We have a government in power in my country...here in my home state of Queensland. They have actually funded a study for information packs to be given to teachers....here is the news item in question. Read it and realise that these kids are going to one day be leading our nation...
*******************************************************************
Teachers have been advised that marking students' work in red pen could harm their mental health.
A kit to help teachers address mental health wellbeing in the classroom offers a list of tips devised by experts.
One tip says: "Don't mark in a red pen (which can be seen as aggressive) - use a different colour."
The kit, tabled in Queensland's parliament on Wednesday by Deputy Opposition Leader Mark McArdle, sparked a row between the government and opposition over education priorities.
"Given your 10-year-old Labor government presides over the lowest numeracy and literacy standards of any state in Australia, don't you think it's time we focused on classroom outcomes rather than these kooky, loony, loopy, lefty policies?" Mr McArdle asked Premier Anna Bligh in parliament.
Ms Bligh said the question was trivial at a time of economic crisis.
"Thousands of Queensland retirees for example are seeing their superannuation earnings go through the floor, and the opposition wants to speak about the colour of pens that teachers are using in the classroom," Ms Bligh said.
Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg said there was nothing wrong with teachers using a red pen.
"How crazy is this government?" he told reporters.
But Health Minister Stephen Robertson, whose department devised the kit, said youth suicide was such a serious issue.
"If mental health professionals determine that as one of a number of strategies teachers should consider, then I'll support them every day of the week," he told reporters.
"This is not a matter for ridicule, this is serious."
***********************************************************
Do these chuckleheads think any of us ended up with "mental anguish" because we saw a red mark on a school report? Maybe a red mark on our arse when our father saw the bad marks...
Here's a tip kiddies...one day you are going to have a boss...that boss is going to be very critical of everything you do, and how you act...he isn't going to worry about your mental sensitivities when you stuff up and lose the company money, he isn't going to check if you don't like to be critisized before sacking you when you stuff up one time too many. He will turf your arse out the door without a backward glance.
Welcome to the big harsh real world.
Some kids are in for a nasty shock in a few years time...
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Roswell...how many different stories can they come up with?
Just been watchin an episode of The Unexplained on Discovery Channel...it was about UFO's.
Now, the tale they told was, of course, Roswell. The funny bit is how the stories kept changing over the years...added to and embellished, one saucer, two saucers, three saucers, no bodies, many bodies, a landing and a bad take off resulting in a crash, a ship being struck by lightning, and many more.
To digress, don't you always find it funny that these are supposedly craft from an advanced civilisation, capable of travel between the stars, of moving through the depths of space at massive velocities...but they just can't seem to handle lightning or a decent take off...
Now, when someone tells you four or five different...radically different, not just little details...versions of the same story, you would start to question the truthfullness of what they were saying, if not outright coughing into your hand "Bullshit!".
Not these people...to them, the basic premise is absolutely true...aliens crashed near Roswell...it doesn't seem to matter to them how the story changes over the years, no matter how much is changed and added to in the story: each change is gleefully accepted without question, seemingly without asking "hang on...didn't you just tell us it was this way? How come now it happened that way...?"
Blind belief is a wonderful thing...
Now I should say straight away...I firmly believe in life on other planets...the odds are just too astronomical for it not to be so. I just don't believe that flying saucers exist.
Oh well...while ever UFO nuts exist, we can all have fun laughing at them...
Now, the tale they told was, of course, Roswell. The funny bit is how the stories kept changing over the years...added to and embellished, one saucer, two saucers, three saucers, no bodies, many bodies, a landing and a bad take off resulting in a crash, a ship being struck by lightning, and many more.
To digress, don't you always find it funny that these are supposedly craft from an advanced civilisation, capable of travel between the stars, of moving through the depths of space at massive velocities...but they just can't seem to handle lightning or a decent take off...
Now, when someone tells you four or five different...radically different, not just little details...versions of the same story, you would start to question the truthfullness of what they were saying, if not outright coughing into your hand "Bullshit!".
Not these people...to them, the basic premise is absolutely true...aliens crashed near Roswell...it doesn't seem to matter to them how the story changes over the years, no matter how much is changed and added to in the story: each change is gleefully accepted without question, seemingly without asking "hang on...didn't you just tell us it was this way? How come now it happened that way...?"
Blind belief is a wonderful thing...
Now I should say straight away...I firmly believe in life on other planets...the odds are just too astronomical for it not to be so. I just don't believe that flying saucers exist.
Oh well...while ever UFO nuts exist, we can all have fun laughing at them...
Sunday, September 21, 2008
The sun is doing some funny stuff...NASA will speak soon.
Interesting developments happening on our friendly star...NASA is going to hold a press conferance speaking on what they thing is happening.
Here is the link and release below:
NASA to Discuss Conditions on and Surrounding the Sun
WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA will hold a media teleconference Tuesday, Sept. 23, at 12:30 p.m. EDT, to discuss data from the joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission that reveals the sun's solar wind is at a 50-year low. The sun's current state could result in changing conditions in the solar system.
Ulysses was the first mission to survey the space environment above and below the poles of the sun. The reams of data Ulysses returned have changed forever the way scientists view our star and its effects. The venerable spacecraft has lasted more than 17 years -- almost four times its expected mission lifetime.
The panelists are:
-- Ed Smith, NASA Ulysses project scientist and magnetic field
instrument investigator, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
-- Dave McComas, Ulysses solar wind instrument principal investigator,
Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
-- Karine Issautier, Ulysses radio wave lead investigator, Observatoire
de Paris, Meudon, France
-- Nancy Crooker, Research Professor, Boston University, Boston, Mass.
Reporters should call 866-617-1526 and use the pass code "sun" to
participate in the teleconference. International media should call
1-210-795-0624.
To access visuals that will the accompany presentations, go to:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/ulysses-20080923.html
Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at:
http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio
A fifty year low in solar activity...wonder what effect this will have on our weather?
Here is the link and release below:
NASA to Discuss Conditions on and Surrounding the Sun
WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA will hold a media teleconference Tuesday, Sept. 23, at 12:30 p.m. EDT, to discuss data from the joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission that reveals the sun's solar wind is at a 50-year low. The sun's current state could result in changing conditions in the solar system.
Ulysses was the first mission to survey the space environment above and below the poles of the sun. The reams of data Ulysses returned have changed forever the way scientists view our star and its effects. The venerable spacecraft has lasted more than 17 years -- almost four times its expected mission lifetime.
The panelists are:
-- Ed Smith, NASA Ulysses project scientist and magnetic field
instrument investigator, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
-- Dave McComas, Ulysses solar wind instrument principal investigator,
Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
-- Karine Issautier, Ulysses radio wave lead investigator, Observatoire
de Paris, Meudon, France
-- Nancy Crooker, Research Professor, Boston University, Boston, Mass.
Reporters should call 866-617-1526 and use the pass code "sun" to
participate in the teleconference. International media should call
1-210-795-0624.
To access visuals that will the accompany presentations, go to:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/ulysses-20080923.html
Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at:
http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio
A fifty year low in solar activity...wonder what effect this will have on our weather?
Saturday, September 20, 2008
A religion of peace? They make it so easy for conspiracy theorists...
I've been doing a bit of trolling around the web, mostly laughing at conspiracy theories about September 11th and other bombings around the world. The way out whacky thoeries of some of these guys just begger belief...some even quote "Occams razor" (basically, the simplest answer is often the correct one), and then go on to list a long, convoluted arguement of intricately linked and highly implausible "facts"...methinks they should go and read a dictionary.
One thing I will say though...I came across a list on such a website which actually had a grain of truth to it...it was about that shining religion of peace, Islam. I'll reproduce it here because I really think it needs to be said:
"* Muslims fly commercial airliners into buildings in New York City. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslim officials block the exit where school girls are trying to escape a burning building because their faces were exposed. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims cut off the heads of three teenaged girls on their way to school in Indonesia. A Christian school. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims murder teachers trying to teach Muslim children in Iraq. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims murder over 80 tourists with car bombs outside cafes and hotels in Egypt. No Muslim outrage.
* A Muslim attacks a missionary children's school in India. Kills six. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims slaughter hundreds of children and teachers in Beslan, Russia. Muslims shoot children in the back. No Muslim outrage.
* Let's go way back. Muslims kidnap and kill athletes at the Munich Summer Olympics. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims fire rocket-propelled grenades into schools full of children in Israel. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims murder more than 50 commuters in attacks on London subways and buses. Over 700 are injured. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims massacre dozens of innocents at a Passover Seder. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims murder innocent vacationers in Bali. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslim newspapers publish anti-Semitic cartoons. No Muslim outrage
* Muslims are involved, on one side or the other, in almost every one of the 125+ shooting wars around the world. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims beat the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes, then hang them from a bridge. No Muslim outrage.
* Newspapers in Denmark and Norway publish cartoons depicting Mohammed. NOW Muslims are outraged, demanding the death by beheading of "those who don't believe Islam is a religion of peace".
Not all Muslims are terrorists.
Virtually all terrorists are Muslims.
As much of a stereotype as that kind of thing is, it is 100% true...we are dealing with a primitive religion which cannot stand any sort of critisism or ridicule, otherwise practitioners with thier heads firmly based in the 1400's will want you dead.
It has been said, even by Koran scholars, that if you read through the Koran and want to find verses which promote peace, you can find them...if you want to promote war and genocide, you can find them too. In this instance, it is pretty much like the Bible. They are just a little more dedicated to the tradition of offing anyone who doesn't believe in them, and the Christian religion has outgrown that sort of thing nowadays, not that it had much of a problem with it in the past...
All religions now need to take a long hard look at themselves...we live in a world of reason and science, showing us more and more about the world every day...it is no use still clinging to a primitive "Don't know how that happened...must have been God/Allah/Buddha/whoever".
It's time that rational people moved on, realised that the Bible and the Koran are interesting literature with an interesting history, but they certainly aren't the inspired word of God, and they certainly don't give us any great number of rules we should base our lives on.
One thing I will say though...I came across a list on such a website which actually had a grain of truth to it...it was about that shining religion of peace, Islam. I'll reproduce it here because I really think it needs to be said:
"* Muslims fly commercial airliners into buildings in New York City. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslim officials block the exit where school girls are trying to escape a burning building because their faces were exposed. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims cut off the heads of three teenaged girls on their way to school in Indonesia. A Christian school. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims murder teachers trying to teach Muslim children in Iraq. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims murder over 80 tourists with car bombs outside cafes and hotels in Egypt. No Muslim outrage.
* A Muslim attacks a missionary children's school in India. Kills six. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims slaughter hundreds of children and teachers in Beslan, Russia. Muslims shoot children in the back. No Muslim outrage.
* Let's go way back. Muslims kidnap and kill athletes at the Munich Summer Olympics. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims fire rocket-propelled grenades into schools full of children in Israel. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims murder more than 50 commuters in attacks on London subways and buses. Over 700 are injured. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims massacre dozens of innocents at a Passover Seder. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims murder innocent vacationers in Bali. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslim newspapers publish anti-Semitic cartoons. No Muslim outrage
* Muslims are involved, on one side or the other, in almost every one of the 125+ shooting wars around the world. No Muslim outrage.
* Muslims beat the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes, then hang them from a bridge. No Muslim outrage.
* Newspapers in Denmark and Norway publish cartoons depicting Mohammed. NOW Muslims are outraged, demanding the death by beheading of "those who don't believe Islam is a religion of peace".
Not all Muslims are terrorists.
Virtually all terrorists are Muslims.
As much of a stereotype as that kind of thing is, it is 100% true...we are dealing with a primitive religion which cannot stand any sort of critisism or ridicule, otherwise practitioners with thier heads firmly based in the 1400's will want you dead.
It has been said, even by Koran scholars, that if you read through the Koran and want to find verses which promote peace, you can find them...if you want to promote war and genocide, you can find them too. In this instance, it is pretty much like the Bible. They are just a little more dedicated to the tradition of offing anyone who doesn't believe in them, and the Christian religion has outgrown that sort of thing nowadays, not that it had much of a problem with it in the past...
All religions now need to take a long hard look at themselves...we live in a world of reason and science, showing us more and more about the world every day...it is no use still clinging to a primitive "Don't know how that happened...must have been God/Allah/Buddha/whoever".
It's time that rational people moved on, realised that the Bible and the Koran are interesting literature with an interesting history, but they certainly aren't the inspired word of God, and they certainly don't give us any great number of rules we should base our lives on.
Climate Change? It's always been changing dumb-ass!
OK, time to slaughter the holy cow...
I don't believe in climate change...let me clarify that...I don't believe in any huge amount of human caused climate change.
The simple fact, which anyone who had even opened a geology or paleontology textbook (instead of blindly listening to Al Gore...) could tell you, is that our entire human history, our entire civilisation from the dim beginnings of agriculture and city building, has happened in what, in geological terms, has been a stable and temperate climate in Earths history.
I will clarify that again...it has been an unusually stable and temperate period...usually Earth's climate has been either frozen in one of the regular ice ages, or baking in a global greenhouse. Sorry Greenpeace...sorry Mr Gore...but earths climate has been always changing up and down, from frozen to oven hot.
In fact, anyone who went to school in the 1970's will remember that at that time, the Earths climate had been in an overall cooling trend since the late 1940's. The majority scientific opinion was that we might just be seeing the start of the next long overdue ice age. Now we see the "majority scientific opinion" saying that, because things have been a little warmer, we are seeing the start of runaway global warming.
Sorry, but in both cases, a couple of decades of weather reports don't make for a firm prediction for what is going to happen over the next hundred years.
To look further back in history, we had "The Little Ice Age", a period which came after another period called "The Medieval Warming Period".
That's right, there was a period of warming of the climate, and it had nothing to do with old cars, power stations, or modern industry. Funny that.
Back to the Little Ice Age...it was a period from around the 1600's to the mid 1800's. Glaciers advanced in some parts of Europe, crushing villages, the River Thames and canals and lakes in other parts of Europe froze solid. in the winter of 1780, in the city of New York, the harbour froze, and people were able to walk from Manhatten to Staten Island. All round, things were pretty damn miserable. Without modern record keeping and widespread media attention like we can muster today, we have no idea how many peasants died out in the countryside from the cold and lack of food.
Now, the Medieval Warming Period...it covered a period from about the year 800 to the year 1300. It was, interestingly, following on the heels of, you guessed it, a period called "Dark Ages Cold Period"...
You get my drift...climate has been changing, up and down, warm and cold, even in comparitively recent time periods...who is to say that this current slight (very very slight) increase in temperature is not another natural warming?
Like it or not, the Earth was not designed for our comfort...it is a natural dynamic model, which cares not a jot for what we might like it to do. Here in Australia, there is a lot of concern about The Great Barrier Reef, and what will happen to it in the future...not many people know that the Barrier Reef has only been there for 14,000 years...that's right, not 140,000, not 1.4 million, only a short 14,000 years. Consider: Aboriginal peoples had been here for around 40-odd thousand years before the Barrier Reef even formed, after a "meltwater pulse event" raised sea levels around the world.
As I said...the world and it's wonders aren't put here for our benifit...the world hasn't evolved to suit us, we have evolved to suit the world. Mother Nature is truly a bitch, and she doesn't give a shit about us.
So enjoy the natural wonders of the world while you can...you never know how long they are going to last...all it takes is a volcano eruption in the right spot, or a comet or asteroid impact, and things would change suddenly.
I don't believe in climate change...let me clarify that...I don't believe in any huge amount of human caused climate change.
The simple fact, which anyone who had even opened a geology or paleontology textbook (instead of blindly listening to Al Gore...) could tell you, is that our entire human history, our entire civilisation from the dim beginnings of agriculture and city building, has happened in what, in geological terms, has been a stable and temperate climate in Earths history.
I will clarify that again...it has been an unusually stable and temperate period...usually Earth's climate has been either frozen in one of the regular ice ages, or baking in a global greenhouse. Sorry Greenpeace...sorry Mr Gore...but earths climate has been always changing up and down, from frozen to oven hot.
In fact, anyone who went to school in the 1970's will remember that at that time, the Earths climate had been in an overall cooling trend since the late 1940's. The majority scientific opinion was that we might just be seeing the start of the next long overdue ice age. Now we see the "majority scientific opinion" saying that, because things have been a little warmer, we are seeing the start of runaway global warming.
Sorry, but in both cases, a couple of decades of weather reports don't make for a firm prediction for what is going to happen over the next hundred years.
To look further back in history, we had "The Little Ice Age", a period which came after another period called "The Medieval Warming Period".
That's right, there was a period of warming of the climate, and it had nothing to do with old cars, power stations, or modern industry. Funny that.
Back to the Little Ice Age...it was a period from around the 1600's to the mid 1800's. Glaciers advanced in some parts of Europe, crushing villages, the River Thames and canals and lakes in other parts of Europe froze solid. in the winter of 1780, in the city of New York, the harbour froze, and people were able to walk from Manhatten to Staten Island. All round, things were pretty damn miserable. Without modern record keeping and widespread media attention like we can muster today, we have no idea how many peasants died out in the countryside from the cold and lack of food.
Now, the Medieval Warming Period...it covered a period from about the year 800 to the year 1300. It was, interestingly, following on the heels of, you guessed it, a period called "Dark Ages Cold Period"...
You get my drift...climate has been changing, up and down, warm and cold, even in comparitively recent time periods...who is to say that this current slight (very very slight) increase in temperature is not another natural warming?
Like it or not, the Earth was not designed for our comfort...it is a natural dynamic model, which cares not a jot for what we might like it to do. Here in Australia, there is a lot of concern about The Great Barrier Reef, and what will happen to it in the future...not many people know that the Barrier Reef has only been there for 14,000 years...that's right, not 140,000, not 1.4 million, only a short 14,000 years. Consider: Aboriginal peoples had been here for around 40-odd thousand years before the Barrier Reef even formed, after a "meltwater pulse event" raised sea levels around the world.
As I said...the world and it's wonders aren't put here for our benifit...the world hasn't evolved to suit us, we have evolved to suit the world. Mother Nature is truly a bitch, and she doesn't give a shit about us.
So enjoy the natural wonders of the world while you can...you never know how long they are going to last...all it takes is a volcano eruption in the right spot, or a comet or asteroid impact, and things would change suddenly.
Friday, September 19, 2008
The March Of Religion Map...great use of thousands of years of effort...
http://www.mapsofwar.com/ind/history-of-religion.html
Do yourself a favour, and visit this site...play this movie and see how 5000 years of human history can be wasted on a useless enterprise...
Whole lotta dead guys argueing over who has a better imaginary friend in the sky...
Do yourself a favour, and visit this site...play this movie and see how 5000 years of human history can be wasted on a useless enterprise...
Whole lotta dead guys argueing over who has a better imaginary friend in the sky...
Thursday, September 18, 2008
F-22 Raptor...nice plane...shame the Yanks won't trust Australia with them...
Just been checking out the F22 Raptor fighter...amazingly advanced plane, fantastic specs, and able to break the sound barrier without engagin the afterburner...this is the sort of plane Australia needs to replace the F18 Hornet when the time comes.
The niggling little fact is that when Australia asked the USA if we could buy some pretty please with sugar on top, the Americans said a polite "piss off".
That's right...the country who was asking was not Soviet Russia, not some tin pot little African country run by a despot, not some flakey South American dictatorship, but Australia, a country that has been a firm allie of the USA for more decades than I would care to count...we have stuck by the Yanks through thick and thin, usually being the first to stick up our hand and join in when wars are to be fought. We were the first to respond after September 11th, when our Prime Minister was in Washington visiting the President...Bush said we were off to Afghanistan, we stood up and said "The toothbrush is already packed, George!"
Some people might say it is silly, that it is looking back on a debt in WW2, but to be blunt, if it wasn;t for the USA in the Coral Sea, us Aussies would all be speaking Japanese right now...those of us who were left alive that is...and I don't know about you, but I would hate trying to type this on a Japanese keyboard. So when people who have a grasp of history say "we owe the Yanks our alliegence", it isn't just being a syncophant...we really do owe them something. I would think we have proved our worth over the intervening years by following the US into a series of wars and actions overseas, contributing far more than our small 21 million population could be expected to.
But when it comes to selling technology to us, it appears that we can't be trusted beyond a certain limit.
The sale overseas is banned by federal law in the USA...even a "watered down" non-stealthy version is not for sale to us (but it might be to Japan...go figure...).
So instead of the proven, already in production F22, Australia is going to be stuck with the purchase of F35 joint strike fighters...if they ever get them working properly...they are still in the development stage.
Our new Government is apparently going to review the purchase of the F35, and push American politicians to overturn the export ban, if only for Australia.
Come on Yanks...we let you build MacDonalds everywhere, let us have our planes and show us you remember the debt you owe us from all these years of following you into battle...
The niggling little fact is that when Australia asked the USA if we could buy some pretty please with sugar on top, the Americans said a polite "piss off".
That's right...the country who was asking was not Soviet Russia, not some tin pot little African country run by a despot, not some flakey South American dictatorship, but Australia, a country that has been a firm allie of the USA for more decades than I would care to count...we have stuck by the Yanks through thick and thin, usually being the first to stick up our hand and join in when wars are to be fought. We were the first to respond after September 11th, when our Prime Minister was in Washington visiting the President...Bush said we were off to Afghanistan, we stood up and said "The toothbrush is already packed, George!"
Some people might say it is silly, that it is looking back on a debt in WW2, but to be blunt, if it wasn;t for the USA in the Coral Sea, us Aussies would all be speaking Japanese right now...those of us who were left alive that is...and I don't know about you, but I would hate trying to type this on a Japanese keyboard. So when people who have a grasp of history say "we owe the Yanks our alliegence", it isn't just being a syncophant...we really do owe them something. I would think we have proved our worth over the intervening years by following the US into a series of wars and actions overseas, contributing far more than our small 21 million population could be expected to.
But when it comes to selling technology to us, it appears that we can't be trusted beyond a certain limit.
The sale overseas is banned by federal law in the USA...even a "watered down" non-stealthy version is not for sale to us (but it might be to Japan...go figure...).
So instead of the proven, already in production F22, Australia is going to be stuck with the purchase of F35 joint strike fighters...if they ever get them working properly...they are still in the development stage.
Our new Government is apparently going to review the purchase of the F35, and push American politicians to overturn the export ban, if only for Australia.
Come on Yanks...we let you build MacDonalds everywhere, let us have our planes and show us you remember the debt you owe us from all these years of following you into battle...
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