Monthly Archives: December 2006

Richard Dawkins website blocked for being “occult” and “religious”

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This is a classic from the New Scientist Feedback section (25th December) where Eliot Attridge let them know that when he wanted to read more about Richard Dawkins:

Unfortunately, the school has installed a net filter called Netsweeper which, Attridge discovered, blocks access to www.richarddawkins.net on the grounds that it is an “occult site”.

To add insult to injury when Eliot tested with Sonicwall that described his site as “religious” – I wonder which wrong label would infuriate Dawkins most ? 🙂

Quenamari Ice Plateau

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Dear Lazyweb,

Reading New Scientist for 2nd December 2006 I came across an article about the Quenamari ice plateau in their “This Week 50 Years Ago” section:

The strange feature of this ice formation is that it exists apparently without fresh supplies of moisture in the middle of a region which is entirely free from ice and snow for most of the year despite its altitude of about 18,000 feet above sea level. No glacier feeds this ice; no high mountain peaks are near enough to snatch rain from the clouds to water it. It is unique – so glaciologists say – and its existence remains a mystery.

Problem is that when you search for what’s known about it now there’s very little information, either how it formed or even whether it still exists given the current episode of global warming that’s going on.

Anyone got any clues ?

Updated to PHP 5.2.0

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I’ve upgraded this server to PHP 5.2.0 using the Debian Backports repository, please post a comment or email me (send it to chris at this domain) if you spot any problems!

First impressions are very good, I’ve not been bitten by these WordPress problems (yet) and memory usage seems a hell of a lot better than 5.1. The only wrinkle is that I had to increase memory_limit to 128M to get posting articles to work, but whereas before that would have killed the system completely it seems OK for now..

To Each As They Deserve – A Good Example of Political Satire

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John Howard to be deported after failing citizenship test

Category: News article

Topic: Politics

Author: Michael Ellerman

Year created: 2006

Overall rating: 4 out of 5

Content rating: 4 out of 5

You absolutely have to read Michael Ellerman’s satirical news article “John Howard to be deported after failing citizenship test“.

I hereby lend it any Google foo that I have..

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Record Weather

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As the bushfires rage today the BBC is reporting that it was the hottest December day in more than 50 years, at 41.1C.

I went looking around the Bureau of Met website but could only find the spring records for 2006, and something caught my eye. Now I knew that this spring was very dry, with the north east having their driest spring recorded and most places getting less than half of the usual, but the new record for Wilsons Promontory shocked me. The previous record was in 1911 with 112.6 mm of rain, but now the new all-time (134 year) record is just 58.2 mm, barely half the previous record.

Not good records to see broken.

Google Earth Overlay of DSE Bushfire Updates in Victoria

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Back in January 2006 some clueful person came up with the idea of creating a Google Earth overlay to monitor bushfires in Victoria.

It pulls in the latest image from the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) from their current incidents page about fires and overlays it on the satellite imagery.

Red circles are controlled fires, red stars are contained fires and red fires are “going” (i.e. not controlled or contained).