Images of war

Sacked for photo Americans weren't meant to see

Doonesbury

Genesis 5

Thou shalt find the text here. My thoughts:

- We're into a new text now - note the "Last Time on Genesis" bit at the start. Cain's been retconned out! He's a failed prototype. (Although is that a reference to him in verse 29?)

- We're into the begatitudes big time. The appearance of Noah at the end is a bit of a relief.

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Seeking the National Party's current policy on asylum seekers, I visited their home page, where a banner advocates FAIR GO FOR BABIES, illustrated by what appears to be a lesbian couple with two babies. Now that's a leap into the twenty-first century for the Nats. ;-)

I can't get the top menu to work on the Liberals' home page in either IE or Netscape, so I can't find or link to their current policy. However, as I am now the perpetrator maintainer of the NSW Democrats site, I shouldn't get too cocky about other peoples' pages.

(no subject)

For those of us with chronic illnesses, mental or physical, a nugget from the alt.support.schizophrenia FAQ:

"Courage is not necessarily bravado; sometimes it is a crawl."

(no subject)

To compensate for the fridge magnetude of my last posting, a splendid observation from a page on cockroach anatomy: "Cockroaches not only have a colon, but a rectum, too! Hooray!" Indeed.

Public vs private education

Now this is interesting. I've seen debate over the extent to which the government ought to fund public schools, with some saying they should be given the equivalent funding as a public school, others saying they shouldn't receive government funding at all. Anyway, this news item is the first time I leaned that private schools receive proportionately more funding than public schools:

Claim $3bn needed to put public schools on the level

"The state education ministers argue that rich private schools charging $15,000 in annual fees receive 13.7 per cent of the cost of educating a student in a public school. Primary students in public schools receive from the Federal Government 8.9 per cent of this formula, while high school students receive 10 per cent. [...] The ministers will push [the Federal education minister] to recognise in the federal funding formula that it costs more money to educate students in highly disadvantaged communities and that most poor students attend public schools. Public schools have twice as many disabled students, three times more Aboriginal students and more than twice as many children at remote schools. Twenty per cent of the 2200 public schools in NSW are classified as disadvantaged, compared with the national average of 16 per cent."

If the state ministers' figures are correct, the poor are subsidising the education of the rich.

Analysis of war

Iraq, then the world, Bush hoped

Fish

Downloadable guide to sustainable seafood from the Australian Marine Conservation Society. Handy for avoiding badly overfished species. Barramundi is a "better choice". Yay!

(ETA: Link updated 1 January 2007.)