Bizarre….
Wired: Wild animals seem to have escaped the Indian Ocean tsunami, adding weight to notions they possess a sixth sense for disasters, experts said Thursday.
Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island’s coast seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found.
A gratuitous plug for the Blog Herald 
Im entitled to do it occasionally
The Blog Herald Christmas Blogging Awards close 23 December, and yes, this year theres cash prizes!!!
It’s finally happened and can be viewed here
The print is very small but none the less I still managed to appear in the list of names. Happiness is giving to a good cause.
Being Australian and have a patchwork of scars on my back from the moles cut out due to cancer scares I know the stats in this Wired story but I don’t know until today if I upgrade from my regular radiant to the colour version (I think its about $1 extra for memory) I now get UV protect for my clothes. Bizarre yet useful.
The UV protection from Australia’s Radiant 3 in 1 Colour Care laundry detergent comes from a special UV-absorbing chemical compound called Tinosorb FD, which is made by Switzerland’s Ciba Specialty Chemicals. Tinosorb FD helps protect against both UVA and UVB radiation.
What will they think of next?
Phone booths resurrected for cell users: Fort Wayne Journal
“Phone companies have eliminated more than a million traditional pay phones in the past eight years, many of them in phone booths, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Now, some restaurants, libraries and other businesses are slowly bringing back phone booths, without the phone this time. Users bring their own mobile phone and can talk as loud as they want without bothering anybody else or being asked to step outside.”
I think the famous line went, First it was the jews, then the gays… or the like, but you get the context. This nutter from Alabama is trying to censor books that mention gay people, labelling them as gay propoganda. If the bill became law, public libraries couldn’t offer books with gay or bisexual characters. We are not talking porn here, but general books in a library. You will find few people who agree with the entire cotents of a library but its our freedom of speech that provides the diversity under which we maintain the right to choose what we like and read.
AL.com> An Alabama lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to ban novels with gay characters from public libraries, including university libraries.
A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for “the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle.” Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the “homosexual agenda.”
Another weekend gone and some time for some gratuitous Australia plugging with this wonderful line “Australia is the BBQ Nation”.
Every Friday night is BBQ night (unless going out), middle of winter or the heat of summer out it comes. Friday night consisted of sausages (thin), lamb cutlets, onions and herbed potatoes, washed down with Dark and Stormy’s
Regular readers would know that my political persuasion in right of centre, particularly on economics, but this story is just plain wrong, even our Prime Minister, who for non-Australian readers is of a conservative persuasion, in the context of the abortion debate, defends proper sex education (in the context of a way to reduce the abortion rate)
Washington Post: Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says.
Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person’s genitals “can result in pregnancy,” a congressional staff analysis has found.Those and other assertions are examples of the “false, misleading, or distorted information” in the programs’ teaching materials, said the analysis, released yesterday, which reviewed the curricula of more than a dozen projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.
Just for once iinet met a deadline, the new wireless card in the back of the box is working fine talking to the wireless adsl modem now located at the phone point at the other end of the house, and all is well again in the world.
iiNet (or “ii” as they now call themselves: short for “incompetent idiots”) rang last week after my faxed complaint to apologise then tell me it would still be another week until my net access was returned. In another complete f*ck up the guy who rang (he was from “upstairs” so he said) promised that someone from “downstairs” would ring in the morning to confirm 1 Dec as the date of ADSL return. Surprise, surprise, no one rang, until he eventually rang in the afternoon to apologise and make some comment about those evil ADSL connection nazis “down stairs”. No explanation has been given as to why it has taken so long.
Well its be no access 12 November, the webmail box is soo full as to make me cry, I’ve lost advertising on the Blog Herald, my ebay business has died, all thanks to f*cking iiNet. A monkey could have done it quicker than iiNet+ add the fact that they slammed me for another 12 month contract to avoid a $100 “transfer” fee to the new address (despite the fact I’ve got the same number and the connection is in the same switch) and many of their competitors are now offering $0 setup and cheaper plans……
Change you say, well at the end of the 12 months I will. I started with iiNet when they where still relatively small, now they’ve gone from 40,000 odd customers to over 200,000 they just don’t give a sh*t anymore. The new estate I’m building in has real cable internet, so bye bye ADSL this time next year.