Twelve Years Ago

It's worth memorialising some of the trials and tribulations the FedSat team underwent when it came to building that bird.

Originally, the task was contracted to SIL - Space Innovations Limited

SIL is a space engineering company that specializes in the design and manufacture of satellite products, subsystems and complete small satellites, which generally weigh between 50 and 500 kilograms. This type of Earth orbiting satellite is often used for scientific and remote sensing applications. They could also form the basis of satellites for constellations similar to Teledesic, Globelstar and Iridium.
SIL recorded sales of approximately 745,000 U.K. pounds and profits of 20,800 U.K. pounds according to unaudited company records for the six-month period ended June 30, 1998. Based on current exchange rates, this is approximately $1.25 million in sales and approximately $35,000 in profits.

The wheels fell off though

Jan. 14, 2000 -- SpaceDev Inc. the world's first commercial space exploration and development company, and Space Innovations Limited (SIL), a wholly owned SpaceDev subsidiary in Newbury, England, today announced that SIL management has reacquired the company from SpaceDev. Commenting on the decision, SpaceDev Chairman Jim Benson stated: ``During the past year it became clear to the boards of SPDV and SIL that continued joint operations was not of sufficient long-term benefit to either firm, due primarily to the stringent U.S. State Department restrictions on the transfer of technology-related information implemented about a year ago. At times we found it difficult to discuss basic marketing strategies or product enhancement plans with our own employees.''
Professor Leonard Culhane, chairman of SIL, said: ``We all thought at the time that this acquisition would be synergistic and would benefit both firms, but the environment changed unexpectedly. We look forward now to assisting SpaceDev as a customer rather than one of its subsidiaries.''
In October 1998, SpaceDev acquired 100 percent of SIL via a stock-exchange agreement. The SIL acquisition was one of several strategic moves made by SpaceDev during the past 18 months to position it as a worldwide, integrated provider of affordable, reliable space missions involving small satellites. The decision to rescind the merger agreement was made final on Dec. 17, 1999. Terms of the amicable separation agreement include a re-exchange of common stock and Culhane relinquishing his seat on SpaceDev's board.

SIL found itself in very deep financial trouble. There were severe cash flow problems - they didn't have the money to complete the work they'd contracted to do. It was necessary that they get stuff out of the door, regardless of quality, just to get progress payments to keep the doors open. They could always remediate it later, after the immediate crisis had passed.

But not only did they cut corners, they tried to make the circles rounder. Components that would never have passed even the most basic Quality Assurance checks at the first stage of production went through to the end. What they produced and delivered wasn't just shoddy - it was junk.

What was delivered wasn't usually repairable. It was industrial waste. So we had to build the components ourselves, to SIL's design. You see, before they got into financial difficulties, they produced really good product, both in design and manufacture.

What you see there was made after they fired their highly talented team of competent staff, and got pretty much anyone present on site to attempt Rocket Science. Cleaners, Managers, Apprentices, Trained Monkeys for all I know. But not the SIL scientists who made the company what it had been - a by-word for excellent space engineering.

Why I haven't Blogged about Politics recently

First Dog On the Moon captures it exactly. Every Night Something Atrocious.

Satellite Separation

12 years ago... Australia had a Space Programme.

The video shows booster separation of the Japanese H2A at 12:15:40, the Japanese ADEOS-2 at 12:16:20, the Australian FedSat at 12:16:40, the Japanese MicroLabSat at 12:17:00 and WEOS at 12:17:20

That was 35 years since the previous Australian Space Programme, and the previous Australian Spacecraft, WRESAT in 1967. We were world leaders then, just as FedSat is still the most complex and capable MicroSat ever launched. And just as with FedSat, the powers that be decided that our future was in digging holes in the ground, not out in space.

Platygeanism, Biblical Literalism, and Martin Luther

I was recently asked

are you really saying that the flat earth people represent the majority of Christians?

Here's my answer:

No, not at all. Only the ones who take the Bible literally.

Very few do. Many say they do, but ask them if they believe snow and hail come from storehouses in the sky, as clearly stated in the book of Job, and they say "that bit's metaphorical". Yet Adam and Eve is not. Neither is the Great Flood, though that depends on the existence of a Firmament with valves in - the ""Windows of Heaven" to let the Waters Above in.

Martin Luther had it right. Either you can believe in scripture as inerrant and literal, or you can rely on "natural Philosophy" - science -, observable facts and reason. The two ideologies are irreconcilable. He therefore rejected reason and natural philosophy.

Natural philosophy because it was wicked,as it contradicted scripture. Reason because while it sometimes supported scripture, it just as often subverted it, it could never be relied on to tell you what you wanted to hear. It was, he said, a whore in that regard. The greatest enemy Faith has.

    "Scripture simply says that the moon, the sun, and the stars were placed in the firmament of the heaven, below and above which heaven are the waters...
    It is likely that the stars are fastened to the firmament like globes of fire, to shed light at night... We Christians must be different from the philosophers in the way we think about the causes of things. And if some are beyond our comprehension like those before us concerning the waters above the heavens, we must believe them rather than wickedly deny them or presumptuously interpret them in conformity with our understanding."

- Martin Luther, Luther's Works. Vol. 1. Lectures on Genesis

    “Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”

- Martin Luther

He was quite right. Reason will only tell you how things are, not how you know them to be through Faith alone.

To take as one example, the facts say that Herod died in 4BC, and that Quirinius became governor of Syria in 6CE, ten years later. The Bible says that Christ was born during Herod's reign, when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

Reason would point out the contradiction. But Faith says the bible cannot by definition be erroneous or contradictory, so Reason must be abandoned.

Christ was born before 3BC, and also in 6CE, And if ( these facts) are beyond our comprehension we must believe them rather than wickedly deny them or presumptuously interpret them in conformity with our understanding.

Senator Leyonhjelm on the Foreign Fighters Bill

For my readers in the USA and Canada... it's getting pretty bad here. It's not just one side of politics, it's both.

We're heading for a National Security Democratic Australia Party state. NSDAP.

Intersex Surgery in the 18th Century | New Republic

Sex-Change Surgery in the 18th Century | New Republic

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According to Brand's report, published in 1787, he noticed an “irregularity” in the patient’s “external parts.” After further examination, he concluded that the child’s “part, which had the appearance of the labia pudenda, was in fact the scrotum,” and suggested an “operation to free the penis from its confinement.” He went ahead and made some alterations, enabling the child—whose name is unknown—“to urinate standing up, wear trousers, and enjoy the privileges of being a male.”

The child's wishes were of course deemed irrelevant. As they are all too often today.

Evolution IS a Blind Watchmaker

This is a good illustration of the principles involved in my PhD work.

Only I'm attempting to evolve more efficient settings for mutation rate and population size, so it's about not just genetic algorithms, but meta-genetic algorithms. Evolving more efficient evolution.

Mum forced to leave Australia after discovering gender error on birth certificate - Yahoo!7

Mum forced to leave Australia after discovering gender error on birth certificate - Yahoo!7

A British woman says she's been forced to surrender her dream life in Australia, after discovering her birth certificate lists her as a boy. Mother-of-five Kim Walmsey was mistakenly recorded as a male at her birth in 1965, meaning her marriage of 23 years was illegal

Upon discovering the mistake, Walmsey found herself unable to renew her Australian visa and spending over £150,000 on a mission to set things right in the UK. Worse, when word got out in her Liverpool neighbourhood, Walmsey became the victim of homophobic slurs as neighbours believed she was in a gay marriage.

Kim told the Mail, “The whole thing is absolutely disgusting. I’ve lived nearly 40 years not realising I was actually registered as a boy and then all of a sudden my whole life fell apart. “In the eyes of the law we were technically two men marrying and that was against the law at the time. "Since I found out I have tried everything I can possibly think of to get it changed but it’s like banging your head against a brick wall."

Westminster sanctuary ruled her marriage to Jack, a security officer, was against the law, which was confirmed in a letter from the Arch Bishop of Canterbury in June last year, the Mirror reports

Walmsey’s MP Bill Esterson has written to UK Prime Minister David Cameron on her behalf. "This is a ludicrous case of a mistake which was made nearly half a century ago, which is still plaguing Kim and her family today," he said. "The fact that Kim is obviously a female is unquestionable. She has five biological children, but because her birth entry states that she is male, she is having these problems which are causing great distress to Kim and her whole family."

So even a woman who has given birth to 5 kids can't get her birth certificate corrected. And suffers from the effects of Transphobic/Homophobic neighbours as she's in a "same sex relationship" with "another man".

“We live in a small community and we felt really intimidated. I don’t want people thinking I’ve had a sex change," she told the paper.
“Some people might think the kids are adopted and that I’m trying to hide the fact I’m a man.
“My death certificate will say I’m a boy too and so when I’m dead and buried, my family down the line will think there was this huge scandal.”

It's all about appearances. If it's this bad for someone in this situation who hasn't "changed sex" - consider what it must be like for someone who has?

Largest Study to Date: Transgender Hormone Treatment Safe

Largest Study to Date: Transgender Hormone Treatment Safe

Cross-sex hormone treatment of transgender adults leads to very few long-term side effects, according to the authors of the largest study to date to examine this issue.
More than 2000 patients from 15 US and European centers participated in the retrospective study, called Comorbidity and Side Effects of Cross-Sex Hormone Treatment in Transsexual Subjects, and nearly 1600 received at least 1 year of follow-up, the authors reported.
"Our results are very reassuring," principal investigator Henk Asscheman, MD, PhD, who heads HAJAP, his clinical research company in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, told Medscape Medical News. "There are mostly minor side effects and no new [adverse events] observed in this large population."
Speaking at ICE/ENDO 2014 last week, where he presented the initial results of the research, Dr. Asscheman said the data confirm findings from smaller studies published in the past decade.
"The take-home message," he said, "is that when using the guidelines from the Endocrine Society ["Endocrine Treatment of Transsexual Persons"], you are not going to see a lot of comorbidities with cross-sex hormone treatment."
 

Why blogging has been light recently

Woman burnt in Downer house fire June 2, 2014

A 56-year-old woman has suffered serious burns following a kitchen fire on Burn Street in Downer.
...
The woman was treated by intensive care paramedics at the scene of the fire and then transported to the Canberra Hospital.
The ESA spokeswoman said she was in a stable condition.

My face was never my fortune, and a few minor scars on the forehead won't make any difference to that. I lost all the skin on my face, but it grew back, and I still have lips, eyelids, nose etc, and looking not very different from before. A few patches on my arms were 3rd degree, but so small no skin grafts were needed.

I just get a bit cold now, much of my dermis on face and arms was destroyed, so there's less subcutaneous fat now, and this will take a year or two to get better.

No damage to lungs or airways. So no real long-term or life-changing effects.

It's taken me a few months to feel OK with blogging it though. I always was terrified of fire, and to be put in a position of having to stay and fight rather than being able to flee was traumatic. Then being warned by the nurses in the resuscitation unit of Canberra Hospital not to look in the mirror was, well, I thought that only happened in the movies.

But it was only for a short while that I looked like a Hiroshima survivor. Now back to normal, or near enough.

Two sides. Same coin.

Sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain

Sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain Ingalhalikar et al PNAS ; published ahead of print December 2, 2013

Sex differences in human behavior show adaptive complementarity: Males have better motor and spatial abilities, whereas females have superior memory and social cognition skills. Studies also show sex differences in human brains but do not explain this complementarity. In this work, we modeled the structural connectome using diffusion tensor imaging in a sample of 949 youths (aged 8–22 y, 428 males and 521 females) and discovered unique sex differences in brain connectivity during the course of development. Connection-wise statistical analysis, as well as analysis of regional and global network measures, presented a comprehensive description of network characteristics. In all supratentorial regions, males had greater within-hemispheric connectivity, as well as enhanced modularity and transitivity, whereas between-hemispheric connectivity and cross-module participation predominated in females. However, this effect was reversed in the cerebellar connections. Analysis of these changes developmentally demonstrated differences in trajectory between males and females mainly in adolescence and in adulthood. Overall, the results suggest that male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes. 

If you can read this....

Then consider yourself lucky. Some can't.

http://aebrain.blogspot.com

ISP	Result	Last check on	Last blocked on
AAISP	ok	2014-07-02 12:20:06	No record of prior block
BT	blocked	2014-07-02 12:20:06	2014-07-02 12:20:06
EE	ok	2014-07-02 12:20:07	No record of prior block
Plusnet	ok	2014-07-02 12:20:06	No record of prior block
Sky	ok	2014-07-02 12:20:06	No record of prior block
TalkTalk	blocked	2014-07-02 12:20:06	2014-07-02 12:20:06
VirginMedia	ok	2014-07-02 12:20:06	No record of prior block

Report via https://www.blocked.org.uk/

The (UK) government is promoting filters to prevent children and young people from seeing content that is supposed to be for over 18s. This includes pornography and sites that talk about alcohol, smoking, anorexia and hate speech.

In practice, filters block many sites that are not harmful to children. Sometimes, they are blocked by mistake. Sometimes, they are blocked deliberately. For example, many blogs and forums are blocked by default.

The Blocked! website lets you check whether a site has been blocked by these filters. The tool is free but you can support the project by joining ORG, making a donation or becoming a technical volunteer.

A Matter of Medical Education

Key points to note:

• Transgender medicine is rarely taught in medical curricula
• Prior to the unit, 38% of students self-reported anticipated discomfort with caring for transgender patients.
• Even in an endocrinology unit, prior to adding this subject, 5% of students reported that the treatment was not a part of conventional medicine.

1 in 20 new endocrinologists are completely clueless without unusual training, and they're supposed to be the specialists! Fortunately, it doesn't take much to fill them in.

A simple curriculum content change increased medical student comfort with transgender medicine. Safer JD1, Pearce EN. Endocr Pract. 2013 Jul-Aug;19(4):633-7

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

A barrier to safe therapy for transgender patients is lack of access to care. Because transgender medicine is rarely taught in medical curricula, few physicians are comfortable with the treatment of transgender conditions. Our objective was to demonstrate that a simple content change in a medical school curriculum would increase students' willingness to care for transgender patients.

METHODS:

Curriculum content was added to the endocrinology unit of the Boston University second-year pathophysiology course regarding rigidity of gender identity, treatment regimens, and monitoring requirements. All medical students received an online, anonymous questionnaire 1 month prior to and 1 month after receiving the transgender teaching. The questionnaire asked about predicted comfort using hormones to treat transgender individuals. Shifts in the views of the second-year students were compared with views of students not exposed to the curriculum change.

RESULTS:

Prior to the unit, 38% of students self-reported anticipated discomfort with caring for transgender patients. In addition, 5% of students reported that the treatment was not a part of conventional medicine. Students in the second-year class were no different than other students. Subsequent to the teaching unit, the second-year students reported a 67% drop in discomfort with providing transgender care (P<.001), and no second-year students reported the opinion that treatment was not a part of conventional medicine.

CONCLUSION:

A simple change in the content of the second-year medical school curriculum significantly increased students' self-reported willingness to care for transgender patients.

Seen on the web

I wish I'd written it. By jnail7

However, it seems clear that you are attempting to follow a Socratic method in engaging in an argument for Biological essentialism. Here is an example of how to accomplish your goal in a form that is more functional to a comment thread than point by point posting.

1) Humans develop from a single cell egg to a complex multicellular organism.

2) The form of human includes various cellular expressions that create organs, tissues, etc. that provide specific functions for survivability and perpetuation of the species, which are universal across the species in general, though may differ in some way individually.

3) One outcome in development from the egg is sexual dimorphism, when the developing fetus's cells organize into a pattern that is labelled male or female, also known as sex differentiation. This differentiation continues at various stages throughout an individual's life.

4) Sex differentiation not only refers to the physical development of the observable body, but also requires that the brain physically in preparation to manage the biological needs (endocrine) for the developing sex and to process sensory input for the body.

5) Development from a single cell to a complex human is far from a perfect process, as evidenced by the variations that are completely benign to those that result in the death of the developing fetus.

6) Variations in the developmental process do result in incomplete or even mismatched sex characteristics that would have been assumed by karyotyping (which is rarely done).

7) Since evidence is easy to obtain showing variation in the sex based development of physical bodies, and evidence also shows variation in development in physical brains, it is not without reason to expect the potential of a variation where the brain develops according to the needs of one sex and the body develops the opposite.

8) Current research is mounting evidence for #7.

So if 7 is true, how would we expect this to manifest from observable behavior?

1) Given that we are culturally reinforced with expected gender norms that encourage some means of expressing one's sex through gender expression (think clothes, behaviors/mannerism, occupational choices, etc.) our cultural understanding of sex is limited by our vocabulary of gender and how we perceive it in others.

2) Instinctively, infants have a drive to mimic behavior that they observe, thus enabling them to learn. However, children demonstrate a preference for mimicking behavior that they identify with. This is where many children start learning gender roles as expressed in their culture.

3) Those whose brain sex matches their body sex have no trouble meeting societal expectations, nor conceive of any issue concerning their own anatomy.

4) Those whose brain sex does not match their body sex have no frame of reference to describe it. Early attempts to mimic the behaviors of the identified sex are likely met with punishment/shaming. For most, this shuts them down and they learn to hide their issue. With no means to discuss what they cannot describe, they reach for the next closest thing, which is the symbol of their desired sex as expressed by those in the opposite gender. Clothes, behavior, etc. become symbolic to the point of becoming the only language available to express/explore their inner identity.

5) worse are those whose brain did not develop completely male or female and they are stuck in some artificial limbo dictated by societal gender norms. Regardless, such people are still human beings, no less than any other. Many wish peace with the conflicts they experience internally. Many have also had to hide because they cannot articulate or communicate their pain in a way that our culture finds meaningful. Some succumb to the pain and take their life.

In the end, whether you believe that transgender is a real physical condition or something simply "in one's head", it does not matter. There is no excuse for denying an individual their humanity or to dismiss them as an "other". Furthermore, look at your view points now and ask yourself, if this is proved to be something physical and "real", what have you accomplished? On the flip side, if it is proved to me to be purely behavioral/cognitive (ie. not physically interlinked from a developmental standpoint), then at least my actions were done with in keeping with the current science and medicine available and my view points subject to reinterpretation based on new evidence.

DAB No. 2576 - NCD 140 3 Transsexual Surgery

DAB No. 2576 - NCD 140 3 Transsexual Surgery by EvanMcSan

A follow-up to a previous post on the issue.

Reading between the lines, there are some very damning comments about how the original decision was arrived at - such as the dismissal of studies with follow-up over many years as "not long-term" without defining what "long-term" meant; or the citing of treatment as "controversial", not in a scientific sense, but a political one.

We note that in addition to stating that transsexual surgery was experimental, the NCD and the 1981 report stated that transsexual surgery was "controversial." NCD Record at 18(1981 report stating that "[ o ]ver and above the medical and scientific issues, it would also appear that transsexual surgery is controversial in our society"). The AP and the new evidence dispute the relevance of this statement. The AP objected that this point relies on two "polemics" that are "are either completely unscientific or fall far outside the scientific mainstream," and Dr. Ettner stated that the views expressed therein "fall far outside the mainstream psychological, psychiatric, and medical professional consensus and call into question the objective reasonableness of the NCD. AP Statement at 15-16; Ettner Supp. Decl. at,;,; 17-18. CMS has not asserted that the Board's decision may be based on factors over and above the medical and scientific issues involved. Considerations of social acceptability (or nonacceptability) of medical procedures appear on their face to be antithetical to Medicare's medical necessity inquiry, which is based in science, and such considerations do not enter into our decision that the NCD is not valid.

One of those appears in this post, 50,000 deaths. I'll try to find the source of the other one, a religious tract. Though the first one is a religious tract too, or at least, ideological.
Neither Religion nor Ideology have any place in medicine, or indeed, science generally.

Tony Abbott - Trust Me

It's not just the fact that the budget is deliberately and maliciously targeted at the poor. It's the completely blatant lies, no attempt to cover them up, and no end to them, they keep on coming.

Trust

No Government Should Get to Decide This

Why Does Kindness Get You? This.