A Canberra microbiologist has warned that the use of recycled water poses the risk of a major disease outbreak and it should only be used for drinking as a last resort.

ABC News Online

So, pump the recycled water back into water supply holding reservoirs and dams. This argument that recycled water is dangerous has whiskers so long it’s proponents are constantly tripping over them. Professor Collignon seriously needs to pull his head out of his test tubes and take a serious look at the realities of recycled waste water. He’s doubtless already imbibing it to some degree if he’s a resident of the ACT. I wonder if he eats grapes or drinks wine? Perhaps he ought to visit the platapus at the Lower Molonglo River outlets.

As for the Professor’s protestations regarding the inaccuracy of references to Singapore’s usage of recycled water, ’almost entirely used in industry’ doesn’t quite bear out his case. Recycled water in Singapore is either drunk by the population, Professor, or it isn’t. Word is, that it is. QED.

Stealthy moves of the predator

I can't really say that Peter Hartcher's Op Ed in today's SMH has anything new to say, or even portrays an objective position.

Running three months late, the space shuttle Atlantis, carrying seven astronauts and a $367 million set of solar panels, roared to life and raced into orbit today, hot on the trail of the international space station.

STS-117 Shuttle Report

Yes indeed and surprise, surprise. The shuttle Atlantis left the ground today for a planned eleven day stay in space, most of it docked to the International Space Station where another power generation truss will be installed later in the week. From tonight’s news reports, you’d never have known. Seven human beings riding what has to be the most lethal of machines into the most hostile of environments where a single poor decision means death, and yet, we here on the ground, scurrying around with our small concerns and insular lives know nothing of the event, and could probably care less.

At ground level, we have far more pressing concerns, such as the G8 farce, rain and flooding in New South Wales, politics, genocide in Africa, wars in Asia minor and the Middle East, etcetera, yadda, yadda. Oh, yes.....let’s not forget the distress of Paris Hilton. The fact that humanity still undertakes manned spaced flights, that the International Space Station continues to grow in size and capability, feeding our collective knowledge of the planet we live on and the way we’re trashing it seems not to rate a mention any longer.

We, the human species Homo sapiens sapiens, have become a very self-centred and insular species. We’ve lost the focus we had a mere forty years ago. We’d much rather concentrate on our own small concerns, or worse, those of some self-possessed, flat-chested, painted blonde bimbo who broke the law of her land, then weeps over the miniscule price levied in retribution.

I find myself asking more and more these days. What’s more important? Celebrity hysteria or scientific endeavour? Who’s the more foolish? Military pawns pushed around the global chess board in constant efforts to destroy other military pawns, or those who volunteer to work in space for the betterment of the species?

We’ve lost all track of what’s important. I wonder if we ever really knew.

ABC News Online
News from the ABC's Investigative Unit which last night revealed what looks suspiciously like more underhanded movements by the Howardian cabal towards embracing the nuclear power cycle, is reminiscent of John Howard's claims of non-involvement in ethanol marketing by the Manildra Group not so many moons ago.

Further to my ’who-gives-a-shit’ rant from last week, I wonder just how many people realised that the International Space Station came closer than it’s ever done, since it’s initial meccano kit creation began in 1998, to falling out of orbit completely over the weekend.

With installation of what NASA calls the S4 truss array supporting a set of solar sails capable of doubling the stations power output in readiness for installation of the European Space Agency module later this year, power systems could be switched from the ten year old P6 array. The switching didn’t go as planned, with a power surge scrambling the station’s Russian navigation and station-keeping computer systems.

The so-called ’glitches’ were eventually resolved, but not until after the station’s Russian commander, Fyodor Yurchikhin, pulled an all-nighter in a bid to resolve the power problems and resultant computer failures. A 24 hour work-shift in space is unheard of. Did we see or hear anything of these days of dramas in our media, while the lives of some eight human beings were at terrible risk in the most hostile environment possible? Barely a whisper. I recall a passing few words on Friday’s ABC television news, but absolutely nothing over the weekend. In fact, except for these dramas which might have eventuated in abandonment of the ISS, even if temporarily, we’ve heard next to nothing about the arduous tasks undertaken and successfully completed by the crews of STS-117 and Expedition 15.

Manned spaceflight, even to low earth orbit, just doesn’t excite the populace any longer. I cannot help myself in asking why not? Space is the final frontier. It’s the last and greatest adventure humanity can undertake and will always be an adventure, a struggle and a challenge because we can’t live there long term. The irony being that for our species survival, we need to learn it’s secrets, and cope with it’s disinterest in our survival. If humanity is to continue on once this planet we call home is exhausted, as it will be someday soon, the rate we’re using it up, we need to master manned space flight. Places like the ISS enable us to train for that eventuality. But who cares? Very few of we planet-bound simpletons, so it seems.

"GM canola offers some solutions to the current problems conventional canola faces in Australia and is likely to make an important contribution to farming systems"
Secret report backs GM crops | NEWS.com.au

This Tamar Valley pulp mill saga has, more or less, washed over me to a great degree. I don't live in Tasmania, and aren't directly impacted by the proposal. I have sympathies with the likes of Peter Cundall who lives in the valley, but without definitive evidence being available for analysis, it's a bit difficult to form an opinion either way.

Here's that idiot, Bolt again frothing over a subject he has bugger-all knowledge of, yet so much to say about.

Latest from the journal Science on the progression of human colonisation of the Americas. Seems they didn't think much of it either.

I happened to catch the repeat of last night's LNL while out & about today. One of Phillip's guests was Steven Starr, a member of INESAP The International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation. Hell of a title, but a snappy acronym.

I heard about this Op-Ed in today's Oz on PM this evening.

As is my wont, I was listening to PM last evening, on the way home, when this story was broadcast.

On Monday just gone, science remembered the centenary of of the largest impact on land of an object from space. Known today as the Tunguska Event, there remains no conclusive answer to the question of just what did enter the planet's atmosphere over the Siberian tundra to annihilate at high altitude with more energy released than 150 Hiroshima bombs.

The area of Siberia where the detonation took place is desolate. Frozen ground in winter, sodden swamp in summer. Expeditions into the region take place almost every year now, yet little of viable scientific evidence pointing to exactly what occurred has surfaced. From an out-of-control alien spacecraft to a geophysical event, the explanations remain rife. Some say asteroid, some claim a comet core. The most frustrating part of the research into the event must surely be the complete lack of evidence of just what did enter and vaporise. No impact crater, no believable remains, no molten extra-terrestrial rock. Only the recorded written memories of those who witnessed the event and felt it's consequences.

Flattened trees radiating out for hundreds of square kilometres from the epicentre are still seen today lying in the morass and hilliny forested terrain, evidence of the power of the occasion. At ground zero, tree trunks bereft of all branches still stand upright, charred and dead, indicative of the air burst immediately overhead. The only real measure human science has for the event is the atomic aftermath at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Apparently these Earth-meets-space events - if indeed Tunguska was a space object meeting - occur around once every 300 years, according to recorded history. Amusingly, recorded history in the grand scheme of our planet's history is so damn short on an astronomical time scale as to be irrelevant.

In the modern age, we'll be well informed of the next event, and there will be a next event, of that we can be certain. Courtesy of the NASA Near Earth Object research program, supposedly our current astronomical science will be able to tell us well in advance of any approaching armageddon. Well ... maybe. All I've ever seen in the news are the near misses. After the fact. Better to live in ignorance and die in a flash, I reckon.