CASHLESSNESS

Gold-coloured carbon transistors on the surface of a $5 dollar note.

Radio tags to track cash


Bootleggers could be left out in the cold as authentic goods and cash are tagged with tiny radio frequency identity (RFID) chips. Unless, that is, the criminals find a way to fake the tags as well.

HEADLINE NEWS

Surviving decapitation


You’ve daubed some graffiti on Robespierre’s door or burnt down the Reichstag. You are quickly sentenced and out you walk ‘one fine morning’ to the place of justice. But what happens when the guillotine blade or the Prussian axe comes down on your neck? Does consciousness cease immediately? When the executioner picks up your head to show it to the crowd do you actually see the rabble jeering?


Your thoughts?

THE DARKNESS

Bill Zeller was a talented programmer. He took his own life on Sunday and left an explanation. Zeller was a victim of sexual and psychological abuse. It's clear from his writing that the abuse left him unable to interface with the world in any way that didn't leave him feeling he was too sullied to have the same experiences that he thought others had. He had a self-described "darkness", which despite his prostration it's clear he handled more ably than perhaps he ever realized. Programming was a solace, but only temporarily. Zeller never felt he could escape the things that had happened to him because he carried his torment with him everywhere.





The Agonizing Last Words of Programmer Bill Zeller

Bill Zeller

I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I assume I'll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right decision. Maybe it's true that anyone who does this is insane by definition, but I can at least explain my reasoning. I considered not writing any of this because of how personal it is, but I like tying up loose ends and don't want people to wonder why I did this. Since I've never spoken to anyone about what happened to me, people would likely draw the wrong conclusions.
My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly. This has affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation.

AWKWARD SEGUE

Police Segways fall foul of NZ law

Police in a New Zealand town have been forced to resume foot patrols after their futuristic Segway scooters were deemed illegal, local media reports.

The two-wheeled scooters use gyroscopes and computers to remain upright and can reach speeds of up to 20 kilometres per hour.
Inspector Steve Bullock said they had proven popular with the community."They are a novel vehicle, I would liken them to a modern-day horse because they engender curiosity and people want to talk to you about them, which is what we want as a police organisation," he told NZPA.
"We want to be more engaged with our community and be approachable and be a person rather than just a blue shirt."

The millionaire British owner of the firm that makes the scooters, Jimi Heselden, died in an accident last September when he rode one over a cliff and into a river.

WHAT'S IN A NAME

Jared Lee (Loner) Loughner ... obviously a terrorist.

What makes Arizona's killer just a loner, not a terrorist?

Did you know that Jared Lee Loughner, the suspect in the Arizona shooting spree that left six dead and 14 wounded, including the US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, had speculated beforehand on YouTube whether he would be labelled a "terrorist"? He needn't have worried. Loughner has yet to be described in such terms by the authorities or the media. "Loner"? Yes. "Extremist"? Yes. Terrorist? No.

PRIME CONSCIOUSNESS

Life is Religion

Life is religion.
Life experiences reflect how one interacts with God.
Those who are asleep are those of little faith in terms of their interaction with the creation.
Some people think that the world exists for them to overcome or ignore or shut out.
For those individuals, the world will cease.
They will become exactly what they give to life.
They will become merely a dream in the 'past'.
People who pay strict attention to objective reality right and left, become the reality of the 'Future'.

Cassiopaeans, 28 September, 2002

GUN NUTS

Sarah Palin's PAC Puts Gun Sights On Democrats She's Targeting In 2010



Shot Congresswoman Was In Sarah Palin's 'Crosshairs'

Gabrielle Giffords, The Arizona congresswoman shot outside a Tucson Safeway, was featured on Sarah Palin's infamous 'crosshairs' map, which targeted legislators who voted for Obama's health care bill.
The map that was criticized as an incitement to violence?


FLASHBACK: March 25, 2010.
Ms Giffords talks about the consequences of Palin's incitement to violence.

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

Habib drops torture case against Government

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib has agreed to drop his lawsuit against the Australian Federal Government for being complicit in his torture while he was detained by the US.

"In reaching this settlement, the Government acted in the best interests of the commonwealth to avoid further protracted litigation and to enable our agencies to focus on their core responsibilities of protecting our national security," a spokesman said.


FLASHBACK: January 28, 2005

Downer defends Habib detention


Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has defended the three-year detention of Mamdouh Habib, who returned to Australia today from the US military camp at Guantanamo Bay.
Asked whether Mr Habib deserved compensation for his detention without charge, Mr Downer said: "No, I definitely don't".
"We have not a skerrick of evidence that any Australian has been involved in abusing Mr Habib.
"We've told the Americans we will provide appropriate security for Australian people," Mr Downer said.

FLASHBACK: January 31, 2008

Official denies witnessing Habib torture

An Australian consular official has denied claims he was present while former Guantanamo Bay inmate Mamdouh Habib was allegedly being tortured in Pakistan.
Mr Habib claims he was detained and interrogated at the Australian High Commission in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

Spankin' Sarah Palin: A clown short of a circus

If anything is a threat to the national security of the United States of America, it is this screaming, unrefined oaf with as much class as a searing release of flatulence followed by hysterical giggling at a state banquet. Is this what the people of the USA deserve?

EARTH CHANGES

Shift of Earth's magnetic north pole impacts airport

Because of the movement of the Earth's magnetic pole – at nearly 40 miles a year toward Russia – because of magnetic changes in the core of the planet Tampa International Airport has been required to redesignate runway directions.
The airport closed its primary runway to repaint the numeric designators at each end and change taxiway signage to account for the shift in location of  magnetic north.
The main runway will be re-designated 19R/1L on aviation charts. It's been 18R/36L, indicating its alignment along the 180-degree approach from the north and the 360-degree approach from the south.

HOW IT WORKS

The Common Good.
A public sector whose benefits and responsibilities are shared by all, and directed by the consent of the governed

FLASHBACK to Hurricane Katrina: The Perfect Storm

But as culpable, criminal and loathsome as the Bush Administration is, it is only the apotheosis of an overarching trend in American society that has been gathering force for decades: the destruction of the idea of a common good, a public sector whose benefits and responsibilities are shared by all, and directed by the consent of the governed.

For more than 30 years, the corporate Right has waged a relentless and highly focused campaign against the common good, seeking to atomize individuals into isolated "consumer units" whose political energies - kept deliberately underinformed by the ubiquitous corporate media - can be diverted into emotionalized "hot button" issues (gay marriage, school prayer, intelligent design, flag burning, welfare queens, drugs, porn, abortion, teen sex, commie subversion, terrorist threats, etc., etc.) that never threaten Big Money's bottom line.

SELF CENSORSHIP

Our own worst enemy - Sherry Jones

Self-censorship doesn’t just hurt writers. It hurts readers most of all, and it hurts our ability to grow and progress by limiting the exchange of ideas.
The same is true for The Cartoons That Shook the World. In it, Klausen makes a strong case that the controversial cartoons published by Jyllands-Posten in 2005 weren’t the real cause of the ensuing protests and riots, but were merely a tool used by governments and extremist groups to stir up anti-Western sentiment. As I read her book, which describes the 12 drawings, I yearned to see them. I wanted to decide for myself how offensive they were. I also wanted to see the uncontroversial artworks portraying Muhammad the author describes – evidence, Klausen states, that depicting the Prophet has never been taboo. Without a laptop by my side, I was cheated out of this educational opportunity by Yale University Press’s censors.

What’s also disturbing is the relative lack of attention paid to Yale’s censorious act. Are we becoming numb to these losses of our freedoms? When we read of the German publisher Droste Verlag’s recent cancellation of an honour-killing murder mystery, again out of fear of Islamist retaliation despite the absence of threats, do we still feel angry? Or do we shrug in resignation? Do we know about this latest incident at all? Several days after the story hit the German press, I saw no mention in the US media.

SECRETS AND LIES

Saving Private Manning

Private First Class Bradley Manning, is the person being held in detention at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, for allegedly releasing 260,000 confidential US government cables to WikiLeaks.
Reports confirm that he is being held in solitary confinement; that he only has one hour outside his cell a day; is on suicide watch and has no access to news.

The problem with any US “investigation” - for which “witch hunt” may be a more accurate description - is the patterns of behaviour to be found in recent American history.

There is a record of secret support for less than salubrious regimes with undeclared involvement for example in the overthrow of Chilean president Allende, secret support for drug running Panamanian president General Noriega, the corrupt Marcos family in the Phillipines, Ngo Dinh Diem, General Thieu and Air Vice Marshall Ky in South Vietnam and more recently Karzai in Afghanistan.
A further quick sampling would highlight the McCarthy witch hunt of “communists” in the 1950s, the Gulf of Tonkin incident staged to justify the war in Vietnam, the invasion of Afghanistan that hinged on blaming the government for 9/11, and assertions about non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” to justify the invasion of Iraq.

SECRETS AND LIES

Saving Private Manning

Private First Class Bradley Manning, is the person being held in detention at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, for allegedly releasing 260,000 confidential US government cables to WikiLeaks.
Reports confirm that he is being held in solitary confinement; that he only has one hour outside his cell a day; is on suicide watch and has no access to news.

The problem with any US “investigation” like this - for which “witch hunt” may be a more accurate description - is the patterns of behaviour to be found in recent American history.

There is a record of secret support for less than salubrious regimes with undeclared involvement for example in the overthrow of Chilean president Allende, secret support for drug running Panamanian president General Noriega, the corrupt Marcos family in the Phillipines, Ngo Dinh Diem, General Thieu and Air Vice Marshall Ky in South Vietnam and more recently Karzai in Afghanistan.
A further quick sampling would highlight the McCarthy witch hunt of “communists” in the 1950s, the Gulf of Tonkin incident staged to justify the war in Vietnam, the invasion of Afghanistan that hinged on blaming the government for 9/11, and assertions about non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” to justify the invasion of Iraq.

EARTH CHANGES

Golfballs the new hail
Georgia Shield holds several of the golf ball-size hailstones that fell at Logan, south of Brisbane, during a freak storm on the afternoon of December 15, 2010.

LEAKS & GEEKS

Who is Julian Assange?

The super-geek who is now staking a claim to being the world's most notorious leaker of secrets grew up on a small idyllic Queensland island with just 500 residents - a "Tom Sawyer" who fished and built rafts while his mother "lived in a bikini" and shot a taipan on his bed.

Born in July 1971 in Townsville on the Queensland coast, Julian Assange says he's never been a stranger to the nomadic way of life, moving 37 times by the time he was 14. His parents worked in theatre and were often on the road.

He and his half-brother did not receive formal education, with his mother Christine telling The New Yorker magazine in June: "I didn't want their spirits broken."

FIRST CASUALTY

 

T-shirt available from RedBubble

Don't shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths

IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win."

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Assange “rape” accuser has CIA ties

Julian Assange’s chief accuser in Sweden has a significant history of work with anti-Castro groups, at least one of which is US funded and openly supported by a former CIA (Quelle surprise, no?) agent convicted in the mass murder of seventy three Cubans on an airliner he was involved in blowing up.

WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange's rape case gets murkier

Are the sexual assault charges against Julian Assange really true or is he being framed? As more details surface, the case gets murkier by the minute. Assange is currently in a London jail cell awaiting deportation to Sweden on charges he sexually assaulted two women there in August.

EARTH CHANGES

Eiffel Tower shut and roads blocked by Paris snowfall

Heavy snow in Paris brought buses to a halt on Wednesday, suspended flights at Charles de Gaulle airport and prompted the closure of the Eiffel Tower.Motorways in the Paris region were described as impassable as snow that had already hit other areas of France spread to the capital.

Panama Canal shut by heavy rains

Traffic through the Panama Canal - which connects the Pacific and Atlantic oceans - has been temporarily suspended because of heavy rain.The canal authority said the rains had pushed water levels in lakes that form part of the canal to historic highs, potentially affecting shipping.It is the first time the canal has had to close since the US invasion of Panama in 1989.

TWINKLE TWINKLE

'Diamond exoplanet' idea boosted by telescope find

A US-British team of astronomers has discovered the first planet with ultra-high concentrations of carbon.

The researchers say their discovery supports the idea there may be carbon-rich, rocky planets whose terrains are made up of diamonds or graphite.
"You might see land masses and mountains made up of diamonds," the lead researcher Dr Nikku Madhusudhan told BBC News.
The study in Nature journal raises new questions about how planets are formed.