More hot air

Tony Abbott talks about CO2

"This is a draconian new police force chasing an invisible odourless, weightless, tasteless substance,"

Mr Abbott, meet Mr Google

CO2 gas is 1.5 times as heavy as air, thus if released to the air it will concentrate at low elevations. Carbon dioxide will form "dry ice" at -78.5ºC (-109.3º F). One kg of dry ice has the cooling capacity of 2 kg of ordinary ice. Gaseous or liquid carbon dioxide, stored under pressure, will form dry ice through an auto-refrigeration process if rapidly depressured.....Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a slightly toxic, odorless, colorless gas with a slightly pungent, acid taste.

At least he didn't say that is was harmless

Air with a carbon dioxide content of more than 10% will extinguish an open flame, and, if breathed, can be life-threatening. Such concentrations may build up in silos, digestion chambers, wells, sewers and the like. Caution must be exercised when entering these types of confined spaces.

Speaking of draconian has anybody heard from the shadow minister for womens issues and single mothers?

Silly as a box of bollocks.

Guru poster Ducatti drops by

Here I am, ready for my 2yr check in, and I find the company has been sold. For essentially peanuts

This is the same character who had previously sold his CST shares for a small profit because he thought the company accounts were being misrepresented. Anyhow, he read some posts on "Guru" and then advises

Take action. Bring in the Regulatory body. Find out just what is occurring. Just beware, you may be opening a real can of worms.

Ducatti has come to this conclusion without reference to any reasoned argument or evidence.

Some advice Ducatti, seek medical help and seek it soon.

McCain, you've done it again.

Senator John McCain has had enough of the Republican shenanigans McCain erupts: Conservatives are lying to America

Tellingly, McCain cited today’s Wall Street Journal editoral excoriating conservative opponents of the Boehner plan as out of touch with reality for thinking they can do better. McCain’s angry tirade on the Senate floor today perfectly captures the rising frustration, anger, and panic of more responsible Republicans and GOP establishment figures as they come to terms with the true depths of the delusion that is now afflicting some on the right — and the danger it is now posing to our economy and country.

The climate of denial.

The carbon tax debate in Australia has been portrayed as being between believers and sceptics - there are those that accept the expert opinion on climate change and those that need to question the orthodoxy. At first glance this may appear to a healthy expression of the scientific process whereby a theory is tested

To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.  Isaac Newton

.."a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses." Oxford English Dictionary

However in Australia the scientific process has been somewhat replaced by the court of popular opinion. The opinions of learned bodies such as the CSIRO, BOM & Academy of Sciences are being disputed and denounced by shock jock broadcasters and potty peers.

The process has been corrupted and degraded to the level of low grade entertainment by cash-for-comment charlatans.

Paul Krugman calls it a cult and says that it is destroying America.

Getting over it.

I see pundits are still adjusting to the new paradigm that is Cellestis; lots of looking back in anger.

Perhaps the reality can be better explained with reference to Liebig's Law of the Minimum

growth is controlled not by the total amount of resources available,  but by the scarcest resource (limiting factor).

Couldn't lie straight in bed.

The Murdoch press are at it again; today's Australian claimed that Sea-level rises are slowing, tidal gauge records show

ONE of Australia's foremost experts on the relationship between climate change and sea levels has written a peer-reviewed paper concluding that rises in sea levels are "decelerating".

The analysis, by NSW principal coastal specialist Phil Watson, calls into question one of the key criteria for large-scale inundation around the Australian coast by 2100 -- the assumption of an accelerating rise in sea levels because of climate change.

The Australian then refers to climate change researcher Howard Brady who said that sea levels rises accepted by the CSIRO were

"already dead in the water as having no sound basis in probability".

"In a nutshell, this factual information means the high sea-level rises used as precautionary guidelines by the CSIRO in recent years are in essence ridiculous,"

As it happens the paper that Watson wrote is constrained by its small data range

Using a 20-year moving average (10 y either side) water level time series limits the current analysis to the year 2000

something that the CSIRO were keen to point out

“One of the points [Watson] makes in the paper is that because of natural climate variability, which influences the sea level record, it may take 10 – 20 more years of records to determine more conclusively the role of global warming on recent sea level trends,”  

Another constraint is that the date was obtained from gauges which are

satisfactorily managed to facilitate the day-to-day operational requirements of commercial ports but do not utilise consistent technologies or operating procedures or contain sufficient survey records to consider vertical land movements at each individual gauge over the record length.

No wonder Phil Watson's data differs from other data, a point that he readily concedes

Further research is required to rationalise the difference between the acceleration trend evident in the global sea level time-series reconstructions

The NSW Department of the Environment were not pleased with the Australian

Your article has misrepresented our Mr Phil Watson's research paper by saying that "global warming is not affecting sea levels". This is untrue and misleading and it is not what Mr Watson told your journalist. Mr Watson’s research looked only at measurements of historical data. It specifically did not consider predicted linkages between sea level rise and global warming predicted by climate models

Obviously the Australian is not interested in what the scientists really have to say.

BCC

Self professed Apple tragic Gary Allen takes a look at the claims of fake Apple stores in China

Apple has a network of authorized resellers outside the United States, including about 138 resellers in China, who operate “Apple Shops.” Their interior design is similar to Apple’s own retail stores, but is Apple-controlled to differentiate them from company-owned stores. The restrictions cover Apple’s brand, including the back-lit logo and other design elements found in Apple-owned stores (photos below).

The photographed store is located at 23/25 Zhengyi Lu, and is not on the list of Apple’s authorized resellers. The other two stores photographed in the original post are located along Remin Zhonglu. Neither of those two locations is listed among Apple’s authorized resellers.

If the stores are fake then the product being sold is almost certainly also fake; as they are not authorised resellers it would be unlikely they would be able to source product direct from Apple at wholesale rates.

Even the china is fake.

Anybody thinking about the protection that patents provide should read this

News without limits.

Murdoch's man in Australia, John Hartigan, warns the Australian Prime Minister

“The Prime Minister's comments seek to draw a link between News Corporation operations in the UK and those here in Australia,”

..“The comments were unjustified and regrettable.

“There is absolutely no connection between events in the UK and our business in Australia.

“There is no evidence that similar behaviour has occurred at News in Australia.

It wasn't so long ago that Mr Hartigan's words were judged to be unjustified and unreliable

“In the course of cross-examination, it became apparent that Mr Hartigan attempted to give the impression of having a better memory of the events, about which he gave evidence, that was the fact.”

Hartigan’s recollection of the negotiation of Guthrie’s contract, which the News chief had claimed were “long, protracted and hard-driven”, were dismissed.

“In my view Hartigan was an unreliable witness in respect of the negotiations that proceeded the formation of the contract.”

Mr Hartigan would be wise to take counsel

The inordinate power of the Murdoch press, and fear of landing on the wrong side of it, has a decisive influence on the Australian political landscape, too. I am personally aware of a successful opposition campaign to win state government focused almost exclusively on promulgating policies the Murdoch tabloid was seen to support. As The Age argued yesterday, News Ltd's Australian papers have "largely abandoned" valuing or attempts to achieve "journalistic impartiality", embarking instead on a "series of vendettas against its designated foes". Such enemies included Victoria's former police commissioner, Simon Overland, after he suggested the paper had irresponsibly published details of anti-terror raids before they occurred.

Rotten to the core.

Any notion that the Hackergate scandal currently embroiling the Murdoch rags is the work of a few rogue elements is likely to fail in the face of substantial and overwhelming evidence,

In 2009, a federal case in New Jersey brought by a company called Floorgraphics went to trial, accusing News America of, wait for it, hacking its way into Floorgraphics’s password protected computer system.

The complaint summed up the ethos of News America nicely, saying it had “illegally accessed plaintiff’s computer system and obtained proprietary information” and “disseminated false, misleading and malicious information about the plaintiff.”

The complaint stated that the breach was traced to an I.P. address registered to News America and that after the break-in, Floorgraphics lost contracts from Safeway, Winn-Dixie and Piggly Wiggly.

Much of the lawsuit was based on the testimony of Robert Emmel, a former News America executive who had become a whistle-blower. After a few days of testimony, the News Corporation had heard enough. It settled with Floorgraphics for $29.5 million and then, days later, bought it, even though it reportedly had sales of less than $1 million

Not that I know anything...

...about international banking but I was more than just intrigued by comments made by the new IMF head who, when asked to define "challenges" said

You have sovereign debt issues in most of the advanced countries. This is most acute in a monetary zone called the euro zone—which I’m very familiar with—but it’s not the only one. The sovereign debt issue is pretty much all over the place in the advanced economies, from Japan to the United States, and obviously epitomized in the European Union, and the euro zone in particular.

The role and function of the IMF has been described as

...to provide financial assistance to countries that experience serious financial and economic difficulties using funds deposited with the IMF from the institution’s 187 member countries...In return, countries are usually required to launch certain reforms, which have often been dubbed the Washington Consensus.

The World Bank has data on Gross National Income per capita, some of which can which can be described graphically as thus;

When you consider that the IMF have been doing this business since 1945 you could wonder at the success of such a strategy - despite the required "reforms" (codename: Neoliberalism) and in spite of enormous resources moving to the high income countries

sovereign debt issue is pretty much all over the place in the advanced economies

Given the current state of uncertainty you might well wonder how the IMF define "failure."

Another black swan.

Notable free marketeer Ruper Murdoch was interviewed by his own paper saying

News Corp. has handled the crisis "extremely well in every way possible," making just "minor mistakes."

This penchant for notably rare exceptions is becoming a habit.

Interesting times.

Apparently some shareholders are unhappy at the higher offer made, which seems odd under the circumstances As Gavin Ross recently noted

''It's a bit of a miracle, given there were no competing bids, [and] an independent report by Deloitte valued it at $3.55 a share,''

Shareholders need to remember that it is almost impossible to accept an offer that hasn't made, unless of course they were going to source the offer from their own finances. That would almost certainly require another miracle.

Shareholders need to consider that by accepting the revised offer the market now knows that CST is worth a minimum of $3.80 and the option of picking up the company at a bargain price post a failed SofA has been swept off the table. By raising the offer Qiagen has signalled to the market that Qiagen really want CST and should there be another interested party the only option left to them would be to make a competing bid and to make it real fast.

At $3.80 it's a wrap!

No doubt everybody has heard that Qiagen have revised their offer to $3.80 per share. For me that's a definite YES! and I do so for the following reasons;

1) the Board were in the best position to know the business;

2) the Board were acting in the best interests of Cellestis Shareholders.

By accepting the above reasons I have no option other than to accept the Boards advice and vote YES! to the offer. If I was to reject either or both of those reasons, meaning that the Board was incompetent and/or not acting in my best interest, I would also have no option other than to vote YES! as the company would not have been a wise or secure investment.

I am happy to say that at the end of the day reasons 1) and 2) prevailed. The board have earned my full confidence and respect and have to be congratulated on the business like manner in which they conducted their, and mine, affairs.

And that's it folks!

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Strange but true

Opposition Treasurer Joe Hockey getting all sentimental about the good old times

"If you look at payments as a percentage of GDP then the goal you would like to have is to get back to the last year of the Howard government, and the same with revenue."

As Peter Martin points out

this would mean cutting government payments as proportion of GDP from 24.5% to 23.2% and increasing government revenue as a proportion of GDP from 23.2% to 25%.

The figures dont lie

 

 Business as usual?