And there’s even some local flavour this year with an Australian team winning a mathematics prize for calculating the number of shots a photographer must take to almost ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed. Congratulations to Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes of CSIRO for this earthshattering research! Apparently the guts of it is, for groups of less than 20, you divide the number of people by three if there’s good light or a decent flash, and two if the light’s bad.

Hopefully they did some real research while on the government payroll at CSIRO, and the work they got their prize for was done on their own time.

Other noteworthy scientific achievers awarded prizes included:

• PEACE – Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, for inventing a teen-ager repellent – a device that makes a high-pitched noise that is annoying to teen-agers but inaudible to most adults; and for later using the technology to make cellphone ringtones that teenagers can hear but not their teachers.

• ACOUSTICS – D. Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand of Chicago’s Northwestern University for a 1986 experiment aimed at discovering why the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard is so irritating.

• MEDICINE – Francis Fesmire of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine and the team of Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan and Arie Oliven of Bnai Zion Medical Center in Haifa, Israel who both published studies entitled “Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage.”

Regarding the last one, I think I’ll stick to the tried and tested remedies for hiccups, like breathing into a paper bag, rather than sticking a finger up my arse.

Technorati Tags: Ignobel Prize, science, research, digital rectal massage, hiccups

This is the bit that attracted my attention in particular. The father allegedly assaulted the child in the house he shares with his wife, his girlfriend and two other children, one aged three and another six months, in Blacktown, in Sydney’s west yesterday.

That just has bogan written all over it. Living with wife and girlfriend!!! Whats the odds also that his kids are by different mothers (quite possibly neither of the wife or girlfriend?)

I’d hate to think what would have happened to the kid if he’s shat on dad …if he beats the child to death (not quite right now, but probably will die) for chucking up, he’d no doubt think acceptable discipline for shitting on him is both barrels of a 12 gauge.

Technorati Tags: child abuse, bogan

Today’s execution of 5 schoolgirls in Pennsylvania follows hot on the heels of 2 other killings in schools in the last week. I can’t find a reference on line but on Sky News today, they said that there had been 25 school shooting incidents in the US since the middle of August.

The deeds of Charles Roberts in Paradise today are said to be related to some grudge he had held since he was a child. He took out his problems with his life and the world by seizing a school room and then tying up the girls and shooting several of them in the head - killing 5. The motive will probably never be known, as Roberts killed himself as well.

Clearly his grudge was with girls, as he shot only the girls in the school, having released the boys and some adults earlier.

This follows the shootings in Colorado last week where a man took 2 girls hostage, killed one and then himself. Also last week, a 15 year old student at Weston School in Wisconsin shot dead his school’s principal.

The shootings in Colorado and Pennsylvania in particular seem disturbing, in that they did not involve a fellow student gone crazy but strangers who have deliberately chosen schools as the place to take out their psychotic grudges against the world, and have specifically targeted young girls.

How often do these things happen in other countries? And whats the distinction between them and America? The ready availability of high powered weapons to any psycho that wants them. Just think, the damage that could have been done today would have been a lot less had Roberts not had access to the veritable armoury he had.

The response - of course its not to place gun control on the political agenda, thats too hard given the National Rifle Association seems to have the American political system by the balls. No, the response is to hold a conference on school violence and what can be done to prevent it. The action taken will of course be to beef up security screening at schools and things like that. Why not go back a few steps and reduce the availability of guns generally, and particularly limit the ability of nutcases to get hold of them.

Something I found interesting and disturbing on the news today is that there are people in the education bureaucracy in the US who have job titles such as “Director, Safety and Security, Chicago Schools” and similar. Not only that but there is enough business to support a specialist consulting firm, National School Safety and Security Services. Amazing!!!!!

According to this firm, since Columbine in 1999, the number of fatal school shootings in a school year has ranged from three (2002-03) to 24 (2004-05). There have also been 17 nonfatal school shootings so far this school year, beginning Aug. 1. There were 85 the previous school year and 52 in the 2004-2005 school year. Just business as usual I suppose!!!

PS - I suppose despite all the shootings in American schools, Beslan in Russia was far worse so we shouldn’t forget that. We shouldn’t forget Dunblane either. Even so, these were isolated though still terrible tragedies … they just don’t happen anywhere else with the same frequency as America, and its the gun culture which plays a huge part in this.

Technorati Tags: gun culture, Charles Roberts, Paradise, Pennsylvania, Amish school, school murders, gun crime, gun controls

A poll conducted by think tank the Lowy Institute found that 84% of Australians disagree with the statement that the war in Iraq has reduced the threat of terrorism. Two-thirds disagreed that the war would lead to the spread of democracy in the Middle East, and 85 per cent think the experience should make us cautious about using military force to deal with rogue regimes.

The government of course has sought to discredit the poll, saying it was skewed to ignore the risks of surrendering to terrorism. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer dismissed the findings and accused the Lowy Institute of structuring the poll to get aparticular result. Treasurer Peter Costello also rejected the findings of the poll,saying it did not mean Australian troops should be pulled out of Iraq.

I think there is a clear distinction between the effectiveness of the war and what Australia should be doing with our troops in Iraq. The war itself has only ever had a tenuous connection with the war on terror - it had more to do with vengeance against Saddam Hussein. No denying Hussein was an evil thug, and that the Iraqi people suffered greatly under his regime. But the regime’s role in spreading international terrorism was almost certainly marginal. What the Iraq war has done is to remove the legitimate focus on dealing with the terrorists - the right thing to do was apply enough force in Afghanistan (a legitimate target for the US and allies because the Taliban regime clearly supported Al Quaeda and played host to its leaders and training camps) to have finished the job there properly, and focused much greater energy on Iraq which was peripheral to the fight against terror. The other thing it has done of course is to serve as a magnet for the jihadist nutcases to go there and fight for whatever their cause is.

Having said that the war in Iraq was ill-conceived, and is not really achieving whatever its stated objectives were (these are a moving target, with Bush, Howard and co ducking and weaving constantly), it is not tenable for Australia to withdraw from the mess. We helped get Iraq to its current state by participating in a poorly planned war, so morally we need to stay there and help secure Iraq as a stable state. What has to be demanded in Iraq is a clear strategy from the USA as to what has to be done to stabilise and secure Iraq - John Howard must demand this, and not merely tag along with whatever George W Bush wants to do. What is happening there now strikes me as lacking in direction, and with no clear end in sight. I expect that the coalition of countries in Iraq will need to apply much more force than they have to date to get Iraq sorted out …is it better to accept this, rather than let the current instability drift on for years.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, war, Saddam Hussein, Lowy Institute, democracy, Afghanistan, Al-Quaeda, jihad, George W Bush

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