Trovebots attack!

This is yet another stretched comparison from my conspiratorial mind. (The last one was that Gillard v Meme picture – a bit less tangible than this one!)

There is a disturbing similarity between the new logo of the National Library of Australia’s Trove project and the symbol of the Autobots from Transformers.

Don’t believe me? Well let that be on your head when a self-aware copy of The Argus is flying at you faster than a wet fish!

They said I was mad when I warned that the old books and newsreel tapes were conspiring against us, but who’s laughing now!!!!

I have already alerted the police.

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Don’t forget to check out my new shindig – www.warragulcitizen.com (It’s where all my good stuff gone!)

On A Friday: The Science of Opinion

It’s a strange time that we live in. Not since 1975 has the Australian public formed a strong political opinion en-masse (with the possible exception of the referendum debate), yet now Cletus has his head out of the window yelling “Ma, it’s happening again!”

It is odd - most people in the country actually seem to have an opinion, or something closely resembling an opinion, about the carbon tax. It’s one topic which you can bring up with strangers on the street and hear in their response an opinion which was obviously formed before your conversation. Depending on your views, you might even get a nice run down the street with your new best friend too.

How set and how ill-informed people’s opinions are varies greatly, but that’s not the key thing to take away from this. The really weird thing is that this issue is not about football, it is not about MasterChef – it is about politics!

It is remarkable how much of a fuss this re-ordering of the tax system has caused. It has occurred to me that yearly alterations to government budgets have done more to effect household bottom lines than this tax is set to do. Indeed, a household earning $110, 000 per year would only have to pay about $10 per week with a carbon price in place; and in most cases you can end up with a huge tax break if you switch to the untaxed renewable energy sources.

Although being ranked as the second least trustworthy group of professionals in a poll of 1000 Reader’s Digest readers this year, people seem to be taking up arms on this issue after listening to, you got it, politicians.

What’s more, this “debate” is all just political rhetoric – something that I thought the Australian public was supposed to have an aversion to. Rhetoric-ridden speeches by Tony Abbott question the quality of our climatologists, our ecologists, our economists and probably even our biologists, archaeologists, zoologists and gynaecologists. At the same time, Julia Gillard levels anti-Abbott rhetoric at the nation.

This completely throws to the wind the importance of scientific research and instead makes this a debate about “who lied about what” and “which multi-millionaire should have to pay 5c extra for a hotdog.” The science is occasionally taken along for the ride.

Indeed yesterday one politician, Malcolm Turnbull, revealed that he had been receiving persistent abusive text messages from one individual about his stance on climate change; this is not in line with political debate or scientific research.

But if all this tax talk is taking its toll on you, you might want to sit back and watch the video below. The sentiment can be appreciated by everyone of every opinion and political persuasion, and even by those managing to hold no opinion.

I’m not sure if it was Terry Gilliam who was responsible for the animations. A large part of me hopes that it wasn’t.

Or maybe that song is too scientific for some people?

But oh, if only the sun were the direct source of all our power - then there’d be no need for a debate at all.

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©2011 William Kulich.

Opinion: When Australian Politics Breaks

Today is former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s 95th birthday. Whitlam became Prime Minister in December 1972 and was eventually toppled, not by the Liberal/National opposition, but by then-Governor-General of Australia Sir John Kerr who sacked him on Remembrance Day 1972.

Whitlam’s short term in office was one of the most unstable moments in Australian political history, and was the first true test to the Australian hybrid system of government.

The “constitutional crisis” which surrounded Whitlam’s dismissal was a clash between the unwritten conventions of the Westminster system and the written constitution of Australia, which is required to make the Australian Federation work.

Sir John Kerr broke many conventions when dismissing Whitlam, especially the convention that the Governor-General should consult with the Prime Minister on important matters. I argue that Kerr also broke the law of the Constitution of Australia by consulting with a member of the High Court – a move which is questionable under the separation of powers described in section one of the constitution.

This was not the first time that convention had been broken for the Labor MP; in fact, right from the moment that Whitlam entered Parliament he was subject to breaches of convention. When delivering his maiden speech to the parliament in 1953 after the Werriwa by-election, Whitlam was interrupted by John “Black Jack” McEwen. Maiden speeches are, by convention, heard in silence.

The political instability of the early- to mid-1970s was, to say the least, a scary realisation that Australia’s democracy is far from perfect. But what is the alternative? One of the strange side-effects of anti-communism in Australia is that any non-democratic system of government is hardly considered by the population.

Although any future Governors-General are unlikely to dismiss a Prime Minister, we’re not out of the woods yet in proving the worth of Australian democracy.

I was watching a sitting of the House of Representatives last week, where the house became rowdy so quickly that Speaker Harry Jenkins was forced to stand and issue a general warning after only five minutes of sitting time. The rest of the sitting saw Jenkins throw out five opposition members, nearly throw out the opposition leader and yell for silence at both sides of the chamber.

Once again, we are lucky that there is not a strong alternative to democracy in Australia as, given how much of a rabble our Parliament has started to become, it would be difficult to defend the functionality of our system at present.

Although there is some fun about Australia’s parliament and how parliamentarians interact, when there are clear breaches of standing orders for the sake of TV news bites and attempts to stall parliamentary proceedings to force an extra sitting week it has gone too far. Everyone should be thankful that we have no rival ideology.

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©2011 William Kulich.

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On A Rapture: Apples fall, not stars!

It has been three months since my last post on OCSN. There are a few good reasons for this; I have started a course at University, I have started a local paper (look out Rupert!), and I will even admit that at times I have not posted because of laziness. But one thing that has not been taking up my time is preparing for the Rapture.

Ladies and gentlemen, according to Harold Camping it’s Rapture day. Put on your helmets, wrap yourself in bubble wrap and cover your kids’ eyes for Jesus is a’comin’ back, and he has a grudge 1,975 years in the making!

What is the Rapture exactly? The Rapture is a Christian event; It is a bit like Christmas. Pretty much, the Rapture is the day when all the Christians are supposed to be taken to meet Jesus in the sky whilst all non-believers suffer for not having faith.

But there is only one thing that I really need to know about the Rapture - what time is it supposed to be? I want to know exactly when I will finally get confirmation of my radical Christian beliefs by being spared whilst all my atheist, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist friends are sent to an eternity of torture and pain.* Oh wait…

I should probably show my hand now. Before I took a step back from the teachings of government primary school religious education (hoorah for a secular Australia!) I strongly believed in a Christian God. But I have since stopped accepting what has been preached to me and for the past eight years I’ve been atheist.

I am sceptical about anything religious, mainly because I like to ask questions and the answers that any religion provides seem so ambiguous and/or farcical. Here is one example: The new testament is essentially a re-written, dumbed-down version of the Bible written when Jesus “came back to Earth” and decided that the Old Testament was too hard for “God’s people” to abide by. If we are supposed to have been created in God’s image, why did we not get it right the first time?

But back to Rapture, or more specifically, the twelfth “notable” predicted Rapture (as stated by John “Jo” Smith of Wikipedia) and Camping’s second Rapture prediction. On that note, I think it’s time for a tally of Rapture predictions:

Predicted by:	Notable dates:	Secondary dates:
William Miller:	March 1843- March1844 (seems that in the old days Rapture prediction wasn’t a precise… science?)	Revised to October 1844. (Full marks for trying!)
Jehovah’s Witnesses:	1914, 1918, 1925, 1942. (I don’t think that I’ve missed any...)	(I think they pretty much covered it in direct predictions.)
Chuck Smith:	1981. (Although Metallica’s formation in 1981 might have been some kind of a musical Rapture.)
Edgar Whisenant:	1988, 1989.	1992, 1995 and the list goes on.
Mission for the Coming Days:	1992.
MANY people:	1993.
John Hinkle:	1994.
Harold Camping:	1994 (counted with Hinkle), 2011.
Sir Isaac Newton:	Any time from 2060 onwards.	2061, 2062, 2063, 2064…

So, the past 12 notable Rapture predictions, including Camping’s 2011 prediction, have flopped like a rebellion in Jerusalem. What of the next one? Could Isaac be right?

Well, just for the hell of it, I am going to make the prediction that Isaac’s prediction is right! Why? Well, by using the same method of loose connections used in formulating previous Rapture predictions, I conclude that because there were 13 people at the last supper, the 13th notable prediction MUST be the right one! Onya Isaac!I do not actually believe this; I know that my theory will eventually abide by one of Newton’s other (already proven) theories, the law of gravitation, and come crashing down…

*KEEP READING!

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On A Friday: Ready thine ears

Over three years after their last album, and after much (often false) speculation over when LP8 will be released, last Monday Radiohead announced the imminent online release of their latest studio album, The King Of Limbs.

The new album will be available from the Radiohead website tomorrow as a digital download. A physical copy, described as “the world's first* (*perhaps) Newspaper Album”, is available to be shipped at a later date. Radiohead was right to put the “perhaps” clause in there – if I recall correctly, the original release of Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick was released as a newspaper.

Can’t wait until tomorrow? Well, here for your Friday night viewing pleasure, is the first single from the new album. (Incidentally, “On A Friday” was the name of Radiohead whilst they were still a school band.)

If this new song, called Lotus Flower, is an accurate indication of what The King Of Limbs will sound like, it would seem that this new album breaks Radiohead’s track record of every album being significantly different from their last. Lotus Flower could easily have been a part of Radiohead’s last album, In Rainbows, or singer Thom Yorke’s solo album, The Eraser.

Now that he’s a bit older, I think that Thom Yorke is starting to look a little like Jamie Oliver.

This is not the only news from the alternative music industry this week. Chiptune and Nerdcore artist Doctor Popular, who recently released Beeps and Smudges, has also released a new single.

Part of a new album planned for release in March, sunchoked is a return to the sound that Doctor Popular had when he released Me Geek Pretty One Day. Doctor Popular manages to do this whilst continuing his venture into iPad and iPhone music software, which he started with Beeps and Smudges.

Compare the new single, which can be listened to through the YouTube video below, to an earlier Doc Pop song, Dropped. (Click here to listen to Dropped.)

It seems that both Radiohead and Doctor Popular are standing by the styles which have worked for them in the past.

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On A Friday: Bad Ads

I dislike advertisements.
Actually, no, I love a good advert. Artistic or entertaining advertising can really brighten my day and served to lessen the blow of SBS’s in-program ad breaks. Internet advertising, however, can be frustrating.
Not only do you get worthless junk and potential phishing sites flashing in small boxes on your screen, but if you are on a slow connection, a video ad can slow down or break a loading page.
I got so frustrated one day whilst roaming the internet that I felt the need to contact some people of a similar mindset. So, I typed “ihateads.com” into my address bar, thinking that I would be taken to a page of amusing anecdotes regarding advertising. What I was instead greeted with was a page that was as infuriating as it was comedicly ironic.
I landed on a parked domain, but not just any parked domain – the most ad-crammed parked domain that I have ever seen! Pop-up boxes, flash ads, text ads, ads about the page, ads about advertising, the lot!

The number of ads on this page have since been toned down a bit, but the subtle and probably accidental mockery of modern day frustrations holds to light the extent to which the internet is used for quick revenue generation these days.
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On A Friday: Pre-Polling Predicaments

On last Tuesday and today I have been handing How To Vote cards at an early voting centre in my electorate ahead of Victoria’s state election this Saturday. I did the same at the last two federal elections, but this election has been the one which I have the most to say about.

At the particular early voting centre that I was stationed at I have had a wonderful time. The representatives from all parties have been welcoming, and have even handed out the How To Votes of other parties when people have had to leave for various reasons. However, despite all this good sportsmanship I have seen something really quite devastating.

On the Tuesday a carer turned up to make an early vote with two elderly people, one of whom was in a wheel chair. These two people were not physically keeping up with what was going on around them, however they seemed hopelessly aware of what was going on. As the carer approached slowly with the two in her care, pushing the one in a wheelchair and holding the arm of the other, I and the other campaigners greeted them. I tried to offer the carer a How To Vote card which she turned her nose up to. Not taking it to heart I then I then tried to offer the How To Vote to the person in the wheelchair.

This was responded to with the wheelchair being pushed faster as the carer told the person that she “didn’t need that.” This happened to every party handing out How to Votes except the Liberals, who handed over their How To Vote successfully.

The campaigners from the other parties had not actually been able to communicate with the elderly people much at all, and as we tried to make sure that these two knew which parties were present the person in the wheelchair slowly raised a hand to accept the alternatives. We were stymied however when the carer gathered pace again and they were over the line which campaigners are unable to cross before we had the chance to hand them anything.

Once they had entered the polling place all of us campaigners uttered words of dismay amongst each other, including the Liberal party campaigner who later mentioned that he had seen displays like that before. Now there may have been a pre-arranged agreement between the carer and the elderly ladies, however from where I and the other campaigners stood it sure didn’t look like it!

Discussion of reform to the system then arose, with some truly excellent suggestions being raised amongst us. One idea was that inside polling booths everywhere, all the How To Vote cards for parties contesting upper and lower house seats should be displayed in some way. This also gives equal treatment to the small parties whose budget does not allow the mass-printing of How To Votes, or who don’t command the support base to have a campaigner at every booth.

There was another concerning development which came about at the start of the week. The ballot paper for the Legislative Council (Victoria’s Upper House) had a fold in it, made during printing, which hid the last party on the paper. Despite the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC) officials opening up the paper for voters to see, this paper could still be picked up by the voter in such a way that could hide the party again without the voter knowing. I was assured by the early voting official at my booth that they were making sure that all voters knew about the issue with the fold, but I am painfully aware that this was just in one booth. I have also been informed that the original batch of ballot papers which had been printer earlier did not have this fold.

The person in control of the booth was at pains to assure me that this was just a printing fault, which I am sure is the case. However the VEC’s slogan that “every vote will shape Victoria” is somewhat undermined by poor quality control with the ballot papers – with the slip of paper on which the actual votes are marked!

We live in a country with a proud democratic history, a country which has been described in the past as the pinnacle of democracy (notwithstanding our position as a constitutional monarchy). This however does not mean we should rest on our laurels – there are clear areas in need of improvement. The VEC this election has been using computers and mobile phones to assist vision impaired and non-English speaking voters cast a private ballot, a move which is a great leap forward in democratic representation for many people. However so long as carers can have absolute control over the votes of those they look after, and so long as ballot papers do not present each party equally, there is still room for improvement in our system. Improvements which, especially in Victoria where seats can swing easily, need to be made sooner rather than later.

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On A Friday: So You Think You Can Speak English?

Back in the days shortly after Australian Federation and until halfway through the 20th century, it was common banter for Aussies to describe the Australian people as “more British than the British.” Back then Australia was still strongly attached to the British Empire and the “more British” suggestion could be seen as a light-hearted joke at the expense of the mother country.

America on the other hand has not tried to carry on its British history since its revolution and independence in the 1700s. Many parts of American culture and values have changed to become unique to the US, but there are still quite a few remnants of British settlement. One of the most obvious of these is the English Language. I have in the past joked that American English is far from being “real” English, and now I now have some serious backing for that argument!

People around the world use American websites such as Google and its subsidiary YouTube to explore what the internet has to offer. Google delivers most of its websites and services in a plethora of languages, with its standard language being US English.

I signed in to YouTube last night to be greeted with a “Welcome to YouTube” message (despite having been a user for some time now). The message suggested setting my location filter to Australia and my language to English UK.

Happy with those suggestions I went to click Ok. But just as I went to do that I noticed a little hyperlink in the bottom left of the message box that read “Show message in English”.

I’m sorry Google, but where did the ENGLISH language originate from? No, not the region of New England, but from England in the United Kingdom!

Fundamentally these languages are the same but there are some critical differences. I spell colour, you spell color; I spell centre, you spell center. Describing US English as “English” is muddling the dialects and could be confusing for some people who are trying to learn the language.

Greater clarity is needed in these language message boxes to prevent such confusion, especially when automation goes wrong as it did in the above message. At least that way you won’t get people like myself being picky about your terminology!

On A Friday: Um, no I won’t click that

Day after day we are bombarded with commercial images trying to convince us to buy the latest and greatest product – be it whitegoods, technology, a political idea or spray on cheese. A lot of this advertising is mediocre, with vague attempts at appealing to our sense of modernism, however there has been some truly great advertising.

An example of one such piece of excellent marketing is the “low fat, no fat”  ad for Pauls’ Smarter White milk which has fully infiltrated Australian society.

There are some sad, sad cases though. The internet is a really easy place to find poor advertising due to its relative cheapness – especially if you are advertising your own products on your own website.

Last month I found the ad below on the Gigabyte website.

[Ad reads “Booktop (tm). The thrill comes after you insert it.” Images: Laptop on dock and man picking his nose]

Yes it does grab your attention, but there is little appeal in clicking an ad with a picture of a man picking his nose as the main focal point when it is not entirely clear what the product is. In this case you have to be tech savvy to notice the laptop dock which is the real purpose of the ad. This uncertainty cuts out some groups of potential customers.

There have also been some poor attempts at public relations stunts. I found the hidden tile pictured below in Microsoft’s Bing search engine some time ago.

[click image for larger screenshot. Tile reads “Almost every animal is insanely cute when it’s a baby. This is also true for hippos »”]

I understand what happened to the advertising gurus when they were writing this one – the craze of insanely cute pictures of kittens and puppies that have been getting millions of hits finally brainwashed these poor people at Microsoft into distastefully getting them more visitors to further their grip on the world’s chain messages. It’s a sad day when your search engine attempts to distract you from researching a world war with the promise of cute hippos.

In a time where there is vast unemployment around the world, surely Gigabyte and Microsoft must be able to find better public relations personnel than those who wrote these!

Eighth Radiohead Album Coming Soon?

Given Radiohead front man Thom Yorke’s statement to NME  last year that another full album would “kill” Radiohead, it was a surprise when fellow band member Ed O’Brien later announced that the band would begin recording their eighth album.

In a post on the band’s website in December last year, O’Brien said that the band would return to the the studio in January. O’Brien wrote that it was “reassuring” that the band was “most definitely a different band” to what it was whilst recording their forth album ‘Kid A’, suggesting that the band’s stylistic movement was “the aim of the game” in music.

And history tells us that when Radiohead moves onto another album their website moves with it. On the Radiohead website, ‘Dead Air Space’, there is a section for old websites under the Orwellian name of “Memory Hole”. This includes websites designed specifically for the release of many of their previous albums including ‘Hail to the Thief’, ‘Amnesiac’, ‘Kid A’, and ‘OK Computer’. Their second most recent design tied directly in with the cover art of their seventh album ‘In Rainbows’, and now it has changed again.

[The new design of the Radiohead website.]

Although this doesn’t explicitly mean that the band is to release another full album, the redesign shows that with the January recordings Radiohead has made a definite step from their last album.

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NOTE: Due to an error in publishing, the time posted for this article is incorrect. The real time is 12:05PM

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On A Friday: How To Escape A Ninja

There has been a craze of “Ninjas can’t catch you if….” backgrounds sweeping the internet. One of my personal favourites is one designed for a dual monitor desktop that reads “Ninjas can’t catch you if you’re on another monitor.”

“Ninjas can’t catch you if… you’re on another monitor”

But despite this being a reasonable argument I am not convinced. Why? I am certainly no expert at dodging jumping, near-invisible, super-stealthy killers so I don’t take much comfort from there just being a monitor between me and them!

So to arm myself against these killers in black I have created my own safeguard. I feel it may just save my life:

“Ninjas can’t catch you if… you’re on another computer”
[CLICK IMAGE for larger version]

And with that advice I wish you a happy, ninja-free week.

P.S. – I know it’s not Friday but this is such an important community service announcement that one can throw convention to the wind!

On A Friday: Parliament Speed Dating (Cartoon)

[click image to enlarge]
Captions:
Julie Bishop: “Next!”
Tony Abbott to Julia Gillard: “Sorry Julia, I have to leave you now”

Cartoon by William Kulich

 

Google’s Stand for Free Speech

The Implications of Google’s Actions in China on the Labor Government’s proposed internet Censorship.

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In a firm stand against the Chinese government’s human rights policies, Google yesterday announced that they will no longer provide the same search censoring service to China that they once did.

Google’s webmail service, Gmail, and several other internet services were subject to cyber attacks last month which Google have traced to China.

In a post on The Official Google Blog entitled “A new approach to China”, Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond stated that “we [Google] have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn”.

Drummond continues to explain that Google will “discuss [how Google could run] an unfiltered search engine within the [Chinese] law, if at all.” This is backed up by a statement that Google “may well [have] to shut down Google.cn, and potentially [its] offices in China” if an agreement with the Government cannot be reached.

Drummond’s post indicates that the attacks were on the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, and that Google have a strong belief in human rights and freedom of information. He comments that when Google China was launched in 2006 it was intended to make uncensored information more easily available in China, and that Google had experienced “discomfort” in agreeing to censorship.

Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy announced in December of last year that he plans to put legislation which would censor Australia’s internet to parliament before next election.

The Australian system will be implemented as a blacklist targeting “refused classification” (RC) websites. RC websites contain material which is not allowed a rating in Australia due to illegal actions being portrayed. A report leaked last March however suggests that some websites possibly outside of the initial scope of RC content may also be blocked, including some pages on the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia.

What are the implications of this on Google’s service in Australia? If the search engine were to leave Australia it may cause greater public unrest than in China where Google is not such a dominant search engine.

Google’s stance on freedom of information may lead to some disputes on service with the Australian Government, however the ISP-level filtering forwarded by Senator Conroy may mean that filtered content found on Google will lead to a dead link and not the blocked website.

Google’s actions in China show how a large information carrier such as Google can attempt to hold an entire country’s Government at ransom.

On A Friday: Lipstick on a Pig

 

On A Friday: Trick or Treat (5% Confidence)

This week’s On A Friday is a cartoon in response to the Government’s proposed 5% minimum reduction of greenhouse gas on 2000 levels by 2020.

Holding to the Constitution, is Victoria's government being hypocritical?

Today (6/3/09) The Age newspaper reported that the South Australian Premier, Mike Rann, will be holding Victoria to the constitution in relation to the distribution of water from the Murray-Darling river system. The paper also reported that Victorian Water minister Tim Holding in return accused the South Australian government of having an “appalling” record with water. But how well placed is Victoria to make such a judgement? The state is the largest user of water from the Murray-Darling at 34.2%, with SA only drawing 9.3% (The Age). The state has also recently started farming rice which requires fields to be flooded, wasting water through evaporation and ground absorption. New South Wales (which draws 32.6% of water from the river (The Age)) produces most of Australia’s rice crop, with all of the country’s harvest being grown in the Murray-Darling basin. Cotton is another water demanding crop that is grown in the basin, and has been the cause of deforestation in Uzbekistan and salination in the Aral Sea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton).
These and other crops are unsuitable for growing in Australia in general, where rainfall is barely high enough in some places to provide water for day-to-day tasks; towns in South Australia such as Goolwa are simply running out of water. Crops such as these can be imported easily from other countries, allowing our water to be used in more useful ways, after all it’s be harder and more expensive to import water than it is to import rice and cotton. The Murray River requires constant dredging to keep flowing to the Coorong. Despite the water situation, rice can still be grown in Australia; several species or rice can grow on dry land, some of which are perennial which would also fix some soil erosion problems. Victoria, and New South Wales, should put tighter restraints on the farming of high water usage crops, perhaps limiting the total number of hectares that can be grown? Goolwa is thirsty, as too is Victoria.
(6/3/09 - Melbourne dams at 30.6%, down 4.8% from same time last year.)

Opinion: An Informed Society.

Today the Victorian Police have sent the following text message to Victorian mobile phones:

“Msg from Vic Police:Extreme weather in Vic expected Mon night & Tues.High wind & fire risk.Listen to local ABC Radio for emergency updates.Do not reply to this”

This is an excellent warning system that has been brought into action after Victoria’s Black Saturday fires last January, so what else could a system like this be extended to? A similar system could be developed to send an emergency text message to all in the vicinity of an armed robber, or the utilities (power, eater etc.) could warn users of impending service cuts and/or advise them when the service will be resumed by the use of a simple text message (See “Water Main Burst”). Even evacuation advice for a large department store could be issued via customers’ mobile phones and strong wind warnings could be issued to campers in tree-heavy areas.

Perhaps the government could subsidise a worthy system like this? Text messages are a more immediate and easily received format for emergency information than an announcement over a speaker (which could be inaudible or cause panic) or on the internet, which people may not see/hear. This could help save lives (in worst case scenario) and avoid confusion and panic in the public.

Many households now have at least one mobile phone within, and people could easily pass on the message to neighbours or those around them who don’t have a mobile themselves. This is an excellent move by Victoria Police and a concept that could be applied with great effect to a wide range of emergency situations.

News/Opinion: Burst Melbourne Water Main Not Cut, Millions of Litres of Drinking Water Lost

/First half written on 25/1/2009/

At 3:30am today a small leak in a 50-year-old pipe in St Georges Rd Melbourne was reported which erupted into a 40 meter high fountain two hours later.

The approach that even the least handy-person would take would be to turn the water off, however Melbourne Water didn’t shut down the water main until hours later. During this time dismayed locals looked on, trying to save what water they could from the flooded roadway.

A Melbourne Water spokesman defended the decision not to shut off the pipe, which supplies water to over a thousand homes and businesses in the western suburbs, saying that "In order to fix it we have to shut it down so to avoid leaving people without water we have to first isolate this part of the system.” [heraldsun.com.au]

Victoria’s Water Minister Tim Holding is yet to comment on why the sparse resource was allowed to leak for so long and exactly how much water has been lost to the Melbourne storm water system. However, Upper House Opposition Leader David Davis speculated that the recent efforts by households to reduce water consumption have been undone as a result of the “debacle”. [heraldsun.com.au]

/The following was written on 28/1/2009/

Heat has been cited as the cause of the burst. [MX Newspaper, Jan 28 2009]

Does the delay to warn residents of a water cut-off mean that Victoria’s water protocols need to be changed? In a state that is suffering from its driest January in 77 years [Source: http://is.gd/hv4R] and as Melbourne swelters through its hottest week in 100 years [Source: theage.com.au], surely common sense would prevail and the pipe would be switched off?

Today (28/1) another burst in the same area was caused by a car which crashed into a fire hydrant. Thousands of litres of water were lost again in a 5m high spray [MX Newspaper, Jan 28 2009]. This time 63 homes were affected.

If providing notice to residents and shop owners is required, maybe water companies should reduce the water pressure after a burst so that not so much water is lost? Also, water companies should try to reclaim water that would otherwise be lost, maybe with a stand-by crew that can try to rescue at least some water from a leak. The state’s water system would also benefit from more water control gates so water pipe closures would affect a smaller number of people; similar upgrades have been applied successfully to Victoria’s electricity grid in past years.

Melbourne’s dam levels are presently at 33.8%, a drop of 3.9% from the same time last year. With no rainfall registered in Melbourne catchment areas so far this month, maybe it really is time for the government to review its water protocols. [Statistics from the Melbourne water website, last updated on the 23^rd of January.]

/All statistics correct at time of writing./