The Sydney Morning Herald has really taken a leap of faith on this one, tying rumours spread by an anonymous wikipedia contributor to ongoing police investigations into the deaths of Chris Benoit and family.
The editor made the change after Benoit’s appearance on a WWE show was cancelled due to “family reasons”. It’s not hard to work out how he managed to guess that Nancy was dead.
However, the SMH clearly has an alternate theory. Chris Benoit, after killling his wife, phoned a young Sydneysider to let him know that she was dead. Of course, Benoit didn’t tell the guy that he was responsible for the deaths, he just informed him so that the unknown Sydneysider would gain the prestige of getting in first on this spectacular scoop.
The man then updated the Wikipedia page, but was cruelly edited out by the fun police at Wikipedia, who insist on concrete evidence on their pages.
Looking a bit stupid now, aren’t you, Wikipedia?
To celebrate, I’m going to start spreading rumours of other celebrities wives’ deaths. I think I’ll start with Rene Rivkin.
Queensland police were again cleared of wrongdoing as it was revealed that the aboriginal man who died this morning was 44 years old. As this is well past the life expectancy of aborigines, his death can be put down to natural causes, and not (as some scurrilous commentators have suggested) police brutality.
Celebrations in Northern Queensland continued after Chris Hurley waslast week found not guilty of the murder of an aboriginal man on Palm Island. The Mareeba command hailed the decision, and celebrated by bashing to death another aboriginal bloke this morning.
Victoria and Queensland are now locked in a tight struggle for the “highest incidence of police brutality” award, with NSW coming in a distant third. With just over 6 months to go in this year’s competition, our boys in blue are going to have to pull the finger out and descend on Redfern in numbers.
Hello my friend!
I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog, if medicine prices here (http://stopmatch.hk) are bad.
Look, the site and call me 1-800 if its wrong..
My dog and I are still alive 
Well, apparently it is all-systems go for the desalination plant. Since the mainstream media is reluctant to provide any actual reasons not to build the thing, let’s examine the costs.
- Current price of water (at the tap): $1.264/kL
- Capital cost of Kurnell desalination project: $1.35/kL
- Operating cost of Kurnell desalination project: $0.45/kL
- Storage, treatment, distribution, administration, retail markup, &c: ~$1.20/kL
- Cost at point of use of desalinated water: $3/kL
Capital cost is based on taking the $1.76b at 7% per annum. Operating cost is as compared with the Kwinana desalination plant. Storage &c was made up by me, but loosely based on the current price of water.
Now let us go to the archives. Cost at point of use of an industrial-scale rainwater collection project in Melbourne (which has a much lower rainfall than here): $2/kL (data from an internal feasibility study). Cost at point of use of a stormwater harvesting project in Riverside: $0.52/kL. Cost of water at point of use from a household rainwater tank: $2.15/kL.
Clearly, desalination is financially dumb.
Environmentally, it’s not too crash hot either. You’ve got brine disposal and greenhouse emissions as two major black marks on the plant, whereas alternate options such as household rainwater tanks are good for the environment because they reduce the load on stormwater systems during heavy rain.
Socially, you’ve got all the Shire NIMBYs jumping up and down about the placement of the facility.
Someone please remind me what the benefits are?
In addition to all these points, we are now at the start of a La Niña cycle. Dam levels will rise for the next 5 years or so, before they start heading down towards 30% again. Surely we can wait for 5 years until the technology improves, prices drop, and alternate solutions can be further investigated. Otherwise, we’re going to have a white elephant which will be used to keep us out of water restrictions.
Just have a look at the comments of Professor Campbell and his team, who provided advice to the Government over a month ago. What did they say? They said that the capacity to bring online a desalination plant was an essential part of a plan to secure our future water needs. That was their advice. The plant would kick in at 30 per cent.
The Hon Morris Iemma, 28 Feb 2006
The desalination plant is at 30 per cent, if and when the dam levels reach 30 per cent.
And in times of severe drought it’s the third line of defence, after having accessed the deepwater, which previously could not be accessed, the ground water reserves, and at 30 per cent, the desalination.
The Hon Morris Iemma, 8 May 2006
At 3pm Thursday 21 June 2007, the available storage in Sydney’s water supply reservoirs was 50.0 percent. This is a +10.8 percent change on the previous week.
Sydney Catchment Authority, 21 June 2007
Certain media outlets are up in arms about the fact that the NSW government are “going ahead” with the desalination plant at Kurnell. Funny thing is, I couldn’t find a single quote which suggested that Iemma is going to build the plant before dam levels drop below 30%.
The Premier, Morris Iemma, says water restrictions will not be lifted, and the plan will not change.
“We are 100 per cent committed to building the desalination plant,” he said.
ABC News
“The plan” mentioned here seems to refer to the plan to build a desal plant if dam levels drop below 30%. Why then is the media getting so cranky? Why would Iemma scrap the desalination plant now? Sure, dam levels might be up for a few years, but you can bet your bottom dollar that they’ll be back towards 30% some time before the Liberals next have a chance to win power (say, 2015 or so).
The answer is obvious – after spending so much time and effort trying to influence NSW voters to ditch Iemma and hop on the ultra-right bandwagon of the other guy (what’s his name again?), the media in general are pissed off that they were exposed as being a bunch of whining nohopers with all the influence of a gnat’s urine stream against a bushfire.
Desalination for life!
[Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley] was reinstated immediately after the court decision but won’t return to his desk job at the Gold Coast regional headquarters until “he is ready”, a Queensland Police spokesman said.
I am now officially marking November the 19th as “kill an Abbo and go on cushy taxpayer funded leave” day. Meanwhile, Murrandoo Yanner’s suggestion that the dead man’s family should go after Hurley in the civil courts, “OJ-style”, wins this week’s most ridiculous notion award. A family of Aboriginals versus the Queensland police force? If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.
Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley escapes scot free
Another victory for police brutality as the man who cleft Mulrunji Doomadgee’s liver in twain is found not guilty of manslaughter and assault.
Justice Dutney said the jury must decide whether or not the injuries had occurred before or after the fall, and whether or not Hurley had lied in his accounts of the incident.
Hurley initially told investigating police he fell beside Mr Doomadgee.
But in testimony to the court last week the policeman conceded he “must have” landed on top of Mr Doomadgee.
Justice Dutney said if the jury decided Hurley intentionally injured Mr Doomadgee they needed to decide whether “a reasonable person” would have considered his actions could result in the 36-year-old Aboriginal man’s death.
If bashing people to death is standard police procedure, then you’ll excuse me if I keep my distance from them. Oh wait, I forgot: I’m white. No need to worry.
Senior Sergeant Hurley, I hope dreams of Mr Doomadgee haunt you for the rest of your life.
Allow me to indulge for one second in a Joel-style browser review.
The people at Apple have recently released their web browser for PC, so I thought I’d check it out.
Point 1: Appearance
This browser is ugly. What’s with the militaristic grey? What do the buttons mean? What the hell is that spider?
Point 2: Configuration
I pull up the “Edit Preferences” menu.The change proxy settings button is greyed out. What the hell? How are you supposed to use this thing? Likewise, five other buttons are greyed out in various sections of the preference menu. Do they want me to buy a full version?
Point 3: Instructions
“Press Tab to highlight each item on a webpage. Option-Tab highlights each item”. What the hell is Option-Tab?
Point 4: Compatibility
When you install Firefox, it copies over all your settings, bookmarks etc from Internet Explorer (if you want). Safari just gives you its own bookmarks: CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post. None of which interest myself, being from Sydney.
Conclusion:
This program is a steaming pile of crap. Cue rabid rebuttals from demented Apple fans…
Who ever knew that game theory could be so useful? According to economicist Hammad Siddiqi, leaving the toilet seat down is inefficient, even taking the cost of being yelled at into account.
He then goes on the explain why this practise will not change. I didn’t quite follow the mathematics, but it’s an interesting read.
WikiOracle?
General | stu | 
June 29, 2007 1:02 pm | 
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