Seditious intention, Abu Jihad,dams,ice

Anti-terra laws in Aus. bye-bye Habeas corpus & presumption of innocence & hello disappearance: indefinite secret detention, arbitrary search, and banning, RSA style.
Section 30A b ii states that "Seditious intention means an intention to .. urge disaffection against.. the Government of the Commonwealth."

Let me be the first to so urge, I urge everyone against affection for this Government. Walked through a fake demo this morning, part of anti-terra exercises I'll be bound. Especially if the anti-terra laws apply retrospectively.
Yesterday SBS repeated their program detailing how Indonesian so-called "Islamic terra" is broadly led by provocateurs. Fauzi Hasbi aka "Abu Jihad" from Aceh, was a well documented agent of the TNI until he was outed and gutted. His son died in a plane crash last month.
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The Brits are whining that the IR beams that trigger shaped charges in Basra must have come from the IRA, who aparently got some English gear in a botched sting years ago.
Well duh! its obvious to any high-school electronics freak that IR beams are the way to trigger, and any avid reader of Jane's "how to sell killing devices world-wide" can grasp the idea of shaped charge.

Mad Science

Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment, journalist Jacques Leslie examines the modern battles over dams. His route into this broad and complex topic is a wonky one, but it works. Five years ago, the independent World Commission on Dams published a report titled Dams and Development; it acknowledged, to the surprise of many observers, that large dams are typically less profitable than predicted, cause irreversible environmental damage, and lead to "the impoverishment and suffering of millions."
[ -in NZ dams on the Waikato were rather well received in the 50s & 60s and continue to power the place. Importantly, Lake Taupo was not drowned, indeed it became protecteed against lows. Later Hyrdo schemes drowned a lovely Southern lake, and sold subsidised power to RioTinto. Not so well received]
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NASA chief Michael Griffin has drunk the Bush Kool-Aid. This week he called the last three decades of NASA effort a "mistake":
Asked Tuesday whether the shuttle had been a mistake, Griffin said, "My opinion is that it was.... It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible." Asked whether the space station had been a mistake, he said, "Had the decision been mine, we would not have built the space station we're building in the orbit we're building it in."
..let's hear Griffin articulate a convincing scientific and technological reason why we're going back to the Moon--other than that our President says so.
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..Ted A. Scambos.. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo...consecutive record-low extents make it pretty certain a long-term decline is underway." ..the new summer low Sept. 19th, was 20% below the average minimum ice extent 2000 - 1978.. difference between the average ice area and t this summer .. 500,000 square miles.. This summer was the fourth .. sharply below the long-term average

- what odds on a mass extinction like the Permian, where 95% of lifeforms in the oceans & three-quarters of land species went under?
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What is the $100 Laptop , really?
The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop that will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. These rugged laptops will be WiFi- and cell phone-enabled, and have USB ports galore. Its current specifications are: 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel.