Wikileaks wets itself

The system fails! Hooray! The system works!

Wikileaks, a wiki that allows anonymous users to publish leaked documents has allowed someone to leak information on their website, about Wikileaks themselves.

The Register:

The issue arose after a fund raising email on Saturday went out with all 58 addresses in the To field (instead of the bcc field). The all too common schoolboy error meant that all the recipients found out the online identities of other donors.

This is rather admirable. The list has been not been censored. Though some are also speculating conspiracy:

Wikileaks described the list as a partial list of its donors, adding its speculation as to the likely motives of the leaker.

A scientology mole perhaps?

The partial donor list is available from wikileaks here.

Koala cuteness tragedies

via F U Penguin (language)

Do not share your water bottle with koalas kids, you could get Chlamydia…

Click through for a larger picture. AdelaideNOW (News Ltd) has a complete gallery of thirsty koalas snapped while the Victorian bushfires raged.

Donations can be made to the RedCross bushfire appeal here. Donations can also be made to the RedCross to assist floodstruck North Queensland.

Common health for the Commonwealth?

6 minutes’ Michael Woodward summarises some of the NHHRC’s suggestions that have been made to improve Australia’s healthcare system.

1. More Super Clinics.
2. Voluntary enrolment with a single practice.
3. Fundholding to supplement fee-for-service.
4. Performance payments.
5. Super divisions of primary care to replace division of general practice.
6. Extending Medicare and PBS rights to nurse practitioners.
7. Procedural work to be done by physicians’ assistants.
8. Shared care arrangement s and care co-ordinators.
9. Electronic health records for all.
10. A National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health Authority.

Crikey‘s health blog, Croakey, believes in only one solution to reform of Australia’s broken health system.

Let the Commonwealth take right over everything. Sure delivery will be local, but no authority will rest in local hands.

Now, while I agree that a state-based model is next to useless. There’s no sudden shift in medical needs as you cross the border from New South Wales into Queensland, so really hospital standards, doctor qualifications and diagnostic testing shouldn’t differ either.

But this solution sounds typical of urban-based Australian politics.

Can has internet monies?

Internet. You have officially sold oout.

You used to be cool. You used to be about the fans. And the free … ummm… stuff.

Now companies can’t even bother paying advertising to pretend to be ordinary Joes and post viral videos on the internet.

Now they are openly soliciting entries from … anybody.

Supervirals.

I’m so torn. But honestly this can only be the unholy spawn of evil.

On one hand they are rewarding people who create original and imaginative content using a nonconformist prize-motivation system.

On the other its a magnet for attention whoring sycophantic wankers who will ultimately only be rewarded for TnA, shocking violence and mediocricity that ordinary people understand while leaving professionals out of a job.

I don’t believe in prom dates

Krazy Krow and Krakow Studies have unveiled a new webcomic project for 2009: CharlieHorse It has me all confused because the first chapter is entitled “September”. Start from the start. The latest panel is here.

Return of sexy succubi! (Though I will agree with Preston, what’s up with hooves…)

Preston and Charlotte do not look like they are going to get along like Case and Kia in the original Krakow. Maybe that will change, but Krakow is not always that predictable.

Can Charlie succeed as a demonic Henry Higgins to help Preston level up his charisma stats to land a prom date in time?

Check out the other stories from KrakowStudios:

The very original Krakow; skip forward to colour and panels; skip forward to the Demon Sisters

Krakow 2.0 is the tale of a sexy blonde (I mean blonde) bombshell of an assassin employed by a doublecrossing Jesus who kidnaps/rescues the daughter of Japanese magnate …

… and it didn’t end with that: Marilith is ongoing in an edgier new series (start at the start of Marilith).

Oh, if I had the internet monies…

Inside the tomato

I can vaguely make out this is meant to be Tomato sapiens, it has a mouth, heart, lungs, gizzards, and I don’t know much of the other kanji, but I think there is at least one kidney.

How ethical is you vegetarianism now, huh!?

Hattip Alan and Danny Choo.

Answer to Danny’s question: In a tomato’s sweet delicious heartbeat.

It’s a bug’s taxonomy fail

Previous taxonomy fails: (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Yet another Taxonomy FAIL from bug_girl_mi's flickrstream (CC-A,NC)

Ladybug’s in your food and cosmetics. ZOMG! Only, the story isn’t about ladybugs, but cochineals – a type of scale insect that according to Wikipedia were also used to make Redcoats coats red.

Now, granted, insect taxonomy is hard, at least compared to mammals, but still, getting them wrong will rile up your etymology crowd (Bug Girl’s Blog). And there’s quite a few of them.

Bug girl mi first noticed the story when it ran at several outlets with a scarab beetle image which was a bug-up by the Center for Science in Public Interest

Taxonomic FAIL from bug_girl_mi's flickrstream (CC-A,NC)

Bug girl also takes to task the alarmist tone of the whole story. And that you really have no idea where all the raw materials in your consumer products actually come from, and it really shouldn’t matter as long as its safe and does the job (and thanks for pointing out Mars Bars may contain traces of  baby cow!)

Cancel that order

via Irraditus

As I was writing my tirade against the floodwaters of superficial historical innacuracies being spawned by the mainstream media who only care about the Darwin after he got famous, certain denizens of the blogosphere have unleashed the beast of all beasts: A challenge!

Kevin Z (Deep Sea News/The Other 95%) and the Southern Fried Scientist have laid down the gauntlet for Darwin beard challenge from now until October 1, the date of the publication of the 1st edition of On the Origin of Species, by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life as printed in the book.

Neat and trimmed goatees do not count. Beards must be “Huge, bold and bushy”.

All are welcome to participate. Sadly, my job relies on my dashing good looks and charisma, so I will not be participating this year. Beauty, it’s a curse some must suffer.

The guys are also forgiven for at first dealing with the post-Origin Darwin beard. Kevin Z has also suggested a sideburns growing contest. And boy did Chuck have sideys that would make the original 90210 cast hang their head in shame.

SBS is showing Paradise Lost (I think half last Sunday, half this one coming) and if you feel the need to be inspired by some old-school Beagle sideburn re-creation action.

Shave the Beagle!

One more Darwin Day gripe.

Darwin, for much of early voyaging and discovering did not have a beard!

Promotions like the one at Bristol Zoo are doing it wrong!

Thanks to the photographic evidence available we know he kept himself shaved until the 1860s.

When he first published the Origin in 1859/1860 he looked like this:

Decidedly not looking like Santa Claus.

Image: Public domain. Hosted at Wikimedia Commons.

Oh, and while we are talking Beagles – if you haven’t seen it before The Beagle Project 2009

Darwin day: Rational selection

With the BlogForDarwin blogswarm coming to a close, here are a few selected stories.

While no head-mounted lascannon, Darwin had a magic hammer. Was he a mortal incarnation of the mighty Thor? You’ll find in this post at Life Science Tools of the Trade further evidence incriminating Darwin as a single minded rare-species killing machine (and that he did it in full knowledge that the fox was a rare inhabitant of the island). Luckily(?) the dodo was already extinct 100 years by the time Chuck D was roaming the seas “collecting specimens”.

Christie (I avoid the N-word where I can) elegantly posits why Darwin day is a good idea, but that good biologists are not “Darwinists”. Science works and *ahem* evolves beyond original concepts.

It’s not that Darwin was wrong, as some feeble-minded magazine cover designers have purported. It’s that he wasn’t complete.

Deep Thoughts and Silliness plays it a little less diplomatically, stating Darwin WAS Wrong.

John Wilkins uses a comprimise: Darwin was wrong…ish. And also points out that some of “Darwinism” that has been shown to be wrong wasn’t even Darwin’s work anyway.

Faith In Honest doubt had an interesting post last year, but has decided this year to point out someone else shares Darwin’s exact birthdate.

I think its an analogy

What flaws could be found in the logic of talking beaver statue-thing in a webcomic? Really?

(Ask Dr Eldritch btw)

Lots of measles where there are none

Measles Measles everywhere. Even the Grammar Girl podcast has measles.

Thanks to anti-vaccination campaigners I get to read the following two stories on the same day:

• Australia now officially measles free
• Biggest measles outbreak in years (in Victoria, Australia)

Please explain?

Boom Ka Boom

Bushfires, drought, floods, economic turmoil.

Oh.

The end of the world.

Yes, it’s starting to get a little too all run-of-the-mill these centuries.

Take your frustration and despair out by nuking nearby cities. At least until the Minister for Broadband allows ASIO to monitor your web access and arrests you for suspected terrorism (Tip: Don’t grow a beard or have an Arab-sounding name).

Darwin’s ecological villainy

Damn Skippy, little kiddies, the truth will out.

It’s Darwin Day. Yes, 200 years ago was the birth of some guy who came up with wrote some book about some theory some other time ago.

I’m not gonna mention evolution much. I do that enough already. Evolution is a unifying theory of biology. Darwin did a bit of work relating to that.

In the interests of not letting objectivity rest in the hands of resoundingly inane kooks, lets see what the forces of good can uncover to tarnish this mere mortal’s image. Remember: Everything you have ever been told is a lie.

Fact: While in Australia, Darwin shot a poor defenceless platypus.