 18 January 2006, which will conduct three experiments to test the idea. The satellite will be deployed from a rocket on a sub-orbital trajectory. This means scientists will have only 10 minutes of microgravity in which to perform their tests before the craft starts its descent back to Earth and eventually burns up in the atmosphere.

The first experiment will see three small satellites detach from the mother ship and stretch out to form two corners of a triangular net with their mother craft forming the other. Onboard cameras will be used to verify that the net, which measures 40 metres on each side, remains as steady as possible and that the daughter satellites do not get tangled in the web.

Well, I guess the Japanese really love their robots. :)
If indeed I get to see the JAXA launch as paart of this doco crew, it won't be the 19 January launch but the 15 February launch.

$250million? (That's A-Rod Money)
It's the cost of Richard Branson's proposed spaceport. It's about the quarter of the cost of a brand new modern MLB stadium.

Branson said that nearly 100 people have paid the $200,000 price to reserve a seat on his planned SpaceShipTwo flights, and thousands more have sent deposits. He said Virgin expects to be launching three seven-passenger flights per day over New Mexico by 2010. The planes are to be equipped with extended seat belts to allow passengers to float in zero gravity.

But Richardson expressed hopes for the spaceport -- to be constructed on the high desert near the White Sands Missile Range -- that soar far beyond Branson's sightseeing trips.

The state's preliminary plans include three intersecting runways and two towers for rocket launches. The terminal will be underground. The governor predicted cargo service from New Mexico to Paris in "a couple of hours" and "orbital hotels" where space fliers could take a vacation of cosmic dimensions.

Richardson said the state government will pay about half the construction cost, in the range of $130 million, with the remainder to come from local and federal governments. Legislative leaders said the funding will almost surely be approved. With record tax revenue from a booming energy industry, New Mexico is predicting a budget surplus of about $1 billion this fiscal year.

"This commitment demonstrates that New Mexico is a state that embraces entrepreneurs, adventurers, pioneers and risk takers," Richardson said.

Who said space programmes had to be expensive?
I think I mentioned this before, but the 1950 Robert Heinlein vision of space travel was strictly funded by brave private financiers and entrepreneurs. I see echoes of that thinking in Branson.

Hayabusa Update

It Might Be Long
Before it gets back to us.

The trouble-plagued Hayabusa space probe has developed engine problems that will delay its return to Earth by about three years to June 2010, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said Wednesday.

"We are disappointed about the postponement of the departure, but we will work hard to have the probe back to Earth as long as there is a possibility," professor Junichiro Kawaguchi, a project manager, said.

A glitch occurred in the Hayabusa's engine on Nov. 26, when it landed on and took off from the asteroid Itokawa for the second time.

The probe was supposed to have fired a metal ball into the surface of the asteroid, located about 290 million kilometers from Earth, and collect samples. But the probe apparently failed to fire the ball.

Fuel started leaking from the craft's chemical engine used for positioning immediately after it took off from the asteroid.

The leak stopped, but the fuel has collected in other parts of the probe and is spurting out sporadically. This has made the craft's position unstable and has almost completely cut off JAXA's communication with the probe since Dec. 9.

Work to determine the cause of the trouble cannot be carried out under such conditions.

So much for that one.

Branson Plans For Space Tourist Customers
Here's the link.

Virgin Galactic, the British company created by entrepreneur Richard Branson to send tourists into space, announced yesterday it will build a $225 million spaceport in New Mexico.
The company said up to 38,000 people from 126 countries have paid a deposit for a seat on one of its manned commercial flights, including a core group of 100 "founders" who have paid the initial $200,000 cost of a flight upfront. Virgin Galactic is planning to begin flights in late 2008 or early 2009.

New Mexico Economic Development Secretary Rick Homans said construction of the spaceport, to be built largely underground near the White Sands Missile Range, could begin in early 2007.

Virgin will have a 20-year lease on the facility, with annual payments of $1 million for the first five years and rising to cover the cost of the project by the end of the lease.

"Virgin is the beginning and many other space companies will follow," Homans said.

Virgin Galactic said it had chosen New Mexico as the site for its headquarters because of its steady climate, free airspace, low population density and high altitude.

So the space tourism era is nigh upon us.

Headline Watching

Still Workin'
I've been busy lately so my posts have correspondingly become sporadic, I guess.
I'm quite annoyed with myself that I seem to spend so much time on talking politics, in particular about the anti-terror legislation and 'sedition' laws instead of review movie andd records and natter on about baseball. I guess it is the off-seaon in the top half of the world.

Still, recently I feel as if all I'm ever doing is making a compendium on the stupidity and the misery of mankind on this page. It'ss a right drag. This was not the world I thought I'd grow up into. Really, it's not.
Anyway, here's today's headline notables...

1. Holocaust Was A Myth According to Iranian Politician.

TEHRAN (AFX) - Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched a fresh attack against Israel, describing the Holocaust as a 'myth' and saying the Jewish state should be moved to Europe or North America.

'They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets,' the outspoken president said in a speech carried live on state television.

'If somebody in their country questions God, nobody says anything, but if somebody criticises the myth of the massacre of Jew, the Zionist loudspeakers and the governments in the pay of Zionism will start to scream,' he said.

'Our proposal is this: give a piece of your land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska so they (the Jews) can create their own state,' said Ahmadinejad, who was speaking to thousands of people in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan.

What a classic. And that high point of journalism, Tehran Times actually applauds and agrees with this position. Talk about people wanting to stir a hornet's nest. Aryan Islamists. Oh boy.

2. Australian Police Prepare For more Racial Violence.

Sydney's racial violence erupted at Cronulla last Sunday when some 3,000 people, some yelling racist chants, attacked people of Middle East appearance, saying they were defending their beach from Lebanese youth gangs.

Police said white supremacists incited violence at Cronulla.

Lebanese and Muslim youths retaliated with two nights of violence in several different beachside suburbs.

The burning to the ground of a church hall on Tuesday night, smashing of church windows and shots fired at a Catholic school, prompted authorities on Wednesday to say they would focus on places of worship to ensure they were safe from violence.

"Special attention will be paid to places of worship, our churches and our schools," said Morris Iemma, premier of the state of New South Wales (NSW).

"Obviously we have to be on guard for this, and these hooligans and criminals will not destroy the fabric of our society," Iemma told a news conference.

The NSW state parliament will hold an emergency sitting on Thursday to pass legislation giving police extra powers to allow them to "lockdown" suburbs and areas of unrest in Sydney and impose alcohol prohibition on areas.

Uh-huh. There's an old Robert Menzies observation that Australia would never go revolutionary and take to the streets as long as its people lived in quarter-acre blocks with their own backyards to worry about. I heard it in the faculty of Architecture at the University of Sydney when I was still a Medical student. There's a certain kind of truth in that Menzies notion that actually measures the weakness of people who own stuff, and their inability to fight for causes - look at all those materialistic inward looking people living in their McMansions with Satellite TVs. they've got too much to lose!
It's quite deft politics, but it brought about urban sprawl of McMansions. seemingly it was a kind of self-perpetuating apathy machine, but now we have a higer density of population and increasing inequalities in our society. Who knows where this is going to go? And in case you're wondering, I'm not inciting anything.

What's interesting about this exercise is that if Police can lock down suburbs and barricade people in and out, isn't that a replay of one of the state actions that led to the 1848 French Revolution in Paris? You know, the one portrayed in Les Miserable?
I just thought I'd point that out before bricks came through our windows.

3. 'Hot For Teacher' - Oz Version
There have been a number of these cases being reported lately. Thirty-something school teacher seduces young male student, only to get reported and in court, then prison.
Question... If you were a teenage boy, would you refuse a blowjob from this woman?:

A 36-YEAR-OLD female teacher has been charged with sex offences after she allegedly seduced one of her 15-year-old male pupils.

Natalina D'Addario, a languages teacher at a school in Melbourne's outer north, allegedly started a sexual relationship with the boy, who cannot be named, in May this year.
It is alleged the pair engaged in oral sex on six separate occasions between May and July.

None of the encounters are said to have taken place on the grounds of the school, or during school hours.

Most are alleged to have occurred in parks in the inner-west suburb of Ascot Vale, and Dallas, in the city's northwest.

The affair allegedly ended in September when the boy informed the school's assistant principal of the sexual liaisons.

The school then notified the boy's parents and the police. Ms D'Addario, who was employed at the school in April as a part-time languages teacher, was immediately suspended without pay.

On November 16, she was charged with six sex offences, including sexual penetration with a child aged under 16, wilfully committing an indecent act with a child under 16 and sexual penetration with a 16-year-old child who was in her care, supervision or authority.

Yesterday, she appeared briefly in Melbourne Magistrates Court for a filing hearing.

Would a teenage boy refuse any blowjob? Could a teenage boy refuse a blowjob?
"Blowjob!" Frank Zapa pointed out it was the most profound experience a teenage boy can hope for.
Another teacher-seductress Karen Ellis' case went before Justice Michael Kirby some months ago in an appeals court and Justice Kirby tossed it out on he grounds that there should be gender equality under the law. It may be the case on paper and in theory, but the facts are that if you're a hetero-sexual male high school student and a female teacher who was not unattractive offered sex, you wouldn't hesitate. Girls might hesitate with male teachers, but boys just wouldn't. Seriously. And while girls might claim after such events to have been traumatised, it's hard to imagine too many boys claiming to be traumatised by such an event - heck you'd expect they'd celebrate it. After all, what the hell is this song about?

Spoken:
Oh wow, man ! Wait a second man. whaddaya think the teacher’s gonna look like this year ?
My butt, man!
T-t-teacher stop that screaming, teacher don’t you see ?
Don’t wanna be no uptown fool.
Maybe I should go to hell, but I’m doin’ well,
Teacher needs to see me after school.
Chorus:
I think of all the education that I missed.
But then my homework was never quite like this.
Got it bad, got it bad, got it bad,
I’m hot for teacher.
I got it bad, so bad,
I’m hot for teacher.
Spoken:
Hey, I heard you missed us, we’re back! I brought my pencil Gimme something to write on, man
I heard about your lessons, but lessons are so cold.
I know about this school.
Little girl from cherry lane, how did you get so bold ?
How did you know that golden rule ?
Chorus
(guitar solo)
Oh man, I think the clock is slow
I don’t feel tardy
Class dismissed

You've got to think there' something not quite right with the law if it can't tell the difference between 'Don't Stand So Close To me' and 'Hot For Teacher'.

4. Nomar To Yanks Rumours Fail To Die
Yep MLB stuff again. It takes my mind off the horrible reality that is Sydney 2005. :)
Besides, somebody's got to sign Nomar this off-season.

The New York Post, citing several industry sources, reported the Yankees have made an offer to Garciaparra to play first base.

Garciaparra would join such ex-Boston luminaries as Babe Ruth, Roger Clemens and Wade Boggs who went on to don pinstripes.

But before fans go imagining a shortstop-studded infield of Garciaparra at first, Derek Jeter at shortstop and Alex Rodriguez at third base, Yankees GM Brian Cashman and agent Arn Tellem refused to confirm or deny an offer has been made to Garciaparra.

And FOXSports.com's Ken Rosenthal reports the Astros are also on the list of teams interested in Garciaparra. The Astros would play Garciaparra in left field. He also could serve as a backup for shortstop Adam Everett.

The competition for Garciaparra is intense, but two factors could weigh in the Astros' favor: Minute Maid Park would be conducive to Garciaparra's right-handed power. And Garciaparra's wife, Mia Hamm, is from Austin, Tex.

The Braves, Blue Jays, Indians, Dodgers and Orioles are among the other clubs interested in Garciaparra.

The rumour is that there's an offer on the table.

Today's Grab Bag Of Headlines

Making The Same Mistakes?



It's odd-looking, I know. This is a mock-up of the proposed Russian Space mini-shuttle 'Klipper'. It's more modern and filled with the experience of Soyuz capsule returns. The European Space Agency has agreed to support this project, but it being a shuttle and all, you sort of wonder if this is a wise investment.

Russia hopes its reusable Clipper shuttle will be ready for test flights early next decade and would then gradually take over from the veteran Soyuz spaceship, which has been putting cosmonauts in orbit since the 1960s.

Earlier this week, ministers from European Space Agency (ESA) countries failed to pledge money to the Clipper program, despite agreeing to spend more on other space research. But ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain remains optimistic.

"I am convinced we can get wide support," he told reporters in Moscow after talks with Russia's Roskosmos space agency.

Officials have said Russia can theoretically fund the Clipper -- or Kliper -- program by itself but would welcome international involvement to speed up the work.

"It is not a question of member states for and member states against. I think the decision could not be taken for reasons that are not linked to Clipper itself. The decision could not be taken because of budgetary restraints," Dordain added.

Then again, you'd think that somebody somewhere might have a better way of building any kind of ERV.

Hayabusa Misses Catch


It turns out that Hayabusa didn't manage to get a sample from the asteroid.

After that, we found that there was a high possibility that the projectile (bullet) for sampling had not been discharged on Nov. 26, as we finally acquired a record of the pyrotechnics control device for projectile discharging from which we were not able to confirm data showing a successful discharge. However, it may be because of the impact of the system power reset; therefore, we are now analyzing the details including the confirmation of the sequence before and after the landing on Nov. 26.

As of Dec. 6, the distance between the Hayabusa and the Itokawa is about 550 kilometers, and that from the earth is about 290 million kilometers. The explorer is relatively moving from the Itokawa toward the earth at about 5 kilometers per hour.

We are now engaging in turning on, testing, and verifying onboard equipment of the Hayabusa one by one to start the ion engine. We currently plan to shift the attitude control to one using the Z-axis reaction wheel, and restart the ion engine. The restart is expected to happen no earlier than the 14th. We are currently rescheduling the plan for the return trip to earth. We need to study how to relax the engine operation efficiency. We will do our utmost to solve the problem with the attitude control (such as the restoration of the chemical engine), then find a solution for the return trip.

Kind of a bummer really, as that's the reasson why it was sent in the first place.

Magnetic Pole Instability



The North Pole is moving South.

After some 400 years of relative stability, Earth's North Magnetic Pole has moved nearly 1,100 kilometers out into the Arctic Ocean during the last century and at its present rate could move from northern Canada to Siberia within the next half-century.

But the surprisingly rapid movement of the magnetic pole doesn't necessarily mean that our planet is going through a large-scale change that would result in the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field, Oregon State University paleomagnetist Joseph Stoner reported today at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, Calif.

Stoner and his colleagues have examined the sediment record from several Arctic lakes. These sediments - magnetic particles called magnetite - record the Earth's magnetic field at the time they were deposited. Using carbon dating and other technologies - including layer counting - the scientists can determine approximately when the sediments were deposited and track changes in the magnetic field.

The Earth last went through a magnetic reversal some 780,000 years ago. These episodic reversals, in which south becomes north and vice versa, take thousands of years and are the result of complex changes in the Earth's outer core. Liquid iron within the core generates the magnetic field that blankets the planet.

This is kind of scary as it means the Van Alllen Belt will be affected.

Shifts in the North Magnetic Pole are of interest beyond the scientific community. Radiation influx is associated with the magnetic field, and charged particles streaming down through the atmosphere can affect airplane flights and telecommunications.

Nice to know, huh?

Killer Whales Are Poisonous



Being a Top Predator in the ocean means you get to absorb all sorts of toxins from your prey.

Previous research awarded this dubious honour to the polar bear, but a new study shows that killer whales have even higher levels of PCBs, pesticides and a brominated flame retardant.

The results are based on blubber samples taken from killer whales in Tysfjord, a fjord in arctic Norway. This is the first time the findings of the research, carried out by the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI), and partly funded by the Norwegian Research Council, have been revealed.

“Killer whales can be regarded as indicators of the health of our marine environment," said Dr Hans Wolkers, a researcher with NPI.

That's not good news either.

Don't Recognise Ostraya Anymore?

Pleiades Mailbag
Here's one about Australia applying pressure on an Indonesian Film festival. Whatever happened to freedom of expression?

The director of a major Indonesian film festival has condemned Australia's decision to withdraw funding a day before it begins because it objects to the Australian films to be screened at the event.

Australia had promised the 10-day Jakarta International Film Festival $18,000 in July, but director Orlow Seunke said he was told by letter Thursday that the funding was being retracted.

"I think they've made a terrible mistake," he said.

Mr Seunke quoted the letter as saying that the films would not help develop relations between Indonesia and Australia.

"We have recently become aware that you intend to screen four Australian films... these films do not meet the objectives of the Australia-Indonesia Institute (AII) as set out in the guidelines," he quoted the letter as saying.

The letter, Mr Seunke said, mentioned the four Australian films being shown at the festival: The President vs David Hicks, Dhakiyarr vs The King, Garuda's Deadly Upgrade and We Have Decided Not to Die.

Only the first two films however were brought with AII assistance.

An Australian embassy spokeswoman confirmed that the funding was withdrawn because the films were deemed to "not assist in developing relations between Indonesia and Australia".

She said the money came from a public diplomacy program aimed at "improving the bilateral relationship" but could not comment further.

Mr Seunke said three of the films had already passed Indonesian censorship and that The President vs David Hicks had already been screened at festivals all over the world and on Australian television.

"Of course we have a gap now in the financing (but) for sure we're going to show the films and I hope many people are going to see them," he said.

Mr Seunke said he would not apply for funding from the AII next year "because they are not a reliable partner".

The popular festival is in its seventh year and is funded by an array of international and local donors. The AII has provided funding for the six previous festivals.

Stinks, no?
I was at a Birthday party for an old University friend tonight and we got talking about how fascist our government has become and how amazing it was that we as a populace were just sitting back letting it all happen. Another old University friend opined that Little Johnny was simply having his own back at a world that laughed at him and belittled him throughout his sad little life.

I can't really argue with that insight; and you know Little Johnny would deny that was his motivation; and you know he'd be lying because he's a lying rat; and the sad part is he's got a free hand to do whatever he damn well likes with his Upper House majority. If this doesn't disturb you, let me just remind you that Adolf came to power because he took the Reichstag hostage. Democracy isn't without faults that can be exploited by cunning rats like Adolf and Little Johnny. But as Winston Churchill famously said, it's the best of a bad lot.
And the funny thing is knowing all this, all we ever do is talk about it at parties or write about it on a blog. We are the weak, toothless gormless generation, failing to live up to our democratic responsibilities.

UPDATE:
Riots Every Day



Or so sang uncle Frank. Turns out we're straight bang in the midst of those moments in history once again. Indeed, what we've got going are 'race riots'.

The battle on Cronulla Beach yesterday requires more than a little context. What happened has been brewing for a long time, well beyond Cronulla, and well beyond the beach culture.

The first clear hint of the undertow pushing this along came three years ago at the Coogee RSL, in 2002. Upstairs, the police from Waverley station were having their Christmas party. Downstairs, there was a 21st birthday party dominated by a beach gang known as the Bra Boys (from MarouBRA). The Bra Boys are basically Aussie surfer white boys, but with Pacific Islanders and others in the mix.

A brawl broke out, one of the ugliest and most unacceptable recorded in Sydney in many years involving police. The police were the victims. Those who left the Christmas party were confronted and mocked by a mob at the Bra Boys party. Other police went to their aid. It became what witnesses described as a "sea" of fighting men, with more than 120 involved. One police officer had his eye gouged and his sight permanently damaged. Thirty police reported injuries. Two had broken jaws. Several had their heads rammed into tables.

One of the worst incidents, and one of the few to lead to a conviction, involved a first-grade rugby league player, Reni Maitua, who at the time was with the Canterbury Bulldogs. He was one of several men at the Bra Boys party who dragged Constable Tim Allen from a lift and attacked him. Allen told them he was a police officer. Maitua responded by laughing and kicking him in the face while he was on the ground, breaking Allen's nose. Maitua was later arrested and fined $2000. He served no time for the incident. The NSW Police Association described this decision by the magistrate, Janet Wahlquist, as a disgrace.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this ugly story is that it received only modest publicity. Yet it was far, far worse than what took place at Cronulla yesterday.

Context is everything. Cronulla will receive saturation coverage, which will balloon the events of yesterday into something more than they were - the actions of a minority of idiots. Just remember, this started small, then the media got involved. Thousands of people gathering on a beach singing Waltzing Matilda doesn't materialise without a lot of media oxygen. But blame-the-media won't do. This was and is a legitimate story that had to be covered.

Out there in Sydney, there is a huge cumulative weight of resentment and contempt at the constant provocations by Lebanese gangs - I'm not even going to bother with the simpering euphemism about "men of Middle Eastern appearance" when everybody knows what it means. It was evident on the beach at Cronulla yesterday.

That's Paul Sheehan's take and there's more but I'll leave it for you to check out.
The Prime Minister condemned the attacks, but claimed we were not a racist country. Well of course he'd say that.

``I do not accept there is underlying racism in this country,'' Mr Howard said today following yesterday's race riots at Cronulla Beach.

``I have always taken a more optimistic view of the character of the Australian people.''

Up to 5,000 people descended on North Cronulla Beach, chanting racist slogans and attacking people of Middle Eastern appearance in what NSW Premier Morris Iemma today condemned as the ``ugly side of racism''.

The violence sparked apparent reprisal attacks late last night, with cars damaged at Maroubra Beach.

``Mob violence is always sickening,'' Mr Howard told reporters.

``Attacking people on the basis of their race, their appearance, their ethnicity, is totally unacceptable and should be repudiated by all Australians irrespective of their own background and their politics,'' he said.

``I believe yesterday's behaviour was completely unacceptable but I'm not going to put a general tag (of) racism on the Australian community.

``I think it's a term that is flung around sometimes carelessly and I'm simply not going to do so.''

And yes, it might look that way to our 'Fearful Leader'. Talk is cheap. Especially talk from a man who copped a lot of heat in 1987 for claiming that there were too many Asians coming into Australia. Australians might not be blanket racists, but Little Johnny?

More seriously, Australia by policy is not racist. That much we know. Yet in practice, we see all sorts of discriminatory things in our society that leads one to conclude that somebody is always looking to ostracise or persecute one group or another. There's no mystery in the angst of the disenfranchised and yet all we do seem to get is repeated stereotyping of 'The Lebs'. Meanwhile, the PM never quite puts his foot down against the likes of Pauline Hanson and One Nation, which brings about an unspoken permission for the crazies.

Which is why it's not so weird to discuss racism because the Police thought they saw Neo-Nazis joining the fray.

Neo-Nazis are believed to have been among those who took part in the race-fuelled violence at Cronulla in Sydney's south, NSW Deputy Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione says.

Up to 5,000 people descended on the beach yesterday as mobs yelling racist chants targeted people of Middle Eastern appearance.

Mr Scipione said police believed neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups were among the crowd.

"That in fact is something that we're following up," he told the Nine network. "Yes, that's the advice we've received."

One woman was pictured at Cronulla Beach holding a poster that read "Aussies fighting back." Her photo appeared in a Sydney News Limited newspaper today. She was advertising a group called the Patriotic Youth League.

The group, founded by former Newcastle student and One Nation activist Stuart McBeth in 2002, described itself as a "radical nationalist" group, News Ltd newspapers reported today.

It has links to the German-based skinhead group Volksfront, British Nationalist Party and the New Zealand National Front, the paper said.

The group has campaigned for the deportation of immigrants and for keeping foreign students out of universities.

Ah. Skinheads. What did Woody Allen say about Neo-Nazi groups? They'd understand baseball bats. Well, I guess that would only exacerbate things, but boy is it tempting when the rest of it is so sickening. It's really just so-o-o-o charming when you see this:

Yesterday's violence had been brewing for months. It came to a head last weekend when some Lebanese Australian men attacked members of the North Cronulla Surf Life Saving Club after they asked the visitors to stop playing soccer because it was disturbing other beach users.

"Steely" - who did not want to identify himself "for fear the Lebs will come and shoot up my joint during the week" - said his children had been scared by Lebanese Australians coming in from the western suburbs.

"I've got a four-year-old girl and a boy who's 11, and they see these bastards come here and stand around the sea baths 'cos their women have got to swim in clothes and stuff, or they see them saying filthy things to our girls," he said. "That's not Australian. My granddad fought the Japs to see Australia safe from this sort of shit, and that's what I'm doing today."

Steely, the Japanese aren't about that "sort of shit", mate. It's shame some bullet missed somewhere in time, somewhere in history. What a missed opportunity that gave rise to the life and times of 'Steely'. What a moron. What a stupid fucking moron - but hey, the media love Steely already, for his statement is incendiary and hateful a media grab you'll get.

You have to wonder about a few things.
1) What kind of society have we become where this sort of thing happens? You have to wonder about this. This wasn't exactly imaginable 10 years ago. Now, it's unfolding in our 'Olympic City'.
2) What kind of Prime Minister have we got that won't condemn white supremacists?
3) What kind off future are we looking at if Australia is going to go down the alley of divide-and-conquer race relations a la The United states of America. Is this where Australians really want to go?
4) What exactly were they expecting when people kept banging the patriotism drum? Patriotism is the first refuge of the scoundrel, and by the looks of things we have aa lot of scoundrels in our society.
5) Media media media. it's a bit like Quantum Physics except the opposite you only get a wave function of idiocy and irrationality when the media does the watching.
6) Does this give the excuse to toughen police powers even more? And who is all of this activity targeting?
7) Will we be seeing more personal ads like this in the future?

photo

Are you a perfect Aryan maiden looking for her stormtrooper of love? Then look no further, because here I am. I am in to racial purity, protecting the white culture and bowling.

Look, these are just questions. Looking at the faces of the rioters, I think 'Sartre's hour of Resistance' is approaching faster than you expect.

UPDATE 2:
This link came in from Gragra. Check out this conclusion bit:

One theme that emerges from this paper and the experience of ethnic crime in Sydney in the last few years is the readiness of politicians to exploit fear of crime for their own political purposes. Political parties in Australia, and in many other countries, appear to fight to be tougher on crime than their opponents, even when so called progressive parties, such as the Labor party in NSW, are involved. Moreover, themedia, particularly the tabloid newspapers, are eager to give great headline space "often on their precious front pages" to crime, particularly ethnic crime, because it sell papers. Political opportunism and newspaper sensationalism have a vested interest in beating-up the ethnic crime issue.

It is partly for this reason that an investigation into Lebanese or Middle Eastern crime in Sydney is at the same time an investigation into racialisation of crime. That is, attitudes of racial prejudice, directly or indirectly, shape practices of individuals and institutions, including the labour market and the police. This is not to say that very thing is a consequence of police or media racism. To think this would be naive. What we are saying is that in order to understand the complex issue of "ethnic crime" in Sydney, we need to consider how the social construction of "ethnic" - say Lebanese - produces a discourse about ethnic crime that often reproduces racist stereotypes rather than challenges them.

The report dates to 25 April 2002. Sobering, really.