If you are reading this you might be one of Ruperty Pooh's "flat-earthers"

News Corporation put out a press release of its master's words on the occasion of

the World Media Summit in Beijing, China.

Here are the really funny bits from Rupert Murdoch's speech:

"Too often the conventional media response to the internet has been inchoate. A medium once thought too powerful has often seemed impotent in the past few years. Of course there should be a price paid for quality content, and yet large media organizations have been submissive in the face of the flat-earthers who insisted that all content should be free all the time. The sun does not orbit the earth, and yet this was precisely the premise that the press passively accepted, even though there have been obvious signs that readers recognize the reality that they should pay a price. There are many readers who believe that they are paying for content when they sign up with an internet service provider, presuming that they have bought a ticket to a content buffet. That misconception thrived on the silence of inarticulate institutions which were unable to challenge the fallacies and humbug of the e-establishment. The value of content has been volatile in the past decade but we are entering another decisive phase in which device makers are again courting the creators of content. I have sensed that shift in recent days during my travels in Japan and South Korea where I met some of the world’s leading electronics manufacturers. These companies don’t want their customers to be served a diet of digital dross, and yet that will be the inevitable consequence if the worth of content and creativity are not appreciated. The Philistine phase of the digital age is almost over. The aggregators and the plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid-for content, it will be the content creators, the people in this hall, who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph. "

Today is the start of Anti-Poverty Week 2009 in Australia and still Rudd, Swan & Macklin haven't acted against September pension increase grab by the states

This week across Australia people and organisations are observing Anti-Poverty Week 2009 which has as its main aims:

• Strengthen public understanding of the causes and consequences of poverty and hardship around the world and in Australia;
  
• Encourage research, discussion and action to address these problems, including action by individuals, communities, organisations and governments.

Over 100,000 Australian single pensioners (National Seniors statement to Courier Mail) will begin this week still worried that the Rudd Government has yet to make any concrete move to protect their recent $30 per week pension increase from the greedy grasp of state governments and community housing companies.

According to 2007 FAHCSIA data the majority of the 714,156 Disability Support Pension (DSP) recipients across Australia are single and don't own a home, so one would expect that these pensioners are significantly represented among single pensions who will lose 25% of the 2009 pension increase in late 2010.

DSP recipients are most heavily clustered in New South Wales which makes the Rees Government pension grab all the more distasteful - a fact these pensioners will possibly remember at the next election.

Etching from CAP Art Blog

Don't rubbish the environment

From the hinterland through to the beaches, the Clarence Valley is renowned for its natural beauty. It is an environment that provides us with a charming lifestyle. It is an environment that is admired, and oftentimes envied, by visitors. It is home to a diverse range of native animals.

It is vital that we care for what we have, and don't risk losing it, as has happened in other places. Throughout the world, areas that were once pristine are now overwhelmed by the rubbish in their environment - debris litters the roads and waterways; insidious chemicals hide in the soil and water.

We must ensure that does not happen here.

We must ensure that we do not see a re-occurrence of the tragic plight of this pelican on the Clarence River [© Gill Bennett].

What you can do:

Be mindful of your rubbish – don't leave it behind when you are out – don't let it escape with the wind.

Don't let chemicals get into gutters and drains – these all discharge into our waterways.

Participate in clean up programs.

Prevention is also better than cure – support programs such as the Yamba Chamber of Commerce project to eliminate plastic bags.

Do what you can to keep our environment clean – it is good for us and good for the wildlife.

Imelda Jennings Wildlife SOS

Guest Speak is a North Coast Voices segment allowing serious or satirical comment from NSW Northern Rivers residents. Email ncvguestpeak at live dot com dot au to submit comment for consideration.

Because Andrew Bolt brandishes a truncated graph, once more it's time to look at that global warming data again

On Sunday 11 October 2007 journalist Andrew Bolt was a guest on the ABC Insiders program and that gave rise to a post on his News Ltd blog on the same day.

In this post Mr. Bolt presented a graph which he thinks demonstrates that the world has stopped warming and hence there is no climate change going on.

Now that graph (left) apparently came via the Watts Up With That blog from information compiled by Dr. Roy Spenser an anthropomorphic climate change sceptic and supporter of the legitimacy of Intelligent Design Theory.

However, when one looks at NASA graphs of those same years placed within a longer time scale it is obvious that although there are 'plateau' periods the overall global temperature has been steadily trending upwards since at least 1880.
The report of the RSS graph (which relies on the same data as Spenser and Bolt) indicates that there are significant variations within those plateau and NASA points out that past plateau have been known to last for up to 9-10 years in living memory.

"Despite the fact it's been warmer and cooler at different times in the last 10 years, there's no part of the last 10 years that isn't warmer than the temperatures we saw 100 years ago." Josh Willis, NASA, 22 September 2009.

Global Annual Mean Surface Air Temperature Change

Line plot of global mean land-ocean temperature index, 1880 to present. The dotted black line is the annual mean and the solid red line is the five-year mean. The green bars show uncertainty estimates. [This is an update of Fig. 1A in Hansen et al. (2006)] January-September (9 months) mean is used for 2009 data.

(Last modified: 2009-10-06)

Our traditional analysis using only meteorological station data is a lin e plot of global annual-mean surface air temperature change derived from the meteorological station network [This is an update of Figure 6(b) in Hansen et al. (2001).] Uncertainty bars (95% confidence limits) are shown for both the annual and five-year means, account only for incomplete spatial sampling of data. January-September (9 months) mean is used for 2009 data.

(Last modified: 2009-10-06)

While Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) released this satellite derived global chart opposite for September 2009:

According to RSS, September 2009 was warm compared to normal with a global temperature anomaly of +.476 C. Keep in mind, the RSS temperature data covers the latitudes between 82.5 North and 70 South across the globe, so large areas of the polar regions are omitted.
Based on RSS data alone, September 2009 was the warmest month compared to normal since January of 2007 and the warmest September since September of 1998, when the anomaly was +.494 C.

Is Nicola Roxon suffering from a lack of foresight?

Maud up the Street is one of many in New South Wales who were diagnosed with cataracts in both eyes this year.
Like a large number of other pensioners she will have to go on the Medicare waiting list as there's no money in the pot for private surgery of any sort.
Maudie's livid over reports that Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon has stated that if the Senate doesn't agree to pass legislation introducing a reduced Medicare benefit for all cataract surgery, the government will automatically cancel the whole rebate anyway leaving those with diminished eyesight to find the entire cost of this operation and presumably both the pre-op and post-op visits.
Maudie reckons Roxon classing retaining your eyesight as a "minor surgical procedure" misses the point entirely.
Reasonable eyesight is one of the main supports of autonomy and independence for those getting on in years, so I agree with my friend that Ms. Roxon is getting a little too uppity in how she approaches the matter.
If saving health care dollars is such a big issue, perhaps the Minister should consider proposing a lesser reduction in the rebate to meet the ophthalmologists halfway - before Oz turns into a land where the poor are distinguished by higher levels of blindness than the general population.
How about it, Nic?

Local government thin ice pivot, slide and glide on the NSW North Coast

It seems like only yesterday that local government across the nation was up in arms over the constant cost-shifting by state and federal governments, which saw councils being asked to do more and more with less and less.
Indeed there was a formal inquiry into this very subject in 2003.

So I'm somewhat bemused to hear that one NSW North Coast council (which is known to complain about straightened financial circumstances from time to time) is now committed to allocating funding for improvements in a national park for which it has no responsibility, legal or otherwise.

This is the first time I have heard of local government actually encouraging other tiers of government to off-load their own financial obligations onto council ratepayers or council's own coffers. To the tune of a ballpark figure of $22,000+ no less.

So take a bow, Clarence Valley Council, for a dubious Yuraygir National Park coastal walkway decision based on an even more dubious attempt at a trust fund raid.

One has to wonder which councillor (or councillors) is trying to curry favour with either the Rees Labor Government or the Sussex Street mob and, for what purpose?

Surely not pre-selection hopes resurfacing?

Cartoon from Google Images

Just don't get Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize? Well join a growing crowd.....

I have to admit that I was one of those who, on hearing that US President Barack Obama had been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, went; "Whaaa?"
To see if I was the odd man out I did a quick swing across cyberspace on Saturday afternoon and this is what I found:

According to Mashable: The Social Media Guide Obama's Nobel Peace Prize: 69% of Twitter Users Don't Get It and drew this graph. Click to enlarge

Many in US media skeptical of Obama's Nobel Prize‎ reported the AFP.

Nancy Gibbs at Yahoo News thought The Last Thing Obama Needs Is the Nobel Peace Prize but her colleague Gregory Katz played another tune with Obama's Nobel Peace Prize triumph praised by many.

The Taliban pointed out the irony of getting a peace prize while conducting an escalating war in The Age's article Taliban condemns Obama's Nobel Prize.

The Brisbane Times informed us his Kenyan family 'honoured' by Obama's Nobel Prize.

The Sydney Morning Herald ran with Obama urged to use Nobel as spur to peace

Al Jazeera expressed surprise but went with Obama: I do not deserve Nobel prize

Examiner was plain blunt - Barack Obama: a Nobel for speeches, sainthood if he achieves something?

Teh Man himself was suitably humble according to a White House presser REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON WINNING THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE and a twee blog post Happy Birthday Bo! (which should come with an excess sugar warning).

While the Norwegian Nobel Committee released a short four paragraph announcement which started all the fuss by awarding the prize to Obama primarily for his "vision" and "attitudes".
Ever obliging, the Nobel Committee invites us to Ask the 2009 Nobel Laureates a Question! via its website.

Before the year is out Obama will probably be wishing that he hadn't won, because everytime the US death toll in Afghanistan rises some grieving mother is likely to toss that prize right back in his face.

Funniest line of the week.......

From The Borowitz Report:

Elsewhere, NASA bombed the moon, saying it was the one spot President Bush missed.

FBI current terrorist watchlist too big and riddled with errors

From THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION'S TERRORIST WATCHLIST NOMINATION PRACTICES, May 2009:

The federal government's consolidated terrorist watchlist was created in March 2004 by merging previously separate watchlists that were once maintained by different agencies throughout the federal government.1 The watchlist is managed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), through its supervision of the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC). The watchlist is used by frontline screening personnel at U.S. points of entry and by federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement officials.2 The watchlist serves as a critical tool for these screening and law enforcement personnel by notifying the user of possible encounters with known or suspected terrorists and by providing instruction on how to respond to the encounter. Each day the watchlist is updated with new or revised biographical information on known or suspected terrorists gathered by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. Within the FBI, submitting the name of a known or suspected terrorist to the consolidated terrorist watchlist is referred to as a watchlist nomination. In general, individuals who are subjects of ongoing FBI counterterrorism investigations are nominated for inclusion on the watchlist, including persons who are being preliminarily investigated to determine whether they have links to terrorism. In certain circumstances, FBI policy also allows for the nomination of an individual for whom the FBI does not have an open terrorism investigation. Since the establishment of the watchlist in 2004, the FBI has nominated or processed the nominations for more than 68,000 known or suspected terrorist identities.3 As of December 31, 2008, the consolidated terrorist watchlist contained more than 1.1 million known or suspected terrorist identities.4........... In total, more than 62,000 watchlist records have been created using the FBI's processes for nominating individuals who are not being investigated for terrorism. Additionally, we found almost 24,000 FBI watchlist records that were based on an FBI investigation but not sourced to a current terrorism case classification. Many such watchlist records that we reviewed were based on cases that had been closed years ago and should have been removed at that time. [My highlighting]

If one bothers to read this U.S. Dept. of Justice audit it quickly becomes obvious that this terrorist name/profile list is not being accurately updated and is riddled with errors, including in some instances the names of dead people.

And so many pooh-poohed when the ACLU first pointed out problems with the list and set up its Terror Watch List Counter.

I can't help but wonder if the Rudd Government were to introduce a national mandatory ISP-level Internet filtering scheme, would we see the Australian Communications and Media Authority/Censorship Board list of banned URLs increase with similar rapidity (although it would be hoped with a more modest total) as those born-again flying monkeys the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy appears to favour pile on complaints about their pet hates?

Evans Head's Dawn Undery is a living treasure

Images from Dawn Undery website and Lismore Regional Gallery

click on images to enlarge

Dawn Undery, now retired to Evans Head on the NSW North Coast, is one of Australia's leading botanical artists.
She is exhibiting at Lismore Regional Gallery until the end of October 2009.

A NSW Nats ROFL

Now NSW Nationals MP for Ballina Don Page is probably a nice bloke in private, but I had to laugh at his expense last Thursday as he did his well-polished softshoe pollie dance.
There he was, his phizog in almost every frame and one sound bite (along with captioned name and job title) of a teev news story about six groups in Bangalow receiving funding from the NSW Government's climate change grants.
Then in The Far North Coaster online magazine he was at it again congratulating the successful applicants who scored a combined total of $59,000 in grants.
All done without Page managing to identify the state government in question as the Rees Labor Government.
Fair dinkum, the opportunistic pettiness of pollies as a species is beyond imagining!