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.

Questions floating out in cyberspace

Ever noticed just how many questions are posed on the Internet?

Here are some of those queries offered up into cyberspace by others and my thoughtless answers:

Q. How are the Eyjafjallajökull eruption emissions counted?
A. By the number of vowels in the volcano's name ;-D

Q. Is there anything Conroy’s said in defence of his Great Wall of Australia that hasn’t been misleading, disingenuous or flat-out lying?
A. NO and NO and NO.

Q. Who is the Devil?

A. That bloke on the left of the dispatch box during Question Time.

Q. What did I do today?

A. Removed those hairs that have migrated from the top of my noggin down to my ears {from the way-too-much-info file}

Q. How do planes stay in the air?

A. Interaction between lift, weight, thrust and drag on the back of five Hail Marys.

Q. Why do people blog?

A. There is no one answer - might as well count pebbles on the beach.

Q. Does God exist?

A. Only if you're afraid of the dark or in the middle of a firefight.

Q. Who's to blame for {fill in the blank}?

A. God or Goldman Sachs - take your pick.

Q. Do we have the right to kill people?

A. Put yourself in front of the executioner/soldier/armed assailant and then ask yourself that question again.

Q. Why do Australians, unlike our western democratic brothers and sisters need the government to tell us what we can access on the internet with no choice in the matter and no details of what is/will be blocked?

A. Well actually we don't, but Rudders right-wing wowsers intend to shaft us anyway.

Q. Why do people hunt innocent animals?

A. Mostly because hunting each other is illegal.

Q. Where do snowflakes come from?

A. They're pieces of cloud shaken loose when angels do the Lindy Hop.

Q. Why do bankers make so much money?

A. Because they usually have governments of the day by the short and curlies and no pollie is game to stop them feeding at the trough.

Q. Vote for change, Nick?

A. Nah - that chap Snowden's too busy trying to avoid expulsion from uni over his homophobic, racist and misogynistic slurs on Twitter.

Q. Why can't humans breathe under water?

A. For the same reason they can't walk on top of it.

Q. Is anyone else suspicious that the press conference is at dinner time?

A. Er, no. If the fourth estate is on duty it's on duty - no time off for an extended nosh on the boss's dollar.

Fight! Fight!

Stupid Fight has turned up on my digital radar:
What's this all about?
FACT: A lot of people on Twitter are stupid. Many of these people follow celebrities and try to send them messages. But which celebrity's fans are most stupid? It's time to find out.

As can be seen, this software places followers of right-wing journo Andrew Bolt and Australian Opposition Leader Tony Abbott in the thick as short planks category. Well - surprise, surprise.

Internet activism against mandatory filtering according to Ben Grubb

Not a bad idea for a young bloke:

"Today the costs of running a blacklist were made clear, showing that the filter could be a very expensive operation.
When a URL is submitted to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) it will cost between $173 and $685 per item to investigate, regardless of whether it is "refused classification" or not.
The dollar value was revealed in answer to Greens communications spokesperson Scott Ludlam who had asked ACMA how much it cost to action URLs submitted for the Classification Board to classify.
"In 2008-09, the average cost to ACMA of investigating an item of online content that was not referred to the Classification Board was approximately $173 per item. For items that were referred to the Classification Board this was $685 per item, which included the cost of the ACMA preparing and administering the referrals," ACMA said.
If I wanted to stymie the filter, I'd just keep bombarding ACMA's online complaint form with questionable URLs. If lots of people did this — and we know there are lots of people who feel strongly about the filter — it would only be a matter of time before the costs blew out to completely unmanageable levels." {Ben Grubb, ZDNet.com.au}