Still time to get your entry in for the 2010 Bureau of Meteorology calendar

The Bureau of Meteorology and the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society's Australian Weather Calendar photography competition for the 2010 calendar will close on 31 March 2009.

Still time for photographer's on the NSW North Coast to send off their favourite lucky weather photo to see if the Northern Rivers can be represented in the next calendar.

This is definitely a for the love of it competition, but lots of fun if you make the final cut.

Entries must have a meteorological theme, such as clouds, thunderstorms, lightning, rainbows or tornadoes.

Entries must be provided initially as photographic prints, at a minimum size of 15x10 cm. Digital pictures must be a minimum size of 5MB uncompressed (about 1700 x 1150 pixels), such as are produced by 2 megapixel cameras. No more than 10 entries per person are permitted.

Entries must be accompanied by a completed entry form that contains details of any and all digital alteration to images.
Photographers must be willing to provide the image in its original format (negative, transparency or digital file) if the picture is shortlisted.

Winning photographers are awarded three complimentary calendars. No prizemoney is offered. All rights associated with the images are retained by the photographer.

Entries must be sent to:

Weather Calendar Competition,
Public Affairs Group,
Bureau of Meteorology,
GPO Box 1289,
MELBOURNE VIC 3001

More information:Telephone (03) 9669 4668, fax: (03) 9669 4113, e-mail: librarypic@bom.gov.au

And you thought is 'twas only Muslims.........

I stumbled across a website yesterday called the Catholic League: for religious and civil rights.

Intriguingly it links to annual reports on anti-Catholicism (up to 2007) and other supposedly anti sentiment - Christmas Wars and The Jewish Community Should Rethink Its Attitude Towards Pius XII.

But what really fascinated me were the cartoons this report objected to in 2007, like the one above.

It seems that it isn't just the Islamic faith which is touchy over caricature and political comment.

And this mob keep a yearly tally!

Bambauer rains on Senator Conroy's parade - download full text of Internet censorship paper

FILTERING IN OZ:

AUSTRALIA'S FORAY INTO INTERNET CENSORSHIP

Derek E. Bambauer*

Abstract

Australia's decision to implement Internet censorship using technological meanscreates a natural experiment: the first Western democracy to mandate filtering legislatively, and to retrofit it to a decentralized network architecture.

But are the proposed restrictions legitimate?

The new restraints derive from the Labor Party'spro-filtering electoral campaign, though coalition government gives minority politicians considerable influence over policy.

The country has a well-defined statutory censorship system for on-line and off-line material that may, however, be undercut by relying on foreign and third-party lists of sites to be blocked.

While Australia is open about its filtering goals, the government's transparency about what content is to be blocked is poor.

Initial tests show that how effective censorship is at filtering prohibited content – and only that content – will vary based on what method the country's ISPs use.

Though Australia's decision makers are formally accountable to citizens, efforts to silence dissenters, outsourcing of blocking decisions, and filtering's inevitable transfer of power to technicians undercut accountability.

The paper argues Australia represents a shift by Western democracies towards legitimating Internet filtering and away from robust consideration of the alternatives available to combat undesirable information.

PDF of draft paper at SSRN

Image from The Sydney Morning Herald

Gaza '09: Reports from Israeli human rights groups

B'Tselem (Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in Occupied Territories) has this link to a blog reporting human rights violations in the Gaza Strip.

B'Tselem also documents the appalling mortality statistics between 29.9.2000-30.11.2008 which show 2,994 Palestinians (including 634 minors) in the Gaza Strip were killed by Israeli security forces/civilians compared with 136 Israeli dead (including 4 minors) in the same territory killed by Palestinians.

With totals across Gaza, West Bank and Israel for the same period showing 4,897 Palestinian dead (including 955 minors) and 1,062 Israeli dead (including 123 minors).

The current bombing and incursion into the Gaza Strip will of course swell these figures markedly in relation to the number of Palestinians killed or wounded.

When will enough be enough?

Philip Slater over at The Huffington Post expresses what must be a common sentiment:

I can understand that after centuries of persecution it's satisfying for a Jewish state to be the aggressor for a change, but there's a codicil that goes with that role. You don't get to act like a victim any more. "Poor little Israel" just sounds silly when you're the dominant power in the Middle East. When you've invaded several of your neighbors, bombed and defeated them in combat, occupied their land, and taken their homes away from them, it's time to stop acting oppressed. Yes, Arab states deny your right to exist, threaten to drive you into the sea, and all the rest of their futile, helpless rhetoric. The fact is, you have the upper hand and they don't. You have sophisticated arms and they don't. You have nuclear weapons and they don't. So stop pretending to be pathetic. It doesn't play well in Peoria.

B'Tselem 2009 testimony page.

A big round of applause for W.I.R.E.S wildlife rescue please

According to The Daily Examiner, last year WIRES Northern Rivers received 50,000 telephone calls from the public and made 25,000 rescues of injured animals.

Chris Lloyd, WIRES Executive Officer, said: " We live in one of the most beautiful countries in the world and it's heartbreaking to see how we are killing off our helpless animals. Many species are unique to this country and we must work together to provide these precious animals with a safe future."

In the Clarence Valley WIRES averaged 10 calls per day over 2008 for everything from injured eastern grey kangaroos, wedgetail eagles, parrots, and water birds, to various lizards and snakes.

WIRES volunteers are always prompt, polite and caring whenever they call to pick up injured or 'lost' wildlife from around the NSW North Coast and we are all lucky to have such an excellent service just a phone call away.

Thinking of donating?

Donate by Phone
Call 02 8977 3333 and have your credit card details on hand to donate over the phone.

Donate by Fax

Download printable donation form and fax to: 02 8977 3399 Donate by Mail

Download a printable donation form to send through the post to:
PO Box 260
FORESTVILLE NSW 2087

* Photograph of Tawny Frogmouths from WIRES Northern Rivers

It's official - the editor's an ars#h@le

The Daily Examiner at Grafton celebrates 150 years of news publication this year.
It's circulation covers the Clarence Valley, with a supposed readership of around 28,000 from Monday to Saturday.
A somewhat unnatural number given that there are only about 50,000 people living in the Valley.
Still, it is to be congratulated for hanging in there when so many in the print media are living on what appears to be borrowed time as teh teev and teh net make inroads into 'audience' share.
So it's a real pity that in a year of celebration this local paper should be lumbered with such a tactless, insensitive tabloid hack like its johhny-come-lately editor, Peter Chapman.

His latest effort on Tuesday was to berate Yamba small business owners for taking either Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year's Day off to be with their own family and friends.
Apparently everyone in Yamba should have been open comme la Gold Coast for the benefit of the editor, his extended family and friends (because not for one moment did I believe in the unnamed dissatisfied 'tourists' he was supposedly championing).
As an afterthought he also included Maclean and Grafton shopkeepers in his gripe - presumably the boofhead remembered that he currently resides in Yamba and has to face his neighbours once the paper hits the streets.

Map from APN

You go (you godless) girl! Part Two

In October 2008 I wrote a post about Ariane Sherine's efforts to raise funds to run a counter-message to advertising by religious groups in Britain.

Ariane was so successful that now at last the godless have a voice!

According to The Telegraph last Tuesday:

Organisers originally hoped to put the message on just a handful of London buses, as an antidote to posters put up by religious groups which they claimed were "threatening eternal damnation" to non-believers.

But after the campaign received high-profile support from the prominent atheist Prof Richard Dawkins and the British Humanist Association, the modest £5,500 target was met within minutes and more than £140,000 has now been donated since the launch in October.

Enough money has now been raised to place the message – "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" – on 200 bendy buses in the capital for a month, with the first ones taking to the streets .

A further 600 buses carrying the adverts will be seen by passengers and passers-by in cities across England, Wales and Scotland, from Aberdeen and Dundee to York, Coventry, Swansea and Bristol.

In addition, two large LCD screens bearing the atheist message have been placed in Oxford Street, central London, while 1,000 posters containing quotes from well-known non-believers will be placed on Underground trains for two weeks starting on Monday.

They feature lines doubting the existence of God, and celebrating the natural world, written by Albert Einstein, Katharine Hepburn, Douglas Adams and Emily Dickinson.

It is the first ever atheist advertising campaign to take place in Britain, and similar adverts are now also running on public transport in America and Spain.

Ariane Sherine, a writer who first thought of the atheist bus adverts, said: "You wait ages for an atheist bus, then 800 come along at once. I hope they will brighten people's days and make them smile on their way to work."

The Guardian also reported:

Atheists in Australia have fared badly with their campaign. Attempts to place slogans such as "Atheism – sleep in on Sunday mornings" on buses were rejected by Australia's biggest outdoor advertising company, APN Outdoor.