Category Archives: Writing

Writing

Detention For Life With No Trial – In Australia

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You’ve heard about the film “The Terminal” where Tom Hanks character gets stranded in an airport terminal because he suddenly finds himself stateless. Well there is a real life version of this that has been going on for almost 7 years now in Australia and, unfortunately for the person, he’s not trapped in an airport lounge but in various Government detention centres with razor wire and guards.

Peter Qasim is caught in a situation where he arrived as an asylum seeker from Kashmir, was denied asylum by Australia, but India refuses to believe he is their citizen and will not accept him. He is trapped inside the system, unable to return to Kashmir and not permitted to leave the detention centers.

He has been locked up for almost 7 years now, and faces no escape and (in his dark times) believes he will die there, never being allowed to live the life of a free man. The ABC has a background report on his plight and there is more here, here and here.

In other news, Australian officials deported a man travelling on a false French passport despite being told he was a convicted criminal by the French authorities.


The French Embassy believed without his French passport the man with the fake identity could not leave the country, but they had not reckoned on what the Australian authorities might do.


Sources close to the French Embassy say they are most concerned that their warnings about the man posing as Kingue were seemingly ignored and a convicted criminal using a stolen identity and therefore a fake passport was able to travel out of this country with the help of the Australian Government.

Patenting Medical Facts – A Diagnosis for B12 Deficiency

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Argh – I don’t believe how silly US patents are getting these days! Found through this Groklaw story.

The Public Patent Foundation has a statement condemning the issuing of a patent diagnosing B12 deficiency by looking for elevated homocysteine levels, a medical fact, and asking for it to be revoked.


“This result is not only perverse public policy – placing the rights of patent holders above the rights of doctors to perform medical diagnosis and discuss a natural biological relationship – but it also violates patent law, which mandates that only processes, machines, manufactures, and compositions of matter are eligible for patent protection,” states PUBPAT’s position statement titled, Supreme Court Should Protect Medical Facts and the Right of Doctors to Use and Discuss Them From Patents. “The public, including specifically those wishing to use and learn from laws of biology, is significantly harmed by a failure to maintain the limits on patent eligibility because patents can – and often do – prevent important medical treatment and scientific research.”

Multiple Aftershocks Hit Indonesia

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A quick look at my email shows that the USGS Earthquake has reported 5 sizeable aftershocks around Indonesia, 3 in Simeulue and 2 in Nias (where up to 2,000 are reported to have died). 



 N  3 Please_Do_Not_Reply_   “2005/03/28 18:48 M 5.5 SIMEULUE, INDONESIA Z= 30km  2.73N  95.96E”

 N  4 Please_Do_Not_Reply_   “2005/03/28 19:02 M 5.8 NIAS REGION, INDONESIA Z= 30km  1.01N  97.82E”

 N  5 Please_Do_Not_Reply_   “2005/03/28 23:13 M 5.7 NIAS REGION, INDONESIA Z= 30km  0.19N  97.02E”

 N  6 Please_Do_Not_Reply_   “2005/03/28 23:37 M 5.7 SIMEULUE, INDONESIA Z= 30km  2.89N  96.33E”

 N  7 Please_Do_Not_Reply_   “2005/03/28 23:39 M 5.5 SIMEULUE, INDONESIA Z= 30km  2.92N  96.34E”

Two Big Earthquakes, 8.7 and 6.7, Hit Indonesia

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Two big earthquakes have hit Indonesia, one was Magnitude 8.7 and hit Northern Sumatra at a depth of 30km, the second was Magnitude 6.7 and hit the Nias region of Indonesia.

This ABC report is predicting a Tsunami and evacuation orders have been issued for various parts of that region. They are also reporting dozens dead on Nias.

This appears to be the predicted aftershocks and follow on quakes from the new stresses put on the plates in that region after the massive December 26th earthquake.

More reports on Google News.

Strange Cat Photo

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The thing that gets the highest hit count on this website is not any of the blog entries, none of the photo galleries nor even the URLs that those damn accursed referrer spammers try to go to, but this photo:

Silly cat photo - source unknown

Unfortunately I can’t find any attribution for it – the best I’ve got is that it was first mentioned in this story by Alec who pointed to this URL that went 404. I managed to track down a copy via some method that escapes me and added that as a comment to Alec’s article, which he then posted about here.

The EXIF information isn’t much use, it just says: 

$ exif Cat.jpg
EXIF tags in 'Cat.jpg' ('Motorola' byte order):
--------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------
Tag                 |Value
--------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------
Orientation         |top - left
x-Resolution        |72/1
y-Resolution        |72/1
Resolution Unit     |Inch
Software            |Adobe Photoshop 7.0
Date and Time       |2004:05:19 12:49:44
Compression         |JPEG compression
x-Resolution        |72/1
y-Resolution        |72/1
Resolution Unit     |Inch
Color Space         |Uncalibrated
PixelXDimension     |434
PixelYDimension     |377
--------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------
EXIF data contains a thumbnail (3764 bytes).

My guess is that as Photoshop is involved it’s a fake.. But I’d love to find out who did it so they can get proper credit!

New Tasmanian Tiger Photos – Probably Fakes :-(

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ABC News is reporting that the new Tasmanian Tiger photos (as yet unpublished anywhere) which created such a stir recently are now believed to be fakes by the curator of the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery.

Mr Pemberton says he thinks the photos are clearly doctored.

“The thylacine in the image was very similar to another photograph that we quickly identified,” he said.

“But secondly there were two photographs and there was a time gap between the two of… five, 10, 20 seconds… and the posture of the animal hadn’t changed, which I found very strange.”

Wales do the Grand Slam!

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It takes a while for the news to get down here, where they take a rugby ball and make up silly rules about what to do with it, but Wales have done the grand slam! The last time they did that (1978) I wasn’t even in high school!

For those who have not been initiated into the mysteries of the Five Six Nations Rugby Union championship it means they beat all 5 other teams in the championship. I was over the moon when they beat England but never imagined they’d do the Grand Slam…

Kevin Morgan dives over to score a try for Wales, from the RBS Six Nations Website
Wales Celebrate Victory, from the Welsh Rugby Union website

AOL Revise Their Terms of Service for AIM – Much Better!

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AOL have revised their Terms of Service to replace that wording that had everyone in such a kerfuffle, and it’s a lot better.

They’ve replaced the Orwellian "You waive any right to privacy" section with a much more reassuring statement, quoted below:


As explained in detail in the AIM Privacy Policy, AOL does not read your private online communications when you use any of the communication tools on AIM Products. If, however, you use these tools to post Content or other information to public areas on AIM Products (for example, in chat rooms or online message boards), other online users will have access to this information and Content.

Their privacy statement referred to above says (amongst other things):


AOL does not read your private online communications when you use any of the communication tools offered as AIM Products. If, however, you use these tools to disclose information about yourself publicly (for example, in chat rooms or online message boards made available by AIM), other online users may obtain access to any information you provide.

So well done to AOL for clarifying this so quickly, but it’s a shame it happened in the first place.

They do still claim that if you post to a public area then you are allowing them full licensing rights, viz:


You or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to public areas of any AIM Product. However, by submitting or posting Content to public areas of AIM Products (for example, posting a message on a message board or submitting your picture for the “Rate-A-Buddy” feature), you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium.

But that’s easily fixed by not posting to them in the first place!