Blog – Page 261 – Stilgherrian

15 November 200826 August 2020

Space: we’ve still such a long way to go

This morning I watched the Space Shuttle Endeavor [sic] rocket into orbit on NASA TV. Exciting. But now I see this new photograph (above) of a planet found orbiting Fomalhaut, and realise we’re still only taking the tiniest of baby-steps into the universe.

I’m a child of the Space Age. When I was born, no-one had been outside the earth’s atmosphere. I was too young to be aware of the flights of Yuri Gararin or Alan Shepherd. But when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong walked upon the Moon we got the day off school to watch the grainy video imagery — our rural school didn’t have enough TVs for everyone to see.

Today I watched quietly as Endeavor became a tiny blue dot in the empty black sky — oh so quickly! And yet… And yet in the full-sized Hubble Space Telescope imagery the newly-photographed planet Fomalhaut b is also just a faint dot.

25 light-years away.

Endeavour would take more than 900,000 years to get there at its low Earth orbit speed of 8 kilometres a second.

Tiny. Baby. Steps.

15 November 2008

Links for 15 November 2008

Here are the web links I’ve found for 15 November 2008, served with a mild mustard and posted automatically.

New Twitter Anti-Spam Bot Causes Chaos | ReadWriteWeb: The real reason Kevin Rudd’s Twitter account was misbehaving.
Too many twitters drown out Rudd website | theage.com.au: The Age‘s article claiming the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Twitter account “crashed&” because of overload.
Aussie Prime Minister Kevin Rudd Joins Twitter – The Reponse: No Clean Feed | Young PR: Australian PR expert chap Paull Young’s take on Kevin Rudd’s launch into the Twitterverse. He reckons it’s a waste of time because the audience is too small.
Internet addiction disorder | Wikipedia: The Wikipedia article says that the definition and status of Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) is still somewhat controversial.
China classes Web addiction as clinical disorder | The Inquirer: China appears to be the first nation to official classify Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) as a clinical condition.
Reservoir Thunderbirds | YouTube: YouTube recommended that I watch this mashup of Thunderbirds and Reservoir Dogs. I agree.
Was Simpson Desert closed because of aliens? | AdelaideNow…: The South Australian government refuses to rule out that their closure of the Simpson Desert Conservation Park was due to the presence of aliens.
A senior fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence | International Herald Tribune: The news report that Sarah Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent was a hoax, set up by two guys developing a character for a new TV series.

14 November 200814 November 2008

@KevinRuddPM isn’t really Kevin

I’m not particularly surprised to discover that the Prime Minister’s Twitter presence isn’t really Kevin Rudd but a minion of some kind.

I’ve already written about this [1, 2], and will doubtless write again, but I figure today’s the day they really do need to sort out how they’re going to use this Twitter account.

Are they talking in first person like “I’m on my way to the G20…” or the third like “We think getting 700 followers in 7 hours + following back caused us to crash“? How will they respond to the massive return traffic, making sure everyone feels like they’ve been heard while not sounding like a robot?

Why wasn’t this written up on the site before the account went live? After all, those basic ground rules would have been negotiated well before the PM approved the idea, wouldn’t they?

I’m still not convinced by this “we crashed Twitter” line either. Al Gore joined Twitter the other day and was getting 2000+ adds an hour. It coped fine then. I don’t see why it wouldn’t cope now. Linkage please, Prime Minister’s Minion!

I’m also surprised that they seem to be stumbling a bit, even by rolling out the account while the PM’s travelling. Surely they’d have hired an expert for such a public activity?

14 November 2008

Conroy’s Cnutful Hat Trick

Photograph of Senator Stephen Conroy labelled Cnut of the Week

Yes, Stephen Stephen Conroy was voted “Cnut of the Week” for the third time running by the audience of last night’s Stilgherrian Live — which you can watch online now. My people do not like his Internet censorship plans, it seems!

We had so many nominations, ranging from “NSW wheat farmers” (who, despite record crops in some areas, are still whingeing because the world economic recession means they can’t get the price they want for their grain) to “the people of Arkansas” (for their medieval attitude to gay couples adopting children).

Still, despite a strong final field including Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (for calling US President-Elect “tanned”), Vitamin D (you’ll have to watch) and NSW Premier Nathan Rees (for recent state budget cuts), Senator Conroy was the clear winner with 66% of the vote.

14 November 200816 November 2008

Links for 10 November 2008 through 13 November 2008

Stilgherrian’s links for 10 November 2008 through 13 November 2008, greased up and wearing a beanie:

Against Australian Internet Censorship? We Must Change Our Arrogant, Flawed Strategy | Let’s Take Over: Someone who manages to talk about Internet censorship with even more anger than me, though the anger is directed at those who poorly manage the political arguments against censorship.
If you look long enough, you can find anything on the Internet | The Weblog With No Name: A nice little piece about the need to preserve our knowledge, “just in case”.
ISP Content Filtering Live Pilot | DBCDE: The official call for expressions of interest from ISPs who want to take part in the Australia government’s Internet censorship trials.
Filter advocates need to check their facts | ABC News: Network engineer Mark Newton’s latest piece about plans for Internet censorship.
Get the Picture – Video | Screen Australia: A detailed analysis of the video industry in Australia, with lots of useful statistics and graphs. The site also has analysis of cinema, free-to-air and subscription TV, interactive media, the audiovisual trade and international comparisons.
A Brief Lesson on the Practicalities of Internet Filtering/Censoring for the Current Australian Government | UserFriendly: The metaphor has been used before, or at least variations of it have, but this cartoon version might spread the meme more widely.
Destruction Day for Pirated DVDs | Minister for Home Affairs: Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus’ original media release claiming the figure of $1.7 billion for the cost of illegally-copies DVDs.
Film piracy “funding” Islamic militants | ABC News: According to Optical Media Board chairman Edu Manzano, the Abu Sayyaf — blamed for the worst terrorist attacks in the South-East Asian country — are likely behind the illegal copying of movies onto DVDs, which are then peddled at Manila shops by migrant Muslim traders.
US Attorney General: Piracy funds terror | ars technica: Another source for the trope that illegally copying DVDs funds terrorism.
What piracy crisis? MPAA touts record box office for 2007 | ars technica: The US box office continues to grow, despite all the rhetoric about piracy.

14 November 2008

Appearing on 2SER’s “Diffusion”

I was interviewed yesterday about Australia’s Internet censorship plans by radio 2SER’s Ian Woolf for their science program Diffusion, which goes to air in Sydney on Monday night at 6.30pm on 107.3 FM, and then around Australia on the community radio network after the news at 4pm Wednesday. It’ll also be podcast once the program has aired.