Lower Clarence man competes in ITU 2009 Triathlon World Championships

Credit: The Daily Examiner 27 July 2009

Ray Hunt of Yamba is pictured above demonstrating that retirement can be healthy, productive and just plain fun.

Ray will be competing between 9 -13 September 2009 on the Gold Coast, Queensland and the Lower Clarence Valley is barracking for their man as he swims, bikes and runs in the ITU Triathlon World Championships in both aquathlon and triathlon events.

Event schedule here.

Results of races will be posted after 7pm on the day at http://www.triathlon.org/

Update:

Full Aquathlon results

Ray finished the Aquathlon event on 9 September in 0:44.51 (with his first run coming in at 0:11:15, his swim at 0:20:30 and his second run at 0:13:05).

A mere 0:11.41 behind the elite athlete who took out first place.
Well done, Ray.

Further update:

Ray came fifth in his age group in the ITU 2009 Age Group Triathlon World Championships on 12 September, with an unofficial time of 2:30:56.

Just 0:9:31 behind the age group winner David Roadhouse (USA).

A sterling effort.

"Please sir, will you pay for this anti-ALP brochure". Now which MPs said that?

This week the Commonwealth Auditor General released a report on the Administration of Parliamentarians' Entitlements by the Department of Finance and Deregulation.

What this reveals is one long rort of the $100,000 MP printing allowance by the major political parties for campaign purposes and a very lackadaisical federal department which did not adequately police invoicing for this allowance.

Happy little pigs in mud abounded in the run up to the last federal election - what with at least $125,000 each to play with at the time.

A little snippet in the report reveals that four unnamed Liberal pollies put in invoices for printing brochures called "Labor can't manage money. You Pay for it", which failed to mention either their names or electorates and seem to have originally been labelled by these MPs as "anti ALP" material.

The report rated these as a real risk of being outside the printing guidelines.

Now Google shows there's a long list of possible suspects ranging from big players like Nick Minchin and Christopher Pyne through to tiddlers such as Michael Ferguson and perhaps Jamie Briggs.

An enjoyable hunt the pollie game for the truly bored and tired of life.

Forget genetic manipulation as the ultimate in useless innovation - look at food shape changing

Some orchardists in far-flung places obviously think that fruit needs a new look.
These pears have been shaped on the tree using plastic moulds during the growing period, while the watermelon became square by unknown means.
What on earth is happening to quality produce au naturel?
And as jaded appetites and ennui are obviously being catered for here - did anyone create a new shape for the 9th day of the 9th month of the 9th year of the 21st century?




Pics from U.K. Telegraph

Climate change largely irreversible for 1,000 years after excessive greenhouse emissions stop?

One of the distressing abstracts found online at the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America:

The severity of damaging human-induced climate change depends not only on the magnitude of the change but also on the potential for irreversibility. This paper shows that the climate change that takes place due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. Following cessation of emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not drop significantly for at least 1,000 years. Among illustrative irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase from current levels near 385 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450–600 ppmv over the coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in several regions comparable to those of the “dust bowl” era and inexorable sea level rise. Thermal expansion of the warming ocean provides a conservative lower limit to irreversible global average sea level rise of at least 0.4–1.0 m if 21st century CO2 concentrations exceed 600 ppmv and 0.6–1.9 m for peak CO2 concentrations exceeding ≈1,000 ppmv. Additional contributions from glaciers and ice sheet contributions to future sea level rise are uncertain but may equal or exceed several meters over the next millennium or longer.

Full 2009 paper in PDF form here.