Category Archives: News

Current affairs

Ajax Going Under

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So you have a single point of failure for the Australian automotive industry, with Ajax Fasteners making parts that not one, not two but three different car companies (Holden, Ford and Toyota) based here are dependant on.

Now they pressure that company to cut costs so they can keep competing, and eventually that company goes under.

Given that the three car companies literally cannot keep building cars without the parts they make and will have to stand down workers (Ford say they may need to do this on Wednesday, less than 2 days from now) they would be falling over themselves to keep it going.

But no, they’re actually fighting over how much each of them will pay to keep it going and I’m starting to wonder if the fact that Ford say they’ll need to stop production before the other two is part of what’s going on here. It certainly wouldn’t hurt Holden or Toyota if Ford lost a few days or a week of production whilst they kept going..

Fallout from the Israel/Hezbollah/Lebanon war ?

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Seeing that the 1982 Israeli Invasion of Lebanon resulted in the creation of Hezbollah I’m now pondering what the result of the 2006 invasion will be.

Having watched tonights news on the ABC and seen what’s happening with people returning to the south of Lebanon to confront the devastation I’m wondering whether this will result in Hezbollah winning the next election in Lebanon ?

That would really put a cat amongst the pidgeons in the region, but given the results of Israels interventions in the West Bank and Gaza I wouldn’t be that suprised..

Israel Attacks UN Aid Convoy

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Israel says it was never authorised, the UN says it was.

Either way it is a breach of article 9 of the 1864 Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field to attack aid workers bearing the Red Cross symbol.

Art. 9. The personnel charged exclusively with the removal, transportation, and treatment of the sick and wounded, as well as with the administration of sanitary formations and establishments, and the chaplains attached to armies, shall be respected and protected under all circumstances. If they fall into the hands of the enemy they shall not be considered as prisoners of war.

Art. 20. The personnel protected in virtue of the first paragraph of Article 9, and Articles 10 and 11, will wear attached to the left arm a brassard bearing a red cross on a white ground, which will be issued and stamped by competent military authority, and accompanied by a certificate of identity in the case of persons attached to the sanitary service of armies who do not have military uniform.

SBS: Insight: Understanding Autism

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Well tonight the SBS Insight program “Understanding Autism” was on tonight, and Donna and myself were on talking about how we live with Donna’s autism.

One question I didn’t get to ask was going to be this:

Why, if we hear that people with autism react so very differently to different treatments with one helping one child and then for another child it has no effect (or makes things worse), do we continue to assume that there is just one thing called autism ?

Some children improve on gluten free diets, some don’t. Some improve on cassein free diets, some don’t. Some respond well to ABA, some become phobic because of it. Some are intolerant to salycliates, some have no problem with them. Etc, etc, etc..

To me, as a physicist, it makes sense when you change different variables on the same thing and it reacts differently then it usually is not the same thing!

So, to me, it makes good sense that there are multiple underlying issues (multiple autisms) that are causing symptoms that look similar.

A final plug – Donna mentioned the website we built almost a year ago now for people on the spectrum to advertise their employment skills to the world – it is called auties.org – go visit and hire someone with autism!

Has Cassini Found Lakes on Titan At Last ?

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The Planetary Society is reporting some really interesting news:

Saturn’s moon Titan was once thought to conceal a global ocean of methane and ethane beneath its smoggy atmosphere. However, while the landforms seen by Cassini and Huygens show ample evidence of past modification by the action of flowing liquids, actual bodies of present liquid have proven elusive through more than two years of investigation. Until now. During a July 22, 2006 flyby, Cassini’s RADAR instrument has finally unveiled what appears to be a land of lakes in Titan’s northern polar regions.

Pretty neat stuff, and this image is a neat example of some of the data they’ve got..

Possible Lakes on Titan

BBC Articles on Lebanon Conflict – History and Future

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BBC correspondent Jim Muir in Lebanon has two excellent articles on the current conflict in Lebanon – “History repeats with a vengeance” and Washington risks a wider conflict.

The second article makes a very interesting point, saying:

The Hezbollah operation of 12 July was apparently launched at least partly in support of the embattled (Sunni) Hamas in Gaza, perhaps at the prompting of their mutual supporter Iran.

So the seeds of co-operation between Sunni and Shia radical groups are already there, and – encouraged by Iran and Syria – they could start sprouting elsewhere in the region.

This, I bet, is something that Israel and its US backers would probably not have envisaged when they started on this tragedy and I fear that his thought that:

If an increasingly isolated US, with anaemic support from Britain, continues to support or even encourage Israel’s absolutist approach, the consequences could be dire both in Lebanon and in the wider region.

is probably not far off the mark.

Australian Academics Branded Anti-American for Being Pro-Australian

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This makes me sick..

Vice-chancellor Professor Ian Chubb says ANU researchers were labelled as “anti-American” after they released a study of Australia’s free trade agreement with the US, which revealed adverse results.

The fact that some people believe publicising the fact that this “Free” Trade Agreement isn’t good for Australia is “Anti-American” seems to speak volumes about their real sympathies, which is really sad given that some of them are our politicians. 🙁

Professor Chubb says he received several calls suggesting the university would be unwise to promote the research.

I’d love to know where those calls were from!