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Australia is feeling more and more like a totalitarian state.

POLICE have told organisations planning to campaign during World Youth Day events they need to have placards, banners and T-shirts pre-approved or risk losing their protest "rights"

Quoted from SMH article Protests need our blessing, say police.

What's next?

Australian immigration officials handed him over to Chinese immigration officials who returned him to his home city, where he was immediately arrested, beaten and tortured for "shaming" China by accusing its government of human rights abuses in articles he had written in the Chinese-language press in Australia.

Quoted from SMH article Tragedy of refugee Australia sent back.

To those in the south, Happy Autumn Equinox.

To those in the north, Happy Spring Equinox.

An equinox in astronomy is that moment in time (not a whole day) when the centre of the Sun can be observed to be directly above the Earth's equator, occurring around March 20 and September 23 each year.

More technically, at an equinox, the Sun is at one of two opposite points on the celestial sphere where the celestial equator (i.e. declination 0) and ecliptic intersect. These points of intersection are called equinoctial points—the vernal point and the autumnal point. By extension, the term equinox may be used to denote an equinoctial point.

There is either an equinox (autumn and spring) or a solstice (summer and winter) on approximately the 21st day of the last month of every quarter of the calendar year. On a day which has an equinox, the centre of the Sun will spend a nearly equal amount of time above and below the horizon at every location on Earth and night and day will be of nearly the same length. The word equinox derives from the Latin words aequus (equal) and nox (night).

From Wikipedia.

Sheela na Gig: Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Yesterday I discovered the story behind N-rays, and today I learned about Sheela na Gigs.

"Such carvings are said to ward off death and evil"

I wonder if one of those placed on the steps of my front door would be of any help to prevent religious nutters from disturbing my peace and privacy? Guess it's time to start carving. As a Bright I would view such an exercise as experimental verification (and implicitly, debunking) of pagan views, as well as having a laugh in a creative way.

I'm a sucker when it comes to toys. Wandering into a toy store is to me a form of impulse control training. Thanks to /. and ars technica I'm now battling with web-induced impulse-buying temptation.

The Tux Droid may not be very practical, but it certainly seems like a nice way to be wasting time. Certainly better than submitting oneself to brainwashing via commercial TV. At least one can use the excuse, that one purchased the Tux Droid for Python hacking skillz training, which to me, honestly, is less of an excuse and more of a darn good justification

The community of Tux Droid hackers seems a little quiet, but that will hopefully change once Tux Droid receives a little more exposure.

Now, screw self-control, where are my credit card details?

Today is International Womens Day, just a little reminder as there doesn't seem to be much coverage (compared with the trivial Valentines Day).

7 von 44 Artikeln prophezeiten Abkühlung

In den Jahren 1965 bis 1979 fanden die Forscher nur sieben Fachartikel, die eine Abkühlung prognostizierten. 44 sagten hingegen eine Erwärmung voraus, in 20 Artikeln war von einer neutralen Entwicklung die Rede. Alle untersuchten Beiträge stammten aus Fachmagazinen mit Peer Review, sie waren also vor der Veröffentlichung von Forscherkollegen geprüft worden.

Zitiert aus dem Spiegel Online Artikel Eiszeit-Konsens der Siebziger ist ein Mythos.

Rechnen soll gelernt sein, was keine Bedingung für die Mitarbeit bei Spiegel Online zu sein scheint.

7 + 44 + 20 = 71

Somit müsste die Überschrift lauten "7 von 71 Aritkeln prophezeiten Abkühlung", ein erheblicher Unterschied.

I always shake my head when westerners get all upset about Asians eating dogs and/or cats. The latest in carnivore hypocrisy comes from horse lovers, as I found out today reading an article on SMH, from which the quotes below are taken: Racehorses For Dinner.

Figures obtained by The Sun-Herald show 2,000 tonnes, or $8.5million worth, of horse and donkey meat was exported from Australia from January to November last year.

So? Those who consume meat will have to agree, that the definition of it is "animal tissue used as food". It doesn't really matter which animal it comes from. According to numbers found on the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 1997-98 the per capita consumption of meat was 74.2 kg.

"You can literally be watching a racehorse run at Randwick on the Sunday and the next week it is on its way to a dinner table in Japan," horse welfare advocate Laura Stoikos said.

Again, so? You can go into a sea food restaurant, point your finger at a lobster happily swimming in a fish tank, and it wont take a quarter of an hour to be served to you on a plate. As long as the killing is "humane", most of us can tolerate such behaviour. You can visit a farm and watch a calve sucking its mothers teats, and then buy veal from it the next day at your local butcher. I guess Laura is just telling us, that Japanese people are really evil, not only do they slaughter an endangered species, but they prevent us from developing our horse burial industry.

A former actor and model, only remembered by boys who grew up in the 80's due to her big ... hair, offers the following reasons for her opposition to using horses as a food source.

"Horses are never bred to be eaten. They're not even beasts of burden anymore, those are the old days," Derek said. "They're beautiful animals, used in sport and as companion animals."

If having been bred for consumption were a justification, or rather a rule for what can and can not be eaten, then deer, quail, moose, buffalo, and many more would also have to be taken from the list of animals that we are permitted to kill to feed upon. Her next qualifier is "beast of burden", to which I can only say, I'm sitting here wide eyed, with an expression of disbelief, thinking to myself "WTF is she trying to say?" Not surprising if you take into account, that this came from a women who supported Bush senior, as well as junior in their presidential campaigns. Clowns united. Next in line of painful reasoning is beauty. And I thought that by now everyone knew, that beauty is a subjective quality. I've met plenty of people, who would sign a statement claiming cows to being more beautiful than a horses.

Leaving us with the companion argument, which would actually force us to outlaw meat consumption, as every kind of animal has at some point been a companion of a human being. I can assure you, if it can be held captive, we will have kept it as a companion. To be honest though, this is the only argument I can actually accept and support, as it would be in line with my beliefs. As someone who believes in animal rights, I find it impossible to justify the killing of an animal to feed myself. But I highlighted the b-term, as it is just that. Some people like to believe in a creator, I like to believe that when lost and close to starving, upon meeting an animal I would decide to die rather than kill. And as reality has no creator, I'd probably kill a rat or what ever to live another day.

Miss Stoikos runs the not-for-profit organisation and said the treatment of the doomed horses was horrific. "They are trucked in like cattle in the dead of night," she said.

Sanity seems to be an exceptional condition.

Any "taboo" created, is just another form of religion - non-rational behaviour induced by psychosis. If you want the freedom to eat meet, then you can't tell other people what meat they are allowed to consume. The only exception being a threat of its extinction, and the last I heard, animals bred are the least likely to suffer such a fait. By the way, I'm a vegetarian, who keeps playing with the idea to turn vegan, but that is a personal life style choice. So carnivores, if you don't want to eat meat, join us. If not, well then stop telling other carnivores "you are bad", as you are not just as bad, but even worse - a carnivore living in denial.

After humans displayed a high level of incompetence, by being unable to decipher their universal language, which took much effort to draw into cornfields, extra terrestial beings were forced to study the mass of human communication to find universal symbols even an imbecile as a human could understand.

Not much time had passed when their computers spat out a universal symbolic language human kind had developed on their own. And after much discussion in the intergalactic council, the aliens finally decided to leave a message on Mars. Not only were humans displaying an incredible interest in that planet, it would also serve as proof, that this was not just a prank by college students.

I am happy to report, we have received the message from [illegal^*] aliens.

.Happy Mars
Found on The Planetary Society. Image Credits: NASA, JPL, MSSS

^* : As of current legal status.