AUTEUR EGOS

It is shaping up to be a bad week for film directors.

Director Ingmar Bergman dies

Legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman has died at the age of 89.

Ingmar Bergman found bleakness and despair as well as comedy and hope in his indelible explorations of the human condition. He is regarded as one of the great masters of modern cinema.

He grew up surrounded by religious imagery and discussion. His father was a rather conservative parish minister and strict family father: Ingmar was locked up in dark closets for infractions such as wetting the bed.

"I devoted my interest to the church’s mysterious world of low arches, thick walls, the smell of eternity, the colored sunlight quivering above the strangest vegetation of medieval paintings and carved figures on ceilings and walls. There was everything that one’s imagination could desire — angels, saints, dragons, prophets, devils, humans."

Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born on July 14, 1918, in the Swedish university town of Uppsala.

Film legend Antonioni dies

Michelangelo Antonioni, one of Italy's most famous and influential film-makers, has died in Rome aged 94.

Considered the cinematic father of modern angst and alienation, Antonioni had a career spanning six decades, which included the Oscar-nominated Blowup and the internationally acclaimed L'Avventura (The Adventure).

Antonioni has been described as a poet with a camera.

LONG SHOT

Woomera recognised for historic value

A space archaeologist says the Woomera rocket range in South Australia has been recognised internationally for its historic importance, and this should be the catalyst for Australian authorities to place it on the heritage list.

Dr Alice Gorman from Flinders University says the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics has given Woomera the status of a Historic Aerospace Site.

This puts it in the same league as Tranquillity Base, the site where man first landed on the moon.

[When Woomera was established in 1947 as part of the Anglo-Australian Joint Project it was one of only four rocket ranges in the world.]

SOLAR ROAD

Solar roadway: big black water heaters

If we are all going to fry because of global warming, at least get some cheaper hot water. The principle is the reverse of under-floor heating.

Instead of pumping hot water into a floor, the floor (or road, to be precise) heats the water.

Special pipes are laid on top of a grid frame, under the tarmac or asphalt, or whatever it is called in your neck of the woods.

Sunlight is absorbed by the wide, black road surface, which boosts the temperature of the water just beneath. This turns roads into massive solar hot water heaters.

ARMS ALMS

US plans huge Mid-East arms deal

A high-level US delegation is travelling to the Middle East, after confirming plans for massive arms deals for allies in the region.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates are due to meet Arab ministers at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.
The main beneficiaries of the deals are Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

OVER REACTION

Loved ones 'lost to drug-driving'

Police are targeting drivers under the influence of drugs as part of a summer crackdown in England and Wales.
They say drug-driving is a "growing problem" and can be as dangerous as driving while under the influence of alcohol.
Anne Maria Rennie, 56, of Peebles, Peeblesshire, lost her daughter, Chantelle Shalice, 35, and two-year-old granddaughter, Ellora, in a car accident in Australia.
"Their car was hit by another vehicle that had lost control at a roundabout. The other driver was found to have smoked cannabis the night before the accident.

NEW WORLD ORDER

The scum always rises


Zoltan Torey (b 1929, Budapest, Hungary)
Psychologist, philosopher, independent scholar and author of autobiographical memoir "Out of Darkness" and "The Crucible of Consciousness"
Broadcast July 2003, repeated LNL 2007-06-15
CLASSIC Late Night Live (ABC Radio, Australia)

PHILIP ADAMS: ... I asked him about his statement that after Hungary declares war on the Soviet, there were scum that took advantage of the situation.

TOREY: Ah yes, the scum is always there. One of the lessons I have learned is that about 90% of the population consists of decent, normal people who mind their own business and who don't want trouble.
Now, 10% is all that is needed to give us permanent trouble.
About one third of it is ideologues. Ideologues, whether they are Marxists, economic rationalists, nazis, communists, makes no difference.
These are people who really believe in the fact that it is some mental model that constitutes reality. And this is what has to be followed, regardless. A bit like the medieval church ... essentially a very dangerous organisation and frame of mind.
The second third of this 10% consists of opportunists. People who are quite willing to cash in on whatever goes and to milk the system and to lord it over us and to push us around and to bring us into situations which are not of our chosing, whether they be wars or economic changes or whatnot.
And a final third of this 10% consists of the thugs. Young men usually, sometimes psychopathic. But basically people prepared to do anybody's dirty work.

OUR COSMOS

Astronomers spot most distant galaxies ever seen

Astronomers using a giant telescope say they have found glimpses of the most distant -- and oldest -- galaxies ever seen.
"The light the researchers viewed originated when the universe was only 500 million years old and has been traveling through distant space for billions of years, said Richard Ellis, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology.
This means the team found galaxies further back in time than anyone has ever seen as scientists try to better understand how the universe was born some 13.5 billion years ago, he said.
Ellis is due to present his findings of work he did with graduate student Dan Stark at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"The implication is these are the early generation of stars switched on when the universe was in its infancy."
The team used the giant Keck telescope in Hawaii.

QUANTUM UNIVERSE

'Hidden' order ups odds for quantum super computers

An international team of scientists, including several at The Johns Hopkins University, has detected a hidden magnetic “quantum order” that extends over chains of nearly 100 atoms in a material that is otherwise magnetically disordered. The findings have been published in the journal Science,
The team’s results are important because they demonstrate that the magnetic moments (the measure of the strength of a magnetic source) of a large number of atoms can band together to form quantum states much like those of a very large molecule.
Though, on the surface, these atomic “compass needles” seem to be disorganized and disordered, the team was able to discern “a beautiful, underlying quantum order,” said team member Collin Broholm, professor in the Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins’ Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.
“Quantum mechanics is normally appreciated only on the atomic scale. However, here we present evidence for a very long and very quantum mechanical magnetic molecule,” Broholm said.
“While disordered to a classical observer, the magnetic moments of almost 100 nickel atoms arranged in a row within a solid were shown to display an underlying quantum coherence limited only by chemical and thermal impurities."

POWER WITHOUT GLORY

Haneef: I was the victim

On Sunday morning Australia's Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said that Dr Haneef's decision to travel to India after having his passport returned "heightens rather than lessens my suspicion".
Mr Andrews said he still believed the decision to throw the doctor out of Australia was the right one.

Dr Haneef returned home to Bangalore after 27 days in police custody, leaving behind a political storm which has erupted since the terrorism-related charge against him was dropped on Friday.

EARTH CHANGES

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

Ministers accused of 'driving' Haneef case

Civil libertarians say any inquiry into the bungled prosecution of Dr Mohamed Haneef should focus squarely on the actions of Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock and Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews.

The terrorism-related charge against the 27-year-old Indian was dropped yesterday after prosecutors abandoned their case amid revelations of mistakes in the case against him.

The outrages concerning this case include:

1. Accusations by the prosecuting lawyer that the mobile phone SIM card which Dr Haneef was alleged to have given to his second cousin in Britain was found in the burning Jeep rammed into Glasgow airport.

[The SIM card, given to his cousin a year ago, was discovered not in Glasgow but in Liverpool.]

2. Police claimed he offered no explanation of why he tried to leave Brisbane on a one-way ticket to India.

[A transcript of his first police interview, leaked to the press by his defence team, showed he did: he wanted to see his wife, who had just given birth to their child.]

3. When the magistrate at that hearing in Brisbane, Jacqui Payne, decided to grant the doctor conditional bail, the government controversially intervened. Kevin Andrews, the immigration minister, decided to cancel his visa and keep him detained under immigration laws.

4. Following a story in the Queensland press Police at first refused to confirm or deny whether its officers found photographs of a prominent Gold Coast building and documents relating to the destroying of structures while searching Haneef's unit.

5. Police officers wrote the names of terrorism suspects in Haneef's personal diary after he was taken in for questioning in Brisbane. The paper says police then asked Haneef if he had written the names, before admitting their mistake.

THE QUICKENING

Study has bad news about sea level rise

A study by scientists at the institute of Arctic and Alpine Research of the University of Colorado, Boulder, has bad news for coastal areas around the world.
The team, led by Mark F. Meier, suggests in Science magazine that the latest International Panel on Climate Change projection of sea level rise in the 21st century by is too low by 10-25 centimeters because it leaves out the contributions of increasing glacier melt water.
To quote New Scientist, the IPCC report "predicted that sea levels worldwide will most probably rise between 21 and 47 cm by 2100, taking the averages of the six scenarios considered.
Using the new figures on small glaciers, Meier calculates the rise to be between 27 and 97 cm.
"This is an appreciable adjustment," Meier says. He notes that more than 100 million people live within one meter of the current sea level.

CAT A TONIC

Cat predicts patients' deaths

A cat at a US nursing home appears to be able to predict when patients are going to die. According to an essay in the respected New England Journal of Medicine, Oscar's predictions are proving more accurate than trained medical staff.
A detailed essay of Oscar's behaviour in the New England Journal Of Medical Science says the cat has presided over the deaths of 25 patients in the advanced dementia unit of Steere House in Providence, Rhode Island.
Oscar, rescued as a kitten from an animal refuge two years ago, does not usually care much for human company but every now and then, he snaps to attention, seeks out a patient and curls up in bed next to them.
He stays there paying attention to the patient as family members say their goodbyes and the priest give last rights, and then dissappears once the patient has died.
Oscar's predictions have been so accurate that staff now call a patient's family if the cat appears purring at the door. Loved ones often have just enough time to say goodbye.

BROWN BROWN

MIT finds mechanism behind fear

Researchers from MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have uncovered a molecular mechanism that governs the formation of fears stemming from traumatic events.

The work could lead to the first drug to treat the millions of adults who suffer each year from persistent, debilitating fears - including hundreds of soldiers.

[Child soldiers used by African warlords drug their young recruits with 'brown brown' to eradicate fear and help instil a murderous rage.]

DIRTY CREATURES

Toxic spill, inferno follows rail crash

Carriages burn after a freight train carrying highly toxic phosphorus derailed in western Ukraine, near Lviv. Eleven carriages loaded with yellow phosphorus derailed and erupted in flames in the Lvov region, Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry official Alexander Kravchuk said.

HYDRA PHOBIA

The Hydra was a many-headed monster from Greek mythology. If any of its heads were severed two would grow in its place.

Al Qaeda recoups post-9/11 losses: report

Leaks of a US intelligence report show Al Qaeda's operating capabilities are at their strongest since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.The report suggests the network has rebuilt itself despite a six-year campaign to dismantle it.

Al Qaeda getting stronger: experts

"It's a paradox: we have succeeded in degrading the operational capabilities of the jihadist enterprise and yet almost every assessment indicates that we are not succeeding," RAND Corp terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins said.

US backs Pakistan's campaign to crush militants

General Musharraf has vowed to root out extremists from every corner of the country, and the United States says it fully supports Pakistan's efforts to crush Islamic militants.

Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser to US President George W Bush says the situation is of concern to the US.

"We have seen, in the north-west territories of Pakistan, Taliban pooling, planning and training," he said.

Pakistanis baffled by US support for their corrupt military dictatorship

Well, it could have something to do with the fact that Musharraf’s regime has supported the Taliban and Al Qaeda which are the boogy-men needed to wage the phony War on Terror and that the Pakistani ISI, which has trained Al Qaeda, is a front for CIA’s plausible denialability.

Then there was the little matter of ISI Gen Mahmoud Ahmed, who had wired Mohammed Atta money, and who was meeting with the Senate Intelligence Committee on the morning of 9/11. But the 9/11 Commission didn’t think that merited investigation.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Expulsions escalate UK-Russia diplomatic row

London has expelled four Russian diplomats in protest over Moscow's refusal to extradite a former KGB agent to stand trial over the murder.

In response, Russia has warned of serious consequences and that is expected to include tit-for-tat expulsions of British diplomats.

It is nearly nine months since Litvinenko, a former Russian agent living in exile in the UK, died a horrifying and lingering death after he was poisoned by the highly radioactive isotope, polonium 210, which is used as a trigger in nuclear weapons.

HOT AIR

Howard grilled on emissions package

Australian Prime Minister John Howard says Australia needs to move on from the Kyoto protocol and take a market approach to tackle climate change.

But the full details of its carbon trading scheme have not been revealed yet.

Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett says the Federal Government's carbon emissions trading scheme cannot work until it sets a price on carbon.

[Market approaches continue to fail the presupposed beneficiaries -- the people.]

WAR ON SHARING

© abk.

GEOMETRY

Moebius strip riddle solved at last

A moebius strip is a loop that has an intriguing quality, dazzlingly exploited by Escher, in that it only has one side. To make one, take one end of a strip, twist it through 180 degrees, and then tape it to the other end.

Since 1930, the Moebius strip has been a classic poser to resolve the in the form of an equation.

In a study Gert van der Heijden and Eugene Starostin of University College London, say the strip's shape is its differing areas of "energy density".

"Energy density" means the stored, elastic energy that is contained in the strip as a result of the folding. Places where the strip is most bent have the highest energy density; conversely, places that are flat and unstressed by a fold have the least energy density.

If the width of the strip increases in proportion to its length, the zones of energy density also shift, which in term alters the shape, according to their equations.

A wider strip, for instance, leads to nearly flat, "triangular" regions in the strip, a phenomenon that also happens when paper is crumpled.

MARKET FORCES

Mystics and merchants in fourteenth century Germany

The thesis of this paper is that fourteenth century German mystics administered psychotherapy to fourteenth century German merchants, thereby aiding the efforts of the merchants to rationalize commerce and society. The argument runs that the merchants' emphasis on economic rationalism violated traditional values of the Church and of medieval society in general. Since the Church and the associated social order were perceived as controlling every man's chances for salvation, the merchants felt anxious and guilty about their rationalist tendencies, and were therefore tempted to dilute them. Another solution, however, was to continue the rationalism but to seek therapy for the anxiety and guilt that it evoked. Mysticmonks were among those who provided such therapy. Analyses and speculations are offered regarding the symbolism that goaded the therapy forward.

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion: Vol. 8, No. 1 (Spring, 1969), pp. 47-59

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Russia suspends arms control pact

Russian President Vladimir Putin has suspended the application of a key Cold War arms control treaty.

Mr Putin signed a decree citing "exceptional circumstances" affecting security as the reason for the move.

Russia has been angered by US plans to base parts of a missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

EARTH CHANGES

Warming waters to drive fish south: CSIRO

A CSIRO study of the waters off the south-east coast of Australia reveals that they are warming up faster than anywhere else in the southern hemisphere.

The scientists warn that these warmer waters will not only dramatically change the marine environment, but could devastate local fisheries.

However fisherman from the area say they are not worried yet because they have just had their best catch in years.

DEATH OF DEMOCRACY

Missing the vote

Tightening of the electoral roll provisions may mean tens of thousands of Australian citizens will miss out on voting in the forthcoming federal elections.

Should prisoners be allowed to vote?

Today a full bench of the High Court will start considering the case of Vicki Lee Roach, an inmate of a Melbourne jail. Her lawyers will argue that the ban on prisoners voting in parliamentary elections is unconstitutional.

FLASHBACK

Electoral commissioner appointed in clouded circumstances

(May 25, 2005) A career public servant will head the Australian Electoral Commission amid claims the selection committee for the post was tainted by a political operator.

Ian Campbell, deputy president of the Repatriation Commission and a member of the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission, will succeed Andy Becker as the electoral commissioner from July 2.

FLASHBACK

Finding fault where there was none before

(Apr 4, 2006) SOMETHING puzzling has happened at the Australian Electoral Commission over the past 12 months.

In March 2005, when it made its first submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the conduct of the 2004 federal election, the AEC expressed no concern whatsoever about the workload it faces at each election, when voters are given seven days' grace to enrol or to update their enrolments.

Nor did it express its support for the argument that the last-minute rush of enrolments creates opportunities for electoral fraud. Although several members of the committee repeatedly returned to the issue, they failed to persuade the commission to support the closure of the electoral roll as soon as the prime minister calls an election.

Almost exactly a year later, appearing before a Senate committee on March 7, recently appointed Australian Electoral Commissioner Ian Campbell expressed almost exactly the opposite view.

The committee was inquiring into the innocuously titled Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill [PDF], which proposes to abolish the period of grace and - if history is any guide - prevent perhaps 300,000 otherwise eligible people from voting at the next federal election. The committee reported to the Senate on March 28 and the Coalition majority supported early roll closure.

HELL IS FOR CHILDREN

Catholic school gives in over Hell enrolment

A row over a Melbourne Catholic school refusing to enrol a boy whose surname is Hell has been resolved.

Max Hell had applied for a prep place at St Peter Apostle Primary School at Hoopers Crossing in Melbourne's west.

His father, Alex, says he was refused because of his surname.But the Catholic Education Office says the matter has been resolved.

The office says the school was concerned the child would be teased.

Pat Benatar - Hell is for Children

BUDDY JESUS

you're the shit ... no really, I mean it ...

GOOD NEWS

BBC reporter free after 'terrifying' ordeal

Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist held hostage in the Gaza Strip since March, has been freed by his Islamist captors.

"It was an absolutely appalling experience. You can imagine 16 weeksof solitary confinement in the hands of people who sometimes talkedabout killing you and so on.
"I literally dreamt many, many times of being free and always wokeup back in that room and now it really is over and it is indescribablygood to be out."

Related: Kidnappers threaten to 'slaughter'

EARTH CHANGES

'Scepticism' over climate claims

The public believes the effects of global warming on the climate are not as bad as politicians and scientists claim, a poll has suggested.

The Ipsos Mori poll of 2,032 adults - interviewed between 14 and 20 June - found 56% believed scientists were still questioning climate change.There was a feeling the problem was exaggerated to make money, it found.

The Royal Society said most climate scientists believed humans were having an "unprecedented" effect on climate.

The survey suggested that terrorism, graffiti, crime and dog mess were all of more concern than climate change.

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

Democrat fury as Bush commutes Libby jail term

US President George W Bush has commuted the prison sentence of former top White House official Lewis 'Scooter' Libby.

Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice-President Dick Cheney, was originally jailed for two-and-a-half years for obstructing an investigation into who blew the cover of a CIA agent whose husband criticised the Iraq war.

The original sentence outraged some Republicans and Mr Bush was under pressure to issue a pardon. Instead Mr Bush has commuted the sentence, which means Libby still has to pay $US250,000 in fines but will escape a jail term.

"I respect the jury's verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr Libby is excessive," Mr Bush said in a statement.
"Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr Libby's sentence that required him to spend 30 months in prison."

Mr Bush's decision has been condemned by the top Democrat in the US Senate.
"The President's decision to commute Mr Libby's sentence is disgraceful," Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said in a first reaction to the move.
"Libby's conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq war.
"Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone," he said in a statement.

SHOOT THE MESSENGER

Kidnappers threaten to 'slaughter'

A Palestinian militant group holding BBC reporter Alan Johnston says there is no deal to free the Briton abducted in Gaza three months ago and says he will only be released if its demands were met.

A man identified as a spokesman for the Army of Islam in Gaza told Al Jazeera television said, "If they do not meet our demands there will be no release for that detainee and if things become more difficult ... then we would seek God's satisfaction by slaughtering this journalist," the spokesman said, identified as Abu Khatab.