G20 Protests

You may not like the G20 meetings and you may not like capitalism. That's fine your entitled to your opinion. What gets me mad is not that people protest at the G20, as stated your entitled to your opinion and the right to express that opinion. I get mad because there are hipocritical idiots protesting.
Below is a Photo from the Article in Der Speigel magazine about the G20 protests. At first you may see nothing wrong with it. There is however a glaring problem.


Consumers suck. Once again entitled to your opinion. However live up to your ideal. Don't hold up a sign saying consumers suck while wearing mass produced Jacket, Shirt, Jeans, Shoes and probably socks. This idiot really should have a big sign saying "I'm with stupid" and an arrow pointing down!
If this is the quality of protesters that attend these events then it's no wonder that they have totally failed to get there message across.

Internet Filtering

On 21 March 2006, the Federal Labor Opposition announced in a media release that a Labor Government would require all Internet Service Providers (”ISPs”) to implement a mandatory Internet filtering/blocking system. This means that you cannot opt out. This list has already been started and has been leaked to the Media organisation Wikileaks. The current list already includes sites that would not be deemed illegal like online gambling some porn sites and a dog boarding kennel. A reasonably well written article appeared in Wired News. This fiasco being perpetrated upon the Australian public by the current labour government is making us look rather totalitarian. "History shows that secret censorship systems, whatever their original intent, are invariably corrupted into anti-democratic behaviour," WikiLeaks said in a statement. "This week saw Australia joining China and the United Arab Emirates as the only countries censoring WikiLeaks.". Excellent company our country is keeping in that little list. Thailand start mandatory filtering of internet feeds and the initial list mainly included Child pornography. However since it was introduced hundreds of sites that criticised the King of Thailand have been added to the list. This from Wikileaks "In December last year we released the secret Internet censorship list for Thailand. Of the sites censored in 2008, 1,203 sites were classified as "lese majeste" -- criticising the Royal family. Like Australia, the Thai censorship system was originally pushed to be a mechanism to prevent the child pornography.Research shows that while such blacklists are dangerous to "above ground" activities such as political discourse, they have little effect on the production of child pornography, and by diverting resources and attention from traditional policing actions, may even be counter-productive". With Australia's list being secret and unveiwable how long would it be before some aspiring politician placed websites that criticised him on it.

In 'Labor’s Plan for Cyber-safety' from 2007 They sate the dangers that face Australian Children are:

• having their identities appropriated by others;
• having photos or videos of themselves published online without their permission;
• suffering from computer and/or internet addiction;
• being traced by strangers from details they have entered online;
• being the subject of cyber-bullying;
• picking up a virus or trojan or being the victim of a phishing attack; or
• inadvertently downloading illegal content when file-sharing.

Only this last point (highlighted) has even a slight relation to IPS internet filtering and the report from ACMA report of the trial internet filtering concluded that none of the Current tested filtering method could identify illegal content in non-web based traffic. All file sharing happens on what are called P2P networks which are not web based. This means that file sharing would be in no way affected by the ISP filtering as P2P networks are not html content. This means that this filter is an inappropriate response to a non-existent problem.

Yes it is not a problem. This from Electronic Frontiers Australia - A filtered internet feed, if it could be fully implemented, would help only to mitigate so-called “content risks” - the risk of a child being exposed to content inappropriate for their age or maturity level. However, even the Government’s own literature suggests that content risks are the least serious of concerns to parents or children themselves. The 2008 ACMA report Developments in Internet Filtering Technologies and Other Measures for Promoting Online Safety identifies the further categories of “communication risks” and “e-security” risks. The former include issues such as scams, inappropriate advances from strangers, and online harassment, while the latter includes things such as viruses, spam, and the theft of personal information.

Few to no details of the plan have been given except that it would be a IPS based filtering meaning that you do not get to choose weather you have access to the entire internet. Pages and websites would be filtered out before they get anywhere near your computer. The following is from the Wikileaks website "While Wikileaks is used to exposing secret government censorship in developing countries, we now find Australia acting like a democratic backwater. Apparently without irony, ACMA threatens fines of upto $11,000 a day for linking to sites on its secret, unreviewable, censorship blacklist". So your not allowed to view the list, your not allowed to know whats on the list, but if you inadvertantly link to something you don't know is on the list you will be fined $11000 a day. That would make for an interesting courtroom arguement!!

I have a couple of questions for the government over this stupid little idea of theirs.

Who decides what sites go on the list?
Is there a system of notification and appeal?
Why can the Australian public not see and comment on the list?
Do parliamentarians have any say in what sites go on the list?
If I run a site and get a link to a banned site placed on my website through spam will my site be added to the list?
If it is added to the list how would I get it off the list?
Who will maintain the list and what measures will be put in place that ensure legitimate sites with legal content are not blocked?
What compensation can be sought for loss of revenue if a site is inappropriately blocked?
If only the government of the day can decide what goes on the list what is to stop the Liberals, once they get back into government, from putting ALP and union sites on the list?

I have to say this Idea could be a complete tradgety for Australia. It has the possibly to be a major cancer in Australian Democracy.

Election

I had quite a sad revelation yesterday. I was looking at the candidates and deciding who I should vote for as my first choice. I couldn't pick one!!

We have five candidates in my electorate surely one of these people should be a person that I could vote for. Well who is there to vote for I said to myself. I know I'll run through them and see where I would put them on the Ballot paper.
The Greens - can be a good choice but they have had Jenny Stirling as there candidate for ages and she has some strange and unrealistic ideas/policies. They might not be a great choice so maybe not #1.

Labour - has been in government for the last 11 years and really don't seem to have any vision or new ideas. Also they are pushing through a Canal development that very few people in Townsville want, so put them in the middle somewhere either 3 or 4 I thought.

LNP - Are led by Laurence Springborg. I don't really need to say more if you've seem him on TV. These guys are probably going on the bottom of the list.

Family First Party - This state run by the Assembly of God. No Thanks!!! Definitely bottom of the pile.

An Independent - Some one with new Ideas, a fresh way of doing things unencumbered by party politics, This could be good. Then I saw his campaign letter sent out to many people in this electorate. An literate idiot representing my area in the state parliament, at least he would be better than the Family First Party.

At this point the sad realisation hit me. I will be voting from the bottom. I will be voting from the candidate I like the least in number 5 to the one that is the least worst (yes I know this is very poor English I'm trying it out to see if I should vote for the independant candidate) in position 1. What a sad day it is when there is no-one that you can vote for, only people to vote against.

Slackness Inc.

Well it's been a rediculously long time since I updated this site, and I have many things that should be going up here. Hopefully over the next little while I will get to this site a bit more and up date it a bit.
Also I think there will be some rants put up on this blog soon as well.

God I hate the Family First Party

The below story comes from the ABC website. The family first party doesn't seem to live up to it's name. I don't see anything in this decision by Senator Stephen Fielding that puts families first. One of the parties stated aims is"FAMILY FIRST believes Australia has a binge drinking problem which is killing Australians, particularly young Australians. Alcohol is a part of life and social drinking is fine, but we must change our culture which celebrates alcohol and accepts
drunkenness and drink-driving;". This was taken directly from their website. The previous stated position and Senator Fieldings vote yesterday don't seem to dovetail nicely do they. That's right I forgot The name of the Party should be Assembly of God Families First, or as they want to be know now Australian Christian Churches. Religious organisations for the past couple of Millennia have reserved the right to be completely contradictory so why should the Assembly of God party be any different.

Alcopops defeat a win for distillers

By Jennifer Doggett

Posted 1 hour 0 minutes ago
Updated 51 minutes ago

Senator Fielding's decision to vote against the alcopops tax bill is a win for the spirits industry. (AAP)

It's "families first" for Senator Stephen Fielding but only if your family happens to be named Bacardi, Hennessey, Smirnoff or similar. Those of us whose families don't own multi-national distilling companies can only lose from the Senator's decision to block the Government's alcopops tax bill.

The bill sought to increase the tax on alcoholic soft-drinks or 'alcopops' by 70 per cent from $39 to $66 per litre. This would have raised $1.6 billion over four years, some of which would have gone to alcohol harm reduction campaigns, due to the deal reached between the Government and the Greens with Senator Nick Xenophon.

Senator Fielding's decision (along with that of the Opposition) to vote against the bill is a win for the spirits industry, which had been campaigning vigorously against the tax. For ordinary Australian families it simply means that alcoholic soft drinks will become cheaper, and therefore more accessible, to their teenage children and that that less funding will be available for campaigns to address the harms associated with youth alcohol consumption.

There is good evidence to support a targeted approach to reducing alcopop consumption by young people. Alcohol researchers estimate that around 70-80 per cent of alcohol consumed at risk levels by 14-17 year olds is in the form of alcopops. In 2000 14 per cent of girls aged 15-17 reported that an alcopop was the last alcoholic drink they consumed. By 2004, this figure had grown to a staggering 62 per cent. Alcopops are not simply substituting one alcoholic beverage for another, they are in effect creating a new market for teenage alcohol consumption.

Senator Fielding, along with Liberal Party and Nationals senators, argued that there was no evidence that the tax had reduced binge drinking among young people. However, the Government never claimed that this measure alone would stop young people from misusing alcohol. The tax increase was only ever presented as part of a broader approach to reducing unsafe alcohol use, in the context of the National Binge Drinking Strategy, which includes funding for community and sporting organisations and health promotion campaigns.

Risky behaviours, such as unsafe alcohol use, can never be addressed through one single measure. In other areas of public health, for example tobacco control, this is accepted. The dramatic reduction in smoking in the Australian community over the past 30 years is a result of the multi-faceted approach taken to reducing tobacco-related harms, including taxation increases, advertising bans, point-of-sale restrictions and bans on smoking in public places. While overall these strategies have been successful in reducing tobacco consumption in Australia it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate out the individual effect of each single measure on smoking rates.

Luckily, Senator Fielding was not around at the time that the ban on cigarette advertising on television was introduced. Had he required evidence that the ban would result in an immediate drop in smoking rates before he supported the legislation, we would still be seeing the Marlboro Man riding his horse into the sunset on our televisions today.

Senator Fielding also asked the Government to ban alcohol company sponsorship of sporting events in return for his support, a position not supported by any major health groups. While most health advocates would be in favour of a ban on alcohol sports sponsorship in the longer term, no-one had argued in the Senate inquiry into the bill that this was essential to the success of the Government's taxation measure.

As the history of public health in Australia demonstrates, sponsorship of sporting events is not a barrier to the success of other harm reduction measures. A ban on tobacco company sponsorship of sporting events was one of the last measures introduced to combat tobacco-related harms in Australia. In fact, the last tobacco sponsorship of a sporting event occurred less than three years ago. Most of the decline in tobacco use over the past 30 years has occurred alongside some sponsorship of sporting events by tobacco companies.

Senator Fielding, along with his Liberal Party and Nationals colleagues, should learn a lesson from history and seize every opportunity to reduce youth alcohol misuse. While other measures are clearly required to address this complex issue, a tax increase on alcopops makes perfect sense when the group most vulnerable to harms associated with these products are also the most price sensitive. Unfortunately, by voting against this important bill they have simply managed to swell the coffers of the distillers while doing nothing to reduce the growing health and social problems associated with the consumption of alcopops by young Australians.

Happy Birthday Glen

I haven't sent your present yet so here is a picture of Bear as a prepresent

Syngas and Char

I found a paper by The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering on Biofuels in Australia. In it they classify biofuels into generation 1 and Gen 2 fuels. They are more categorisd by the processes used to make the Fuels and their source materials. Basicly if you using the sugars or the oil produced by food crops to produce fuel these are the Gen 1 Biofuels. Gen 2 Biofuels come from low value, Plentiful and currently mostly unutilised sources like Cellulose.

Generation Resources Status
1 Sugarcane and cereal crops Mature worldwide
2 Bioethanol – lignocellulosic wastes; Early stage worldwide
Biodiesel – algaes, FT
Synthetic diesel, methanol and DME
3 Biorefineries Still in conceptual stages


They also talk about, what in Australia is called Biochar.

Pyrolysis has been used for centuries. Wood and other carbon products, including sewage, are heated in the absence of oxygen to 475°C to 500°C. Applying ‘slow pyrolysis’ about one third of the feedstock weight is released as water (or steam), one third converts to char and one third to a fuel gas which can be further processed to a liquid fuel using, for example, the Fischer-Tropsch process, or burned to generate electricity.

Lehmann, Gaunt & Rondon (2006) report that minor process modifications can alter product compositions and can convert between 40 and 50 per cent of feedstock carbon conversion to char. Although char can itself then be burned for heating, as outlined by Marris (2006), Amazonian Indians for thousands of years have known that char burial leads to substantial crop improvement. Recent testing by the NSW Department of Primary Industries shows that as well as improving yields up to 200 per cent, char also reduces agricultural nitrous oxide emissions, possibly more so than achieved by replacing mineral oils with biofuels. This benefit adds to more obvious GHG reduction by carbon sequestration, e.g. burying carbon. Amazonian soil tests show that carbon remains in the soil for centuries, making it more effective than tree sequestration and competitive with geosequestration on a long time scale.

Over 1100°C gasification occurs. In combination with the Fischer-Tropsch process it is thus possible to produce diesel fuel from coal (Worldwatch Institute 2007). Currently this combination at large scale is uneconomic for biomass. Gas cleaning of tars and fine particles is problematic. Stucley et al. (2004) illustrates differing sized gasification plants costs. He notes that if sited close to gas use, and with carbon tax and dry land salinity reduction payments introduced, the process may be economic depending on the size of the subsidies. Small biomass plants, suitable for large towns, are also economic without subsidy whereas scale economies require coal-fired power stations to be far larger. At still higher temperatures (5500°C or more) plasma is formed56 and virtually the entire resource transformed into fuel gas. An advantage is that any bacteria or viral contamination (e.g. sewage or hospital waste) is rendered inactive. Small scale prototypes have proven cost-competitive with conventional fuels operating at this temperature.

‘Fast’ or ‘flash’ pyrolysis has been under active development for the past 25 years. In this process up to 75 per cent of the biomass may be transformed into a liquid, having approximately 60 per cent the energy content of petroleum diesel on a volume-for-volume basis. This bio-oil can be used in various applications, such as for food flavouring but needs to be upgraded for use as a transport biofuel because of its high phenol content. It has been trialled for stationary energy applications and is being researched internationally as a transportation fuel. The Canadian company Dynamotive has built commercial plants up to 200 tonnes per day of biomass and has successfully run a 2.5 MW combustion turbine on this fuel.

They then go on to talk about Syngas. Saying that it is more energy efficient to use the gas in a similar way to LPG.

Biomass (trees, weeds, shrubs, or almost any other carbon source including sewage) can be converted efficiently into fuel gas (syngas) comprising hydrogen, methane (natural gas) and carbon monoxide using elevated temperature (>700°C) chemical processes. This distinguishes it from biological processes such as anaerobic digestion which produces biogas. Syngas can be used in standard internal combustion engines with only minor modifications and much more efficiently than direct combustion of the original fuel. Although syngas can be further converted into a liquid fuel using the Fischer-Tropsch process, it is more energy efficient to compress it for vehicle use, as with LPG and CNG. Technology already exists for operating large trucks on a combination of gas and liquid fuels or even entirely on LPG. Gas fuels have less adverse effect on air quality because they burn more cleanly than liquid fuels with lower toxic emissions (Beer et al. 2001) and less impact on human health.

Check it out is a good report.

Cheers L.

Solar Air-Conditioning

"During the day, we use the heat from the sun to drive a chemical reaction which separates a chemical refrigerant from a chemical absorbent. And then at night, the reaction runs in reverse," said Jinny Rhee, the engineering professor in charge of the project. "When the refrigerant gets reabsorbed, it gets very, very cold."
From Wired Science.

I see a different application for this though. Solar Air-conditioning. Cheep or free cooling from the sun. This would be a boon for the tropical areas such as Townsville.

Generate refrigerant during the day, Cool Water at Night, Use the water the next day to cool the home.

Interesting Idea, and could save a lot of energy.

Cheers L.

Boyer Lecturer

This series of lectures has been going for 50 years. This year the speaker is Rupert Murdoch. It is definitely interesting.

Quick Update

I know I haven't posted in a while. It's been a Little Hectic here. But there is some definite Good news. Bear our poor little puppy has been all fixed up His little back leg has healed and he's running around the back yard bringing destruction to all potplants. He does still have one problem though. His ankle joint seems to have sustained some damage in the fall as well. He can now over rotate his ankle joint, which he should not be able to do. The vets think that he has damaged a tendon in there and it might need another round of surgery. The bonus is that the vets cannot do this surgery we would need to book Bear in with a specialist when he is in Town. This surgery would make the repair of the broken leg look like a nice cheep surgery due to the involvement of the specialist. Oh well, we will have to see how this develops.

Paddling has been going well. We have finished our regatta season and have started Training Corporate crews for our Corporate regatta that is on the 19th of October. Not to far away now.

Min is getting right into training for nationals states and other races for her rowing. Now is the time when the Seniors start training for regattas. Seniors is actually the younger crowd. Masters is anyone over 25 and seniors is between schools rowing and masters. Min went away with Masters earlier in the year and is now training to go away with the seniors team.

My plants aare going well. I will post a photo of my Wollami pine soon I also have some tree removal to do. Bernie has seen this and even Helped out ALOT while he was here. The wattle trees that I planted when I first bought the house are dying and it's time they came out. I have bought a number of trees to replace them but it will bring a definate change to the look and feel of the yard. Oh well now I just need to hire a mulcher and start chopping.

Min and I will be in Sdney for this comming weekend for a 30th birthday party. Unfortunately it's a bit of a flying visit and I will not have time to visit family much. It's really a bugger as i will be so close but I will talk to people tonight and see who I can see.

Love to all and I will write again soon.

L.