New Blog Formatting

The internet is a wonderful thing - there's someone out there who can tell you how to do almost anything these days... I've been looking into ways of breaking up longer posts so that only a summary shows at the top and you can click through to read the rest of the post if you're interested. And of course lots of people have already done that. I've used the code developed at Hackosphere to do this - thanks guys!

And this is just a quick demonstration of how it works. Looks good to me so far.

As I get a chance, I will be looking through the rest of the blog hacks on Hackosphere. There's bound to be lots of other interesting things to do on there.

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Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson is one author that I've been meaning to read more of since first reading "Cryptonomicon" back in 2000. That book was entertaining, complex, well-written and thought-provoking - a combination I like in a book. But for one reason or another I've never got around to picking up any of his other books until now. Then, the last time I visited the local library, I found a copy of "Snow Crash" on the shelves and decided this was the time.

I'm glad I did. It's not the easiest book to read that I've ever come across. The writing style varies between characters, each having their own unique way of appearing on the page. The plot jumps around quite a bit between characters, locations, ideas and action - not randomly, but it does take a bit of an effort to follow what's going on with the story. All that is obviously deliberate, and it kept me interested in reading on, to find out where it was all going.

The book draws on a whole range of ideas to create it's complex story line. There's references to ancient civilizations, language, religion, computers, medicine, politics, the environment, all drawn together to create a believable alternative world. Some of the ideas are pretty weak - the way the ancient Sumerian language is supposed to work, tied in with the computer virus that affects human brains are a stretch. But that's part of reading fiction - suspending disbelief long enough for the story to catch you. The book is written well enough so that I could get caught up in it without worrying about its use of ideas that I would normally find unbelievable. It made me think, in other words. And that's always a good thing in a book.

So - like I said, it's not the easiest read I've ever had. It took me longer to read than most books do. I will have to go out and read Stephensons other books - unfortunately I've lost my copy of Cryptonomicon somewhere along the way, so I'll be looking to replace it. Or maybe just buy his later ones...

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Good news of the day...?

Todays headlines : We've killed the dolphins! The Yangtze river dolphin was declared extinct today. Really sad news, and I hope it's not true. But just like the Tassie tiger, I'm guessing it's gone.

Interest rates go up, again! I haven't heard from the bank yet, but it's probably only a matter of minutes before they put my mortgage rate up again. Great... But John Howard seems to have apologised for the rate rise, even though he's blaming someone else. So he's sorry for something he says he didn't do? In what world does that make sense?

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The year that was....

It's been a great year all around. I've got out and about the great South East, had a good time with friends and family etc.

I've been to beaches, and forests.

Spent time in the city, and the bay.

I have to say, Brisbane is a great place if you like getting outside and seeing more than just the city.

Anyway, all that is just leading up to this whole new year, starting today. Yes, it's happy birthday to me - it's been a good year, and here's hoping the next one is just as good. Now I'm off for a birthday dinner to celebrate!

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Great news of the day!

My sister is getting married! That definitely counts as good news. She and her fiance announced their engagement yesterday.

I'm excited, and can guarantee that my parents are more than thrilled!

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Gunns, Part 2

As well as the political concerns I have over the Gunns pulp mill (see previous post), I also have a few environmental concerns. As I mentioned before, the RPDC found holes in the Gunns IIS. They failed to address the environmental issues adequately.

First of all, this is a pulp mill. That means it will be using a lot of wood, turning it into pulp. At the moment, Gunns is a huge exporter of woodchips. These woodchips mostly go to Japan, and are then turned into pulp and paper. When Gunns first put this proposal up, I think they said that the wood supply for the mill would come from the woochips that are now being exported. That would be fantastic – there would be no more wood taken from the forests than is already being harvested. In that case, the mill would definitely be a good thing. After all, if the Japanese can buy our wood chips and turn them into pulp or paper then why can’t we do it? Exporting wood chips just seems silly to me – almost a criminal waste of our forest resources. Logging of old-growth forests for woodchipping just seems so wrong. But since then, I’ve heard that they are not planning to phase out wood chipping in favour of supplying the pulp mill. The latest plans, apparently, are to continue exporting wood chips as well as taking extra wood from the forests to supply the new mill. That would mean that they could potentially double the amount of wood being harvested. If that’s true, I think that would definitely be unsustainable. I’ll have to try and find a reference for that, though – I remember hearing that this was the plan, but can’t remember where I heard it.

Other issues include the treatment of effluent from the mill. The plan is to build a pipeline three kilometers out into Bass Strait. This will have the effect of dumping a lot of waste water into a fairly pristine area, and a prime fishing ground. There’s also been a study done that shows this area of Bass Strait is one of the slowest areas in the strait to be flushed clean, which means that any toxins etc in the effluent will be concentrated here for quite some time. This doesn’t sound like the best possible environmental standard to me.

I’ve been in a few pulp and paper mills over the last few years. They are smelly places. I haven’t yet seen a pulp mill that doesn’t have odour problems. Gunns says that this mill wont have an odour problem because of the technology they will be using. That seems a bit optimistic to me. The best systems can fail, and have weaknesses. This is one of the issues that the IIS given to the RPDC failed to address. There will be leaks, there will be failures, and odour will get out. In a remote area this wouldn’t be a problem, though. The gases aren’t poisonous, or anything like that. They just smell bad. If there was a large distance between the mill and anything else, that would be fine. One of the main concerns here is that the mill is going to be a few kilometers downwind of Launceston – a city that already has air quality issues due to a winter inversion layer. Adding anything else to the air in that part of the world just adds to the problems of the city. I don’t think enough attention has been paid to this – and it’s a real concern to people living in the area.

Then there are concerns about access to the mill site. Many, many log trucks will have to travel to and from the mill every day. Roads in Tassie already feel clogged by log trucks, and this can be a menace. Roads can be narrow, and winding, and adding a lot of trucks to the roads can be dangerous. The mill is being built in an area with no other way for logs to be brought in except by road. It would have made more sense, I think, to build it at a location with rail access, so that the number of log trucks on the access roads could be reduced.

Anyway, on environmental grounds, I think this is the wrong mill in the wrong place. I don’t think the technology they will be using is as good as they claim. I don’t think they’ve chosen the best possible location. And I don’t think they have any plans for a sustainable wood supply – they just plan to keep clearfelling any and all forests they can access to use for wood chips and pulp.

Overall, I think a new pulp and/or paper mill in Tasmania would be a great idea. Forest-based are great industries. If they’re done well, they are sustainable forever – after all, trees do keep growing. Well-managed forest industries would be a great part of Tasmania’s clean and green image. When I first heard of the proposal I was a supporter. But Gunns, and the government, have lost my support. I think this project will be bad for the Tasmanian environment, and will be bad for the image of the state. It’s too big, in the wrong place, doesn’t seem to use the best available technology, and I don’t trust Gunns to have any concern for environmental issues. This pulp mill will go ahead, but I don’t think that’s a good thing anymore.


Links : Wikipedia

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Howards Hospitals

So - John Howard announces that he'll take over a Tasmanian hospital. Why?

Well, it's an election year, it's a marginal electorate that he's trying to save, and it's an issue where the state Labor government has made an unpopular decision. The perfect opportunity for John Howard to gain some votes just where he needs them.

Good politcs, yes. Good policy? Probably not. But who cares about good policy in an election year?

Other links: John Quiggin, Blogocracy, Crikey

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