New Toys

Just wanted to introduce people to my new toys. Well not really toys more like tools but it is fun having things like this especially when you need to get a job done. So with out further adieu Let me put up these photo's

On the left is the Water Blaster a Kartcher G2500 with a genuine Honda engine. Water pressure goes up to 2500psi hence it's name. When looking for a model to buy I found I could buy a Petrol powered one cheaper with much higher pressure output. It also looks like it will do the job and last quite a while. I have cleaned mine and Mine paths and drive ways with it so far and I am very impressed with the pressure and ease of use.

On the Right is a Spray painter a Wagner project 115. It has a 10 litre paint hopper on the top and the same gun as the professional models that sell for over $4000. have used it with some water and spraying is easy. Hopefully there wont be a lot of over spray and the quality of the finish will be what I'm after. I will let you know when I do some actual spraying of paint.

Report on the Dambala

Well I've been a little remiss. I have had a new working, fully built bike for a couple of months now with no report on what it's like. Though in my defence I've been busy trying to renovate a house, which doesn't actually work as an excuse for my lack of posting as I really should be putting up at least a little information about that.

Anyway enough of my waffling on, time to show off the bike.

First off I want to say that I bought this bike piece by piece and assembled it myself. I bought most of the bits from eBay at I have to say excellent prices. One piece, the Handlebars was given to me as a birthday present, so I have to say a big thanks to Dad.


While the price was good and I had time to research each piece before I bought it, it did take an excruciating 6 months of purchases to finally have enough pieces for a working bike. Six months of riding a barely working bike around. I did get impatient several times but there was not much I could do.

What I did get out of it though is a bike that fits perfectly with what I want. I needed a commuter bike to get me around the 'Ville' with speed and with more ease than I've had with my dual suspension bike. Because of my size though I needed a tough bike that could handle the bumps. To that end I had decided on a mountain bike frame but build it up with more road or hybrid type parts.


Most hybrid bikes have large Road bike size wheels but I needed strength as well so I needed to buy a mountain bike wheel. This prompted me to look into an emerging part of the mountain bike market called 29ers.
The basic concept of the larger diameter is simple: there is less of an angle when ever you encounter an obstacle and it's easier to roll over the obstacle. The larger wheel offers increased centrifugal force, which in turn improves the bike’s stability. The extra three inches also increases the amount of tire contacting the ground at any one moment offering better traction.

So I decided to buy a 29er, probably in steel to keep cost down. I needed a slick or semi-slick tyre to keep rolling resistance down so I looked into Schwalbe tires and found the Marathon tires. In the end the Marathon Supreme seemed to suit my purposes best. Next I had to think about a drive train. I had decided to simplify the drive train on my new bike and only have a nine speed bike. I love the clean look of a single speed bike but I'm a slacker and decided I needed at least a few gears. the solution was to only have the rear gears (see the third photo). Lastly but definitely not least I had to figure out the Forks for my bike. I wanted simple and long lasting so I decided not to get a suspension fork. They need maintenance occasionally and are much more prone to failure than solid forks. With that decision made I chose to go with some light weight Carbon forks.

The last important piece was of course the one less car sticker.

I now have a fast fairly light and above all reliable bike that gets me around. Ride Quality is not nearly as forgiving as my dual suspension Specialized, but it is fast and brilliant on the roads where I ride it %90 of the time. I have so far beaten my previous best time to the strand from uni by nearly 10 minutes.

I really have enjoyed building and then riding my new bike. I hope it likes me too as over the next probably 10 years we will be doing a lot of Kilometres together.

Mandatory Internet Filtering

Something every Australian should be concerned about. If Steven Conroy and the Labour Party get their Mandatory Internet filtering bill through Parliament the Australia will be one of only 3 countries in the world that have mandatory and un-opt outable internet filtering. The current countries are China and Iran. What great company we are putting our selves in.

If you want to know more or decide that you want to do some thing please read This Article on the ABC unleashed website and/or click on the No Clean Feed sticker at the top of the page on the right.

Can I urge everyone to write to your local Green, Liberal or Independent senator and ask them not to support this bill.

Dennis Meadows

You hear it nearly every day, another scientist warning about climate change. All the news articles and stories make it sound like the only ones who are worried about climate change are environmental scientists and Greenies. Economists and business people are usually portrayed as either non believers or only worried about the cost of action.

Well I would like to introduce Dennis Meadows an economist from the US. In 1972 Dennis published a book titled 'The limits to Growth'. This book back in 1972 predicted that if population growth and resource use continued to grow in the exponential way they were at the time then the world would be facing environmental disaster by about 1992. What is interesting is that this is shortly before serious concern was starting to be raised by environmental scientists about the global climate.

In a recent interview with Spiegel Online there were two questions and responses that really just hit home how little we as a society tend to listen to the people we hire to inform us if they are informing us of something that is difficult to grasp or will require real change from people.
First;

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Meadows, you simulated the future of the Earth back in 1972 with less computing power than a Blackberry. How good was your model on the limits to growth?

Dennis Meadows: Amazingly good, unfortunately. We are in the midst of an environmental crisis, which we predicted then. The difference is that we have lost 40 years during which humanity should have acted.

And second;

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You don't have a recipe for saving the world?

Meadows: We don't have to save the world. The world will save itself, like it always has. Sometimes it takes a few million years until the damage is repaired and a new balance has been established. The question is much more: How do we save our civilization?

The first question really makes it perfectly clear hear Climate change is not some future event but is happening now. Sea level is rising at over 3mm per year and we have already seen a 0.7 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures since pre-industrial times.

0.7 degrees doesn't sound like much does it. I mean the difference between a 25 and a 26 degree day is not much. The problem is that a 0.7 degree change has already led to the melting of all Glasciers world wide the loss of Arctic Ice and the current sever melting of Antarctic Ice (side note: we are currently seeing the loss of BILLIONS of tons of ice from the West Antarctic Ice shelf each year). Just imagine what will hbe happening when we reach a 2 degree rise in global temperatures. Just so that you know, we as a species have locked ourselves into a 2 degree rise through our previous emissions. All that we can do now is reduce our own emissions individually and hope that we don't continue to follow the IPCC worst case scenario. This would eventually lead to a melting of Methane hydrates stored under the ocean and a catastrophic collapse of global ecosystems. The last time this happened....... well we call it the PT extinction or the great dying where nearly 95% of all life on earth was wipe out!

Elloquence and the Written Word

Well I have never claimed to be the worlds greatest writer. In fact I can lay claim to being well into the lower half of writers on a best to worst scale. I do try though and I feel (hope) that I am getting better as time goes by.

Australia's current Chief Scientist Professor Penny D Sackett began her appointment as Chief Scientist for Australia in November 2008. She is an accomplished cross-disciplinary scientist with a record of academic excellence on three continents. She also obviously spends some time crafting her words and can really punch out a nice paragraph or two. Her recent article on her website so eloquently states the dangers involved in climate change and the problems facing the world and Australia that I had to link to it.

So with out further adieu:

Why we must act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Rate of Change

So a bit of an update on the state of climate change and how things are going. By all reports that I've seen or heard we are tracking quite nicely along the worst case scenarios from the IPCC report. I would love to see actual evidence that can show that Climate Change is not happening and that all the ice on the planet is slowly disappearing for other reasons, but I haven't seen any real evidence. All the "sceptics" I've seen rely on denigration and opinion.

There is also now evidence to demonstrate a declining calcification rate for corals over the last 20 years most likely due to Ocean acidification. This is startling evidence to show the Climate change could wipe corals out. Corals may be able to adapt to Bleaching and survive hotter temperatures but I fail to see how they can adapt to Ocean acidification. It's a chemical process that means there is less and less Calcium available to make skeleton and if pH drops too much will dissolve the skeleton of corals.

Below is a report from the ABC on evidence for climate change and us following the worst case scenario from the IPCC report. Next post hopefully I'll be looking at my personal carbon budget and how to improve.

Climate changing faster than expected: scientists

By environment reporter Sarah Clarke for AM






It has been two years since the landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report gave its most recent assessment on the state of the planet's changing climate.

Now, 26 international scientists have collated the most recent data and observations, and they have found that climate change is accelerating beyond expectations.

Most of the 26 scientists are authors of reports published by the IPCC. They have updated the panel's latest scientific projections and their observations show an acceleration of change.

According to their research, the Arctic may be ice-free by the summer of 2030 and sea levels could reach the upper limit of 2 metres by the turn of the century.

Professor Matthew England from the University of New South Wales is a contributing author to the report and he says things are changing rapidly.

"Over the last few years, some of those indicators have accelerated, some are right where the IPCC forecast, but the mix of all of the indicators tells us that, if anything, the IPCC projections were slightly conservative," he said.

"[They were] absolutely on the money for some metrics, but for things like Arctic sea ice, the system there has changed much more rapidly than any scientists envisaged."

According to the scientists' observations, sea levels have risen more than five centimetres over the past 15 years - about 80 per cent higher than IPCC projections made in 2001.

And the Arctic sea ice melt over the last two years was about 40 per cent greater than the last forecast.

Ice-free Arctic summer

Professor England says the observed rate of summer ice melt is now running faster than any climate model can predict.

"The Arctic sea ice was thought to be something we saw that we would continue to see during summer time right through to the end of this century, and possibly even beyond," he said.

"At the moment we may have an Arctic that is ice-free in summer as early as about 2030 and that really is bringing forward that ice melt much closer to now than we had previously thought."

With that in mind, the scientists say global emissions must peak then decline rapidly within a decade if the worst of climate change is to be avoided.

And the researchers says global warming could reach as high as 7 degrees Celsius by the turn of the century if emissions are not curbed.

While some might question the doom and gloom observations, Will Steffen from the Australian National University has welcomed the update and he has called on scientific critics to put forward their work.

"There will be those who say, 'Well this is just more doom and gloom' and so on, but you have to ask, do those people come from the main credible scientific community?" he said.

"There are a lot of people who are scientists but are they part of the credible, reputable climate change science community?

"And second of all, if they dispute this, have they taken their evidence and published it in the peer-reviewed literature, in the prominent journals? And the answer is no, you can't find it there."

CO2 Emissions

There is allot Talk about Climate Change and problems associated with it. There is not allot of talk about solutions that everyday people can use. The other problem is that the debate has been dehumanised. What I mean by this statement is that the everyday discussion revolves around different countries emissions and global emissions. People don't associate with this. Each countries emissions need to be dealt with by the government of that country. Global emissions are dealt with at big conferences Like Kyoto or the up coming Copenhagen global climate summit. I thought 'Why not change this, bring it home how much each and every person has to do'.

The first question though is how to do this. Well it's a global scale problem so we had better start with global emissions. Boring I know and has nothing to do with you right. Wrong! It has everything to do with you, just wait and see. The world population is 6 692 030 277 (see map below for a truly frightening look at global population).

Population, total - 2008

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Source: World Bank Data - Total population

Another look at world population



The Global CO2 emissions are 4.5 metric tons per person for 2005 and the world population in 2005 was 6 462 054 420 (see above population link). This means that total global CO2 emissions are 29 079 244 890 metric Tons as of 2005. If you look at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/wdi09introch3.pdf you will see that the 29 billion ton is a pretty accurate estimate for todays CO2 emissions as well. I want to be generous here so lets just say 30 billion tons of CO2 went into the Atmosphere in 2009 purely because of humans driving cars heat/cooling and generally trying to get machines to do things for us.



What do we do with these numbers. Nothing at the moment looks much like it pertains to the average person. Well no not yet, but bare with me. Many scientists and climate modellers are recommending a minimum 25% cut from 2005 levels by 2025. Lets be a little generous here as well, we don't just want to do the bare minimum, so lets commit to a 30% reduction. That means by 2025 the global emissions should be down around 20 355 471 423 or 20 billion metric tons of CO2 annually.

So divide the global emission target by current population and you get 3.041 or 3 tons per person annually. Here is where it finally becomes personal. Are you good enough to drop your emissions to 3 tons per person per year. Australians currently use 20.5 tons per person per year. Your goal is to drop your usage to 3.

This gives everyone the same problem that many are having with food, so much information available and no real meaning until you get to relate these numbers to your life, what your doing and how it will affect you. Well on this Page is a guide to energy usage throughout the home and there is a Carbon emission calculator. This is a good start in linking these numbers to your daily life. Also a energy monitor that tells you how much power your using at any one time will help you keep a track of your power usage and connect you more to what your emissions are.

Over the next few posts I'll be exploring my own Greenhouse emissions and looking at what I can do to reduce them, So hopefully you'll be back to get some pointers on how to make your own reductions.

Private Schools

During Year 11 at High School Mum considered sending me to this school I'm glad that didn't happen as it's an all boys school. It's very interesting that this type of thing seems to happen more often in Private schools.

Maybe it's the increased power that teachers seem to have over the students. It also must come from the students feeling powerless. In the school I went to if a teacher told you to have group sex with the other boys in the class we would have told him to go F@#K himself, and walk out.

What ever caused it I'm just glad that the Principle came across as a misogynistic pig and mum didn't like him so I didn't have to go to that school. Of course my problem with the school at the time stemmed more from where my friends were rather than any ideology. I hadn't really gotten into the social effects of Private schools and the governments idiotic subsidies that they seem to want to pursue.

Students forced to have group sex, court told

St Stanislaus College in Bathurst, where Brian Spillane worked as a chaplain. (ABC News)

Students at a school in central New South Wales were allegedly forced to engage in group sex and were hypnotised to have intercourse with teachers, a court has heard.

The allegations were made during a bail application for a former chaplain at St Stanislaus College in Bathurst.

Brian Spillane, 66, is one of several men charged after allegations of assaults dating back to the 1960s.

Earlier this year he was granted bail on 117 charges of indecently assaulting former students.

He has since been charged with another 29 offences.

In asking for bail to be revoked, the prosecutor said the brief of evidence "paints a picture of rampant paedophilia".

Pollies and their Answers

The below article is from Leigh sales one of the presenters from Lateline

it's a pity when politicians do this as it makes them look shifty and untrustworthy

Well-readhead: Just answer the question

When viewers offer feedback about interviews on Lateline, easily the most common complaint is about politicians not answering questions. Nothing irritates people more.

So that I don’t embarrass any particular Member of Parliament – since many are offenders – here’s a little manufactured dialogue to illustrate what I mean.

Me: Minister, what did you have for breakfast?

Minister: For lunch, I had a salad sandwich and then for dinner …

Me: I’m afraid that’s not the question, the question is what you had for breakfast.

Minister: Leigh, if you’d let me finish, for lunch I had a salad sandwich and then for dinner, I had a steak.

Me: Minister, I want to know what you had for breakfast.

Minister: Leigh with all due respect, the issue is not breakfast, the issue is lunch and for lunch, I had a salad sandwich.

Me: The reason I’m persisting is because I think my viewers would like to know what you had for breakfast. You’ve not answered the question.

Minister: Leigh, I have answered your question, but if you need me to make it clear for you one more time, for lunch I had a salad sandwich.

Why do some politicians do that? Obviously some media trainer somewhere has taught them to ignore questions they don’t like and shift the discussion to more comfortable ground. But the tactic has surely jumped the shark. It’s now so endemic that viewers see straight through it. They make two assumptions when a politician ignores a question: it’s too difficult or there’s something to hide.

Not all politicians duck difficult questions. In fact, some of them are pretty good at rebuttal using logic, intellect and conviction rather than relying on spin. The more self-assured ones sometimes even concede a point or two. One of the more memorable Lateline interviews of recent years was when Tony Abbott fronted up after a particularly bad day during the last election campaign. He made no attempt to put a positive gloss on it, instead frankly admitting to my colleague Tony Jones that ‘shit happens’. But that’s pretty rare. If you listen to most political interviews on Lateline, you will note questions are often repeated in an attempt to cut through pollie-waffle.

I wish more politicians understood the benefits of being frank or trying to answer questions head on instead of skirting them. One, it can be persuasive. Two, viewers award points for guts. Anyone can win over an audience on a good day or under sympathetic questioning. But it’s much harder to convince an audience who may not be on side or to make your case in the face of challenges.

Viewers sometimes say to me ‘I don’t know how you keep your cool’ or ‘I could tell you were getting frustrated’. Sure, I get frustrated when politicians don’t answer questions. But based on the feedback I get from viewers, I’m not the only one. Non-answers irritate hundreds of thousands of people watching at home too. And they all vote.

Here are this fortnight’s ten interesting things to read, watch or listen to:

1. Perhaps the most famous example ever of a television interviewee not answering a question is the British Home Secretary, Michael Howard, under questioning from the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman. Paxman asked the same question twelve times without eliciting an answer. The key part is about four minutes in.

2. Lest anyone think my made-up dialogue about breakfast/lunch is exaggerated in its repetition, I refer you to exhibit A: The Chaser’s tally of Peter Garrett’s use of the word ‘jocular’ in the fallout over a conversation he had with journalist Steve Price during the last election campaign.

3. John Howard recently gave a speech at Melbourne University’s Centre for Advanced Journalism about whether journalists and politicians are adversaries or bedfellows. A week later a panel of journalists (Paul Kelly, Alan Kohler, George Megalogenis and me) gave their take.

4. If you own a cat, no doubt this happens to you too every morning.

5. Earlier this year, Stephen Fry gave the inaugural Spectator Lecture in Britain. His topic was ‘America’s Place in the World’. Whether you agree with all his observations, it is a textbook example of how to write a great speech full of original insights. I warn you it’s long. But worth it.

6. National Geographic printed a great story and brilliant photo about a couple whose holiday snap was hijacked by a squirrel. The critter went viral, with a website where you could ‘squirrelize’ any photo.

7. If you’re the sort of person who takes pleasure in a great looking library or bookstore, this is the website for you. It’s a shame that the text is crass (they’ve called it ‘hot library smut’). It’s not funny and it takes away from what’s otherwise a great idea. (thanks @dlewis89 on twitter)

8. The New Yorker published an article earlier this year on lesbian separatists in the 1970s. It was one of the most bizarre and entertaining things I’ve read this year. I laughed out loud, although I’m still not sure if it was meant to be funny or not.

9. Psychologist Robert Feldman has written a book about the amount of lying all of us do and why. The Guardian printed a fascinating extract

10. I found this quiz in The Philosophers' Magazine rather interesting. It assesses whether your religious views are rationally consistent.

You can follow Leigh Sales on twitter via @leighsales or watch her on Lateline on ABC1.

The H index

It sounds a little more interesting than it is, The H-index. To scientists though it's a measure of what you've done in your career. Imagine that an entire career boiled done to one number. If you would like to know what the H-index is and find out a brief history of citation indices and the business of categorising and ranking science have a read of the Piece by Wired science and learn about Jorge Hirsch and his invention of the H-index.

http://www.wired.com/culture/geekipedia/magazine/17-06/mf_impactfactor