Why is it that Mondays and radio stations seem to lead to me spending far too much time in said radio stations, and not getting enough sleep that night.
I got in to 1WAY FM a bit after 4:30am yesterday and left a bit after midday. I then returned around 5:30pm and left shortly after 7pm.
I was intending on going to sleep after I got home, but ended up having dinner, watching the additively awful “112 Emergency” on SBS 2 followed by Media Watch, and then managed to, just before I would have gone to sleep, sidetrack myself with buying music from iTunes.
This morning I slept through my alarm at 4am (although I think I may have turned my phone alarm off without realising as the phone was in a different location when I woke up than it was when I went to sleep) and then woke up at 6:10am at the end of a dream about how “it’s time to get up when your alarm starts buzzing, whirring, spinning and singing”.
Of particular interest to me is one of Craig Emerson’s many titles, namely “Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation”. If we ever see that as the title given to Craig on a TV news super, I will fall off my chair, get back on the chair and fall off again just to make sure the point gets through.
What makes Craig’s title all the more amusing is that Senator Nick Sherry is the “Assistant Treasurer” and not the “Minister assisting the Treasurer” or even worse the “Minister assisting the Minister for the Treasury on matters of Treasure”.
Apart from that, there are just a whole heap of minor roles which I think we forget exist, and I am forced to wonder how many exist merely for the sake of ensuring that a certain number of MPs get an extra allowance because they are a minister or a minister assisting a minister.
[Greg] Combet becomes Minister for Defence Personnel, Material and Science and Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change.
[Chris] Bowen becomes Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law, as well as Minister for Human Services.
Brendan O’Connor takes on the Homes Affairs portfolio, replacing [Bob] Debus, with responsibility for policing and law enforcement and the administration of Australian territories.
[..]
In other movements Craig Emerson, Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy and Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation, will also become Minister for Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs.
Senator Nick Sherry a former Shadow Assistant Treasurer, will be appointed Assistant Treasurer.
Brendan O’Connor will be appointed Minister for Home Affairs, with responsibility for policing and law enforcement and the administration of Australian territories.
Warren Snowdon will be appointed Minister for Indigenous Health, Rural and Regional Health and Regional Services Delivery.
And Kate Ellis will be appointed Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare and Youth and will continue as Minister for Sport.
At the risk of picking on Craig Emerson again…the Minister for Independent Contractors? Seriously? Why don’t we just have a Minister for Baked Beans while we’re at it?
Further cluttering the already somewhat overpopulated lower end of the FM spectrum in Canberra, is China Radio International, now heard on 88FM, a frequency which at one stage was home to a rather interesting tourist information station.
Programming from the state-owned China Radio International (CRI) is now being heard in Canberra with the launch of radio station FM88.
The new Canberra station is the latest in a Chinese-language media empire in Australia which includes eight Chinese-language newspapers across Australia as well as radio stations in Melbourne (1341 kHz) and Perth (104.9 MHz). Attending the radio station’s launch in Canberra were Wang Gengnian, president of CRI, and the Chinese ambassador to Australia, Zhang Junsai.
[..]
The radio stations include programming from CRI as well as Chinese-language content from BBC and the Voice of America but also include locally-produced content such as talkback.
Leading the organisation in Australia is Melbourne-based Tommy Jiang, a former soccer player who relocated to Australia 21 years ago. Mr Jiang said that the local Chinese communities “love to talk and find out about Australian politics, about relations with China, about lifestyle issues – including of course restaurants and real estate”.
[..]
The radio stations also broadcast programs that teach Chinese.
I wonder if Kevin Rudd will find the Chinese lessons helpful? Perhaps he could get a job on the station when he eventually leaves politics.
Given the frequency allocation and the commercial nature of some of the station’s content, I’m assuming that it’s a narrowcaster. Sadly ACMA’s somewhat outdated website doesn’t provide any information about the Canberra station, however it does confirm that the Melbourne station is a narrowcaster.
Today is the start of 1WAY FM‘s Future Feed, two weeks (OK, 11 days) of the station going “all out” to provide high quality programming, as a taste of what the future could be for the station.
Many things have changed for the two weeks including the news service, rostering of announcers, the music playlist, and even some changes to the program lineup, but some things have stayed the same. At the end of the two weeks, some things will change back, and some things might stay!
The station is after your feedback, be it by phone (6239 3711), SMS (0432 621 614) or e-mail (feedback@1wayfm.com.au), to help it be as good as it can be, which will in turn enable it to reach out to more people.
Excitingly, 1WAY FM have a new website (1wayfm.com.au) by KJWDesign and have a webstream.
I’m on breakfast duties with James Scott this week between 7am and 9am, and again on Monday before I head off to Deniliquin for another week.
1WAY FM’s Future Feed. 91.9 and 94.3 FM, plus streaming online at 1wayfm.com.au
Searchers found two passengers’ bodies and a briefcase containing an Air France Flight 447 ticket in the Atlantic Ocean near where the jetliner is believed to have crashed, a Brazil military official said Saturday.
[..]
All were killed, the world’s worst commercial air accident since 2001, and Air France’s deadliest plane crash.
The bodies of two male passengers were recovered Saturday morning about 45 miles south of where Air France Flight 447 emitted its last signals — roughly 400 miles northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil’s northern coast.
Brazilian air force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral said an Air France ticket was found inside a leather briefcase.
“It was confirmed with Air France that the ticket number corresponds to a passenger on the flight,” he said.
Admiral Edison Lawrence said the bodies were being transported to the Fernando de Noronha islands for identification. A backpack with a laptop and a vaccination card also was recovered.
The finds could potentially establish a more precise search area for the crucial black box flight data and voice recorders that could tell investigators why the jet crashed.
The U.S. Navy is sending two high-tech devices to French ships that will help them locate the black boxes, a senior U.S. defense official told The Associated Press on Saturday.
The Towed Pinger Locators, which can detect emergency beacons to a depth of 20,000 feet, are being flown to Brazil on Monday with a U.S. Navy team, said the official, who requested anonymity because the decision, which came in response to a request from France, has not been announced.
We’ve heard about the inconsistent air speed messages which came from the plane in the moments before it crashed. Now we have answers as to what caused those messages.
The French agency investigating the disaster, meanwhile, said airspeed instruments were not replaced as the maker recommended before the plane disappeared in turbulent weather nearly a week ago during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people aboard.
[..]
The French accident investigation agency, BEA, found the plane received inconsistent airspeed readings from different instruments as it struggled in a massive thunderstorm.
The investigation is increasingly focused on whether external instruments may have iced over, confusing speed sensors and leading computers to set the plane’s speed too fast or slow — a potentially deadly mistake in severe turbulence.
Airbus recommended that all its airline customers replace instruments that help measure speed and altitude, known as Pitot tubes, on the A330, the model used for Flight 447, said Paul-Louis Arslanian, the head of the agency.
“They hadn’t yet been replaced” on the plane that crashed, said Alain Bouillard, head of the French investigation.
Air France issued a statement Saturday saying it began replacing the monitors on the Airbus A330 model on April 27 after an improved version became available.
The statement stressed the recommendation to change the monitor “allows the operator full freedom to totally, partially or not at all apply it.” When safety is at issue, the aircraft maker puts out a mandatory service bulletin followed up by an airworthiness directive, not a recommendation.
The Air France statement said that icing of the monitors at high altitude has led at times to loss of needed flying information, but only a “small number” of incidents linked to the monitors had been reported.
If they manage to find the black box data recorder, then this could be a very interesting investigation, with important ramifications on future part replacement by airlines following recommendations by manufacturers.
This week’s award goes to Sting and The Police, and the feature song is “Walking On The Moon”.
Giant steps are what you take
Walking on the moon
I hope my legs don’t break
Walking on the moon
We could walk forever
Walking on the moon
We could live together
Walking on, walking on the moon
Walking back from your house
Walking on the moon
Walking back from your house
Walking on the moon
Feet they hardly touch the ground
Walking on the moon
My feet don’t hardly make no sound
Walking on, walking on the moon
Some may say
I’m wishing my days away, no way
And if it’s the price I pay, some say
Tomorrow’s another day, you’ll stay
I may as well play
Giant steps are what you take
Walking on the moon
I hope my legs don’t break
Walking on the moon
We could walk forever
Walking on the moon
We could be together
Walking on, walking on the moon
Some may say
I’m wishing my days away, no way
And if it’s the price I pay, some say
Tomorrow’s another day, you’ll stay
I may as well play
The ACT now has eight confirmed pig flu cases, which pales in comparison to the number of people who will get normal flu this winter.
A 19-year-old man is the latest to test positive to the swine flu in Canberra, taking the number of ACT cases to eight.
The man tested positive when he visited the territory’s Influenza Assessment Centre, which was set up at one of ACT’s hospitals just days ago to deal with influenza testing.
“He is not a contact of another confirmed ACT case,” a statement from ACT Health says.
The number of swine flu cases has risen nationally to more than 1,000. Most of them are in Victoria.
ACT Health’s press release isn’t up on their website yet, however they have confirmed that the number of confirmed pig flu cases in Australia is now 1020.
Earlier this week Sean Hannity went to Florida and interviewed fellow talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh for his show on the Fox News Channel. The interviewed covered a wide range of topics including Barack Obama’s policies and the problems with the Republican party in its current form.
The interview was long enough to be spread out over two nights, and is well worth watching.
Part One
Topics include:
Why the Democrats are seemingly focussing on Rush as if he was the leader of the Republican party.
Why Rush wants Barack Obama’s policies to fail.
Why Obama is “running around the world and apologising for America”.
Fidel Castro believes Obama is further left than he is.
Part Two
Topics include:
Some thoughts on Colin Powell and why he supported and voted for Obama, despite him being in the other political party.
Sonia Sotomayor, why she shouldn’t be a judge, why she is being nominated, and the unknown factor which could make her racist comments overlookable.
Part Three
Topics include:
Who Rush thinks should replace him as the person Obama declares the “titular head” of the Republican party.
How to understand the thought process behind Obama’s policies.
Why Rush is optimistic that the American people will stand up to Obama in the 2010 and 2012 elections.
The hypocricy of Obama saying that America can’t impose values on other countries, and then going ahead and doing it anyway. (which includes a comment on Israel).
Part Four
Topics include:
Obama’s socialist policies, and the effect it will have on the economy, and on peoples’ lives.
The so-called “Fairness Doctrine” and a possible way to introduce it by stealth.
The problem with the Republican Party in its current moderate form.
More on the problem with Obama’s policies.
Part Five
This section doesn’t appear in the transcripts and appears to be a portion of the interview which wasn’t aired in the “four parts spread over two nights” version, and instead aired later on.
Topics include:
Rush describes the real meaning of conservatism, and how that differs from many perceptions of it.
Obama’s speech to the Muslim world, and what he should have said.
The transcript of parts one and two can be found here, and parts three and four, here. If I find a transcript of part five, I’ll let you know.
Seeing as this blog post is related, I should say to all of those of you who guessed that my “major infrastructure investment” earlier this week was a car…congratulations, you were correct.
I love hitch-hikers. They often have interesting and somewhat random (and often alcohol induced) stories to tell, and occasionally (OK, rarely) they pay for their ride. This morning I had one of these rare paying hitch-hikers. When we arrived at their house, they asked me to wait for a few moments while they got “some coins” which were apparently going to be more than worth my while…they weren’t kidding.
After waiting for a couple minutes, the hitch-hiker returned with what looked like a small bucket, which they then took a couple seconds to empty in to the front passenger’s footwell. The coins covered the entire footwell, seemingly layers deep.
It took me at least five minutes to pick up the coins when I got home…and whilst half a (full size) bucket of coins is an exaggeration, the bucket is certainly heavy enough, and it is going to take me quite some time to count.
This leaves me pondering a couple questions though. The coins are obviously worth a fair chunk of money, so how drunk was this hitch-hiker? And will they regret giving away so many coins when they wake up later today.
Secondly, who keeps large amounts of coins of all denominations, in buckets?
I’ll weight the bucket once the bathroom is (and the scales are) free. I’ll count the coins later on today. I’ll report back on both counts.
Update: 12.5kg of coins. End Update
Further Update 5pm: Having spent the better half of the afternoon counting coins, I can confirm that the coins are as follows:
In $2 coins: $398
In $1 coins: $228
In 50c coins: $92.50
In 20c coins: $57.40
In 10c coins: $21.90
In 5c coins: $6.30
In total: $804.10
I took this hitch-hiker from Barry Drive to Weetangera, a distance of about 7 kilomteres, which makes the cost of the journey a rather ridiculous amount of $114.87 per kilometre, or 11.5 cents per metre. To the same extent, the trip took about ten minutes, which is a pay rate of $482.46 per hour.
It seems that ill-fated Air France flight 447 is actually still missing, and that the stuff which they thought was wreckage is actually just “sea junk”.
France’s transportation minister said Friday that French forces have found no signs of the Airbus A330 airplane that vanished over the Atlantic and urged “extreme prudence” about suspected debris taken from the ocean.
Dominique Bussereau said he regretted that an announcement by Brazilian teams that they had recovered plane debris from Air France flight 447 turned out to be false.
The Brazilian air force announced Thursday afternoon that a helicopter plucked an airplane cargo pallet from the sea that came the Air France flight, but then said six hours later that it was not from the Airbus.
“French authorities have been saying for several days that we have to be extremely prudent,” Bussereau told France’s RTL radio. “Our planes and naval ships have seen nothing.”
Bussereau said the search must continue and stressed that the priority was finding the flight recorders. The plane went down Sunday night with 228 people on board in the world’s worst aviation disaster since 2001.
Meanwhile Airbus are issuing some rather concerning safety messages about the A330
Such warnings from Airbus to its clients are only sent if accident investigators have established facts that they consider important enough to pass on immediately to airlines, an industry official told Reuters.
The French air accident investigation agency (BEA) has said the speed levels registered by the slew of messages from the plane showed “incoherence,” Reuters reports.
[..]
Investigators are looking into whether malfunctions in instruments used to determine airspeed may have led the plane to be traveling at the wrong speed when it encountered turbulence from towering thunderstorms over the Atlantic Ocean.
Two aviation industry officials told The Associated Press on Thursday that investigators were studying the possibility that an external probe that measures air pressure may have iced over. The probe feeds data used to calculate air speed and altitude to onboard computers. Another possibility is that sensors inside the aircraft reading the data malfunctioned.
If the instruments were not reporting accurate information, the jet could have been traveling too fast or too slow as it hit turbulence from violent thunderstorms, according to the officials.
Jetliners need to be flying at just the right speed when encountering violent weather, experts say — too fast and they run the risk of breaking apart. Too slow, and they could lose control.
[..]
European planemaker Airbus has sent an advisory to all operators of the A330 reminding them of how to handle the plane in conditions similar to those experienced by Flight 447, which was an Airbus A330-200 version.
[..]
In such circumstances, flight crews should maintain thrust and pitch and — if necessary — level off the plane and start troubleshooting procedures as detailed in operating manuals, Dubon said.
It’s almost a week now since the plane went missing, so I have to wonder if any of the wreckage (assuming that it crashed and didn’t just disappear in to thin air) would still be floating, and more importantly, be floating near any other wreckage.
It just occurred to me, as I contemplate ringing in to KXNT‘s morning flip segment at 1am that I have remembered their phone number, including international dialling codes and area codes etc: 0011 1 702 733 5968. Whilst I am slightly concerned that I have managed to remember a fifteen digit phone number, it is nice to know that I don’t have to refer to KXNT’s “contact us” page every time I want to call them.
As it happens though, I have something else to do at 1am, and therefore won’t be calling Alan. I’ll try to make some time next week instead.
Update: Meh, I’ll push the 1am thing back a tad and ring Alan Stock at about 1:10am. End Update
Well that certainly saves me from keeping an eye on the scores for the rest of the household, as 3AW are providing “around the grounds” scores of the Melbourne Storm NRL match during their AFL coverage, and the other match is on TV.
Many thanks to 3AW’s Graeme Bond for saving me a bit of work tonight.
The announcement has been confirmed with a released letter from Mr Fitzgibbon to the Prime Minister, which acknowledges that he is “not absolutely satisfied that I [ensured full] compliance with your Ministerial Code of Conduct.”
“I have decided to resign as a member of the Executive, effective, immediately.”
Yesterday Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he was not happy about Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon’s failure to declare another gift.
Mr. Fitzgibbon’s failure to declare gifts in a timely manner, and his controversial relationship with Chinese businesswoman Helen Liu forced this outcome, and after what I said the other night following Mr. Fitzgibbon’s latest late declaration of a gift, I’m pleased with the outcome.
[..]quite frankly if you aren’t capable of disclosing gifts, I fail to see how you can be considered competent enough to be the minister for defence[..]
I don’t want to take pleasure from the downfall of Mr. Fitzgibbon, rather from the fact that the right thing has been done, and the important role of Minister for Defence can now be handed to someone who won’t bring as much controversy, and will hopefully be more suitable for the job.
Dr Willem de Lange, IPCC author and senior lecturer in Waikato University’s Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, describes some of the dodgy science at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and explains why he believes that global warming and cooling is not caused by humans.
In 1996 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Second Assessment Report was released, and I was listed as one of approximately 3000 “scientists” who agreed that there was a discernable human influence on climate.
I was an invited reviewer for a chapter dealing with the economic impact of sea level rise on small island nations… I was not asked if I supported the view expressed in my name, and my understanding at the time was that no evidence of a discernable human influence on global climate existed.
The chapter I reviewed dealt primarily with the economic consequences of an assumed sea level rise of 1 m causing extensive inundation… I disagreed with the initial assumptions, particularly the assumed sea level rise in the stated time period.
Further, there was good evidence at the time that sea level rise would not necessarily result in flooding of small island nations… Subsequent research has demonstrated that coral atolls and associated islands are likely to increase in elevation as sea level rises. Hence, the assumptions were invalid, and I was convinced that IPCC projections were unrealistic and exaggerated the problem…
What has sea level actually done so far this century? There have been large regional variations, but the global rate has slowed and is currently negative, consistent with measured ocean cooling. Claims to the contrary are exaggerations and not realistic…
Trying to stop or control climate change is akin to stopping ocean tides…. As the latest IPCC report notes, there is no convincing evidence of the impact of CO2 (or any other human influence on climate) at a continental scale…
So, I am a climate realist because the available evidence indicates that climate change is predominantly, if not entirely, natural. It occurs mostly in response to variations in solar heating of the oceans, and the consequences this has for the rest of the Earth’s climate system. There is no evidence to support the hypothesis runaway catastrophic climate change due to human activities.
I had a most unusual dream the other night featuring an odd version of the (now defunct) Belconnen Bus Interchange.
In this dream the bus interchange was larger than it is in real life and had multiple ramps and bridges crossing the roadway. I, for one reason or another, was boarding buses, validating my ticket, sitting down for a second and then walking off the bus so that I could repeat the procedure.
Eventually I decided to use one of the bridges and sit down on a bench near a fence next to a building at the back of the bus interchange, which seemed to back on to a street in Holt. While I was sitting there, two girls ran out of the interchange carrying something and jumped the fence. A lady from ACTION followed them but didn’t see which direction they went in…I informed her that they had turned right, she then followed them and returned a few moments later with them tied up by a rope.
The girls asked me why I had given up their location, to which I replied that they hadn’t paid for my silence.
