I have been thinking about what happened in the last episode and it still makes no sense – in fact this entire season makes no sense. It’s a pity as the show used to be entertaining (and at one point was even educational). Hopefully the second half of the current series will get postponed until they can rework it to restore the show to how it used to be.
A recent newspaper article that I saw suggested that certain television shows have a political bias. Now in some of the instances mentioned the television show was originally based on a book. One example in particular was MASH and I can’t really understand why that particular example was included in the list of examples of shows with a particular political bias – not because it doesn’t display that bias but because that bias is equally evident in the original book and is in fact the reason for the book’s existance in the first place. Those shows not based on books and where the purpose isn’t to put forward a particular political viewpoint far better supported the journalist’s point.
MASH as a social satire uses humour to make the book a more acceptable read for those who may not necessarily agree with the particular political views expressed in the book. There are other ways to make a strong political point more acceptable and one such way is to express the viewpoint through a science fiction setting. The book Starship Troopers expresses an extreme viewpoint that is almost directly opposed to the “politically correct” position that western society has moved toward since the book was written. Of course in each of these instances it is not necessarily obvious whether the author actually supports the extreme view being expressed, is completely opposed and has written the book using the extreme opposite view to his own, or has views somewhere in between but has selected the extreme viewpoint because it makes a better basis for the story.
Went to another meeting last night. The information that has been gathered seems compelling, it is just a matter of hoping that enough politicians have sufficient intelligence to understand it when it is presented to them.
The evidence relating to health risks has apparently been rejected because it relates to similar setups in America where 21000 people die each year due to living too close to an intermodal. Since no intermodal has been built so close to residential areas in Australia before there is no equivalent statistics here yet but presumably if the intermodal gets built then thousands will die as a result – then they’ll have their Australian evidence of the health risks. As the area is one of those where the population is growing the situation will only get worse over time.
Apparently one of the reasons for this choice of location is that this is considered the cheap option because it is close to an existing freight rail line. One person currently working in the affected area who is to be relocated provided information to indicate that the cost of moving the existing army facilities and clearing the site will cost about one and a half billion. Given that the Government already owns suitable already cleared land in other locations where a rail link could be built for a small fraction of this, their ‘cheap’ option is actually the most expensive.
Another issue raised is that of space. The capacity of what is to be built will be exceeded in not very many years. They then have to find somewhere to provide additional facilities. The alternate locations suggested have plenty of adjacent properly to allow for a lot of expansion. Also the local council in the area where the available land (far from residential areas) is actually want the intermodal while the local council where the Government wants to build it does not.
Yet another issue is the claim that it will reduce the number of trucks on the road. Given that the proposed site is further from the centre of Sydney and so the distance the goods would be transported by truck would be increased. The cheaper, healthier sites are far closer to the centre of Sydney and are likely to be even closer in the future as the centre moves further west and so will actually achieve what the intention is for building a new intermodal in the first place.
With hundreds dead, thousands injured (including several who had limbs amputated to free them from the rubble), who knows how many without power or water, and the city centre so badly damaged that there was even consideration of moving it to a new location, this has to be one of the worst natural disasters this year. Not everyone is supportive of those affected though. Looters have been taking advantage of the situation and even members of the press have created problems by trying to go places that they ought not.
As if all that isn’t enough to deal with those suffering from this terrible loss are also being told via a web site that they deserved what they got. This newspaper article discusses how some brainless garbage (I refuse to call them human because they obviously are not) have published a web site using a domain name likely to show up when people are searching for information about the disaster to try to suggest that the result of the earthquake was what the city deserved.
To make this situation worse the hosting provider that is hosting this site which is well known for immediately removing sites that are far less offensive than this site (since those sites are not claiming that people deserve to be dead) has have declared that the site is not sufficiently offensive for them to remove it without a court order. They have no compassion for those suffering through this disaster at all.
From what I have seen there are a very large number of people who get these two words mixed up. The two words mean totally different things but there are many examples where the first is used but where the writer seems to be implying the meaning of the second.
Devastated means destroyed or ruined. Decimated means exactly one in ten have been killed or destroyed.
When something has been decimated exactly 9/10ths of it is still there. When something has been devastated less than 1/10th of it is still there (if there is anything left of it at all).
Decimation was a punishment that the Romans occasionally applied to legions that needed to be punished. It meant that one out of every ten common soldiers was deliberately killed as a warning to the rest.
Each year the Sydney Peace foundation recognises those people who promote peace and justice in Australia with their annual peace prize. Since they were formed in 1998 they have also issued gold medals to those individuals whose efforts are considered to be exceptional. The presenting of one of these gold medals is fairly rare with only Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and Daisaku Ikeda having received them prior to this year.
The Foundation has announced that a fourth person – Julian Assange – is to receive a gold medal for “exceptional courage and initiative in pursuit of human rights”. Congratulations Julian.
In the 18th century canals were one of the essential means of communications. In the 19th Century trains displaced the canals and in the 20th Century the car displaced trains. In the 21st century the internet is in the process of displacing the car.
For this process to work requires high speed internet connections to as big a portion of the population as possible and it needs to be absolutely reliable. In Australia this absolutely critical infrastructure to move the country properly into the 21st century is called the National Broadband Network (or NBN).
Unfortunately construction of the NBN is at a very early stage of development. Because it wasn’t already in place the Queensland floods ended up far worse in the damage they caused and in loss of life than almost certainly would have been the case had the NBN been there beforehand. One example which I saw referenced today relates to dozens of doctors in the affected area who due to the NBN not being in place have lost all of their patient records – that’s the paper copies and computer copies and the offsite backups all gone. Had the NBN been in place they could have had backups of this essential information now lost backed up to “the cloud” where it would have been safe. So who knows how many people will now have major medical issues due to the loss of these records which the NBN could have prevented.
The most obvious way in which the NBN would have helped had it been in place before the floods would have been in providing more warning to those affected. Perhaps a minute or two extra notice would have saved the lives of some of those who died and more accurate real time information as to what was happening with flood waters would have enabled some people to save more of their property.
Communications is the most critical thing when it comes to disasters such as this. Of course the opposition in parliament have made a complete mockery of the whole thing by suggesting that the NBN be abandoned to pay for repairing the flood damage. The only possible suggestion that they could have made that would have been as stupid would have been if they suggested that Australia stop importing food to pay for the reconstruction (considering how much of Australia’s food supply was destroyed by the floods).
It is absolutely essential that the NBN be fully implemented before the next such disaster.
Why are so many people still referring to “global warming”. That term officially replaced some time ago with the term “climate change” when it was realised that the average world temperature has actually fallen by 0.7 degrees over the last ten years. Perhaps they should refer to it as “global cooling” if they specifically want to refer to the temperature.
