Author: bobmcgee

Once more into the fray …

Back from the Goldfields, with not a nugget to show for it.

But little grapes, tiny little fetal grapelets on every vine. If they can just survive the frost for another month … most promising. The trouble with Victorian country life, though, is the total absence of broadband in my little hamlet. The local telephone exchange is not equipped for ADSL, will not be equipped for ADSL, and even if it were the copper wire is too small and too old to cope and the house too far from the exchange. Mobile phone coverage? Not at my house. Oh for the NBN.

So home  to Melbourne and a rush for the news. Not good so far as the NBN goes …

EXECUTIVES at the company building the national broadband network pocketed more than $600,000 in bonuses in 2011-12 despite the project running a year behind schedule.

The NBN Co annual report shows the company is spending 25 times more on executive salaries than it earned from selling broadband to customers …

The opposition’s communications spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, said the report, released on Friday night, showed the roll-out of the network was a year behind schedule with 24,000 homes and businesses connected to the national broadband network at the end of last month. <SMH>

Julia, meanwhile calls sexism wherever she finds it …

 

Maybe she went on a bit long about the uranium sales.

She probably yearns for the good old days when the law firm she was working for brought this defamation action …

Concerns among union officials about financial irregularities and the conduct of the then branch secretary were silenced by Mr Blewitt in the Supreme Court defamation action brought on his instructions in October 1993.

The action came six months after Mr Blewitt, who now admits to being involved in fraud, transferred about $100,000 from the slush fund to buy a $230,000 Melbourne terrace for the use of Ms Gillard’s then boyfriend, union boss Bruce Wilson.

Ms Gillard attended the auction for the Melbourne property, helped in the transaction, and witnessed a power of attorney giving Mr Wilson control over the asset.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly and strenuously denied any wrongdoing, and said she did not know about the workings of the slush fund. <The Australian ( paywall)>

Taking a leaf out of her book, one of the punters she relies on to stay in power has threatened to sue anyone that suggests he may have had sex with prostitutes …

But the allegations FWA has presented to the Federal Court are detailed and extensive, listing dates and times in which Mr Thomson allegedly called escort services and paid for them with his credit cards. In all, there are 10 occasions where FWA alleges Mr Thomson called prostitute services and then used $9603 of union money on them. <news.com>

and he did sue Fairfax last year … but dropped the matter at the court room door. The Labor Party shelled out to keep him from bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy, there’s a thought, how’s that budget coming Wayne?

 

Rwanda …

Rwanda was a member of the UN Security Council in 1994 …

Back in April 1994, as the massacre of Tutsis rolled out, Rwanda’s diplomat in the UN Security Council, Jean Damascene Bizimana, firmly told colleagues there was no genocide and they agreed. Eighteen years later, Rwanda is back to the 15-member exclusive club. In a secret ballot, the country scooped 148 votes from the 192 cast – way ahead of the 128 required.

The UN did not distinguish itself in Rwanda …

Despite hearing evidence of the targeted mass-murder of Tutsis by interahamwe militias in 1994, the critics say the UN deliberately avoided labelling the slaughter as ‘genocide’. As a result, they avoided being obliged to protect the Tutsis and the genocide continued …  The massacres stopped in July.

On 21 April, while genocide raged, 11 Belgian peacekeepers were killed. As a result, instead of increasing forces, the UN reduced their forces from 2,500 to only 250.

On April 30, under intense pressure, the UN debated whether they should intervene in Rwanda to stop the massacres in Rwanda. The UN debated about the unfolding situation in Rwanda, and whether or not the International Community should intervene to prevent the escalation.  The UN forces on the ground were forbidden to intervene to protect people; instead they had to “monitor” the situation.

Estimates of the number that died vary, somewhere in the vicinity of 800,000 seems about right.

And now we’re bus monitors, too. Let’s hope the bus will start …

 

Misandry …

That debate drew attention to the need to update the definition, said Ms Butler.

“I always think of myself as the person with the mop and the broom and the bucket who’s cleaning up the language after the party’s over,” she told ABC News.

“And in this case it was a fairly big party, and what was left on the floor was misogyny.”

The Macquarie Dictionary will redefine misogyny for the benefit of our viral prime minister.

The Mcgee Dictionary will, henceforth, define misandry as the alteration of the meaning of words, by women, to denigrate men.

Justice … ?

He tracked his 20-year-old former girlfriend to the Gold Coast after she fled Adelaide in 2010. Where …

He attacked her in her apartment, bashing her with an empty Bundaberg Rum bottle, slicing open the corners of her mouth and cutting off part of her tongue with a knife.

And then he tried choking her.

Judge Katherine McGinness refused an application by the prosecution to declare Tahir a serious violent offender. He will be eligible for parole from September 12, 2013.

Hummingbird …

Far more exciting than little brown jobs and more diagnostically challenging than waders the Hummingbirds  provide the birdwatcher with plenty to enjoy and plenty to learn.

They form the family Trochilidae, often placed somewhere close to the Swifts in traditional classifications and depending on how they are lumped or split there are somewhere between 325 and 340 species.

They tend to be small, most are in the range 7.5 to 13 cm. They are the only birds that can fly backwards when they want to. Their energy requirements are very high, their payload isn’t so they run on a very tight energy budget. They have some special adaptations, such as the ability to enter a state of torpor, to bridge non feeding periods. Despite the challenges some species make long migration flights. They meet their energy requirements from a diet of nectar and the remainder of their nutrition is from insects.

Humming birds are only found in the Americas, a few make it as far north as Alaska and as far south as Southern Chile but the species diversity is highest in tropical central and South America. Colombia alone has more than 160 and the small country of Ecuador has about 130 species. Ber van Perlo lists 80 for Brazil.

Part of the challenge in identification of Hummingbirds is due to the way their colours are made. Much of their colour is structural in origin, the play of light on the prisms within their feathers can turn a dull bird into a blaze of glory. They pose a considerable problem for the illustrator.

Here are a few that I photographed in Brazil …

 

World temperature …

Arctic ice at record lows, Antarctic ice at record highs.

All to be expected in a warming world says Seth Borenstein …

Shifts in wind patterns and the giant ozone hole over the Antarctic this time of year — both related to human activity — are probably behind the increase in ice, experts say. This subtle growth in winter sea ice since scientists began measuring it in 1979 was initially surprising, they say, but makes sense the more it is studied.

Of course it makes sense, warmer water more ice. That must be why the experts predicted the opposite, as catalogued by Jo Nova …

The IPCC Experts in AR4 prediction (thanks to Bishop Hill)

“In 20th- and 21st-century simulations, antarctic sea ice cover is projected to decrease more slowly than in the Arctic (Figures 10.13c,d and 10.14),”

See also IPCC #15.4.4where they discuss the impact of decreasing sea ice, but not of the possibility it might increase.

USGS (2010):

Ice shelves are retreating in the southern section of the Antarctic Peninsula due to climate change. This could result in glacier retreat and sea-level rise if warming continues

British Antarctic Survey:A thaw of Antarctic ice is outpacing predictions by the U.N. climate panel and could in the worst case drive up world sea levels by 2 meters (6 ft) by 2100, a leading expert said on Wednesday.

Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University:

Most models predict that both precipitation and temperature will increase over Antarctica with a warming of the planet.

Al Gore, Jan 2012

What happens to the rest of the world as that frozen water is released, at ever increasing rates, as a result of the rising temperatures caused by climate change?

[In 1988] Scientists expected that as climate change accelerated, Antarctica would be one of the fastest warming areas of the planet. This prediction has proven true

Well not according to the …

Latest ICEsat estimates thanks to Zwally et al:

“During 2003 to 2008, the mass gain of the Antarctic ice sheet from snow accumulation exceeded the mass loss from ice discharge by 49 Gt/yr”

Latest GRACE satellite data also shows Antarctica is gaining ice mass.

And how quickly are we warming, take a look at the latest Hadcrut 4 data …

 

Over the last 15 years you’d have a lot of trouble picking a signal out of the noise.

Oh, why won’t the climate do what the models tell it to?

A Vic Spring …

Spent a very pleasant weekend at my little farm in Victoria’s Goldfields.

The Flame Robins are long gone back up into the high country. The summer visitors are returning. The very welcome song of the Rufous Songlark was music to my ears on Saturday. It seems a little late this year but the weather has been a bit cold.

Grass is growing well, must have the firebreaks cut by the end of the month.