Determined chants of "Death to America" rang out in city after city in Iran Tuesday, even as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a mass rally in Tehran that Iran was "ready" to talk to its arch-enemy if the US showed "real change."
Speaking as Iranians marked the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution, Mr. Ahmadinejad declared Iran to be "officially … a real and genuine superpower," and that the "shadow of threat has been removed forever" from the Islamic Republic.
"From now on, which power in the world can be found that has the courage to threaten the Iranian nation?" Ahmadinejad asked to cheers.
Hint: it probably starts with the letter "I".
But back to the basis on which the Iranian public appears to want "dialogue":
Despite the nod toward dialogue, the message from state-run TV was unrelenting. The afternoon news broadcast on IRIB Channel 1 devoted 25 minutes to scenes of Tehran and huge rallies across the country, with primary emphasis in every city on the "Death to America" chant.
Andrew Norton has a great line in his post about Kevin Rudd's attack on "neo-liberalism" (which Andrew writes after pointing out the obvious problem in Rudd's argument is that it was Labor that brought in the fundamental reforms he complains about):
Apparently when the Coalition introduces a market reform it is ‘economic fundamentalism’, but when Labor implements a market reform it is ‘economic modernisation’.
While we are talking clean energy, this recent New Scientist article outlined some of the natural bottlenecks that may be involved in some clean energy ideas.
Newt Gingrich is notable for being a Republican identity who takes greenhouse issues seriously. He thinks the "Bush-Obama" stimulus is all wrong, and argues:
At American Solutions, there is an American Energy, Jobs and Prosperity plan being built that will turn American energy assets (including clean coal, ethanol, more production of oil and natural gas, new technologies from hydrogen to wind and solar and a vastly expanded nuclear-power program, as well as a dramatic modernization of the electric grid and an expansion of conservation) into money that stays here at home.
The next building boom ought to be in America instead of the Middle East, and the future of American energy consumption should be built on paying Americans rather than paying Venezuela, Iran, Russia or any other unreliable foreign country. OPEC's efforts to cut production and raise prices should remind us that the time to invest in new energy resources is now, before the next crisis.
It's a wonder Bob Brown and the Greens here are not arguing along similar lines for a big redeployment of the next stimulus package into energy issues (other than mere insulation.)
No, actually I am not torn at all. This planned giant white horse, standing in a nondescript field surrounded by electricity towers, would have to take the award for stupidest big public art installation ever. And it is the winner in a design competition for a work that is to be called "Angel of the South"? Is there something funny leaking into the water in that part of England?
Incidentally, the other two shortlisted entries "included a steel latticework "nest" by Richard Deacon and a tower of stacked cubes by Daniel Buren. " Hardly angel-like either, one must concede.
I see that England already has an "Angel of the North", but at least one can some influence of the concept of "angel" in it.
Great Britain's decline continues. Further updates coming.
It was a big building too: go to the link to see the photo.
The story is also of interest for the way China effectively censored the image from its public:
There were no pictures on the front page of The Beijing News. On Tuesday morning, the home page of Xinhua, the official news agency, featured a photo from another tragedy: a stampede in South Korea that left four people dead. Throughout the morning, CCTV's brief bulletins about the blaze omitted footage of the burning tower. By evening, the newscast skipped the story entirely.
Even before the flames had been extinguished early Tuesday, pictures of the burning hotel had been removed from most of the main Internet portals serving China. In the afternoon, the story had been largely buried, but by the evening, news of the fire was accessible via the Xinhua and CCTV Web sites.
The network's unusual public apology and the media's skittish approach to covering the fire suggested that the authorities were struggling with how to deal with a sensitive news event in the age of cellphone cameras and YouTube.
The concept of "openness" in that country has a bit of a way to go.
The rabidly and offensively anti-religion scientist PZ Myers takes down Ray Kurzweil's silly "singularity" idea.
I have never taken Kurzweil seriously, but it's good to read another scientist's explanation of why my intuitive dismissal of the concept was well founded.
AN ASTEROID that had initially been deemed harmless has turned out to have a slim chance of hitting Earth in 160 years. While that might seem a distant threat, there's far less time available to deflect it off course.
Asteroid 1999 RQ36 was discovered a decade ago, but it was not considered particularly worrisome since it has no chance of striking Earth in the next 100 years - the time frame astronomers routinely use to assess potential threats.
Now, new calculations show a 1 in 1400 chance that it will strike Earth between 2169 and 2199, according to Andrea Milani of the University of Pisa in Italy and colleagues (www.arxiv.org/abs/0901.3631).
With an estimated diameter of 560 metres, 1999 RQ36 is more than twice the size of the better-known asteroid Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting Earth in 2036 (New Scientist, 12 July 2008, p 12). Both are large enough to unleash devastating tsunamis if they were to smash into the ocean.
Although 1999 RQ36's potential collision is late in the next century, the window of opportunity to deflect it comes much sooner, prior to a series of close approaches to Earth that the asteroid will make between 2060 and 2080.
Maybe, this asteroid will be the target of the world's first attempt to nudge one out of harm's way.
David Packham, a researcher from Monash University's climatology group who has specialised in bushfires, said governments had abandoned responsibility for the one control they had over wildfires -- the state of the forests that fed the flames.
"Due to terribly ill-informed and pretty well outrageous concepts of conservation, we have failed to manage our fuel and our forests," Mr Packham said. "They have become unhealthy, and dangerous."
I could be wrong, I admit, but from the television images and descriptions of events in the media, it sounds rather like twaddle to be blaming poor forest management for the Victorian fires.
The impression one gets is that you would have had to perform precautionary clearing/burning of an absolutely huge area of forest to significantly reduce fires fanned by 100kph wind gusts after a bone dry month of heat wave conditions.
UPDATE: Germaine Greer, who seems to be regarded by the British media as the expert on absolutely everything Australian despite not having lived here for what, 4 or 5 decades?, says it is indeed poor forest management that is at fault. However, it also seems that the reason she is writing this is mainly to point out how clever the aborigines were in their fire management of forests.
No wonder there are fights over forestry management when there are such differing agendas swirling around the issue.
The article is about the young doctor who spends his time coming up with the rare and readily misdiagnosed diseases for "House" episodes. What a fun job that must be.
I rarely get to see the show now, but the medical mystery format is one that I have always enjoyed, even back to Qunicy.
For some reason, there is one episode of Quincy which I can remember clearly - some bad chilli was getting sucked back up via a hose connected to a tap into the water pipes at a sports stadium, causing those getting a drink at a particular water fountain to get botulism. To this day, I do not leave hoses attached to taps sitting in buckets full of rotting food for this very reason.
It's a tragedy, no doubt, but it does sound surprising that the kids were allowed to play there at all:
A QUEENSLAND tour guide plunged into a croc-infested mangrove swamp in a desperate bid to save his five-year-old son snatched by a 3m crocodile.
Steve Doble, who owns Daintree Rainforest Rivertrain, flung himself into the waist-deep floodwaters only to find his youngest boy had vanished.
He was alerted by the screams of his older son Ryan, 7, who had to be treated for shock after witnessing the attack.
Jeremy Doble, 5, is missing feared dead after he was taken by the crocodile, believed to be the dominant resident male Goldie, in the swamp behind his family home about 9.15am (AEST).
Locals said the "sweet, gentle-natured" child and his older brother were playing on a boogie board as their father fixed a broken mangrove boardwalk nearby, The Courier-Mail reports.
UPDATE: I should have guessed. The version in the Cairns Post is quite different:
Mr Doble was working on the boardwalk when Ryan’s screams alerted him to the tragedy. The boys were chasing their pet dog and Jeremy jumped into the flooded creek after the animal. Ryan told police he saw a large croc immediately after his brother vanished.
It also says that there were "unconfirmed reports" that the father jumped in after his son.
Regular readers may recall that one of my not entirely "conservative" features is my high regard for David Byrne and nearly anything he does. (OK, I don't automatically buy every new CD any more, but his lifetime body of work is incredibly strong.) I recommend his journal again for the quality of the writing and breadth of interest he shows, although he has become a bit slack in updating it lately.
So, proving again that I must be the coolest conservative-ish blogger in Australia (ha ha), I went to his Brisbane concert on Saturday night.
This particular tour, featuring his songs with producer Brian Eno, has been on for a good few months now, getting positive reviews everywhere, and with good reason. It is a more theatrical show than his last tour, with three dancers often on stage doing what might be called somewhat whimsical choreography. David often joins in too, and the effect is a bit like a smaller scale "Stop Making Sense".
I guess I enjoyed the last show a little more, as some Brian Eno produced songs from Talking Heads are not amongst my favourites. On the other hand, some of the songs from their just released CD are immediately appealing. Have a look at this one, for example, and just ignore the first jiggling 15 seconds, it settles down after that:
And here's a still photo I took during Burning Down the House (err, no bad taste intended, Victorians) performed for some unexplained reason with everyone on stage wearing a tutu:
Someone at the concert has posted a very clear and up close video of a new song which featured some very David-esque choreography. You'll like it if you like that sort of thing.
Ah I can't help myself. Finally here's a very good quality clip from the recent Singapore concert of an old favourite, "Heaven":
It's slightly surreal how the death toll from the Victorian fires has risen during the day. Last night it was 40 feared dead; by tomorrow, it seems a good chance that a 100 or more will have been found.
It would seem that there is considerable way to go in educating people who live in high fire danger areas how to react appropriately when a fire is approaching. Still, I guess that even doing the "right" thing and not fleeing in a car when the fire front was too close did not save many people who perished in their houses. (Some areas, such as those suburban areas close to Bendigo, also might not really have been considered by the residents to be at high risk of such devastation.)
Scary photos are over at Caz's. Sympathy and prayers are offered.
(It shows the Law Society of NSW donating $16,000 to NSW Labor last financial year. They made no donation to any other party, apparently.) I know some people say that Law Societies are like solicitors unions, but I never expected that they would see any particular benefit in not being at least even handed in political donations.
Good Lord. Opinion Dominion knows that it has truly entered Bizarro World when it finds itself agreeing with (most of) Ken Lovell's comments over at LP. (Earlier opinion of Mr Lovell's posting career at Road to Surfdom was expressed here.)
UPDATE: some very sensible commentary here by Harry Clarke on why Ken Henry's views on alternatives to "his" stimulus package should not be taken as sacrosanct.
I would like to know why, amongst journalists who comment on economics, they don't express skepticism of the economists who (by and large) have been caught by surprise by the unfolding events of the last 12 months, yet now sound so certain as to what the "fix" should be.
Found this snippet at the end of an article about a temple in Kyoto:
Fans of religion and alcohol might also enjoy Matsuo-taisha shrine in Arashiyama, Kyoto Prefecture. It's dedicated to the god of sake, and is a place of pilgrimage for sake brewers praying for good fortune. The priests can reportedly outdrink most people, arguing that it's their sacred duty to imbibe.
