Dramatic pictures of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano

Photographs of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano during eruption this month.

Three of 35 images from The Big Picture feature at Boston.com

Thanks to Clarrie Rivers for sending the link - hope he gets well soon.

Additional photographs on Flickr here.

Ambos try to tell us something we all sadly know....

Quite a few people in the Northern Rivers have sad or frustrating tales to tell about the Triple 0 emergency line or the state of our ambulance service over the years.
And although many are quite rightly lemony about the attitude of
emergency call centre staff, few blame the ambos for stuff-ups that occur as they genuinely try their best.
Now the paramedics from other states are complaining about a system NSW is currently in the process of installing:
"The current paper-based Patient Care Records contain information from paramedics on a patient's condition and are handed over to doctors and nurses when an ambulance arrives at a hospital.

Through moving them to digital records via the ePCR system paramedics will in theory cut down on the time filling out carbon-copy paper reports and create new lines of digital data which can be analysed to improve healthcare delivery.
However, irate paramedics using the system say records in the ePCR system take up to an hour to fill out, or four-times longer than with pen and paper, and claim it produces lax reports that do not adequately describe a patient's condition. Worse, they say some doctors have been left stranded when overburden paramedics have dumped patients at
hospitals without PCRs.
"It frequently occurs that an [ePCR] is unfinished before we need to attend to a next case. this means [nurses receive] absolutely no record of events and patient's condition and provisional diagnosis until we return sometimes hours later," said one active Tasmanian paramedic on the condition of anonymity. "The paper [PCR] was at least filled in with the important bits and handed over to medical and nursing staff."
Patient death by microchip or apps is only a heartbeat away.

McDonald's at Ballina finds itself with negative reviews

Menu Mates is a website which assists in the search for somewhere to eat and allows its readers to review restaurants of their choice.

McDonald's at Ballina is not faring well now that Yamba residents have found the site:

Posted by Yamba-ite on 24/04/2010
No to McDonald's in Yamba!
McDonald's Australia, the Westlawn Group and Scott Campbell all want a McDonald's store in Yamba. The Yamba community says NO to that. Tell Scott so at: scampbell@licensee.mcdonalds.com.au

Posted by YambaProud on 15/04/2010
No thanks!

Mr Scott Campbell, please do not open a McDonalds restaurant in Yamba, our community does not want it.

Scientific exploration as art

Three images from Space Telescope's Top 100 Hubble photographs from outer space

MadiGrass Festival - Nimbin NSW, 1-2 May 2010

Where the past....



Meets the future.....

Then has fun in the sun and lobbies for all things hemp, including medical mariajuana.

To find out more go to Nimbin MadiGrass.

Photograph from The Northern Rivers Echo

Internet Filtering: It's not about child pornography it's about copyright

"Child pornography is great," the speaker at the podium declared enthusiastically. "It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites".

American Chamber of Commerce representative at Stockholm conference in 2007, according to Christian Engstrom

McDonald's Corporation: In Litter We Trust

Images of McDonald's litter from around the world including Australia

Despite numerous media releases promising a responsible approach to the waste it produces McDonald's Corporation fast food outlets around the world manage to produce large amounts of branded litter in and around the building.

Local government sometimes tries to curb the litter-making machine by insisting that McDonald's undertake daily 'litter patrols' as one condition of a development consent.

However, this and other measure do not appear to be very effective if this article in the U.K. Daily Echo on 23 April 2010 is any indication:

IT was a mountain of rubbish that had left him McFurious.
The growing mound of burger wrappers along Dave Elgram’s street had not been cleared for so long that he decided to take matters into his own hands.
Armed with a litter-picker the dad of three collected a bin liner full of McDonalds rubbish and tipped it on over the restaurant floor in front of shocked staff.
Now the 44-year-old is vowing to return to the store in Burgess Road every Monday with a fresh bag of rubbish until staff clean up his street.

Likewise, the fact that one NSW councillor could collect a backpack of McDonald's rubbish to show his fellow Wollondilly Shire councillors just last year is hardly reassuring:

``I went to four different McDonald's outlets the other night and was horrified by the rubbish thrown everywhere,'' he said. ``I know it's not McDonald's fault, it's the people who dumped it there but we live in a catchment area and I don't want to see this rubbish in our drinking water.''

In 2008 Choice magazine reported:

Branded litter, such as packaging from McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Cadbury and other retailers, accounts for 24% of the overall waste stream, with highways a major dumping ground, according to an Australia-wide study by Keep Australia Beautiful. The study, released in late September, also reveals that the two biggest culprits are Coca-Cola and McDonald's, which contribute close to 10% each of the branded litter.

These national figures broke down to 14.7% of all branded litter in NSW being McDonald's litter, which was the highest percentage for any branded fast food, drink, or confectionery/snack food items in that state at the time.

In 2010 a two-day litter survey of ten British cities found that McDonald's litter made up 29 percent of all gutter share.

In Litter We Trust could almost be this foreign multinational's official corporate legend.

However this is only a small part of the problem for regional areas such as the Clarence Valley, because eat-in customers at the proposed McDonald's fast food outlet in Yamba will add considerably to local government's landfill waste disposal needs in ever decreasing site options.