Look, a butterfly!

I’ve just uploaded a video of the Glockenspiel in the main square in Munich. My first attempt at annotating Youtube videos.

I’ve been battling an aphid infestation on my chillies for a few months now. I’ve tried using natural killers like Pyrethrum spray, but to no avail. It kills them on contact, but then they come back. I wouldn’t mind having them there, except they chew away at the new fruit and leaves, which then fall off, leaving a barren twig shrub where once there was a lush chili plant. Here is a picture of the little buggers.

After some internet research, I found that there are many home remedies for dealing with aphids ranging from oil sprays to chili powder sprays to dish washing detergent sprays, but all seem to be pretty crap at actually getting rid of the aphids permanently. The only thing that seems to be successful at keeping the aphid population at bay is their natural predator, the lady beetle. It seems that you can buy lady beetles (they come in packs of 1000!), but I haven’t been able to locate a distributor in Brisbane, or even on line in Australia. This is a shame, since the sight of a thousand lady beetles on my balcony would be amazing!

More research, however, revealed that buying the lady beetles doesn’t work that well anyway, since they just fly off. The best thing, apparently, is to just let the aphids be, and wait for lady beetles to come to you. So we decided to wait. And wait. And wait. Then yesterday, I had a peek and found this scary looking thing munching away at a little aphid.

It turns out that this is actually a lady beetle larva. Incredible! After looking more closely, I found quite a few of them slithering around, looking for some grub. I had a lot of trouble imagining how this thing actually turns into a lady beetle, but youtube, as always, has come to the rescue. Here is a video of the larva turning into a pupa. I did end up finding a few of these pupae on the plants as well. They kind of look like klingon lady beetles.

Now I guess we just wait and see if these lady beetles do their job.

My boyfriend was watching Cool Hand Luke the other day and was a bit surprised to find the soundtrack suddenly break in to the theme music for Channel 9 News.

“…with Bruce Page and Heather Ford”.

Who needs a guitar teacher, when you’ve got a half naked man with a doobie hanging out of his mouth, giving tutorials on youtube?

Some of you may have heard about the federal government’s proposal to implement mandatory internet filtering at the ISP (internet service provider) level. I wanted to post about the proposal’s champion, Stephen Conroy’s, recent TV appearances regarding the filter, however, I thought it best to provide a short historical recap of the proposal, before I delve into recent developments.

In late 2007, Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy announced that the federal government would like to implement an ISP-based filter to censor “unwanted content”, to protect children (ABC news). He stated that “anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service” (emphasis mine). I have heard that this was one of the platforms that the Labor party was campaigning on before the 2007 election, but I haven’t been able to find any evidence of this (if you know something, please let me know). In mid 2008, this scheme was updated to include a secondary mandatory filter to stop “adults from downloading content that is illegal to possess in Australia, like child pornography or materials related to terrorism” (NY Times). A month later, the ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) released a report entitled “Closed Environment Testing of ISP-Level Internet Content Filters” (pdf). The report showed that “all of the products tested degraded Internet performance, with two of them reducing speed by more than 75 per cent. One filter reduced network speed by only 2 per cent, but it was one of the least accurate at identifying inappropriate and illegal websites. It also mistakenly blocked many innocent sites” (ABC news).

The second half of the year seemed to be filled with massive opposition to the filter. Many comprehensive objections were being voiced (I will discuss these in a future post, but these include technical issues, freedom of speech concerns and the government’s right to tell adults what content is “unwanted” for them). However, it was still not clear what it was that the government was actually proposing to do. Senator Conroy seemed to concentrate on defending the technology behind the filter rather than addressing some of the other equally concerning issues (youtube).

On December 8, the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy set up the “first online consultation trial” in the form of a blog. The first post, entitled “Minister Tanner’s Welcome“, which did not even mention the filter, was inundated with hundreds of comments, of which I approximate 99% were to do with the filter and and >95% were in opposition to or expressed concern about it. I remember watching the comments coming in in real time, seeing the numbers grow after each refresh and then on at least two occasions, noticing the number of comments suddenly drop by 20 or 30 with no trace of the standard etiquette that usually accompanies comment removal. Were our comments being filtered? This was later followed by an on-topic blog post by Senator Conroy and many more comments. It was becoming very clear that most people (at least those that used the internet) were very strongly opposed to the proposal.

On December 12, 2008 we had a national day of protest (IT news). I attended the protest in Brisbane, but was mostly disappointed with the turn-out. From what I had seen on the internet, there was massive opposition to the scheme (from memory, the facebook event for the Brisbane protest had around a thousand confirmed attendees), yet sadly, this didn’t translate to their physical presence (possibly 200-300 people showed up). I got a feeling that there had been a bit of a climax in activity leading up to the protests (many people vented on the government blog), and I suspect that by the time the protests came, most people were secretly convinced that now that everyone knew (and was angry) about it, there is no way that the government could go ahead with its proposal.

There was talk of some more trials being done before the end of the year, but it was announced that they would be pushed back a few weeks (ABC news), which turned into months. After that, things went quiet…until a couple of weeks ago, when the top-secret ACMA blacklist (the backbone of the filter trial) was leaked and published on wikileaks. This caused iiNet, Australia’s third largest ISP, to join Telstra (Australia’s largest ISP) in pulling out of the trials. At present, the following ISPs are still planning to participate: Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1 (Australian IT). Conroy has since claimed that this was not the real blacklist (ABC news) and has broken his relative silence about the scheme by appearing on the ABC’s program Q&A last week and on SBS’s Insight earlier tonight. I will blog about these two appearances in a later post, however, you can view the full Q&A episode on the ABC website. Tonight’s Insight episode should be available in the SBS archives soon. You could also try youtube.

For more information on the filter, check out the Electronic Frontiers Australia nocleanfeed website.

I find this appalling:

3 Billion years ago cyanobacteria appeared on the planet, changing the course of life on earth. Scientists call this event the Oxygen Catastrophe.

This video discusses the appearance of cyanobacteria and the effect it had on the evolution of life over the next 3 billion years.

Suitable for an introduction to evolution, endosymbiosis and the appearance of photosynthesis and oxygen. The video includes an introduction to iron strata formation and the relationship between cyanobacteria and chloroplasts.

Via Atheist Media Blog

Some potentially useful approximations

* 1° is approximately the width of a little finger at arm’s length.
* 10° is approximately the width of a closed fist at arm’s length.
* 20° is approximately the width of a handspan at arm’s length.

These measurements clearly depend on the individual subject, and the above should be treated as rough approximations only.

From wiki’s article on Angle.

I’m going to post my super easy, super yummy cupcake recipe soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to link to this fantastic recipe for a mini chocolate cake in 5 minutes. I admit that I haven’t had the chance to make it yet, but it looks great and makes me laugh.

On October 1, 1993, comedian, social critic and my personal hero, Bill Hicks was scheduled to appear on The Late Show with David Letterman. For the first time in the history of the show, the whole of a segment was censored and Hicks’ footage never made it to television. Hicks died 5 months later of pancreatic cancer.

15 years later, David Letterman invited Bill Hicks’ mother, Mary Hicks, to appear on the show. Last Saturday, he apologised to her for the incident and for the fist time ever, they aired the censored footage. On the show, he keeps proclaiming that he doesn’t know why he made the decision to pull the segment, but I don’t buy it.

It is interesting to have a read of the letter Bill Hicks wrote to John Lahr with a full account of the events leading up to, and after, the cancellation of his set. It is quite long, but I think it is worth it. It includes a transcript of his account of the segment, which he had to write down since Letterman’s people refused to give him a copy of the tape, stating, “Um. I don’t know if we are legally allowed to send out a tape of an unaired segment of a show.” Here is an excerpt from the letter.

And now, the final irony. One of the “hot points” that was brought up as being “unsuitable for our audience” was my joke about pro-lifers. My brilliant friend Andy posited the theory that this was really what bothered and scared the network the most, seeing as how the “pro-life” movement has essentially become a terrorist group acting with impunity and God on their side, in a country where the reasonable majority overwhelmingly supports freedom of choice regarding abortion.

I felt there was something to this theory, but I was still surprised to be watching the Letterman Show (I’m still a fan) the Monday night following my censored Friday night performance and, lo and behold, they cut to a - are you ready for this? - pro-life commercial. This farce is now complete. “Follow the money!”

Here are the videos of last Saturday’s show with Mary Hicks.

And here is the censored set.