So outragious that I love it …

More details Here

Cheers Comrades

“Green revolution” is “babyish make-believe”.

I love good design and the efficient use of resources, but by the same token I loathe lies and deceptions and when it comes to the hope of a bright new economic future we are being sold a pup by the likes of Al Gore and followers of the his green faith. The reality is simply that the only bright future that exists in the so called “green jobs revolution” will be for the promoters of the schemes and the academics who think up some of the wacky ideas that are floating around about the climate.

Al Gore chairman of a green investment firm, Generation Investment Management

Gore is also chairman of a greeninvestment firm called Generation Investment Management, which is a member of the Copenhagen Climate Council, an international collaboration of businesses and science bodies, and which invests in firms that produce renewable energy and low-carbon technology. So Gore uses one of his multimillion-dollar organisations, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to put pressure on government to promote the low-carbon lifestyle that will furnish one of his other multimillion-dollar organisations, General Investment Management, with booming business.

Gore’s activities provide only a glimpse into the new collusion between greens, businesses and government. So speedily has this network come together that according to one critic of the politics of environmentalism, Bjorn Lomborg, it is not going too far to liken the new green-industrial complex to the military-industrial complex that president Dwight Eisenhower warned of in the 1950s.

Governments across the world are promoting green ideology and economics on the back of the recession. President Barack Obama has spoken of a “green revolution” and spending $US150 billion to create five million “green-collar” jobs. As a result, the race is on among green-leaning businesses to snap up new government contracts and among not-so-green businesses to improve their green-industrial credentials in the hope of reaping government cash.

Yet the international evidence suggests the attempt to create green jobs will hamper economic recovery. Obama cited Spain as a country where green jobs have improved economic matters. In fact, according to a study by a professor of economics at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, for every green job created by the Spanish government in recent years, an average of 2.2 other jobs were destroyed to make way for it. Furthermore, green jobs tend not to be permanent; in Spain, only 1 in 10 green jobs exists for a significant period.

In Britain, green-industrial activists have used their political clout and scientific research, much of it derived from studies that underpin the business-science alliance of the Copenhagen Climate Council, to pressure the government to adopt a green new deal. In response, Gordon Brown announced in April that he would create 400,000 green jobs and a “low-carbon economy”.

Yet his figures don’t add up. The Brown government imagines that by 2015 it will have created 39,600 new jobs in geothermal energy, 74,900 in the development of alternative fuels, 25,300 in solar power and 69,300 in the construction of wind turbines. Yet, as a result of Britain’s debilitating crisis of credit, the renewables industry, in which tens of thousands of new jobs are apparently going to be created, is in a dire state. Five of Britain’s biggest wind-energy projects have been abandoned or put on hold indefinitely and British Petroleum recently cut 620 jobs in its solar-energy division because it wasn’t profitable. As journalist Christopher Booker argues, Brown’s “green revolution” is “babyish make-believe”.

In this country we have outlawed all sorts of Pyramid money making schemes and yet our governments seem hell bent for leather to jump into the green versions of these get rich quick schemes. With the recent news that India is not going to play the game and China doing little more than paying lip service to the Gaiaian liturgy Brother Number One and Penny W(r)ong  still expect the Australian people to believe that our economy will be saved by a “green revolution” the same revolution  that has been revealed as entirely bogus elsewhere, to be incapable of reliably creating even a fraction of its theoretical energy output, and as a consequence can’t make any kind of a profit….
Hmm may be instead of worrying about the Furphy of Co2 emissions our government should look to solving the real problems in our country like the abuse of our indigenous children or how to efficiently respond to  big bush fires…
Cheers Comrades

The house always wins

There are lots of things in life that are just down to chance. It would not be much of a stretch at all to suggest that it is all something of a gamble.

Professor Lord Robert Winston wants long-term animal research on egg-freezing

‘There’s no child aged 30 from egg freezing so how do we know it’s safe?

‘Lord Winston

The chance of conceiving using frozen eggs is only about six per cent, according to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the British Fertility Society.

Yet the number of women putting their fertility ‘on ice’ to pursue a career or find the right partner has more than doubled.

At least 41 clinics now offer egg freezing which involves conventional IVF, egg extraction, freezing and then storage until the patient is ready to become pregnant.

The treatment was developed for cancer patients wanting to preserve their fertility because chemotherapy destroys eggs.

There are also concerns that not enough research has been carried out into the long-term health impacts on children born as a result of a frozen egg.

Lord Winston, emeritus professor of fertility studies at London’s Imperial College, said: ‘Women are paying a very high premium for an expensive insurance policy. And this policy should not be sold at the present time, although it is being sold at clinics in London and other places.

‘The whole thing is a bit of a confidence trick. If a woman goes for egg freezing and produces six to 10 eggs that’s a dangerous quantity.

‘It will be a result of hyper-stimulation, which increases the risk of chromosome defects. Then say all the eggs freeze and half then fertilise (after thawing) then the chance of getting one or two viable embryos is not guaranteed.’

His comments were in response to a call today from experts for egg freezing to be made more widely available.

Scientists at the annual meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology will say it must be an option as more women postpone childbearing.

But Lord Winston said: ‘There’s no child aged 30 from egg freezing so how do we know it’s safe? The concern is the long-term genetic effects. There’s considerable evidence that environmental changes in embryo development may affect humans in later life.

‘In my view it’s irresponsible (for clinics) to egg freeze until long-term animal research has been done.’

The thing is, when it comes to gambling the house always has the biggest edge and attempts to tilt the table, weight the wheel or shave the dice are not going to really improve your odds overall, especially if what you manage to win by cheating is  terribly flawed. Far better to avoid the weighted game and play earlier when the odds  favour the player more…
Cheers Comrades

First of the month and another Airbus A310-300 down

We live in an age when international travel could not be much cheaper or quicker for that matter. By contrast when my family emigrated to Australia we came here by sea and the journey took six and half weeks, now the same journey by air takes less than two days and it real terms it cost only a fraction of the expense of the long sea voyage. But then again in the sixties fewer people travelled the world unless it was to stay somewhere for quite a while…

Airbus A310-300

A BOY may be the only survivor of a Yemeni airliner that plunged into choppy seas on the way from Paris to the Comoros islands off Africa’s east coast. Rescuers yesterday found the child among the bodies of some of the 153 people who had been on board the fated flight.

“A child was found alive. He is now on a rescuers’ boat,” said Ben Imani, a doctor at the main hospital in the islands’ capital, Moroni. A Comoros Red Cross official confirmed the rescue.

“We have all that is needed – drips, equipment – to assist the child immediately.”

[...]

Hopes were fading for the other 141 passengers, including three infants, and 11 crew bound for Moroni via the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and Marseilles.

The aircraft, with 66 French citizens, as well as Comoros and Arabic states residents on board, belonged to Yemenia Airways, Yemen’s state carrier. It came down between five and 10 kilometres from the coast and was believed to be preparing to land in severe weather. Wind speeds on land were recorded at more than 60km/h.

It is the second Airbus to crash into the sea in big storms in less than a month. On June 1 an Air France Airbus A330-200 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing all 228 on board.

With the Greenies constantly whining about “peak oil” and “greenhouse gases” you have to wonder if the age of mass air travel is close to ending because there is no other method of transport that is so hungry for energy  and so incapable of using “alternative” fuels than air travel. As the cost of energy increases I can foresee a very large increase in the the cost of flying and a subsequent decline in the number of people who travel for pleasure  or any sort of flippant reason.

As for this crash I can’t help wondering if the date is significant, given the previous Airbus  crash was on the first of last  month I really hope that it is a coincidence that this tragedy was on the first day of July because it just seems just a little too neat  and we all know how much certain religious nutters like to celebrate their faith with symbolic acts.

Great news though that one child has survived, that is better than none but hardly enough to inspire confidence for this air travel sceptic.

Cheers Comrades

Brother Number One’s Government saying “come on down” to people smugglers.

(Now Updated)

Mores invitations to people smugglers bought to you by Brother Number One

Hands up those of you who are just not taking note  any more when ever there is a news item about another load of illegal immigrants arriving in our waters in a leaky boat ?

The fishing boat north west Christmas Island. It is the 16th boat to enter Australian waters this year.

A BOAT carrying 194 people, the largest number in eight years, has been intercepted by border protection 23 nautical miles north-west of Christmas Island.

The small wooden fishing boat, which defence sources said was “overcrowded”, had been tracked since Friday by Australian officials, after it left Indonesia.

On board were mostly men, understood to be of Afghan or Iraqi descent, who are now being processed on Christmas Island in immigration detention. No children were on board.

It is the 16th boat to arrive in Australian waters this year — during which 867 people have been intercepted by border protection.

[...]

Shadow immigration minister Sharman Stone said the latest arrival could be directly attributed to a softening in Australia’s immigration regime by the Rudd Government.

She said last week we had seen “another softening” — referring to proposed legislation to remove charges for people’s stay in immigration detention.

“No wonder we have seen a boat this big,” she said. “We know from asylum seekers who travel on these boats that the people smugglers watch the online Australian media, so they would have known what happened in Parliament and now they are saying ‘come on down’.”

Of course those seeking to come here illegally know what sort of reception that they are likely to get under the regime of Brother Number One and when they realise that they will not incur any penalty for a failed attempt there will obviously be an even bigger jump in the numbers. and speaking of the numbers we could reasonably expect that for everyone of the men on this latest boat that there may be ten or so others for whom they act as a vangaurd. Because you can be sure that as soon as they are able they will seek to have their families cone over under our” family reunion ” programs. So perhaps we should consider that the complement of a boat like this is really1940 rather then 194…

As I have said before prompt determination of their status and then an equally prompt repatriation and if they have  “lost” (disposed of more likely) their identifying documents, assume that they are not what they claim to be and repatriate them even quicker.

You know it makes sense

Cheers Comrades

PS

I bet that even the Labor government is pleased that John Howard built the facility at Christmas Island even though they were delusional enough to believe that it would never be needed.

UPDATE

10,000 more on their way

Ray Dixon  will be delighted!

June 30, 2009

INDONESIAN authorities are bracing for a huge influx of boat people, anticipating as many as 10,000 asylum-seekers are waiting in Malaysia to transit through the archipelago and on to Australia.

This estimate was backed by a Malaysian group that deals with unauthorised immigrants. An Australian Government source warned of the potential for a similar influx to the thousands who began arriving in Australia from the late 1990s.

About 1500 asylum-seekers have arrived in Indonesia this year and registered for refugee status, almost all travelling by boat from Malaysia. Another 1500 are believed to have arrived and have not registered.

Indonesian police intelligence suggests between 7000 and 10,000 more people are waiting in Malaysia to make the journey once their passage is organised by people-smugglers.

“It could be 10,000,” said senior commissioner Eko Danianto, head of the people smuggling unit at the Indonesian National Police.

“They comprise a mix of nationalities, not only Afghans. There are also Sri Lankan, Myanamerese (Burmese), Iraqis.”

However an Australian academic, Dr Roslyn Richardson, of Charles Sturt University, has said asylum seekers know little about Australia before their arrival here.

Networks of people-smugglers service the 1 million Indonesian illegal workers who regularly travel to Malaysia by boat. The same networks also help arrange passage to Australia via Indonesia.

On Saturday, Malaysian authorities arrested 36 Afghans and six Pakistanis being smuggled to Australia via Indonesia. On Sunday, a boat carrying 194 asylum-seekers, mostly Sri Lankans, was intercepted near Christmas Island. Immigration sources said it was believed to have come from Malaysia. It was the biggest boatload of asylum-seekers to arrive in eight years.

“When they start getting big numbers through on a boat, they [people smugglers] get credibility and they get money. It becomes a virtuous cycle for them,” said one Australian immigration enforcement official.

The paragraph that I have emboldened in the quote above goes right to the nub of the problem, sadly my latte sipping friends just don’t get the bigger picture .

Also the same report says that the 194 people on the boat about which this  post was written are from Sri Lanka which should mean that they can be promptly repatriated to their country of origin as that conflict has now been resolved by the defeat of the LTTE.

Cheers again Comrades

Vale Farrah Fawcett

I never had a poster of Farrah Fawcett on my wall as a teenager but many did and that hair was reflected in the styles I so often saw in my youth…
Hmm makes me feel old to see the style icons that I knew as a young chap popping their clogs…

Farrah Fawcett has died after a long battle with cancer. She was 62.

ICONIC 1970s poster girl and actress Farrah Fawcett has died after a long battle with cancer. She was 62. Fawcett, who rose to fame as the star of US television’s Charlie’s Angels, was first diagnosed with anal cancer in late 2006.

She died in a Los Angeles hospital.

Later Comrades

UPDATE

Well it seems that Micheal Jackson has also popped his clogs , Hmm that one leaves me  feeling even more ambivalent, I liked some of his earlier stuff but was deeply saddened by the scandals and his terribly sad attempts at reinvention.

It will be interasting to see which gets more attention in the media…

Just a quick bathe in the relected glory…

I am a religiously tolerant chap, someone who likes to acknowledge the festivals of all of the major faiths. As faith events go there are none more significant in this part of the world than the “State of Origin” series. perhaps Charles Darwin would even appreciate that there are no better examples of the battle for the ” survival of the fittest” than this sporting battle.

Party time … when Queensland's Cameron Smith scored the Maroons' last try at ANZ Stadium last night to clench a record fourth series win, it was time to celebrate. Photo: Anthony Johnson

NSW 14 Queensland 24

NSW first showed fright, then showed fight, but ultimately the match would be noticeable only for Queensland might. Four straight series wins is a mighty effort, even if the Blues appeared to hand this one to them on a platter – or at least they would have handed it to them had they been able to hold the thing.

As we saw in Melbourne, if the Blues had been able to wipe a 20-minute horror show the result might have been different. They could not hold the ball and so now the Maroons hold the trophy. A slow start beats a fast finish most times.

While the Blues showed remarkable grit to recover from an 18-0 deficit – to the point where, after David Williams scored with 18 minutes remaining, the momentum and the big moments were theirs – they could not produce a miracle.

All of that aside I did not watch one second of the game, none the less my emotional response is right up there with all of my fellow Queenslanders ,  there must be something in the air that does it because no matter how much disdain I show for any kind of sport I am still moved …

Cheers Comrades

Hmmm Cue Comrade Ray who will undoubtedly try to set me on the “right” path to football Nirvana…

The girl with stars on her face

Tattoos have gone from being something that designated one as a member of societies fringes to being very mainstream indeed and some of them can really enhance the attractiveness of the person thus indelibly marked or they can say that a person is a total idiot.

Kimberley Vlaminck who said she fell asleep after asking for only three stars Photo: EUROPICS

Amid a frenzy of media attention, she then said she would sue the tattoo artist, Rouslan Toumaniantz, for the £9,000 she needed for laser surgery to have them removed.

She said after the tattooing last week: “It is terrible for me. I cannot go out on to the street. I look like a freak.”

But the 18-year-old has finally confessed she did not fall asleep, that she wanted all the stars and was “fully aware” of what Mr Toumaniantz was doing.

Ms Vlaminck told a Dutch TV crew: “I asked for 56 stars and initially adored them. But when my father saw them, he was furious. So I said I fell asleep and the that the tattooist made a mistake.”

Mr Toumaniantz – himself covered from head to foot in tattoos and piercings – had consistently denied he had made a mistake and always insisted Vlaminck wanted all 56 stars.

He said at the time: “I maintain that she absolutely agreed that I tattoo those 56 stars on the left side of her face.”

There is also no doubt that the placement choice of any skin art can make a big difference to how it may be received and appreciated by friends and family but more importantly that piece of art work that you may have loved when you committed to it and while you sat listening to the buzz of the tattooist’s tools may become something that you loathe. I had a friend who got a few tattoos when he was a young man and when he reached middle age he very much regretted them all. He was however not as foolish as Kimberley Vlaminck none of them  were on his face.

I actually hope that Kimberley Vlaminck comes to love those tattoos  as much as she did when the artist first laid down his needles because, unlike love, tattoos are forever, something that many people do not really appreciate when they have their bodies scarred for life.

Cheers Comrades

Digital killed the picture star

In an age when almost everyone now has a digital camera in their phone it is easy to forget that taking good pictures required good equipment and the very best chemical technology and I can vouch for the quality of Kodak’s Kodachrome. I have some slides taken on this stock many years ago that are still as crisp and bright as they were when got the parcel in the post.

Sorry, Paul Simon, Kodak is taking your Kodachrome away. Eastman Kodak is discontinuing its oldest film because of falling demand in an increasingly digital age.

The world’s first commercially successful colour film, immortalised in song by Simon, spent 74 years in Kodak’s portfolio. It enjoyed its heyday in the 1950s and ’60s but in recent years has nudged closer to obscurity: sales of Kodachrome are now just a fraction of 1 per cent of the company’s total sales of still-picture films. Only one commercial lab in the world still processes it and it was being made only about once a year.

Simon crooned about it in 1973 in the aptly titled Kodachrome. “They give us those nice bright colors. They give us the greens of summers. Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day,” he sang. “… So Mama don’t take my Kodachrome away.”

Indeed, Kodachrome was favoured by still and motion picture photographers for its rich but realistic tones, vibrant colours and durability.

It was the basis not only for countless family slideshows on carousel projectors over the years but also for world-renowned images, including Abraham Zapruder’s 8mm reel of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963.

I have gone digital now just like most other photographers But my first real camera was a Pentax K1000 that I bought new in my first year at university it was a a no nonsense SLR everything on it was manual and the only really modern feature that it had was through the lens light metering. I loved it for its robust design and its versatility. I also loved to shoot black and white because I could process and print my own pictures  and the pleasure that I got from printing my own is one of the reasons that I,  like so many others have embraced digital photography. The end of Kodachrome almost  marks the end of film cameras and I wonder how long it will be before you can’t get film stock for any 35mm camera?  Not that long I would imagine. But I wonder too if being able to take as many shots as you please for virtually no cost will mean that individuals take less care in composing each shot…

Cheers Comrades,

The Vicky Pollard defence of discrimination in favour or Gay couples

The much mooted changes made by the federal government, to remove all kinds of discrimination against homosexual couples from the first of July is something that I fully endorse. No ifs buts or maybes. We are a society that does not prescribe a template for the sort of relationships that consenting adults can make, have or maintain. I do however think that it is more than a bit rich for gay advocates to complain that some people will be worse off because they will be treated the same as heterosexual couples under the new regime.

Same sex wedding cake Equality comes at a price - literally July 1 should be a celebration for gay couples when they are recognised by law, but there will be a catch.

He said for many years elderly gay people had missed out on family tax benefits, medicare benefits, partner benefits or family assistance.

“Despite having paid higher taxes all their lives and not being recognised as a same sex couple, now they’re going to receive less money in their retirement when their planning was done many years ago,” Mr Mackereth said.

“Gay and lesbian people don’t want any more than equality; they don’t want special rights; they just want to be treated the same as everybody else.

“But when somebody’s been treated poorly for their entire life and then suddenly the laws are going to treat them poorly again, that makes it awfully tough on those people, especially older people.

Mr Page called on the government to install a grandfather clause, so that people affected kept their current benefits until their situation changed.

He said he realised it could be politically difficult to continue paying a gay couple more than a heterosexual couple when they were now recognised as the same by the law.

The argument that Gay couples should continue to have a financial advantage over heterosexual claimants of social benefits and welfare is self-serving and deeply offensive to those of us who believe in equality and it ignores the fact that lacking the obligation of raising a family gives most homosexuals a potentially lifelong advantage in terms of disposable income. Frankly if individuals have frittered that “edge” away with hedonistic living then they should be prepared to enjoy the consequences of the choices that they have made just as heterosexuals do who make the same sort of lifestyle choices.
Cheers Comrades