Just another example of how rural & regional NSW is being let down

The Daily Examiner editor points out the inequity in energy service delivery costs across New South Wales.

Comment from The Daily Examiner, 21 December 2009
Click on image to enlarge

Obama's baby brother is a movie star named Marx?

Much of this Monday 14 December article from the Chinese media mentioning Obama's younger brother, Jiang joined the new film "Let the bullets fly," more and more powerful lineup, may be lost in awkward translation but the picture tells the story.
American conspiracy wingnuts must be ecstatic over the half-brother's first name, "Marx"!

Send Stephen Conroy an anti-censorship gift this Christmas via Electronic Frontiers Australia

A ‘blacklist’ of thousands of websites.

Click on The Gift of Censorship for Christmas and send short e-message to the Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.
For every thousand anti-Internet censorhip messages sent to Electronic Frontiers Australia for delivery to Senator Conroy, EFA will also send a Christmas stocking containing coal.

The fool's playing with us, right?

In the Herald Sun last Friday from one barking mad pollie:
BIBLE classes should be compulsory so children have a fundamental understanding of Christianity on leaving school, federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says.
"I think everyone should have some familiarity with the great texts that are at the core of our civilisation," Mr Abbott said. "That includes, most importantly, the Bible.
"I think it would be impossible to have a good general education without at least some serious familiarity with the Bible and with the teachings of Christianity.
"That doesn't mean that people have to be believers."

Bible classes, Tones? Next you'll want all school kids to have a compulsory Christian baptism before they leave pre-school!

I wonder how many more people can you alienate before New Year - you appear to be going for a national record.

Pic from the Herald Sun article

Australia you've been Gherkin'd!

Clarence Valley teens have launched their own interactive website for youth called Gherkin.

Those deadly rappers JACCAS have a great song This is where we're from playing on the home page.

Go there!

Our Kev not so bright and shiny anymore

Being an Aussie prime minister must be a b*gger of a job, but compared to some others who've been at the top of the pollie pile Kevin Rudd has had a dream run in the public opinion polls since November 2007.
The UN shenanigans in Copenhagen this month have put a bit of a dent in that bright and shiny image......

ABC The Drum poll results at 6am on 21st December 2009

Stewart Franks quite frankly puzzles

I must confess that until fairly recently I had not heard of Associate Professor Stewart Franks.

Franks swam into view when his name become associated with Family First's Senator Steve Fielding and the now notorious Assessment of Penny Wong's Response to My 3 Questions on Climate Change.

Now I do not call into question this academic's record, but I do wish he wouldn't misspeak concerning possible conflicts of interest arising from his research funding.

The Australian online states in Rebels of the Sun:

While not interviewed for Channel 4, hydro-climatologist Stewart Franks at Newcastle University in NSW is one such scientist. Like all other scientists quoted in this article, he says he has never received any funding from any industry, but is increasingly uneasy about the dangerous path the debate is taking, where alternative views are discouraged and reputations attacked and discredited. [my emphasis]

However, in 2007 Stewart Franks received a two-year project grant from Macquarie Generation worth $85,000.

Macquarie Generation is a state-owned corporporation with a core business producing and wholesale selling electricity on the National Electricity Market in Australia.
This corporation operates two of the largest coal-powered stations in New South Wales (consuming a combined total of 13 million tonnes of greenhouse gas producing coal per annum) and is part of the national energy industry.

Therefore, this academic did indeed receive funding from industry.

Which does give one pause for thought when Associate Professor Franks goes into print asserting that high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are not driving climate change.