The Grauniad

<satire>

A Galaxy even further away...

As European-PacRim relations sink to a new low, Alan E. Brain goes to deepest Denmark to discover what the average European thinks about people at the other side of the world.

The Australian Steak House Restaurant looks a little more promising than the dozens of other eating places along the narrow, twisty little alleyways in Copenhagen, Denmark. The discreet hint of sunshine in the decor and the lack of any wine list disguise the fact that there are dozens of other Australian Steakhouses across Europe, all with precisely the same menu. This means, presumably, that everyone ordering a steak sandwhich anywhere in this tiny "continent" will receive the same miniscule cut of marbled, grain-fed beef swimming in an unsubtle mixture of tomato paste and fat.

The diner on the next table turns out to be friendlier, and indeed more cosmopolitan, than the food. His name is Bjorn Thorvaldson, and he's in the Butter Agribusiness. "You're from Australia?" he says. "My mother's cousin emigrated there. Well, New Zealand, actually. My nephew's in Los Angeles. And my half-sister lives in Perth." "Have you been over to see her?" I ask. "Vell, no," he replies. "I don't like flying." "What do you think of Australia?" "Well," he says, "they were good to us in 1945." He pauses. "You know, it's a long way away."

And from the Australian Steakhouse it does seem very distant. Indeed, the whole messy and diverse concept of the Pacific Rim seems very distant. Around Copenhagen, there is nothing but the Baltic and the mud flats of Jutland. Beyond that, there is only Poland, Germany and Belgium, where the speed limit, the price of petrol or the sales tax might vary by a percentage point or two but in essence everything would be entirely familiar to a Dane, even down to the (minute) size of the portions in the local Australian Steakhouse.

"Where do most people round here come from?" I ask Bjorn. "Round here, probably." And he's right. Mass migration around Europe ceased almost twenty generations ago. In Copenhagen, there is as little to remind the blonde population of its Teutonic roots as the darkhaired population has to remind it of the Tartars: Stolichnaya Vodka, Carlsberg Beer and Olaf's Vrische Seafood, where each table has a miniature mug of Genuine Viking Mead nestling between the ketchup and the mustard. That's about it.

Of course, Copenhagen has an elite who travel all over Asia. But less than one-one hundredth of all Europeans have been east of Bangkok, and in Denmark the proportion is much lower. One suspects the Pacific Rim geography of many people here goes no further than the Ice Creams:

Tahitian Delight
South Sea Fruit Ice

That morning, the Kristeligt Dagblad has one paragraph from Australia. Indeed, major disasters aside, foreign news generally consists solely of inter-European interaction. And Copenhagen is a chunky-sized city, far more worldly than the other towns in the area, such as Aalborg, Glostrup and Svendborg. In all of them, an Australian visitor can expect a warm welcome, because Denmark is like that. But the locals might be just as charming to a visitor from outer space, who would be only a fraction more exotic.

Is this just how it is in the hinterland, far removed from the more sophisticated dinner tables of Brussels and Starsbourg? Not necessarily, when Brussels is run by Georges Chirac of France, Tim Blair of England, Gerhard Schroede of Germany, not to mention Hanne Severinsen., from Denmark herself, and "Gorgeous George" Galloway, hero of the Red/Green Coalition, who is sometimes suspected of coming from outer space. You may not feel comfortable with the fact that the future of the planet should be decided by the representatives of voters who know so little about it. A good many senior PacRim politicians share that concern.

At times over the past few weeks, Brussels has seemed almost like an enemy capital, certainly less comfortable for an Australian than Copenhagen, where people do not follow the nuances of international diplomacy. Last month, the EU President coined the phrase "Coalition of the Lackeys" for his unholy trinity of the US, Australia and England. The Copenhagen papers may not have fully reported the reaction of the PacRim's foreign ministers. Goh Chok Tong of Singapore said it was "simplistic"; Alexander Downer of Australia said alliance partners could not be characterised as obedient satellites; America's own Donald Rimsfeld said the speech had more to do with the European Parliament elections than intercontinental politics; Eugene Chien, the Taiwanese Foreign Minister, called it "absolutist" as well as simplistic.

The response was brisk. The Paris Match reported that the EU President was fuming about "People missing an opportunity to keep their mouths shut". Chancellor Schroeder accused Americans of "Texas Cowboy Vigilantism". Jean-Marie Le Pen stated that the American Zionists and Australian Convicts should stay out of European Internal Affairs. The French PM Jacqes Chirac baffled Chinese interpreters last week by using the phrase "Anglophone Conspiracy" in a private meeting in Beijing, though it was not entirely clear who was the phoney.

The kennel of leftwingers who snarl daily in the Franfurter Allgemeine have frothed more rabidly: "It is usual for parents to control their offspring. But in the instance of global geopolitics, the situation has been totally reversed. Our mature - if somewhat brash - children against Father Europe again rebelling are," wrote Martin Gruss, in tortuously teutonic tenses. Alain Bayeaux accused the Australians, in particular, of "arrogance and anger" born of an inferiority complex. Chirac's attack, said Juan Diego y Garcia, "might have been taken as a declaration of war except that the Australians, concerned with selling wool and wheat, are too busy raping Mother Earth and engaging in unashamed Capitalism". Willhelm Krystalnacht, editor of Der Speigel, summed up the differences more elegantly: "Well, the Anglophones do believe that there is an axis of evil in the world. It's just that they believe the axis of evil is our Fraternal Socialist Allies, North Korea, Syria and Iran.."

PacRim embassies have been playing all this down, which is their job. With a world-weary air, they say that intercontinental relations have often been touchy, most recently in the 1980s over the Soviet gas pipeline and over the Balkans in the early days of the Clinton administration. And it is true that as late as 1998, which nostalgists now regard as a sunlit era of Euro-Pacific amity, an article in Foreign Affairs moaned: "Antisemitism and America-Bashing are back in fashion all over Eirope."

"Iraq policy is in process at the moment," said one Thai diplomat. "And during the process there are always arguments. What matters is that we agree on the end product. And there is every sign that we will." One experienced Brussels source described this view as "Merde", adding, "Relations now are worse than anyone can ever remember. It has become very fashionable in the middle reaches of government to beat up on the Americans as being uncultured barbarians. That's especially true in the Quai D'Orsay, but it's true in most of the European Parliament too."

"We're on the edge of the abyss," said Dr Strabismus of the Council of Europe. "Whether we step into it remains to be seen. I think a lot of Anglophones have underestimated the paradigm shift that has taken place in Europe since September 11. I think even most Christian Democrats now see the internal debate as solely one about method and tactics, Sharia now or Sharia later."

There is a fundamental dichotomy between the two sides that in some ways dates back to the very founding of the European Union, when the Second World in general, with the exceptions of Quebec and New Orleans, was uncultured and materialistic. Brussels politicians are especially conscious that Anglophone armies had to come across the Atlantic twice in the 20th century to settle Europe's quarrels. Those living on the Pacific Rim are inclined to think that the Europeans, having mainly surrendered in the last two world wars, are still determined on a course of "Peace at any Price".

In Denmark, the Pacific might seem like a distant fairyland. PacRimmers in Brussels, even New Caledonians, are inclined to see the notion of Pacific Rim unity more positively than they might at home; exile, however benign, breeds a sense of solidarity. And perhaps no single group of people outside Singapore has been as enthusiastic about the idea of South-East Asian unity as the traditional liberal-minded Canberra elite clustered round the Department of Foreign Affairs and restaurants a great deal fancier than the Australian Steakhouse.

Yet in reality the Pacific Rim Treaties seem to harden European colonial attitudes. When Fischer initially responded to the massed ranks of foreign ministers, he was genuinely sorrowful that his friends Colin and Alexander should have misunderstood things so. His tone of voice when referring to Downer implied that the ASEAN was not a significant enough player to be worth considering.

For the past half-century, American disunity has been the European elite's favoured solution to ensure that they could peacefuilly surrender to dictatorship a third time. After all, it works on this continent, doesn't it? Now that the Pacific Rim has attained a sort of political and economic reality, the Europeans are having even more trouble taking it seriously than the Americans. Antenne 5 News recently described Singapore as "un isle picturesque dans le Straits du Malac". So much for a vibrant industrial economy in a country with a per-capita income exceeding France's.

The cadet version of the Quai D'Orsay is at the Sorbonne, Paris's most famous hall of Academe, where the school for foreign service offers degrees that are a traditional route into the Corps Diplomatique. The undergraduates there are clever, worldly, well travelled, and completely uncritical of the thrust of European policy. I talked to some the other day and asked them to play word association.

They responded very readily to the USA and Americans: "MacDonalds, Hollywood, Cadillacs....Berkeley... Michael Moore... Gore Vidal... Michael Jackson... Jerry Lewis.. Ku Klux Klan...Cowboys...Capitalists!" They were just as quick shouting out about Japan and the Japanese: "Sushi... Kung Fu(sic)...Tea Cermonies...Hari-Kiri....Cars... Geisha...". But they seemed almost Denmark-vague when asked about the Pacific Rim as a whole: "Kangaroos... Rice.. Desert Islands...". Someone added, "They enjoy life more," then the answers petered out.

In Denmark, people might imagine that Australia and New Zealand are much the same thing. But in Brussels, the Pacific Rim's pretensions to unity seem to be treated with some contempt. Long before De Gaulle came to town, it was commonplace here to say that the Pacific does not matter to the Europeans any more - except as a convenient place to let off Atomic Bombs so no radiation will reach Europe.

It is, in part, a problem of success. Europeans have turned away from the Pacific Rim because the end of the cold war has enabled them to do so. "We're drifting apart because the relationship has achieved its fundamental purpose," says Uwe Daalder of the Bruecken Institut. "For the past 50 years, America has been the focus of European attention. We now have an Interventionist and Democratic Hyper-power. From that perspective, Europe is Finished." But there is a second part to this. "September 11 confirmed the world-view of the European Union," says Daalder. "They believed that they could hide behind America's military umbrella and that proved it. Apart from Madrid. (a long pause) America thinks the threats are more imminant and immediate. Furthermore, America emphasises Democracy and Human Rights, partly because they see Dictatorships as breeding-grounds for Terrorism. The Europeans emphasise collaboration and bribery. Making out like bandits. Swiss Bank Accounts."

It is, however, easier to claim that the Pacific Rim does not matter than to claim that America or China or Australia don't matter. Europe may not care about the Pacific. But the parts of the Pacific Rim are still greater than the whole. When it comes to it, would the Europeans really surrender meekly to Islamic Extremism without the US cavalry being ready to rescue them from their folly? The Americans insist that the need for action is fully accepted not only in the European Parliament, but also in NATO.

Militarily, Europe can now take on Upper Volta, or possibly the Central African Republic, but it would be a difficult fight. But the colonial psychology is different. One influential Euro-MP (not from Denmark) was musing the other day: "Sure, we can adopt Sharia. But people still think of Winston Churchill. I think it would be politically difficult and perhaps impossible." It might, in short, go down badly at every one of the dozens of branches of the Australian Steakhouse.
</satire>

The original Guardian Article is even more hilarious, as the names and quotes are real.

BTW the Australian Steakhouse chain in Copenhagen really wasn't that bad when I last visited one of them. Just steer (sorry) clear of the meat (quite easy, it's finding it on the plate that's difficult). One of the better Northern European Nosheries.

Sachost.Exe Removal Instructions

Are here.

There's other stuff on the site too -
Mr Picasso Head
Design Your Own Hell
Brain Short-Circuiters
"Blue Suede Shoes" in Klingon
The Hamas Charter and other political articles.

But if you have a case of the sachosts, you'd better go here first.

The Last of the First People - 20 years on

It's been 20 years since a tribe of 9 people first contacted the rest of Humanity, here in Australia. Their story is told in The Bulletin.

On October 24, 1984, Melbourne's The Herald – as it was then known – announced the discovery of the Pintupi nine with an understandably hysterical front-page screamer: "We find the lost tribe." The newspaper had a journalist who happened to be in central Australia and was handed the scoop. But The Herald did not find the tribe and, more particularly, they were anything but lost. Lost people do not survive in a desert, successfully raising children to adulthood, initiating their boys, wandering among claypans and soaks, and literally, in the words of Warlimpirrnga, "chasing the clouds" to stay beneath the precious rain.
[...]
Theirs is a story of pride and survival, not disgrace: they can rightly be called the last of the First People.
[...]
At night, the nine slept by four separate campfires, divided along gender and age lines. Helping keep them warm at night, says Yukultji, was a "big mob of dingoes, full dingoes, might be 12 of them or something". They used their own hair or cat fur to make nimpala, short skirts that served as belts in which to keep lizards – the group's staple – rather than offering concealment.
[...]
Yukultji remembers seeing an aeroplane and a helicopter cross the sky. "We were too frightened," she says. "We hid under a tree." Such visions were not associated with any recognised Dreaming story and impossible to explain.
[...]
Kiwirrkurra's leaders decided to find Warlimpirrnga's group and bring them in. Their main motivation was a sense of pity for what the elders called "the naked ones". It was a prescient move. By then, the group was in real danger – not from the desert, which they had mastered, but from themselves. The gene pool was running dangerously low and inbreeding – which Aborigines avoid with their complex skin classification system – was imminent.
[...]
By 1984, this wandering band numbered nine. Papalya and Nanu, as the group's widow-matriarchs, were both aged in their mid 50s. There was Takariya, then 24, nowadays sometimes known as Doris, and the girls Yalti, 14, and Yukultji, 12. Of men and boys there was Piyiti, then about 26, Warlimpirrnga, about 25, Tamayinya, 15, and Walala, 12. The group's only modern tool was an axe-head that Joshua had brought from Balgo. It was said to be so handled and valued that it was polished to a mirror-finish. Warlimpirrnga had grown into the role of big-game provider. "I would spear mala [kangaroos], emus, pussycat, rabbits, snake," says Warlimpirrnga. "It was easy to catch them. I made my spear sharp with a limestone rock."

Read the whole thing. You'll be alternately proud to be a human being like these nine, and amazed at humanity's folly, no matter how technologically primitive or advanced.

Weird Wide Web

I refuse to comment on this story.

The Earth is Officially Flat

...at least, in Saudi Arabia.

To see why, have a look at The Platygaen Qu'ran.

It was not always so.

At the peak of their culture the Muslims did not believe in a flat earth; owing to their extensive translation of Greek materials, they accepted the Ptolemaic spherical-earth view.

But the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism has caused such innovative, modernistic notions to be discarded.

In 1993, Sheikh Al-Azeez bin Baaz, the supreme religious authority of Saudi Arabia, declared that the earth is flat, and that anyone saying otherwise is an atheist deserving of punishment.[1]

Few Judeo-Christian theologians - even fundamentalist ones - still credit the view that the Earth is disc-shaped, and separated from waters above and below by a hemisphere of beaten metal (see illustration), rather like those small paperweights you can sometimes see, the ones with snowflakes in them.

References :
[1] Yousef M. Ibrahim, "Muslim Edicts take on New Force", The New York Times, February 12, 1995, p. A-14. (NYT Online archive only goes back to 1996), quoted in The New Statesman and elsewhere.

I was very careful to check out the bona fides of this fatwa. There's already too much misinformation on the net. I've yet to find a copy in English of the good Sheik's Magnum Opus "Evidence that the Earth is Standing Still" published by the Islamic University of Medina in 1974, (the ones with the lines

If the earth is rotating as they claim, the countries, the mountains, the trees, the rivers, and the oceans will have no bottom and the people will see the eastern countries move to the west and the western countries move to the east.

on page 23 ) but the fatwa seems pretty much proven.

More discussion on the Islamic Flat Earth (or not) is at the Al Bawaba, Islamic, and TakingITGlobal Fora (Forums).

For what it's worth, the few Muslims that I know personally are more like this guy:

This style of "keep-your-mouth-shut", suppress other opinions, islam could never produce such a Golden Age of diversity and over-all tolerance as too many good-hearted people are too quickly finding out.

When Good Rockets Go Bad

Five of the most spectacular movies of rockets (at least some with live nuclear warheads) not behaving quite according to specifications.

And a list of miscellanea that's uncategorisable.
Examples include:

• The Banned Dr Seuss Book
• Estimates of World GDP, from 1 million BC to the present
• Fungus Of The Month
• Audio Out-Takes from Casey Casem, Larry King, Col Sanders.. and my favourite, Connie Chung
• Scans of Galileo's Notes on Motion

Moonbat of the Year Award

In the Left Corner ( and I do mean Left...) Trots In Space
And in the So-far-Right-he's-past-Alpha-Centauri corner, Joe "The Joos Nuked Bali" Vialls

We report, you decide.

Sachost.Exe Removal Instructions

Monitoring the referrals to this site, I'm getting an increasing number of hits per hour from Google, people looking for sachost.exe or sachost.exe removal. I've also had some e-mails thanking me for the help. Anyway, if you're a visitor looking for help on disposing of this trojan, the instructions are here.

I suppose I should put in a disclaimer about "use these instructions at your own risk", but won't. Use common sense. If you're not sure you can follow the instructions ( editting the register is open-heart surgery on your computer, it's really easy to kill the patient by one small slip ), then go find a tame geek. They'll be glad to help, if only to show off their prowess.

I've also received a second e-mail that attempted to infect me with a Trojan - but now my defences are a little better ( there was a Microsoft patch from April 13 I didn't know about), and I don't even know which trojan it was, it didn't penetrate far enough for me to ID it. Be very careful of any e-mail whose header is Question for seller -- Item #nnnnnnnnn where nnnnnnnnn is a 9-digit number.

More details on people's experience with sachost.exe are available on an e-bay forum.

If this has been any help to you at all, please consider hitting the Tip Jar, as it's been 4 months since my last pay cheque. All major credit cards and Pay Pal accepted. But it's purely voluntary.

Memo to Telstra

From the ABC comes an article about just one of the world's daily tragedies.

The South Australian Coroner Wayne Chivell has heard a young mother dialled 911 when she discovered her infant son unconscious in the bath.

Coroner Chivell today delivered his findings into the death of seven-month-old Christopher John Smith at Elizabeth East, in Adelaide's north, in November 2002.

He referred to evidence from Amanda Hamlyn who said she dialled 911 when she found her son Christopher in the bath.

This is the emergency number used in the United States.

She had no success with that number.

In Australia the emergency number is 000.

A suggestion : bearing in mind that in real emergencies, people tend to panic - to act instinctively rather than calmly and rationally; and bearing in mind that a lot of people may not actually know the 000 number, nor have a phone book handy to look it up (on the first page in BIG FRIENDLY LETTERS); and bearing in mind that we have a lot of Americans visit the joint; and finally, bearing in mind that due to Coca-Colonisation of the airwaves, most kids are likely to know 911 as an emergency number; then wouldn't it be an idea to route all calls to 911 to the 000 service? And maybe the 999 ones as well, to cater for all our Pom visitors? Even a recorded message telling them to dial 000 in case of emergency would do the job.

Just a thought.

Roo awarded Purple Cross

Updating a previous post about a most remarkable Roo. From the ABC :

A kangaroo that helped save the life of a Gippsland man has been awarded the RSPCA's [Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] highest honour for bravery, the Purple Cross.

Len Richards was knocked unconscious by a falling tree branch on his Tanjil South farm last year.

His pet kangaroo, Lulu, came to his rescue by barking to attract his family's attention.

Mr Richards says it also seems Lulu applied some first aid.

"My nephew when he got to my side said she'd actually tipped me on my side and vomit was coming out of my mouth so she'd actually saved me from choking," he said.

He says Lulu has shared a strong bond with his family since they rescued it from its dead mother's pouch by a roadside.

"We proceeded to bottle feed it with a proper formula and that's how Lulu the kangeroo came about," he said.

"Pet" Kangaroo seems a bit of a misnomer.

"She's a free ranging kangeroo, she visits around at different farms and then she comes back to our house at 6:00 o'clock on the dot, taps on the door for a teddy bear biscuit.

"If it's cold outside she'll walk in and go and lie right in front of the open fire."

Virussed by sachost

Darn, my unbroken record of "never having had a virus on my machine" is now Kaput. None of the standard virus-checkers I've used (including Symantec and Trend Micro) can detect it - yet. It sliced through my first few lines of defence like they weren't there. It got caught by my Firewall before it could do any damage, but that line of defence is well beyond the tolerable boundary.

It appears that all you have to do to get it is to a) Use a Microsoft Operating System ( Yes, I know, that's my first mistake), b) Use Outlook Express as the mail client, and c) Attempt to read the wrong e-mail. You don't have to open an attachment, and I don't think you even have to click on a hyperlink - if you can receive html mail, it could do an immediate re-direct to the malware site.

I'm still trying to track down the exact sequence of events causing infection, and make sure that no damage was caused to the system.

It's not properly a Virus, but a Trojan, and from looking at its internals, it probably originated in Russia. It logs keystrokes, and reports things like your password files to a 3rd party site. Until it gets a proper name, I'll call it "sachost". It's a variant of the Ibiza Trojan, so will probably be called "Ibiza-something" when it finally gets named.

How can you tell if you've been infected?

First, use your task manager ( or on Win98, hit CTRL-ALT-DEL once ). If you see the processes sachost, sachosts, sachostc on the list, you've got troubles. If you haven't got a Firewall installed, then ALL YOUR PASSWORDS MAY HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED. You must change all the ones you care about, be it to eBay, Amazon, PayPal, or whatever (but not just yet!). If you change them now, they'll be logged, and sent to the Mafya sometime in the next five or ten minutes (I haven't tracked down when it sends the data, there's quite a few candidate IP addresses in the code, plus proxies).

Here's how to get rid of the thing (if you're using Win98, anyway):
First, if you're not totally sure what you're doing, disconnect from the Internet and go find a Tame Geek. Otherwise, continue as follows:
a) Terminate the 3 processes sachost, sachosts, sachostc using the Task manager. End them.
b) Use the regedit utility (Start->Run->type in "regedit") to find the line Onlune Sarvice"="%Windir%\sachost.exe or possibly c:\windows\sachost.exe and delete it. (this will stop it from automatically re-starting when you start the computer up again)
c) Restart
d) Now make a note of the timestamp of creation of the files C:\Windows\msrt32.dll and C:\Windows\sachost.exe. Then delete them. msrt32.dll is the beast's black heart, the invisible process that logs keystrokes. If you're curious, open C:\Windows\sysini.ini using Notepad to see what the nasty little trojan was going to report back to base. Then blow it away, delete it too.
e) Finally, delete C:\Windows\System\sachostc.exe and C:\Windows\System\sachosts.exe

After step c), it should be safe to go change your passwords, but I'd wait till step e)'s finished just to be certain. Send e-mails to the appropriate sites, saying that any transactions after the timestamp you noted in step d) should be treated as suspect/fraudulent. If you used your Credit Card on the net since that time, go cancel it now. If you did any on-line banking since that time, get your account frozen immediately, and inform the bank what has happened. Hopefully, you still have some money in them. Of course if you have a Firewall, it should have stopped any data from escaping, and you don't need to change any passwords. etc. Assuming it's a good Firewall, that is. ZoneAlarm is fine.

The first mention of this Trojan "in the wild" that I've found is on the 22nd, and I repeat, none of the standard virus checkers appear to be able to recognise it yet. Perhaps Ad-Aware could have, but by the time I ran that, I'd already cleaned up the infection.

I feel like a homeowner who's come home to find the front door lock jemmied open, the burglar-alarm disconnected, the whole place turned over, and signs where the thieves have attempted (and failed) to open the safe.

UPDATE : The Symantec on-line scanner does detect the presence of the beast. It recognises parts of the sachost.exe file as being a Backdoor Trojan. But the rest of the stuff isn't detected.

UPDATE : From reader Orlando Colamatteo :

Symantec Corporate AV Def 5/5/2004 rev. 8 recognised sachost.exe as trojan and quarantined it.

He also corrected some typoes in the instructions for editing the registry. Thanks, Orlando.

As far as I know, no anti-virus system as at 5/5/2004 recognises the sachosts.exe, sachostc.exe and msrt32.dll files as well. I've seen a report that Ad Aware doesn't recognise them as malwear either, but haven't confirmed that.

If you find this advice useful, well, the Tip Jar takes Paypal and all major credit cards, should you wish to make a donation of a dollar or two. But it's strictly voluntary.

Today is ANZAC Day

Please read my article in The Command Post.

Weird Wide Web

From the AP, via The Australian :

SOUTH ORANGE, New Jersey: A 12-year-old student has been suspended after school officials accused him of threatening a teacher with a deadly weapon -- peanut butter biscuits.

Jules Gabriel has been banned from class since April 2 after allegedly threatening to use the biscuit on a teacher who is highly allergic to peanuts.

His father, Loubert Gabriel, admitted his son had a packet of Nutter Butter brand biscuits and made a comment about having "something dangerous". But he added: "They mishandled this."

School superintendent Peter Horoschak said several classmates said Jules waved a biscuit over his head and said he would use it against the teacher to prevent being put on detention.

It could have been worse... he could have threatened to use Pork Brains in Milk Gravy.

A Palestinian Week

From Victor Davis Hanson :

The Palestinians will, in fact, get their de facto state, though one that may be now cut off entirely from Israeli commerce and cultural intercourse. This is an apparently terrifying thought: Palestinian men can no longer blow up Jews on Monday, seek dialysis from them on Tuesday, get an Israeli paycheck on Wednesday, demonstrate to CNN cameras about the injustice of it all on Thursday — and then go back to tunneling under Gaza and three-hour, all-male, conspiracy-mongering sessions in coffee-houses on Friday. Beware of getting what you bomb for.

There are signs of hope though. For example, one editorial from Pakistan... Sometimes it's difficult to remember that the vast majority of people on this planet are decent human beings, regardless of cultural differences. Much of History is Tragedy, rather than Melodrama.

Good against Good is Tragedy; Good against Evil is Melodrama

This should not blind us to the fact that some people are just plain Bad to the Bone. And others... Hitler had great affection for his Dog, until he killed him with a Cyanide capsule just to see if it worked. Goebbels loved his five young daughters, but gave them a cyanide capsule each too. No doubt many suicide bombers are absolutely certain that they are doing the Right Thing. No doubt many American attack helicopter pilots are very uncertain of their complete moral rectitude when firing rockets into a building where fire's coming from (but which may contain innocent civilians), even if it saves many lives.

The London Necropolis Company

In keeping with the somewhat macabre mood of the previous post, it's time for me to post an interesting URL : Riding the Death Line :

During the first half of the 19th century, the capital’s population had more than doubled and the number of London corpses requiring disposal was growing almost as fast. Cemetery space in the city had spectacularly failed to keep pace with this growth.
[...]
The man who came up with the answer was Sir Richard Broun. In 1849, he proposed buying a huge tract of land at what is now the Surrey village of Brookwood to build a vast new cemetery for London’s dead. The 2,000-acre plot he had in mind – soon dubbed “London’s Necropolis” – was about 25 miles (40km) from the city, far enough away to present no health hazard and cheap enough to allow for affordable burials. The railway line from Waterloo to Southampton, Broun realised, could offer a practical way to transport coffins and mourners alike between London and the new cemetery.

The idea of using the railways to link London to the new rural cemeteries had been in the air for some years when Broun presented his plan, but not everyone was convinced. Many thought the clamour and bustle they associated with train travel would not suit the dignity demanded of a Christian funeral.

There were other fears too. In 1842, questioned by a House of Commons Select Committee, Bishop of London Charles Blomfield said he thought respectable mourners would find it offensive to see their loved ones’ coffins sharing a railway carriage with those of their moral inferiors. “It may sometimes happen that persons of opposite characters might be carried in the same conveyance,” he warned. “For instance, the body of some profligate spendthrift might be placed in a conveyance with the body of some respectable member of the church, which would shock the feelings of his friends.”

It is worth remembering that, in 1842, train travel itself was still a novelty....

Worth a read. And I wonder just how many of today's burning issue re Genetic Engineering, Gay Marriage and so on will seem as, er, quaint, 160 years hence as the well-meaning Bishop's notions?

Unlike the London Mortuary station, which was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in 1941, the Antipodean equivalent (built 1867) survived, and was used until 1948. Fully restored, it's visible from every train that departs Sydney Central if you know where to look.

Some more quotes from the article (which really is worthing reading in toto) :

As people got used to the trains, they gradually came to accept them, even giving them affectionately tasteless nicknames such as “the dead meat train” or “the stiffs’ express”.
[...]
The discrepancy in ticket prices had arisen because LNC’s fares were fixed by the 1854 Act which created the company, and not increased again until 1939. By 1902, when LNC’s replacement terminus opened, this had produced a situation where a First Class return ticket from Waterloo to Brookwood cost eight shillings on L&SWR’s normal service, but only six shillings on the Necropolis trains. Golfers travelling from London to West Hill Golf Club, which stood right next to Brookwood’s grounds, sometimes took advantage of this, dressing up as mourners to ride the Necropolis train down, and so pay a lower fare. The remains of a rough footpath from Brookwood Station to West Hill’s clubhouse can still be seen at the cemetery, and Clarke believes it was cheapskate golfers who originally tramped it down.
[...]
For anyone who could afford it, First Class travel on the Necropolis trains conferred some very definite privileges. First Class passengers were relentlessly pampered at every stage of the journey, and constantly protected from having to mix with the lower orders.

RTWT (Read The Whole Thing).

This is just... Sick

The Plush Ebola Virus.

Latest product from GiantMicrobes

We make stuffed animals that look like tiny microbes—only a million times actual size! Now available: The Common Cold, The Flu, Sore Throat, Stomach Ache, Bad Breath, Kissing Disease, Athlete's Foot, Ulcer, Martian Life, Beer & Bread, Black Death, Ebola, Dust Mite, Bed Bug, and Bookworm.
[...]
They make great learning tools for parents and educators, as well as amusing gifts for anyone with a sense of humor!

A Sick sense of humour, that is. Like the one I've got.

Time Travel for Fun and Profit

Seen via The Eternal Golden Braid : How to Time Travel for beginners. Unfortunately, because it's a seriously scientific site, you have to start out with a torroidal (doughnut-shaped) rotating black hole the mass of a reasonable-sized star. Tricky, that.
Then there are the problems regarding Hawking Radiation and so on. Though if you can collapse a star to order, I imagine they'd be relatively minor.
Sub-pages contain details about Lorentz Transformations and Dirac's Negative Mass Energy that are about as simple and well-explained as it's possible for them to be. A lot of hard work went into making this subject as easy to understand as possible - which may not be much to those without a degree in Physics, I'm afraid.

Oh yes, when anywhere near a Black Hole, don't forget your Life Preserver.

Zen and the Art of Cascading Style Sheets

Here's a programming post, which hopefully will be both comprehensible and interesting for non-programmers, especially ones who Blog or are thinking of Blogging.

A document, be it an article, a sentence, or a complete blog, can be divided into two parts: the Content, and the Format the content is expressed in.

Here's a simple example: consider the content, Mary had a little lamb.

This could be reified, implemented, published or what you will in a variety of formats, such as:

Mary had a little lamb

Mary had a little lamb
Mary had a little lamb
Mary had
a little lamb

...and so on.

Other content can have the same format, such as

Its fleece was white as snow

So Content and Format are two separate things.

This concept can be extended to much larger documents, such as Blogs. Blogger, for example, provides a number of Templates for anyone blogging to use. These templates provide a number of pre-defined styles. They can be changed at will, but most people don't bother. This is why so many blogs look similar in style. By the way, this blog uses a fairly popular template, but modified a bit so the links go on the left rather than the right. Anyway, all the blogger has to do is specify which template they're going to use when they first create their blog, then just supply content thereafter - the template does all the rest.

The recommended way of doing this in general is with Cascading Style Sheets - css for short. Unfortunately, different browsers - such as Internet Explorer, Opera, and Netscape - interpret CSSs in subtly different ways. But the Gurus of css can make them do miraculous things. Here's some example of exactly the same content, but with different stylesheets applied:

The CSS Zen Garden .....
with the Edo and Tokyo stylesheet applied...
or the 15 Petals stylesheet...
or (my favourite), the Wiggles the Wonder Worm stylesheet.

It's the same content - just expressed in different styles.

We have to touch people

From The Belmont Club :

The most dangerous thing about the Internet from the point of view of those who would create a totalitarian or theocratic state is that it allows people to see others as men -- who may disagree, or who on reflection decide to fight -- but men nonetheless. The average person is never wholly unaware, as some academics are, of the humanity of other people. Nor is the average person wholly indifferent to concrete evil and imminent danger. Both are real and ancient things, ignored by those who live in a bubble of artificial laughter and contrived wit, but alive to those who meet them in the everyday. The Los Angeles Times article on Marine Corps snipers drives home how these marksmen, who live closer to the enemy than the ethereal postmodernist beings who jeer them, can never seek solace in abstractions. They must glimpse the faces of those they are about to shoot, the horror and necessity of the act combining in the single pull of the trigger, doomed to live in a world of specifics: fighting identifiable evils and performing individual acts of kindness. In this strange universe an Italian rips off a hood and with a final shout proclaims himself undefeated. Todd Beamer crashes an aircraft that others might live. Chief Wiggles raises money for children whose names he knows. And somewhere in Riyadh a Saudi makes excuses to his mother.

Only the Grand Inquisitors stand apart, disdainful alike of both kindness and human weakness, full of schemes and plots. And of their false truces and cunning offers we should have no part except to answer it with silence (as in Dostoeveky's parable) and to go get a beer.

When I read this, I recalled the late Jacob Bronowski's words as he crouched in the mud at Auschwitz, and let a handful of it slip through his fingers. We have to touch people.

Cross Contamination

Time for a Space Post.

I've long suspected that there are parts of the Hoyle-Wickramasingh Hypothesis that are more likely correct than not.

OK, WTF is the Hoyle-Whatchamacallit Hypothesis? (Which I'll call the HWH for short).

Basically, look at the conditions on Earth when Life-as-we-know-it is believed to have formed. Water available, Carbon available, unfiltered sunlight available, and a clay or other substrate (floor) with regularities that would encourage formation of complex compounds.

The take a look at the conditions in the Oort cloud, in insterstellar gas clouds, and in infalling comets. A few quick mathematical calculations will show that theres heaps, piles, zillions more places where conditions like this exist in Space than on a planet's surface. The difference between a few flecks of paint on the surface of some very small marbles, and great vats of paint the size of Jupiter. Now whether the difference is mere Billions or Trillions or something much greater really doesn't matter, the weak form of the HWH says that Life more probably evolved "out there" than "down here". The strong form states that we're constantly being bombarded with biochemical material from space, and that there's a correlation between Viral outbreaks and patterns of infall.

I'm not convinced of the latter. The "fossil bacteria" found in some meteors may be exactly that, or they may be unusual non-living crystal growths.

On the other hand, we know from Surveyor 3 that some common earthly bacteria are hardy brutes, capable of surving in space for some years. Though there is some evidence that the initial reports may have been the result of cross-contamination.

But there's another form of cross-contamination: Martian meteors have been found in Antarctica. (Why Antarctica? Because that's the best place they'd be preserved intact. Dark objects on White backgrounds are easy to find, too)

And now it appears that we've found the other part of the puzzle : similar material on Mars.

NASA's Opportunity rover has examined an odd volcanic rock on the plains of Mars' Meridiani Planum region with a composition unlike anything seen on Mars before, but scientists have found similarities to meteorites that fell to Earth.

"We think we have a rock similar to something found on Earth," said Dr. Benton Clark of Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, science-team member for the Opportunity and Spirit rovers on Mars.

We haven't found Earth-formed rock on Mars yet, but the evidence indicates there's been an exchange of material between the Earth and Mars - and a pretty hefty one, otherwise the odds of finding such a rock so quickly would be, er, astronomical. (Sorry).

That means there's likely been a lesser exchange with every planetary body in the Solar System- including Europa.

Put all the clues together, and they indicate that Life-as-we-know-it, carbon-based, water-soluble life, could be incredibly prolific throughout the Universe. Absolutely everywhere it can exist, in fact. And Cross-Contamination means that every bit will have startling resemblances to every other bit, say as much as Botulinum Bacteria does to Elephants, or Tobacco Mozaic Virus does to Goldfish. (Which is quite a lot, from a biochemical viewpoint).

Quote of the Week

We don’t make a distinction between civilians and non-civilians, non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. Only between Muslims and unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever has no value. It has no sanctity.

-Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, head of the al Muhajiroun group in London. (Reuters)

Brain Cache Found

From Nature :

The number of things you can hold in your mind at once has been traced to one penny-sized part of the brain.

The finding surprises researchers who assumed this aspect of our intelligence would be distributed over many parts of the brain. Instead, the area appears to form a bottleneck that might limit our cognitive abilities, researchers say.

"This is a striking discovery," says John Duncan, an intelligence researcher at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK.

Most people can hold three or four things in their minds at once when given a quick glimpse of an image such as a collection of coloured dots, or lines in different orientations. If shown a similar image a second later, they will be able to recognise whether three or four of these spots and lines are identical to the first set or not.

But some people can only catch one or two things in a glance, while others can capture up to five.

This very short-term memory capacity is thought to be related to intelligence. In the same way that a computer with a larger working memory can crank through problems more quickly, people with a greater capacity for holding images in their heads are expected to have better reasoning and problem-solving skills.

Two research teams operating independently using different techniques have come to the same conclusion: that this "Short Term Working Memory" is implemented by one small section of the brain, in Humans anyway.
Such a "Short Term Working Memory" is essentially the same as a "Cache" in Computer Science terms. For example, your browser has a "Cache" of recently-visited sites and images, so that if you hit the foward and back buttons rapidly, the data doesn't have to be retrieved again over the Internet, it's available quickly.
What does this mean for research on Intelligence? Bugadifino, as they say in the Classics. But it's a significant step in the journey to a better understanding of how our minds work.

Small is Beautiful

Today's interesting URL is one for the Culture Vultures : Willard Wigan's wondrous artwork.

Willard can create a masterpiece within the eye of a tiny sewing needle, on the head of a pin, the tip of an eyelash or a grain of sand. Some are many times smaller than the fullstop at the end of this sentence.
[...]
Willard, who is completely self-taught has baffled medical science and been the subject of discussions among micro-surgeons, nano-technologists and at universities worldwide. His work is ground-breaking - partly because of the astounding beauty of vision which challenges the belief system of the mind and partly because it demonstrates that if one person can create the impossible, we all have the potential to transcend our own limiting beliefs about what we are capable of.
[...]
When working on this scale he slows his heartbeat and his breathing dramatically through meditation and attempts to harmonise his mind, body and soul with the Creator. He then sculpts or paints at the centrepoint between heartbeats for toTal stillness of hand. He likens this process to "trying to pass a pin through a bubble without bursting it." His concentration is intense when working like this and he feels mentally and physically drained at the end of it.

Low Sense of Humour Part 2

I suspect that there is a strong correlation between belonging to the medical profession and having a Low sense of humour. At the second medical blog I've sampled, I came across some descriptions of events that left me in stitches (figuratively anyway). For example, the post about the cat on the laptop...

(First medical bog mentioned here)

New Search Engine Installed

If you look at the Search box to your left, you'll see that I've installed a new one. The old one was good as long as the site only had a dozen pages, but over the months just couldn't cope.

Still, the price was right ( i.e. free ) so no complaints. Feel free to e-mail me if you strike any problems with the new one (the price on this one was also right). The index should be updated approximately daily, but I might have to set it to weekly instead.

Cyborg Development Report - Braingate

From the New York Times :

The company, Cyberkinetics Inc., plans to implant a tiny chip in the brains of five paralyzed people in an effort to enable them to operate a computer by thought alone.

The Food and Drug Administration has given approval for a clinical trial of the implants, according to the company.

The implants, part of what Cyberkinetics calls its BrainGate system, could eventually help people with spinal cord injuries, strokes, Lou Gehrig's disease or other ailments to communicate better or even to operate lights and other devices through a kind of neural remote control.

"You can substitute brain control for hand control, basically," said Dr. John P. Donoghue, chairman of the neuroscience department at Brown University and a founder of Cyberkinetics, which hopes to begin the trial as early as next month.
[...]
"Among many people in the field, there's a feeling now that the time is here for moving the technology to test in humans," said Dr. Richard A. Andersen, professor of neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology, who is working on his own device for the brain. Still, for the trial, there is trepidation mixed with anticipation.

"A disaster at this early stage could set the whole field back," said Dr. Dawn M. Taylor, a research associate at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical Center, who is testing similar systems in monkeys.
[...]
Though Cyberkinetics is not the first to try neural control in people, it seems the most intent on bringing a product to market, perhaps by 2007 or 2008, said its chief executive, Timothy R. Surgenor.

Started in 2001 and based in Foxborough, Mass., the company has raised $9 million for the project.

Timeframe pretty much as predicted.

For Background reading, see previous posts:
Cyborg Liberation Front
Upgrade Your Brain to Wireless
More on Cyborgs
Cyborgs and Hybrots and Borg, Oh My!
Today's Brain Links (I)
Today's Brain Links (II)
and of course my article from January on this subject:
Today's Brain Article : Braingate.

Graduation Day

After a hectic 300km-there and 300km-back daytrip to the Wagga Wagga Campus of Charles Sturt University, I can now style myself Alan E Brain, BSc. MInfoTech(Dist).
Actually it's the first and only time I've been physically present at the University where I was studying. Nice to see some of the faces behind the e-mails.

54 Good Reasons

Why we had to go into Iraq.

The first 53 are detailed in this document, courtesy of USAID.

Since the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown in May, 270 mass graves have been reported. By mid-January, 2004, the number of confirmed sites climbed to fifty-three. Some graves hold a few dozen bodies, their arms lashed together and the bullet holes in the backs of skulls testimony to their execution. Other graves go on for hundreds of meters, densely packed with thousands of bodies.

The 54th is from an e-mail sent by a friend of mine in Israel. It's so that no-one has to hear a radio broadcast like this ever again.

Thanks to TCP reader Ronnie Schreiber, here is a translation:

We all recognize that signal that we have just heard. This is a genuine alert. There is a missile attack on Israel. All Isreali residents should immediately put on their gas masks and should go into their sealed rooms and place their families in the room. The room should be sealed with rags and with adhesive tape. As is known and recognized, stop your normal activities, check on your children and put on their gas masks in the correct manner, and continue to listen to us. This is a genuine alert, a missile attack on Israel and we will have more details as they come in… To review procedures in the sealed room, do not sit near exterior walls or walls adjacent to the exterior walls. Stay near the interior walls. Don’t face the exterior walls. Sit on the floor…If you have a family check on your children, make sure you have the key to the lock so you can lock the door, and proceed to your sealed room. This message will be repeated in Russian.

Beagle Found!

<satire>
At least, according to one report found via Google News. And it looks like sabotage by the Americans.

The Americans, wishing to avoid the ignominy of the British upstaging their Mars lander missions have been under suspicion for some time by the British Beagle 2 team and a chance discovery of a pile of empty Budweiser beer cans outside the Jodrell Bank fence, was the first clue in their dastardly plot.
[...]
Tony Blair is said to be fuming at the Americans, because he was promised that there would be no transatlantic intereference in this mission, unlike the previous 33 British attempts at putting a man on the moon.

</satire>

From the Universe Next Door...

A Book Review.

A Revolution in International Affairs

A quiet but crucially important revolution is occurring in International Affairs. Long-standing principles are being rapidly eroded. But you can't understand what the situation was in the 20th century, how we got there, where we are going and why, without examining history, and especially European history. This is mainly a story about Wars, thereby illustrating the (partial) truth in Mao's maxim : "Power grows out of the barrel of a gun". It's a long story, not easily condensed. Please bear with me, as I'm doing a bit of a Den Beste here.

It's been a long-standing principle that a respect for National Sovereignty is the best guarantee for keeping the peace. One country's Government should not "Interfere in the Internal Affairs" of another. No matter how odious matters may be in a neighbouring state, as long as borders were not violated, no International Law was broken. No military intervention was legal.

There are some good reasons for the adoptation of this principle: different states often have different and incompatible religious beliefs. Whether in Islam or Christianity, Sunni or Shia, Protestant or Catholic, Hindu or Buddhist, Communist or Capitalist, National Socialism or Socialist Democracy. The European 30 Years War of the 17th century showed what could happen when Religious War broke out. There was a backlash, and it was in the 18th century, that formal Rules of War were codified. The vast majority of a nation's populace was hardly aware that one bunch of soldiers replaced another bunch in some province or other. War was "the Sport of Kings", where a border principality or two might change hands now and then, but with little disruption to daily life, and remarkably few casualties to the professional soldiers. It was in everybody's interest - everybody who counted, ie those with wealth and power, anyway - to keep the system going "as was". The stately pavane of often bloodless manouver and counter-manouver during the 7 years war was the result.

The Napoleonic Wars on the other hand (and in one view, they started in 1776 in the USA) were wars of Ideology. On one hand, a Democratic state (that in France soon devolved into a bloodthirsty Oligarchy, then a radical modern state under a Military Dictatorship), on the other, the same old gang of Monarchs, some totally under Parliament's thumb (the UK) , some completely Autocratic (Russia), and many somewhere in-between. Napoleon swept away the old mini-feudalities and customs-posts every 5 miles, instituted a code of laws throughout Europe, and basically founded a European Union some 200 years before the current one.

He also sent hit-squads to assassinate emigres overseas, expanded and institutionalised the old monarchist Secret Police to liquidate opponents at home, set relatives in positions of power throughout the Empire, and tore up international treaties whenever it suited him. Wherever the Grande Armee went, it had to "live off the land". Any province it passed through two or more times in a year was reduced to a howling desert, occupied only by the corpses of the starved inhabitants. Other, less modern armies, were compelled to have an expensive, slow baggage-train that contained food, not just ammunition, so the cost more and were at a great disadvantage when it came to mobility.

After Napoleon had been finally defeated, the Congress of Vienna not only re-drew the map of Europe, but set in concrete the "old order" of the previous century. War as the "Sport of Kings" could still occur ( and did, notably in the minor wars that unified Germany - along with border provinces of Austria, France, Poland, and Denmark - under a Prussian Emperor ). Growing Alliances between major European powers meant that War became more and more costly, and therefore less and less likely. But any War would be a catastrophe, and the whole brittle edifice crashed in the bloodbath of World War I. (Which was Actually World War III, as the 7 Years War and Napoleonic Wars had action in more continents than did World War I, but I digress. )

Bear with me, I'm getting there.

Where was I... Oh yes, The Great War. The War To End All Wars.

This started as an old-fashioned Monarchic war, but soon evolved into a Religious one. Germans started fighting for King and Emperor, but soon fought for a "Place in the Sun", a slice of the colonial cake that had been unjustly denied them by the powers-that-were. It was only when Germany invaded Belgium (with whom the UK had a treaty) that the UK became involved in the Fracas. Soon a battle for "Plucky Little Belgium" became a battle against the Beastly Hun, no respecter of Neutrals. France fought to regain Alsace-Lorraine (and French pride), Russia fought to justify Russia's suzerainty as representative of all Slavs, the USA joined in because of general German obnoxiousness and I'm digressing again.

What is important is that the Victors in 1918 examined the cause of the war - and decided it was all Germany's fault. Which it was (though Austria was to blame too). Bismark's strategy of unification and consolidation through diplomacy (where he could) or short, victorious wars (where he couldn't) had been abandoned in favour of a "Might Makes Right" philosophy.

Such mass slaughter, such a gehenna must have been the result of some monstrous evil. So it was thought, and so it was. The Evil was determined to be the concept that one Nation-State had attacked another, with no valid reason. This was the new touchstone: the doctrine of National Sovereignty, which had been evolving over the centuries, reached its final form. Within its own borders, a nation was safe from outside intervention. No country could interfere with another's "Internal Affairs". No act was forbidden - provided only that borders were respected. Religous disputes between nations would no longer cause Warfare in all its horror, it was a sort of universal "Freedom of Speech" for all nations. In theory, they could enslave half the population, or set up extermination factories to process minority groups into soot, soap and ashes with no legal problems. Of course, no-one would actually do such things, would they?

The first stirings of Trans-Nationalism - a Religion like any other - can be seen in Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points" speech at the end of the war (though a Marxist could point with some justification to the Comintern as well.).

That emerging Superpower, the USA turned in on itself in an orgy of navel-gazing Isolationism, abandoning Wilson's orphan child, the League of Nations. But the universal ( OK, European - at this point in History, White Folks were the only ones who counted ) revulsion against the Great War was such that a number of nations swore solemnly that they would "Study War No More", at least in squabbles amongst themselves. The Treaty of Locarno established a Permanent Court of International Justice. But the final fruit of World War I was the Kellogg-Briand Pact, where (eventually) no less than 62 nations agreed to Outlaw war as a means of state policy (at least in dealing with squabbles amongst themselves).

It's effectiveness can be judged by the fact that amongst the first signatories were Germany and Poland.

But one thing it did do, was to formally enshrine in International Law the concept of the Crime Against Peace. To quote from the charter of the United Nations,

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,

and then also adds

or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

The first part of that clause was used to hang senior German leaders at Nuremberg. The fact that they'd massacred some 6 million Jews was merely aggravating cuircumstance, it wasn't actually illegal (except insasmuch as the Victors made up the law as they went along). And that says something for the moral bankrupcy of the "Peace at any price" brigade, so strong between the two world wars. Legally, up until Nuremberg, it was all "purely an Internal Affair" and nobody's business but the Germans.

It's said that Queen Victoria refused assent to a Law against Lesbianism, as she considered it impossible that such a thing could exist. Similarly, it can be argued that the fact that there was no actual law against the Holocaust (except Ex Post facto) was purely because the people writing up the Kellogg-Briand pact couldn't conceive of, say, Auschwitz.

If so, I can hardly blame them. I drove around Hohne in Germany, I could never bring myself to visit Belsen. I'm not superstitious, but the whole area gave me a case of the screaming abdabs, something Awful and EVIL had happened nearby. Worse, the feeling overcame me long before I knew exactly where I was, the first time I explored the area.

Regardless of whether the Law existed in an unwritten or written form before 1933, or whether the Nuremberg Tribunal were trying to cloak Justice with the shabby mantle of Law after the fact, Nuremberg did establish that Genocide wasn't just immoral, it was illegal.

To see how well that has worked, just look at the ongoing trial of Slobadan Milosovic. Or the non-trial of Pol Pot.

The Kludge to amend the doctrine of National Sovereignty was supposed to be that second clause of the UN charter. The one about "...or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.", along with Article 43 of Chapter 7 of the UN charter. Some relevant sections: First, the Nod to national Sovereignty in Chapter 1:

7. Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll.

Now the Teeth in Chapter 7, article 43:

1. All Members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security, undertake to make available to the Security Council, on its call and in accordance with a special agreement or agreements, armed forces, assistance, and facilities, including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.
2. Such agreement or agreements shall govern the numbers and types of forces, their degree of readiness and general location, and the nature of the facilities and assistance to be provided.
3. The agreement or agreements shall be negotiated as soon as possible on the initiative of the Security Council. They shall be concluded between the Security Council and Members or between the Security Council and groups of Members and shall be subject to ratification by the signatory states in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.

Have you noticed something? The complete absence of Black Helicopters? Where is the Multinational army, big enough to take on any opponent and win, that's supposed to be at the disposal of the UN Security Council? The fact is, that not one single soldier has ever been provided exclusively for the UNSC under this article. All "Blue-Helmet" UN forces are provided on an ad-hoc basis, and responsible to their national authority, not the UNSC.

The UN was supposed to not merely provide the teeth to enforce Justice, it was supposed to decide what Justice was, to avoid Religious Warfare and doctrinal differences (rather than truly moral ones) sparking warfare. The bar was set fairly low -- as I've blogged about before. But the UN has failed in its obligations.

Now we come to one of the defining moments of history : 9/11.

Before that date, it was reasonable to get by with the old 1920's world tarted up. Yes, millions died in various genocides here and there, but they were usually non-Whites, so didn't really count to most (Western) people. As long as no borders were crossed, everything was fine. It was best expressed by Swedish premier Olaf Palme who said (after the not-exactly-terrific Vietnamese had kicked the posterior off the incomparably-more-odious Khmer Rouge):

"the fact that the auto-genocide has ended in Cambodia is probably good for the Cambodian people, but one can never excuse an intervention in a neighbouring country".

Read that again. Such Racist, Eurocentric callousness is beyond comprehension.

That was, in fact, the world we lived in, pre 9/11. I didn't realise it at the time. My moral sense had a blind spot, an area where I just didn't think about things too much, it was all too hard, and the existing system was working adequately, and getting better all the time.

But then, Al Qaeda showed that you didn't need a national army to wage war across borders. 9/11 was no "regrettable incident", it was an act of war. The US, purely out of self-defence, can no longer turn a blind eye to hard problems, nor sit around wishing that Article 43 had meant something (and that the Security Council was trustworthy enough to ensure it wasn't misused).

In the absence of a World Policeman both incorruptible and powerful, the US had to turn Vigilante. It gathered up a Posse of nations that could see the writing on the wall (or more cynically, decided that the US's coat-tails were a great place to be), and took action in Afghanistan.

Iraq was in some ways a far more "legal" war - it was in violation of a number of binding UN resolutions, including ones authorising forced cmpliance, but even if it hadn't of been, it was a clear and present danger as a "safe haven" for extra-territorial covert attack. Acts of war committed by stealth, and implasuibly deniable. Trans-border Terrorism.

I distrust Vigilante Justice. Much as I like a lot of Americans personally, and there's much to admire in their system of Government, it's by no means perfect. Had there been any credible alternative, I would have been against any US-dominated action. But there is no credible alternative: we must either trust the US system (which gives me a queasy feeling), or a gaggle of Kleptocrats and petty-Despots. That's an easy choice to make. If the worst comes to the worst, the US is vulnerable to Gandhi's tactics. But so far, they've done pretty well. "Dubya" has genuinely liberated 50 million people, more than anyone since FDR and Churchill. But, and this is a big But, what aout the next administration? Or the one after that? The whole world is at the mercy of that rag-tag mixture of all creeds and colours, ranging from the rational to the dotty, that is the US voting public. Not perfect, not nerely perfect, but vastly better than any of the alternatives, especially the one labelled "Do Nothing".

The Revolution in International affairs is the abandonment of National Sovereignty as an Impenetrable defence against Righteous Retribution. A line on a map no longer defines where justice must stop and watch helplessly. It was planned back in the 40's that the Enforcer be the UNSC, but that hasn't worked out. Instead we have a loose coalition dominated (so far) by the US, one that may become formalised in the near-future.

OK, it took a long time to get there, sorry about that. But had I not simplified things to the point of distortion (and perhaps a bit beyond) it would have been much longer.

Background Articles :

Representing the Old Order
John Pilger : The Crime Commited in Our Name

And the New (and I'd have to say, Improved)
Dr Robert Horvath : Sovereignty can't protect mass killers

Untold Stories of the Cold War #349

From the Sydney Morning Herald :

When Vladimir Petrov, a Russian intelligence officer, walked out of the Soviet embassy and defected to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation in April 1954, Dick Woolcott and Bill Morrison were very junior diplomats in our embassy in Moscow. Woolcott was 26 and Morrison 25. Moscow was their first posting. They held the rank of third secretaries and in the foreign service you don't get any lower.
[...]
Woolcott would later write: "When the first classified cable came in from Canberra [to the Australian embassy in Moscow] foreshadowing the Petrovs' defection, Morrison and I decoded it with the old time-consuming 'one time pad' system. As we laboriously worked our way through and the gist of the message became clear, I said: 'One of us will be out of here in a fortnight. The Russians will reciprocate. They always do.' "

Morrison disagreed. "If we're expelled, I'll drop my daks in Red Square," he said. "You're on," said Woolcott.

Woolcott was right. Within days the Soviet government gave the entire Australian mission of three diplomats, an administrative officer and their wives 48 hours to leave the country, though they were then held virtual hostage for three weeks until all members of the Soviet embassy in Canberra and their dependants had boarded a ship at Fremantle to return home.

However, before the Australian diplomats eventually were allowed to leave Moscow by train, Morrison honoured his boast. He had a taxi take him to Red Square and while, apparently, guards began running towards them, he dropped his trousers and "mooned" the Kremlin before jumping back into the cab and roaring away, his driver having already been given a huge tip.

Morrison ever after was known among colleagues as a man who had trouble with his trousers.

I thought that was a reasonable response to being given the Bum's Rush....

A very special breed

It takes a very special kind of person to become a successful paramedic.

Today's interesting URL is the blog of a paramedic, or in Strine, an Ambo.

Case in point : please read the post about A Paramedic's Worst Nightmare.
Now read this follow-up.

See what I mean about "a very special kind of person"?

He also has a low sense of humour.

What is a Jew?

It's distressing that in this day and age, a definition for Jew should be needed. But please read Normblog to find out why.

Apropos of nothing-at-all, I should be doing some work for UNESCO in the next few days. The pay is pathetic, but I feel more than a trace of guilt for taking any of their money at all. You see, UNESCO - the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, is like a particularly loyal guide dog, infested with worms and other parasites. Few UN organisations are more corrupt. At a guess, my impression is that of every $1.00 pumped in to the organisation, perhaps 3c actually gets spent on something worthwhile, rather than champage-swilling soires for the Nomenklatura. Or worse, anti-Democratic, anti-Western or anti-Semitic agitprop.

But oh, what that 3c buys! Like other UN organisations such as the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organisation), the WHO (World Health Organisation), and the ILO (International Labour Organisation), UNESCO does a lot of good behind the scenes - despite being parasitised almost to the point of mortality. One of the things people highly critical of the UN ( like myself ) often forget is just how much good is done by its various organs, outside the glare of publicity.

The money's already been allocated, and frankly, after 3 months without an income, I could use it. But what I can do is give them value-for-money by doing rather more work than I'm being paid for. I can't make up for all the Kleptocratic tapeworms that infest the entire structure, but I'm egotistical enough to think that maybe I can make up for one of them. "It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness", and this particular project is highly worthwhile in its own right, no matter who the sponsor.

In the 60's, one of the presents lavished on me as a kid by my Uncle Ted was a UNESCO book called 700 Science Experiments for Everyone. From a review:

At the end of World War II, the newly formed United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), noting the shortage of textbooks and teaching materials throughout much of the world, commissioned a book that would allow teachers to devise laboratory experiments with the most common of materials--candles, balls of paper, saucers, odd strands of twine. UNESCO's report grew into this fine and highly useful collection of experiments in the biological, geological, and atmospheric sciences. The experiments illustrate relatively simple facts--how static electricity can be concentrated, how liquids change to gases, how water is purified by passing through charcoal--with only minimal interpretation.

I venture to say that this book alone has done far more practical good in making the world a better place than any number of Pundits, Blogs, Commentators or Editorials. It certainly got me interested in Science and matters Scientific, how the Universe is constructed and what it does. UNESCO has since fallen on hard times, but the spirit behind its original ideals is not quite dead. Perhaps in some miniscule way, I may make just a smidgin, a small scintilla of difference, in making that dim, dim spark glow just a little more brightly. And if not, it can't hurt.

In that same spirit of education and enlightenment, I'll mention again the definition of one word : Jew. It may make no difference, but as I said before, it can't hurt.

TROOPS

Or: Star Wars meets COPS. The full movie is a 26 MB Download, but the various parts are only a few meg each - and the best parts are the first 3.

Drink Warning

I've been told by several e-mails that I should have posted the obligatory "Do not drink near keyboard when reading this" caution before my latest Op Ed piece on The Command Post.

The comments on the article report several instances of laughter-induced posterial separation too. You have Been Warned.

Educational Games

These two from Totally Boring, a misnamed site if ever there was one.

A game for Maxwell's Demons. Go ahead, break the second law of Thermodynamics and have fun, too!

Or perhaps this is your type of game?

Wish List

The sets are out of stock, and finances wouldn't permit me buying it anyway.

But have a look at this. (what do you mean, "it's for children"?).

On the other hand, I need another expense like a hole in the head.

Today's Brain Link(s)

Courtesy of Normblog : The Brain in a Vat conundrum. Anyone who's studied Philosophy will get a chuckle out of the numerous "in-jokes", most of which are explained for the Layperson. Worth a read even for the Philosophically Challenged.

The History of the article is also worth a read in its own right.

While searching for a suitable illustration, I happened to come across a Symposium on the Neuro-Ethics of Brain Damage, which although a bit dry in parts, I have a particular interest in. I suffered some neurological damage due to E-II viral Encephalo-Meningitis in my early 20's. (You could tell, right?). But apart from some lingering Aphasia, and a bit of numbness in the extremities, I've got back over 90% of what I'd lost, and most of that within 10 years of the injury. On the other hand, I gained a greatly increased ability to pick up new languages, an ability that had atrophied almost completely before I'd reached my mid-teens (as my school marks in Latin and German can attest to).

I found the section on Neuro-Prosthetics... very disappointing. The last article in Session 3 was all about the problems poised by damage to the Hippocampus. Yet there was nothing about developments that will make the problems moot in the near future. <sarcasm>It's almost as if Computer Scientists, Psychologists, Neuro-Anatomists and Ethicists aren't talking to one another. </sarcasm>

Not exactly surprising. But as I've blogged before, computational developments (at least) are rapid in this area, even if Psychology is still mostly guesswork. We need to start considering this stuff from an ethical viewpoint, and do it PDQ.

Finally, sthe graphic comes from Brainjar.Com, an interesting site containing experiments in advanced HTML. An avowed "learning resource" rather than a "cut'n'paste" site, useful for anyone wanting to know about Document Object Models (DOM) etc. Worth a look for the expert, and even more so for those wanting to become experts.

Last Post for the first Blogger

Alistair Cooke 1908-2004

A Guide to English Pronunciation

From LOL, courtesy of G'day Mate. Priceless.

A Slice of History

Recently, I became aware that the UK Public Record Office was publishing their Medal Records from World War I on the web. The Great War. The War to End All Wars.

The medals concerned events of nearly a century ago now. But I still remember vividly my Grandad talking to me about his experiences during World War I, at a time when I was just a little older than my son, Andrew is today. I was fascinated by his right hand - the thumb was just a stub, and he only had two fingers, quite different from my own.

He told me of his time in Egypt, when the 9th Battalion, Notts and Derbyshire Regiment (Sherwood Foresters) was training up after being formed. Seeing the Sphinx, and the Pyramids. Stories of the Camel Corps ( he wasn't impressed by Camels - riding them without a saddle was incredibly difficult. He mastered the art, but was never comfortable on them.)

As a sniper, he spent most of his time between the lines of trenches, in "No Man's Land", hunting other snipers. Though he told me that his main duty in the Dardenelles was shooting the pottery insulators of the main telegraph line that ran along a ridge nearly a mile behind enemy lines. Every day, the British snipers would take "pot-shots" at it, and every night the Turks would repair it.

When I was a little older, and made an Airfix plastic model of an Albatross DV, he told me the one thing that really terrified him was when he was caught in No Man's Land by a group of exactly these aircraft, all painted with red noses, who used him for target practice. He had nowhere to hide, couldn't run, and had great difficulty shooting back at such fast-moving targets. From later researches, it's quite probable that the one with the red fuselage (who was a particularly good shot) was the infamous Baron Von Richthofen, though Grandad didn't know that when he told me about it. (The Red Baron was all of 25 when he was killed in 1918). His fire was probably more effective than he realised - he must have gotten uncomfortably close to some of them, as they soon went after easier and more worthwhile prey.

That brings me to the Medal Records. So far, only the A-B section is available. There are few advantages to having a surname like "Brain", but this is one case where it was useful. I used the (free) Search Form, then got out my Credit card and paid my three pounds for a download of Grandad's records.

I've made them available free of charge here as a 186k PDF file. Grandad's records are in the bottom-right of the second page.

Grandad must have enlisted as soon as he was old enough, on 9th November, 1914. His first taste of action was at a place called Gallipoli. As a sniper, he went in in the first wave of every landing, to cover the disembarkation of the main force. Then off again, and onto the next one. Naturally, the snipers were also the last out, covering the evacuation.

The 9th battalion (after replacement and reorganisation) was sent to the Western Front, and in August 1916 took part in the Battle of the Somme, and later, Passchendaele.

The medal records show that Grandad was eventually discharged due to grave wounds on 14th December, 1918 (Hence the award of the Silver War Badge). Much of his right arm and hand had been blown off, his lungs had been damaged by Mustard Gas and Chlorine over the years (and had lost a pir of boots, burnt by a shell that fell between his feet...but didn't detonate), and his torso was full of shrapnel. He'd still sometimes find one or two bits in his bed as late as the 60's, and a piece eventually worked its way into his heart and killed him shortly after I last saw him.

The odds of anyone enlisting in 1914, seeing action on the front line, and surviving nearly intact were slim. The odds of anyone on the front line surviving the entire war from 1914 through to 1918 mostly whole were astronomical. The odds of surviving Gallipoli, and the Somme, and Passchendaele, and being shot at by the Red Baron... beggar the imagination. Yet had he not, my Father wouldn't have been born, and thus neither would I, nor my son Andrew.

Which gives me pause.

"Liberty" University

At first, I thought their Code of Conduct was a parody. But looking through the website, and examining the HTML source, it looks very much as if it's for real.

A selection of offences and penalties :
4 Reprimands + Written Warning

• Improper personal contact (anything beyond hand-holding)
• Improper sign out
• Music code violation

6 Reprimands + $35 Fine

• Attendance at a dance
• Possession and/or use of tobacco

12 Reprimands + $70 Fine (less previously paid fines)

• Attendance at, possession or viewing of, an "R," "NC-17" or "X"-rated movie
• Participation in an unauthorized petition or demonstration

18 Reprimands + $100 Fine (regardless of previously paid fines) + 18 hours Disciplinary Community Service + 50% Scholarship Reduction

• Association with those consuming alcohol
• Sexual misconduct and/or any state of undress

30 Reprimands + $150 Fine (regardless of previously paid fines) + 30 hours Disciplinary Community Service + possible Administrative Withdrawal and/or possible 100% Scholarship Reduction. NOTE: For each accumulation of six (6) or more reprimands after 30, an additional $150 fine will be assessed.

• Failure of three (3) Christian/Community Services without reconciliation
• Non-participation/disruption/non-compliance (possible removal/exclusion from campus)
• Refusal to submit to an Alco-Sensor test and/or drug test

Anyone in Academe reading this post who has trouble with unruly students - just refer them to this site, and tell them to thank their lucky stars. To paraphrase Arthur Dent, "This is some strange new meaning of the word 'Liberty' which I wasn't previously aware of.

Still, anyone who goes to this place should know what to expect.

Hamas - in their own words

Over at The Command Post, they've reprinted an article of mine about Hamas. In order to understand the organisation, you have only to read their charter. Scary stuff, especially if you're Jewish, or a Rotarian. (Rotarian ? - just go read it. These people are "reality challenged")

Pilger's Verbosity Explained

Today's Brain Link : From the ABC comes this headline :

Big mouths linked to small brains : research

Maybe Pigs really are Flying

From a previous post of December 20, The Tragedy of Transnationalism :

Can the UN be salvaged? I really hope so, but I´m not confident any more. Maybe 3rd Time´s the charm, and we should start with something less ambitious than the UN. Something where a broad adherence to the principles of the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms is required for membership, with continuous review. Something with Teeth to enforce those principles on Tyrannies, yet the flexibility to tolerate minor differences of doctrine - Gay Marriage, Capital Punishment, Gun or Drug Availability, that sort of thing.

Initial members: US, UK, Poland, Spain, Australia?

Maybe the Tragedy of Transnationalism will turn into a Triumph.

Maybe Pigs will Fly.

We can but hope.

Now have a look at this article dated March 19 from the National Journal :

In 1996, a private group called the United Nations Association of the United States of America floated the idea of a caucus solely for democracies. With 120 or so nations (out of 191 U.N. members), such a caucus could serve as a powerful counterweight to the traditional caucuses.

Late in the second Clinton administration, with a push from the State Department, the democracies began to organize. In 2000, 106 democracies gathered for the first meeting of an informal group they called the Community of Democracies. It had no permanent staff or formal powers, but it did produce an endorsement, in principle, of a democracy caucus at the U.N., a stance that the community reaffirmed in a second meeting in 2002 and, most recently, at a U.N. meeting last fall.
[...]
Predictions are risky, but where you see an acorn, it is not crazy to foresee an oak. With a little light and water, the democracy caucus will inevitably grow. In time -- you heard it first here -- it may overshadow the U.N.

In New York, gaining leverage at the U.N. serves the interests of America and all of the other democracies. In Washington, a democracy caucus appeals to conservatives who want America to influence the U.N., and it appeals to liberals who want the U.N. to influence America. "It's a way, in my opinion, of preserving the United Nations as a valuable institution, so it does not follow the path of the League of Nations," says Max M. Kampelman, who was a senior diplomat in the Carter and Reagan administrations.

Guess that makes me a mildly Conservative Liberal. Or a very Liberal Conservative.

But consider the long-term potential. By the time the Community of Democracies becomes strong enough to act coherently inside the U.N., it will also be strong enough to act coherently outside the U.N. It will contain most of the world's countries, including most of the strong ones. It will be unencumbered by the vetoes of tin-pot tyrannies. As it gains confidence and skill, it will attract money and authority. It may sprout an aid budget, a relief program, a peacekeeping arm, perhaps treaty powers.

In other words, the Community of Democracies may begin as a voice within the U.N. but go on to become a competitor to the U.N. Perhaps -- one can dream -- it may someday be the U.N.'s successor.

"United Nations" is an oxymoron. Democracies and dictatorships are mongoose and cobra, with no real hope of uniting except opportunistically. But a community of democracies -- that might just work. It already works in NATO and the E.U. The new community is a fledgling, but many readers of this article may live to see it soar.

What's that going overhead now? And do I hear the faint sound of Oinking?

Recursive : see Recursive

An immensely useful URL : One Look - a Search Engine of Dictionaries. Find out the definitions of a word given in all major on-line dictionaries. Invaluable if you want to find out how English As She Is Spoke differs from country to country.

As an exercise for non-Australian readers, try using it to have a look at what the (Australian) Macquarie Dictionary has to say about the word "root". For Australian readers, use it to find out what the word means in the rest of the world.

Yeti, Penguins and Orcas

Today's interesting URL comes courtesy of BlackTriangle.Org, a site primarily about the responsible use and manufacture of medication. It also very rarely has some political content, though what there is is always cogent and pithy.

But apart from enlightening me as to what "Rhinotillexomania" (never know when that word might come in handy) means, there's a link to Yeti Sports.

"Medical Authorities warn that playing these games is highly addictive."

Or, as The Scotsman says,

It terms of addictiveness it makes crack cocaine look like chamomile tea.

There. You have been warned. Now to see if I can better my score of 398.1....

Wankology

As opposed to multiculturalism, this is Wankology.

Australia's multiculturalism is being celebrated across the country today, with a variety of events to mark 'Harmony Day'.
Thousands of people have been taking part in events including beachside citizenship ceremonies and street festivals.
The event began in 1999 to promote cohesion and harmony in diverse communities - 23 per cent of Australia's current population was born overseas.
The Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, Gary Hardgrave, says the day is gaining significance as more Australians realise the need to work together regardless of their background.
[...]
Mr Hardgrave says the celebration of national Harmony Day plays an important part in promoting racial tolerance.
He says integration creates a win-win situation for everyone.
"Integration simply means you bring who you are to the business of Australia," Mr Hardgrave said.
"This country is attractive to people who have come from all around the world to be here, to live here."
Mr Hardgrave encourages everyone to wear orange and participate in community events to help promote a feeling of belonging.

Trendoid Happy-Feely "Harmony Days" and Politicians urging the wearing of orange clothing. Ye Gods, you can't make stuff like this up.

A Slice of Canberra

I don't treat this blog as a Diary. Perhaps there are people who are interested in my daily life, but the Blog's "mission statement" is "Intermittent postings from Canberra, Australia on Software Development, Space, Politics, and Interesting URLs. And of course, Brains...".

So file this one under "Canberra, Australia".

Today we attended a Church fete.

The denomination was Presbyterian, not that that matters very much: my wife and son are Catholic, and I'm Agnostic with a tendency to commit Buddhism.

The Canberra City Pipes and Drums played "leaving Rhu Vaternish", "Amazing Grace", "Waltzing Matilda", "Scottish Soldier" and "Bound for South Australia" - then did some Jazz Improvisation on "A Londonderry Air" and various Irish jigs and reels.

Food consumed by us included Vietnamese Spring Rolls, Szechuan Spring Rolls, Mango and Strawberry/Apple Ice Cream, Hot Dogs, Chocolate Milkshakes, Steak Sandwiches, and Singapore Noodles (with Indonesian chilli Ketjap and Japanese Shoyu).

We managed to pick up some great mixed-citrus marmalade, but missed out on the Dundee cake.

Andrew had a great time at the 9-hole Novelty Golf green, playing several rounds. He spent too long there, the Jumping Castle was packed away before he got to it. Oh well, next year.

Despite it being late March, and thus into Autumn, it was a fine, sunny day. A bit too sunny, every child was wearing a hat due to UV from the depleted Ozone layer. Andrew's was a Soviet-pattern tropical Giggle Hat I picked up from a Russki deserter in Bremen, Germany around 1990, made in Tashkent.

That's a slice of life in March 2004, here in Australia. I suppose some would call it "Multiculturalism", but to us it's just... normal. The way we are.

Missed by that much...

From New Scientist via A Voyage to Arcturus :

An asteroid the size of a small office building will make the closest approach ever recorded to the Earth on Thursday evening

Discovered just two days ago by an automated telescope scanning the sky for near-Earth objects, asteroid 2004 FH will miss the planet by a mere 40,000 kilometres, just over a tenth of the distance to the Moon.
[...]
At roughly 30 metres in size, 2004 FH is too small to cause widespread damage should it hit the Earth. It would be more likely explode in the air, releasing about a megaton of energy. However, that energy should dissipate harmlessly if the blast is high enough above the surface.

Or, if not, it's the equivalent of one of the largest H-bombs in existence today (though bigger ones have been in service in the past).

Jay Manifold does a few back-of-the-envelope calculations on his blog, and gets the answer of 1.1 Megatonnes assuming a specific gravity of 2. If it's Nickel-Iron (as many meteors are) then it's more like 10. In either case, you wouldn't want one to come down in your vicinity.

Does anyone else think that being able to detect these things a bit earlier than 2 days before they're in the neighbourhood might be a good idea?