Category Archives: Writing

Writing

Time Team – Archaeology by TV ?

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I was watching Time Team on the ABC where they were excavating a suspected crannog and henge monument at Loch Migdale in Scotland back in 2004 when they showed a quick bit of video of the remains of a stone causeway underwater.

Whilst watching the fly over of the rocks something caught my eye, something that looked too regular to be natural and what appeared to me to be a round circular container. I had recorded it on the DVD recorder so I grabbed a few frames to show, but whilst it can be hard to see in still images it’s a bit more obvious when you see it moving so I’ve also got an animated GIF of those put together here.

Animated GIF

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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!

The Parable of the Tulsa

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In the beginning was the Xeon, and it was 32-bit.

Then Intel moved over the face of the Xeon and created Nocona, which was 64-bit, and Intel thought it was, well, OK.

So Intel took Nocona and added more L2 cache, and thus begat Irwindale. Intel saw Irwindale was good, but Opteron was still better.

So Intel was wrathful and split Irwindale asunder internally, creating Paxville DP, with dual cores.

Intel looked at Paxville DP and said unto itself “still not enough cache!” and soon more cache grew within the Paxville DP and thus begat Tulsa.

Thus endeth the lesson, from the book of Wikipedia, Chapter Xeon..

Ahem..

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