Excuse me while I turn my head and barf

The U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen is less than five months away, and with no benchmarks set to measure compliance the world's leaders recently decided to agree to keeping global warming at no more than 2 Celsius - practically guaranteeing massive environmental degradation across Australia.

Now I find that in their wisdom the organisers of this conference have paid out good money for a dinky little website called Hopenhagen at which we are supposed to lodge a 10-word expression of what gives us hope.

WTF? How can the world have hope if all its leaders are doing is playing at finding solutions for climate change instead of actually doing something right NOW.

L'll
Coffs Harbour

How many acute care beds are there in NSW North Coast hospitals?

North Coast Area Health Service (NCAHS) covers an area of 25,570 square kilometres extending from Port Macquarie in the south, Queensland in the north and westward to the Great Dividing Range and there are over 480,675 people living within these boundaries according to the area health service.

Also according to the NCAHS website in 2005 there was a total of 21 public hospitals, with approx. 1384 acute care beds offered at the public/private hospitals in the Area.

Which works out at no more than 2.9 acute care beds to every 1,000 North Coast residents and, even less available to patients without private medical insurance if one was able to extract private hospital beds from the bundled NCAHS 2005 figure.

In 2007 Peter Roberts and Paul Cunningham told a NSW inquiry that NSW had only 1.1 acute care beds in private hospitals per 1,000 population and 2.7 acute care beds in public hospitals per 1,000 people.

Now Professor Peter Collingdon informs us in 2009 that:
In Australia we have 38% less beds than in 1981 when there were 6.4 acute care hospital beds for every 1000 people. There are now only four beds per 1000 people available. Only 2.7 of these beds are available in the public sector -- where the sickest patients are looked after. [Crikey.com.au,20 July 2009]

Which indicates that little is changing for the better in health services when it comes to bed numbers.

Given the relentless NCAHS cost-cutting, staff and bed reduction drive of recent years, perhaps Chief Executive Officer Chris Crawford could favour us all with details of the current ratio of acute care beds in NSW North Coast public hospitals to every 1,000 head of population.

Damning praise and rough criticism for Peter and Malcolm

From the pen of Howard apologista Peter van Onselen in his The Australian article The good oil: Peter Garrett knows his job.

If Garrett doesn't have a line in the sand, he is a sell-out, make no mistake. But if he does, and so long as he hasn't crossed it, he has become a pragmatic politician holding on to a few convictions along the way. Howard would be proud.

Ouch!

Liberal Party Senator Wilson Tuckey assessing the quality of his leader, Malcolm Turnbull in a Herald Sun article on 22 July 2009.

"The issue of the arrogance and inexperience of our leader on the issue of the emission trading scheme has to be addressed"

Double ouch with pike!

The Ugg Boot trademark fight goes on and Deckers does not cover itself in glory

I'm sure everyone will remember that protracted legal battle over who had rights over the term Ug, Ugg or Ugh boots, in which little Aussie battlers were able to convince the Registrar of Trade Marks that these terms in themselves were generic and therefore beyond trademark in Australia by U.S. Deckers Outdoor Corporation (with the exception of one particular graphic representation of a certain trademark incorporating the word UGG).

In the initial Registrar of Trade Marks decision in 2006 it was stated:

34. The evidence overwhelming supports the proposition that the terms UGH BOOT(S), UG BOOT(S) and UGG BOOT(S) are interchangeably used to describe a specific style of sheepskin boot and are the first and most natural way in which to describe these goods which should innocently come to the minds of people making this particular style of sheepskin boot. The terms thus lack any inherent capacity to distinguish the particular goods. The Yellow Pages®, Internet, magazine and dictionary uses of these terms make it quite clear that these terms are generic – they are the most immediate and natural ways in which to refer to a particular style of sheepskin boot.4 They are terms which are required by other traders without any improper motive to describe those boots. The terms, (as opposed to the registered trade mark), are in all senses analogous to the terms SCHOOLIES - Sports Break Travel Pty Ltd v P & O Holidays Ltd, (2000) 50 IPR 51 or CAPS THE GAME - Powell v Glow Zone Products Pty Ltd (1997) 39 IPR 506.

IP Australia now has this fact sheet on its website explaining the current situation as it interprets it, with this particular rider:

The Internet provides easy access to global markets and takes no account of national borders. If you are trading on the Internet you need to understand the laws of the country into which you are selling goods or services. If you place an offer for sale on the Internet in Australia that invites purchase from overseas, this can amount to trading overseas and could leave you vulnerable to legal action and expensive litigation. Likewise an overseas proprietor selling goods in Australia via the Internet may infringe an Australian trade mark.

Decker Outdoor Corporation was such a bad sport about its Australian loss that it apparently attempted to scare away Internet trade from the small Australian company, which led opposition to its attempt to expand the Decker trademark, by creating www.uggsnrugs.com (it's winter here in Australia, so if you have a little cash to spare why don't you click onto the real Aussie site www.uggs-n-rugs.com.au owned by West Australians Bruce and Bronwyn McDougall and order a pair of Ugg boots to keep those feet warm).

The company also took out additional overseas trademarks using the word UGG, of which some are included in a rolling list of 33 marks in the United States alone.

It seems that in July 2009 the ever-litigious Deckers now has Google Inc in its sights and its legal team is demanding that the Internet search engine cease index listing over thirty websites displaying and selling ugg boots.

Thankfully, it appears that Google is not rushing to obey the dictates of this international marketplace bully as the named websites and goods images were still visible at the time of writing this post.

Graphic from Google Images

Biodiversity Summit in Canberra 8 August 2009

Biodiversity for Climate Protection

Biodiversity Summit 2009, with keynote speaker Dr Rachel Warren.

Aiming to better understand the connections between biodiversity and climate, and why protecting natural ecosystems is essential to tackle the climate crisis .

The climate crisis is transforming biodiversity policy, demanding rapid fundamental change to protect and restore the natural environment. The Biodiversity Summit 2009 will review how natural ecosystems contribute to mitigating and adapting to the climate crisis, including the role of terrestrial ecosystems in the global carbon cycle and carbon storage and the contribution of biodiversity to the resilience of natural ecosystems, particularly in the face of climate change. The Summit will also analyse the policy implications flowing from the need to protect and restore natural ecosystems for climate change mitigation and adaptation and discuss implementation strategies and tools.
The program for the day will include presentations, workshops and discussion. Participants will have an opportunity to offer workshops; and round table sessions will cover issues like how to 'frame' the policy debate, identifying key issues that need to be addressed, and how the policy agenda is to be taken forward. Everyone interested in biodiversity and climate will find it relevant – researchers, lawyers, land managers, policy-makers, activists and individuals.

When: Saturday, 8 August 2009, 9am to 5pm
Venue: Canberra Institute of Technology, K Block, Constitution Ave, Canberra
Registration fees: Standard $95, low income $55

List of speakers

Longest solar eclipse of the century on evening of Tuesday 21 and sunrise of Wednesday 22 July 2009 (beginning in India)

2003 total solar eclipse in Antarctica

At sunrise on July 22, 2009, (the evening of July 21 PDT), the moon's umbra—the cone-shaped part of the moon's shadow—will fall on India's Gulf of Khambhat. The shadow will sweep across Asia and the South Pacific before leaving the earth near the Marshall Islands about 3½ hours later. The path of totality will cover a distance of approximately 9,500 miles (15,200 km). The maximum duration of totality is an exceptionally long 6 minutes and 39 seconds, which will come while the shadow is over the Pacific.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like Australia will get much of a view, however more information can be found at Eclipse and NASA, including animations and models.