Send kisses to Julia in support of community workers

Want to support a pay increase for Australian community workers?
Send Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Julia Gillard an online 'kiss' postcard at Pay Up - No More Lip Service to Equal Pay:
An the online a campaign of the Australian Services Union (ASU). The ASU is the union of Community Sector Workers.
Community Sector workers are undervalued and underpaid and not properly respected. Their work has traditionally been seen as "women's work" and their wages have been restricted as a result.
In 2010, Unions led by the ASU and supported by the ACTU and the Federal Government are lodging a test case in Fair Work Australia using the new Equal Remuneration Laws embedded in the Fair Work Act. The case will impact the working lives of about 200,000 community workers.
The Community Sector is largely reliant on Government funding to run its essential services and to pay the wages of the workers. Winning the case will prove that these workers are undervalued – but, the case outcome alone will not correct the injustice. Workers need the Government to fund the outcome of the case to make Equal Pay a reality.
As to any hope that this might equate to equal pay for women generally - well that is a very long bow to draw.

Here comes the sun......

New images and movies courtesy of NASA at

First Light for the Solar Dynamics Observatory

The subject most Australian politicians don't want to discuss in 2010

Global warming and climate change is one subject that has slipped from the forefront of most Australian political party agendas since the 2009 Copenhagen Summit.

To remind readers that (although the issue is fast becoming an unmentionable one) the urgency of the global problem still exists, here is the outline of an article from the international science journal Nature this month on the current status of international undertakings to reduce greenhouse gas emissions:

Current national emissions targets can't limit global warming to 2 °C, calculate Joeri Rogelj, Malte Meinshausen and colleagues — they might even lock the world into exceeding 3 °C warming.

Summary

• Nations will probably meet only the lower ends of their emissions pledges in the absence of a binding international agreement
  
• Nations can bank an estimated 12 gigatonnes of Co₂ equivalents surplus allowances for use after 2012
  
• Land-use rules are likely to result in further allowance increases of 0.5 GtCO₂-eq per year
  
• Global emissions in 2020 could thus be up to 20% higher than today
  
• Current pledges mean a greater than 50% chance that warming will exceed 3°C by 2100
  
• If nations agree to halve emissions by 2050, there is still a 50% chance that warming will exceed 2°C and will almost certainly exceed 1.5°C

HISTORICAL DATA: P. BROHAN ET AL. J. GEOPHYS. RES.111, D12106 (2006
Click on graphs to enlarge

Phony Tony just didn't wanna know....

As Australia's Opposition Leader 'Phony Tony' Abbott revs up with manufactured outrage over Kevin Rudd's health funding deal with the states, a neighbour sent me this evidence that he doesn't listen to voters, even very polite ones:
Your message To: Abbott, Tony (MP)
Subject: Forthcoming Leaders' Debate March 2010
Sent: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:11:23 +1000
was deleted without being read on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 02:18:49 +1000

So which blog did an Australian government ask Google to trash?

From the official Google Inc blog:

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights states that "everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Written in 1948, the principle applies aptly to today's Internet -- one of the most important means of free expression in the world. Yet government censorship of the web is growing rapidly: from the outright blocking and filtering of sites, to court orders limiting access to information and legislation forcing companies to self-censor content.

So it's no surprise that Google, like other technology and telecommunications companies, regularly receives demands from government agencies to remove content from our services. Of course many of these requests are entirely legitimate, such as requests for the removal of child pornography. We also regularly receive requests from law enforcement agencies to hand over private user data. Again, the vast majority of these requests are valid and the information needed is for legitimate criminal investigations. However, data about these activities historically has not been broadly available. We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship.

We are today launching a new Government Requests tool to give people information about the requests for user data or content removal we receive from government agencies around the world. For this launch, we are using data from July-December, 2009, and we plan to update the data in 6-month increments. Read this post to learn more about our principles surrounding free expression and controversial content on the web.

Here is the raw data for Australian government requests received by Google between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009:

• 155 data requests
• 17 removal requests
  • 52.9% of removal requests fully or partially complied with.
  • 1 Blogger
  • 1 Geo (except Street View)
  • 1 Web Search
  • 14 YouTube

This data does not include any blocking requests or requests to remove child pornography and, the statistics primarily cover requests in criminal matters including information concerning Google user account details or products.

Which leaves an interesting question hanging in the air.

Which blog did the Rudd Government (or one of the state governments) ask Google to remove from the Internet and did Google comply?

BBQ Brumby served on a skewer with sauce piquante

If there was an award for questions from the floor after a National Press Club Address, this one should get first prize:

"Mr Brumby, Sue Dunlevy from the Daily Telegraph. You're saying today —  the title of your address is "putting patients first". But it's not something that you're doing in your own hospital system. Victoria's hospitals see fewer emergency and elective surgery patients within the recommended time than hospitals in New South Wales. You spend $123 less per patient than New South Wales. Your hospital system provides fewer beds per thousand people than New South Wales. And your hospital performance has been going backwards for five years. Why should you be regarded as some kind of authority on health? And why should patients in other states have to put up with a second-rate system because someone who can't run his own health system is behaving like a bully?"

You little bewdy, Sue!

Marine Life Survey finds miracles and wonders

From Marine Life Survey 2009 Image Gallery

The Census of Marine Life (CoML) is a global network of researchers in about 80 nations engaged in a ten-year initiative to assess and explain the diversity, distribution and abundance of marine life in the world’s oceans - past, present and future. (www.comlsecretariat.org)

A database that contains 18 million DNA sequences of microbial life has been developed by the International Census of Marine Microbes (ICoMM). 2,000 scientists from over 80 nations have drawn ocean samples from more than 1,200 sites worldwide, making the decade-long project “Census of Marine Life – Making Ocean Life Count” one of the largest global scientific collaborations ever undertaken according to Global Adventure, LLC.

From Census of Hard-To-See Marine Life

Track the geographic locations of the Census of Hard-to-See Marine Life here.

Census of Marine Life website here.