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Totally off topic, but that stuff about lemmings is completely wrong ;)

Time to plug a short flash game i found a while ago, which does kind of the same thing (single player):

TORK

You are stranded on a foreign planet, and can only comunicate with the aliens in a sort of sign language. As you progress throught the game you have to become more and more fluent. Try it!

Environmental impact should be minimal, and there's hardly any ecosystem there to affect anyway. This region was chosen for the Woomera rocket range for exactly this reason. Australia's about 90% of the area of the continental USA, and much of it looks exactly like this area; arid or semi-arid rocky plains.

There's a transcript of an article with quite some depth (ahem.) here. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1 440622.htm

The extinction of the giant lemur (which happened about 2,000 years ago) had nothing to do with "ignorance and superstition". Apparently they were good eatin'. Even now "ignorance and superstition" has contributed nothing to their plight except for their names. Population pressures and concomitant habitat destruction are more the problem.

Asians and Native Americans don't have the CCR5 mutation, so it must be a behavioural thing. Maybe they are more conscientious about using condoms, or inject less or something.

Both attack the same T cells in the immune system, and both even bind to the same CD4 receptor of the T cells. Thus, mutations in the CD4 receptor that are still functional to the organism but disallow the binding by the pathogen would create a form of immunity.


I heard about some research that claims that this is the case

http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s714968.h tm

So if you're from N Europe, have upto a 14% chance of immunity to Aids.

Interestingly enough there's an analogue to African restistance to malaria -

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/disease/sickle.html

Sickle cell anemia is obviously not a good thing to have, but it does give you some resistance to malaria.

Makes you wonder what the downside to not having CCR5 proteins is.

In my case, I only tend to download podcasts from ABC Radio National in any case - a pragmatic feature that allows the listener to pick where and when he or she wants to listen to good quality free-to-air content. And since it's a taxpayer-funded station, there are no adverts, so they fortunately have little to gain from this kind of DRM crud.

I'm finding more and more articles that appear on Slashdot, appear on an au news site that I read (http://abc.net.au/news) days, even weeks, beforehand.

Yet I still keep reading slashdot...

"A significant body of evidence alleged instances of predatory pricing, where it was said that the major chains were prepared to lose money indefinitely in certain stores to wipe out the competition. The evidence was consistent and widespread...
The Committee believes that the evidence clearly reveals a need to address the issue of predatory pricing, with a recommendation that the ACCC be given wider powers to bring representative actions, and to seek damages on behalf of third parties under Part IV of the Trade Practices Act."

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2005/s1487354.htm

It's still only christian schools, but it's here. In the US the christian schools are honest and just call a spade a spade (or religion religion)

Taken from http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s14932 25.htm

Robyn Williams: Professor Derek Denton from the University of Melbourne has just published something of a critique of intelligent design in The Age newspaper, suggesting that some parts of our bodies are so botched that it's an insult to poor old God to hold him responsible.

Derek Denton: There is obvious evidence against such an idea operating in living creatures. The gut is supported by being enclosed in a big membrane called the peritoneum. The peritoneum is attached to the backbone. This is fine for a four footed animal, however, given an animal with an upright posture, for example us, the gut falls to the bottom of the abdominal cavity. The common outcome may be various types of hernia, prolapse of the uterus and vaginal wall and haemorrhoids.

The big maxillary sinuses or cavities are behind the cheeks on either side of the face. They have the drainage hole in the top, which is not much of an idea in terms of using gravity to assist drainage of the fluid. Ear, nose and throat specialists sometimes have to knock a hole through the side of the nose near the bottom of the sinus to help drainage of puss. Apart from horses, which have a very small opening, most four-footed animals operating with head down rarely get sinus problems. It would seem that knowledge of gravity has not been a strong point in the repertoire of the intelligent designer.

The digestive system of grass and herbage eating animals includes a large organ next to the secum, the vermiform appendix in which cellulose is digested. In the human it's rudimentary, it gets matter caught in it, becomes inflamed sometimes causing sever peritonitis and death. Why the intelligent designer put it in at all is conjectural, unless in fact it is an evolutionary remnant from an earlier beneficial function.

One of the marvels of backboned animals is the eye. Indeed, Dr William Paley, a clergyman, whose writings were used to challenge Darwin considered it as the shining example of intelligent design. Paley likened the situation to that of finding a watch abandoned in an open field: it must have a maker who formed it for a purpose. The eye might be compared with a designed instrument such as a telescope, he concludes, 'that there is precisely the same proof that the eye was made for vision as there is that the telescope was made for assisting it'. That is the eye must have had a designer just as the telescope had.

In considering the eye as the marvel, there are facts now known which were not known in Paley's time, about 1801. In our eye and of all other vertebrates the optic nerve carries over a million fibres each leading from a cell in the retina. It is part of a system receiving data from about 125 million photocells. Whereas it would seem a designer would point the photo cells towards the source of light with the wires leading back to the brain, it would be poor design to have the photo cells pointing away from the light with their nerve processes departing on the side nearest the light. This is what happens in all vertebrate eyes, the wires or nerve processes have to travel across the surface of the retina to a place where they all go through a hole, creating what is called the blind spot, to form the optic nerve. The design principle is really not very good. The extremely interesting fact is that with the octopus the wires from the photocells don't point to the light but do indeed go backwards. The octopus eye in this respect is a better-designed effort by the putative intelligent designer than the eye of mammals. How did this come about?

Well, Ernst Mayr, the great Harvard biologist argued that photo receptors in some form evolved independently some 40 to 60 times in animals ranging from worms, molluscs to vertebrates. In the octopus eye it is formed by an infolding of the surface cells on the head, which become thickened to form eye components and it i

If we produced 50% of our power with nuclear power we'd be hip deep in radioactive waste.

Well it is measured in shipping containers per year, only a few per large city it is producing energy for. So it's not too much nuclear waste with no other real emmissions. AFAIK some European countries produce 70% of their energy with nuclear stations.

But I do agree, any waste is not a long-term solution - waste we can't use means we are burning something finite. There might be plenty of different energy sources - uranium, coal, oil - but each of these will eventually run out if we let them, as well as all the bad effects of mining, processing and moving it.

Wind has some of the fewest downsides next to solar.

I would say wind has even fewer downsides to solar. It takes more energy to make a solar cell than a wind turbine. Solar is great if you can't get on the grid, but it doesn't save any real energy, at least with current technology. Something like: http://www.abc.net.au/newinventors/txt/s1487858.ht m might start to help with the solar problem, though. Solar is better used to create hot water (eg for normal home use or heating the swimming pool) than to create electricity.

The best energy device would be a Mr Fusion like in Back to the Future, but that is still science fiction...

You didn't link to Mel

http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/people/mel_bampton.h tm

It's not entirely Science, but ABC's Ockham's Razor is pretty good, and often the topic is science.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/default.ht m

joe

This Week in Science is a great show, if you're looking something less hardcore and more, "popular." Another favorite of mine is Australia's ABC Radio National's All in the Mind, which are similar in production to the same station's The Science Show.

This Week in Science is a great show, if you're looking something less hardcore and more, "popular." Another favorite of mine is Australia's ABC Radio National's All in the Mind, which are similar in production to the same station's The Science Show.

Star Stuff

Science Friday

Ockham's Razor

IANAA (I am not an Aussie) but Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National seems to me to have some of the best science podcasting out there. Blows Science Friday away in terms of depth, seriousness, and presentation. I am a particular fan of All in the Mind(Neuroscience, Psychology, & cognitive science) and Ockham's Razor and The Science Show (both general interest). They also do other health + science podcasts that are linked from those pages.

IANAA (I am not an Aussie) but Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National seems to me to have some of the best science podcasting out there. Blows Science Friday away in terms of depth, seriousness, and presentation. I am a particular fan of All in the Mind(Neuroscience, Psychology, & cognitive science) and Ockham's Razor and The Science Show (both general interest). They also do other health + science podcasts that are linked from those pages.

IANAA (I am not an Aussie) but Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National seems to me to have some of the best science podcasting out there. Blows Science Friday away in terms of depth, seriousness, and presentation. I am a particular fan of All in the Mind(Neuroscience, Psychology, & cognitive science) and Ockham's Razor and The Science Show (both general interest). They also do other health + science podcasts that are linked from those pages.

These are all top quality programs. I am particularly fond of the ABC (Australian) program, I'm going to bookmark them all. Also check out this link from the ABC site titled "inferior design" (I just love sticking it to the conservative religious scum of the world :) http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/inferiordes ign/default.htm

People + Religion = Confusion & Counterintuition

I love most of the Science Friday topics but the weekly Dr Karl podcast is my favourite

http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/podcast/drk_rss.x ml

The weekly Dr Karl show is a talkback format, people call in with their mostly everyday science and medical related questions such as "why does the water in the shower slow down just as it gets hot" "why does my beer spontaneously freeze when I pop the top off" and "what actually causes memory loss when you are drunk"

I love most of the Science Friday topics but the weekly Dr Karl podcast is my favourite

http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/podcast/drk_rss.x ml

The weekly Dr Karl show is a talkback format, people call in with their mostly everyday science and medical related questions such as "why does the water in the shower slow down just as it gets hot" "why does my beer spontaneously freeze when I pop the top off" and "what actually causes memory loss when you are drunk"

Dr Karl has a happy hour on Triple-J every Thursday morning with Mel (who most slashdotters would die for) - and it's also released as a podcast too. http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/default.htm

Once a week for a magic hour, Karl is Live on Air on triple j. It's an hour devoted to the collective exploration of some of the great mysteries of life, such as "why does the water in the shower slow down just when it gets hot?"

ABC / Radio National's "Science Show" did a story on an Australian
  scientist, who falsely reported data from "experiments" that
  had never been conducted, ie, committed scientific fraud.

  An ethical Asian female co-researcher quite rightly
  "blew the whistle" on the unethical researcher.

  The results:
  - He (the "bad guy") is STILL employed by his university / research institute

  - She (the "good guy") LOST funding & access to her research facilities & experimental animals

  - One of the investigative journalists announced that
      HE'LL WILL NEVER REPORT ANOTHER CASE (see below)

  He's host of ABC's weekly "Health Report" show:

    Norman Swan: "I will never do a case of scientific fraud
                                ever again.
                                And the reason for that is just
                                the failure of institutional responses.

                                If the University of NSW can get away with
                                something like this what is the point?
                                  Im not going to do another one because
                                I just dont think that the institutions in
                                this country have responded seriously to this."

  (Just imagine the kind of world it would be, eg, if ALL
  journo's, police, judges, et al. felt like this guy...)

    Excerpt from The Science Show:

        "What happens to the Whistleblowers?"

    The program aired on 3 September 2005.

    http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s14512 50.htm

  So, I'd say the MIT researcher could do well
  in at least ONE Australian research university.

  Australia's embarrassing tradition continues...

  - After WW 2, AU accepted Nazis from Germany,
      apparently forgiving their atrocities [as long as
      they brought enough of their spoils to live well here]

  - today, at least one Australian research institution
      seems to forgive scientific fraud [as long as they
      can still attract research grant money]

  "Past is Prologue"

Do a search on Clairvius Narcisse. Still not conclusive proof for the zombie drug, but the facts are: the man was supposed to be dead and buried when he turned up 18 years later. It took him months to recover from near-catatonia and he claimed to ahve sold as a zombie slave. He was afraid to go home for some time after that because he believed his brother was involved in what happened to him. After his brother died, he finally re-united with the family who thought he's been dead for 20 years.

The story of Clairvius Narcisse
Wikipedia entry
Passage of Darkness

Perfect subject to research for Halloween, huh?

Good post.

And we do have big problems with freedom of speech here. Just the other day a radio interviewee tried to explain the point of view of Iraqi suicide bombers - trying to explain why they think it's "right" to blow up allied forces - and now the media has gone into a frenzy over this "unaustralian, terrorist loving peace hater". He now risks up to 7 years in prison under new anti-terrorism laws for "inciting terrorism". He was just a rational caucasian aussie man, not even muslim.

Islamic leaders in Australia are warning that if this is going to continue, the banning of open public forum debate on the issues in Iraq under the guise of "anti-terrorism", then discussion of "jihad" topics will only go underground, unchecked, and could possibly breed even more terrorism right here at home.

We've already removed books from bookshops.

Yep, it's the thought police. The radio station he was interviewed on can be found liable too. They will likely only recieve monetary fines, but still.

We definately have some messed up stuff going on - I just can't figure guns into the equation of a possible solution.

A violent assult against the government and its servants would only serve to repulse the general public against the assailant's cause. The government would use the violence to their advantage.

Additionally, I believe anyone who has the leadership skills to organise a large militia is also going to be able to influence politics using existing methods anyway. If things get so bad you have to "over-throw" them from the bottom-up instead of the usual process of top-down; I just think it's an almost hopeless battle. You have to contend with the hive-mind of the public, and have the media on your side. This is likely to be impossible unless the media themselves feel threatened by the government.

For now, the "revenue generating" stories are where they sensationalise any perceived terrorist sympathsiser "in our very own homeland". Likely, a new emerging militia will recieve equally depressing negative coverage in the name of profits, whilst missing the big picture. As usual.

I'm feeling quite depressed now... :-/

You do have to consider the fact that zombies are real. So in a sense they are advocating slavery.

(Not really, I just had to make a point)

I agree that the articles I linked to were not from peer-reviewed journals; generally when one performs "trivial googling", you don't get that kind of material. The article which most of these stories rely on for scientific credibility is from Nature, and is only accessible with a subscription. However I found this link: http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s962982 .htm through more googling which carries the meat of the paper in it. I would also note that I was not claiming either side was correct; merely that more investigation is required and that the Navy seem to be solving the problem with a very large hammer when one is not necessarily required. Cheers, Rhys Hill

The dromaeosaur group also included Velociraptor, made famous by Steven Spielberg in "Jurassic Park". For the film, Velociraptor was made twice its actual size, which seemed to be very speculative at the time. However, within a year of the release of the film, a giant dromaeosaur had been found, namely Utahraptor. So life can be stranger than fiction!.

http://www.abc.net.au/dinosaurs/fact_files/sky/uta hraptor.htm

There's only two stations I listen to: Triple J and Classic FM.

Long live independent government funded radio!

There's only two stations I listen to: Triple J and Classic FM.

Long live independent government funded radio!

I have to say, I'm very impressed with the independent music scene in Australia. There's a great spirit of independence there, helped by Triple-J Radio, a gov't-sponsored nationwide radio that actually plays a lot of truly-independent local artists, QMusic - a gov't-sponsored non-profit to develop and help local musicians, AIR, the Association of Independent Record Labels, which is run by a few passionate punks in Brisbane.

(I'm SO impressed, in fact, that we're going to be setting up a CD Baby office in Australia in a couple months!)

In a closely related current issue federal Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran displayed the scientific illiteracy so recently evident in more governments than ours by getting all in a tizz about some Canadian pigeons that flew in ahead of the customs slow down only to be discovered to have viral antibodies but not live viruses and be sentenced to immediate death for having beaten the dreaded avian flu or, in four cases, Newcastle disease.

If only we could do the same to politicans carrying antibodies, let alone their sick computer systems.

Better not think about juxtaposing the importation of pigeons from the other side of the world with the wish of local authorities to wipe out the feral pigeons already settled in here.

Don't worry, it gets worse. Just check out the support for teaching "intelligent design" from the general practitioner our over-tired and under-opposed federal government have given responsibility for education.

He may have a valid point, however, about the government playing a large and not necessarily fair role. Capitalism to a large degree depends on even-handed enforcement of certain rules, such as prohibitions on outright fraud and sanctions for breaches of contract. In addition, the greater the government is directly involved as a buyer or seller and the more unified it is, the less you might trust its ability to objectively investigate possible malfeasances when you consider conflicts of interest and assorted entanglements.

Beijing tacitly acknowledges this through the occasional high-profile crackdown, and the occasional extreme severity such as sentencing a former governor to death.

http://www.transparency.org/cpi/2004/cpi2004.en.ht ml#cpi2004
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/news/stories/s1471412.htm
http://english.people.com.cn/200509/09/eng20050909 _207609.html
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/events/index.cfm? fa=eventDetail&id=284

It's a reasonable concern if you're thinking about a large capital investment that you can't simply take with you if local officials decide to squeeze you after you're committed -- perhaps demanding direct bribes, or using governmental powers against you if you don't throw business to somebody, or so forth. Granted, it's probably not nearly as foolhardy as trying to run a high-profile independent media network in Putin's Russia...

the post mentions "crocodiles" and "pythons" as dangerous pets - granted, we all know that crocodiles and alligators are different, but nonetheless, I couldn't help being reminded of this tasty tidbit of recent news - nice photo too.....

Some interesting debate on the megafauna extinction here. Or if you're after fermented grapes, visit here, and disregard this

> Perhaps it isn't only the editors that should check the credibility of a story?

Everyone should check the credibility of what they read, for sure. A good friend of mine wrote a comical story on her blog at the beginning of this year about macintoshes getting intel upgrades. Remember this was before steve jobs let out the big news. Then in June when steve admitted it was true, someone submitted the story to slashdot. Then the world picked it up, and it was featured on engadget, the inquirer, hundreds of blogs, and within two weeks had made it to two US radio station broadcasts and was printed as a center piece in one Australian nationwide newspaper. The journalist at The Australian lost his job over it and a california radio news guy only just escaped with his.

The kicker was nobody wrote to her to check the origins of the story, not one solitary person until Media Watch, an Australian media watchdog television show contacted her to find out the reality behind the story in The Australian.

Tens of news sites blindly followed one another and printed what everyone else was printing. All the while many regular joes picked out it was meant for a laugh immediately.

Thanks to a strong possibility that Australia will adopt Life+50, PG Australia's works may have to be moved to New Zealand or Canada. Hence PG Canada. (Though the site design is currently horrible. What's wrong with adapting gutenberg.org or pge.rastko.net? gutenberg.org.au made this same mistake and I'll never understand it.)

Of course, you know that whoever inherited A.A. Milne's estate will be fighting tooth and nail to get Canada to up their terms prior to January 1, 2007, when Winnie the Pooh will enter the public domain. (Same for C.S. Lewis and January 1, 2013, and J.R.R. Tolkien and January 1, 2023.)

You tell me.
"Villagers in India's Andamans and Nicobar Islands have denounced 'paltry' tsunami compensation relief they have received from the local government.
One woman received a cheque of just two rupees (less than five US cents) for damage to her coconut crops."

I also remember reading an article recently about how India's Air Force kicked our ass in joint training exercises

While the Indian Air Force did 'win' several (even 'most') of the engagements, to say they 'kicked our ass' is a bit misleading.
No AWACS, which the USAF would use if it were real
Older F-15C, lacking the upgraded, longer range radar, against newer IAF Su-30's.
No BVR engagements
The USAF sent 5 jets, and were outnumbered during the A-A portions of the exercise. This was a DACT exercise, not a 'beat the other guy' situation.

Having said that...
General Hal Hornburg, head of the US Air Combat Command said "that we may not be as far ahead of the rest of the world as we once thought we were"

From an IAF official:
"We have appreciated the compliments but we are being pragmatic. We have no doubt about the technological superiority of the US Air Force. The exercise in Gwalior was a low-level one and involved conventional fighter tactics."

Spin it how you want, but that's not quite "kicking our ass"

With reports like this, this and this (Polar ice caps melting), not to mention the fact that events like Katrina are expected to increase in number, you'd think well informed nerds could get over the light headed feeling they get when someone presents the next upgrade to their computer system and consider the impact that their coal-powered l33t-box is having.

The average speed of the Iranian car was 141.62 km/h, and as everyone who's seen Back to the Future knows, "when this baby hits 141.62 km/h, you're gonna see some serious shit!"

I have been searching up and down google for a video, and I have yet to see even a reference to a site with it. According to this article, It is a 30 time-laps movie of 3 hours while the giant squid was tied up. If you find a link, please post.

police.slashdot.org

Wouldn't it be a part of the Brave New World to include a police-department in Slashdot ?
Ofcourse, you would have to include a few drops of lead with that...

For great radio content I recommend (among many others)

USA -> NPR
UK -> BBC
Continent -> RFI (Radio France International)
Australia -> Radio National.

For the latter, all their programs are on-line: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/

How do you get to choose your own music? friends, relative, etc. Try the radio sometime, you might get surprised.

Fantastic stuff.

"teach our children to think more critically" of what they see in our media...

This is a great idea, being debated in Victorian education (Australia) at present, with divisive strawman arguments against it (e.g. "educating from the back of cereal packets instead of classics","moral relativism will result in social destruction" )

This story created something of a media sensation for a few days, with various stories of varying scientific relevance.

I have to say that it "arcs me up" to see the media treat this kind of simple science story with disdain and hype, trying NOT to understand and then explain the simple science involved.

I heard the national radio (ABC News Radio) science reporter interview the guy and it seems like a legitimate story. Here's more info .

There is another link to this story on the ABC.
 
I wouldn't discount this story out of hand. It's been very dry in Australia lately, and I have been getting shocks quite often. I have on many occasion got a zap when touching my car or closing the garage do. Once (a few days ago) while in the process of shaking hands, we even heard the crack. It is painful.
So, I think this story is not exagerated. Afterall, they even called in the CFS.