Taz

Another thing i learnt in Tasmania is I recognised "Taz" in the Looney Tunes is originated from Tasmanian Devil. Or I should say "Taz" itself is a Tasmania Devil.

Tasmanian Devil is the world's largest surviving carnivorous marsupial, which has a thick-set, squat build, with a relatively large, broad head and short, thick tail. Its spine-chilling screeches and reputed bad-temper led the early European settlers to call it The Devil.

However, "Taz" is under seriously threat of distinction as a devastating disease is sweeping through their population, killing more than 90% of adults in high density areas and 40-50% in medium-low density areas. What make their life even worse is they are also threaten by the fox predation as the population of fox in Tasmania increases in the last couples years. This leads to a state-wide Fox watching (or killing) campaign call "Fox Free Tasmania". A 24 hour Fox Hotline also set up to encourage people to report immediately about all sightings or suspected evidence of foxes.

More Information: Tasmanian Devil, Sarcophilus harrisii

Tasmanian Devilry

Photo Source: Ozhiker.com -Evan Hunter's Photo Gallery

Although Tasmania is famous for its natural environment and it is home to some of the world's tallest and oldest trees, its old growth forests are being logged at an unsustainable rate and a lot of them are being destroyed and replaced by mono-plantations. Some australia's threathen species (such as giant gum trees and Wedge-tailed Eagle) are also being threatened by these unsustainable logging practices and deforestation.
During my time in Tasmania, I passed through few old growth forests. It is really hard to see from outside about the logging and land clearance areas as the timber industrys are using some tricky "strategies" to avoid public attentions of their partices. A local Tasmanian told me that loggers will only remove the trees in the middle of the forests and they will leave about 5m-10m tree-fronts,which faces to the roads or highways. So, when tourists drive through they can still see a lot of trees and believe that deforestaions problem is sort of overstatement by environmentalists.


However, when i looked down from the plane, I could see there were a lots "big holes" in the middle of the forests, which are resulted from substantial land clearance and logging practices. It is believed that eighty percent of Tasmania's old-growth forests have already fallen victim to logging or development. Only 13% of all the island's Wet Eucalypt Forests are left.

Campaigning to raise public awareness of preventing the logging in Tasmania's old growth forest is always one of the major issue among the environmental NGOs in Australia. Recently, overseas paper companies such as Mitsubishi Paper Mills decided not to accept old-growth woodchips from Tasmania. This was a positive step forward for Tasmania’s environment and encouraging outcomes for the campaigners. However, since the timber industry is a major part of the stagnant Tasmanian economy, generating sales worth more that $1 billion and employing thousands, both the state and federal governments have stepped into the breach in order to protect the state economy. Some logging company even tried to sue protestors into silence.

The battle between NGOs, government and the timber industry is still a long way to go.

More Information: Environmental Destruction in Tasmania

Tasmania Forest Campaigns- The Wilderness Society

TASMANIA FACTS

* Tasmania lies about 155 miles off the south coast of mainland Australia. It is about the same size as Ireland, and its population - 472,000 - is around the same as that of Liverpool.
* Only five per cent of Australia - the driest inhabited continent on Earth - is forested. Much of this is in Tasmania, Australia's southernmost state. Native forest covers around half of the island.
* Endemic, rare and endangered wildlife includes the Tasmanian devil, Forester Kangaroo, Fairy Penguin, Quoll and eleven bird species found nowhere else on Earth. The legendary Tasmanian Tiger, officially declared extinct in 1936, may still survive in remote parts of the ancient forests.
* Tourism in Tasmania - much of it centred on the state's wilderness - provided an
estimated 22,000 jobs in 2004; at least twice as many as the logging industry.

TASMANIAN FORESTRY FACTS

* An average of 20,000 hectares of native forest are clearfelled and burned in Tasmania every year.
* 80,000 hectares of native forest have been converted to non-native plantations in the last seven years.
* Tasmania exports more woodchips than every other state in Australia combined; it is the only state that clears and woodchips native rainforest.
* An estimated 90% of wood taken from native forests on public land become woodchips, for export mainly to Japan. No more than 4% become sawn timber.
* In 2003, 14,600 hectares of native forest was clearfelled and burned. Only 6180 hectares - just over 40% - were replanted with native trees. The rest became fast-growing plantations or were converted to 'non-forest use'.
* The rate of logging in Tasmania has quadrupled over the last decade. Logging companies' profits, too, have steadily increased. Logging jobs, meanwhile, have declined. Five thousand jobs have been lost in the last 25 years, as the industry has mechanised and 'downsized.'

- Source: Paulkingsnorth.net

Tasmania - The Land Apart

Caption: Wineglass Bay at the East Coast. It is one of the world most photographic scene.

"If I was obligated to emigrate I certainly
should prefer this place..."

- Charles Darwin, On visiting Hobart Town aboard The Beagle in 1836

I think I share a similar view with Charles Darwin after my trip to Tasmania before i left Australia in early December. Compare with other Australian states (except Western Australia as i haven't been there yet}, Tasmania is my no. 1 state in Australia. I've already fallen in love with the green forest, clear sky, blue ocean, white beaches and the clean air. I believe I will visit Tass again in the future.

Unfortunately, just heard from the news that there is a serious bushfire in the Northern Tasmania. The fire has already burnt 11,500 hectares and the fire front was 70km wide. It is still not yet sure when the fire can be under controlled. I believed the fire must be a huge one as this news also appeared in Hong Kong's TV. I really hope that the fire will be put out asap with minimal impact to the lovely environment .

Photo Highlight:

More photos: Oz-Tasmania Album

Solar Powered Mobile Phone

Another cool toy (not PS3) is arriving Japan!
Just read from the news that solar powered portable phones begin to test by the Tokyosiders. But it sounds to me that the solar cell phone is still a untested prototype. Also,there is no indication if this gadget will go on sale . We may still need to wait for a long time for viable, self-contained power in our mobile phones.

News Link: Solar powered super phone!

Sydney Snap Shots

I have less than a week's time in Sydney. I'm sure the thing I'll miss most is the blue sky here!!


Photo Album: Oz-Sydney

Aussie Diving Adventure

I joint a 5Day dive trip when i travelled in Cairns. That was the first time i lived in a boat for that long. I did 14 dives in the 5 days, including 2 night dives. The trip was fanstastic and it was so great to experience the underwater world.
(Photos are taken by my dive friends)


More photo: Oz-Diving Adventure

Queensland Photo Album

Just upload the photos i took in my trip in Queensland.

Photo Album:Oz-Queensland

A Mysterious Email

I received a mysterious email from a guy/girl called “John Smith”. I know somebody called “John” and also some of my friends’ last name is “Smith”. But I don’t remember I know someone called “John Smith”. I think she/he should know me as he knows my name although he missspelt my name "Sophia" as " Sophiya". More importantly, “John Smith” should be a person know me quite well as I really really love the email he wrote to me. Here is the email:

On 11/5/06, john smith wrote:

Hi there,

A joke for a special lady.

The inmate on death row was scheduled to be put to death by firing squad the follow morning. Throughout the day, the prison guards were being very nice to him. But when they asked him if he wanted something specific for his last meal, he said he didn't want anything special. When they asked if there was something special he wanted to do, he said nothing. It went on like this all day.

Finally, when he was put before the firing squad, the guard asked if he wanted a cigarette and a blindfold.

"No," the inmate said, "just get it over with."

"Well, is there anything that I can do for you before you go?" said the guard. "You didn't even want a special last meal!"

The inmate thought. "Actually," he said, "Music is my life. One thing I would really like would be to sing my favourite song, one whole time through, with no interruptions."

The guard nodded and told him to go ahead.

The inmate started, "One billion bottles of beer on the wall..."

A friend.

He is probably be someone in Australia as it is an email from yahoo.com.au. Well, I hope I can find him out and have a drink(s) with him before I leave Oz in early Dec. ^_^

Photo Highlight

Just came back from Queensland. Here are some photo highlight from my trip:

1.Great Barrier Reef

2. Hot Chicks!

3. Tropical Rainforest

4. Daintree Tree Frog

5. Fig Tree and Little Girl

6. Insect Eating Plant and Little Kids

"Maggie"

Everyone here in Magnetic Island call the Island "Maggie". I don't know why so far and i hope i'll figure it out before i leave tomorrow.
Unfortunately, i did not find any sun or beach or reef for today's trip because of the heavy rain. In my Lonely Planet, it said that September is the driest month in the Island and the average rainfall for this month is only 11 mm. So, i think we are so unlucky(or lucky?) that we met the rain during our time here.
By the way, we still have quite a lot of fun by doing some bushing walking in the rain. Some experience i haven't have too much and walking in the rain made me felt quite good. We still could spot some wildlife, such as Koala and rock wallabies, during our walk.
Tomorrow we'll leave this lovely island and head back to Cairns for the Great Barrie Reef and tropical rainforest.

Mei's Blog: Backpacking

Message from Queensland

I'm having a trip (with my friend Mei) in Queensland for about two weeks. The major things for this tour would be the sun, beaches, underwater world in the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest in Northern Queensland.
Today is the second day of my tour. I am in Magnetic Island at the moment. We took 6 hours bus from Carins down south to Townsville, and then 20 minutes to the Island. So far we haven't see much things yet as we spent too many time on transpotation and other stuffs. But i think things must be better tomorrow as we will have enought time to explore the beauty of the Island and spend some time in the ocean.

CO2 is good?

Another interesting video which is filmed to lobby against naming carbon dioxide as pollutant. Noted that the video clip is produced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the US which is partly funded by Exxon.

View: Global Warming and "Energy"

Two Movie Clips about Global Warming

Two movie clips to share:




(1) Futurama: Global Warming

This one is from my favorite animation Futurama. It uses a funny way to explain global warming. Al Gore also replays this clip in his movie An Inconvenience Truth.

(2) A message from Al Gore

It is an conversation between Al Gore and Blender about Gore's movie. Blender is the main character of Futurama.

False Sense of Eco-Satisfaction

Source: John Fewings Cartoon

There are heaps of “environmentally friendly” or “eco-friendly” products/services in the market. However, using these kinds of products/services doesn’t mean that we are doing something good to our environment. One most common example is the use of biodegradable plastic bags.

Recently, I had an interesting discussion with a man in a liquor store about plastic bag alternative. The liquor man is quite conscious about environmental issues and he is already using different alternative to reduce his business’s plastic bag consumption. He chooses to use bio-degradable plastic bags as alternative as he thought other alternative such as paper or cardboard need to chop a lot of trees and it is not good to our environment, while bio-degradable is made from starch and other degradable material which won’t harm our environmental like normal plastic bags. He wants the Australian government to substitute billions of shopping bags with biodegradable bags to solve the environmental problems created by plastic bags.

To certain extent, he is correct. But there are still lots of issues related to biodegradable bags. First of all, many of them are not 100% degradable. Than, what kind of chemicals they release when they break down in water, sun and in landfill is still uncertain, and the leftover pieces could be just as harmful as normal plastic bags. There is also an issue of the short term harmful effect to wildlife: until biodegradable products actually break down they still pose the same danger as non-biodegradable plastic bags. What more important is using biodegradable shopping bags may promote littering as people think the bags will break down in the environment no matter how they are disposed of.

Having such false sense of eco-satisfaction is very dangerous as people are not able to recognize what is being wrong and fail to figure out further improvement. The other similar example is the use of green energy. Shifting to renewable energy is good to our environment but if our energy consumption behaviors do not change, our environment won’t be benefited too much by the shift. The root cause of most of environmental problems is all about our consumptive life style.

“Doing good to environment” and “doing less harm to our environment” are fundamentally different. People should not mix these two things together or our environmental progress will remain no change or even stepping backward. Indeed, we should do both things together. We also need to be more conscious about how “green” of those "environmentally friendly" products/services are as well as being more critical about how “green” of our consumption pattern of using these kinds of products/services.

Today's Cartoon

Source: John Fewings Cartoon

Mice Hate Cheese

Caption: “No cheese please!” (Source: Sky News)

The popular legend is that mice like cheese, but this legend is false. According to a new scientific study, mice don't like cheese after all as they would reject something as strong in smell and rich in taste as cheese. They would rather have food with high sugar content such as chocolate or fruit.

I was quite surprised when I saw this news. Since I was a child, I have a strong belief, like millions of children, that the best way to catch a mouse is to entice it into a trap with a tasty chunk of cheese. I never doubt that. Now clearly the supposition of mice liking cheese is just a popular premise.

Well, I have no idea when and who started this myth. But for those who started this lie should have some sort of punishment as they'd created such a big lie!

News: Mice hate cheese, new study reveals

Cryonics: Freezing for the future?

“Cryonics (often mistakenly called "cryogenics") is the practice of cryo-preserving humans or animals that can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine until resuscitation may be possible in the future. The process is not currently reversible, and by law can only be performed on humans after legal death in anticipation that the early stages of clinical death may be reversible in the future”
– Wikipedia Definition

Recently, I heard a story from the TV about an American lady decided to “cryonics” herself before she finished her last breath. Put it into simple, Cryonics is the term for freezing humans to prolong life. People who chose to have Cryonic has a common belief that future medicine will enable molecular-level repair and regeneration their body, disease and aging are also assumed to be reversible after decades or a century. The program also said that people can have different options when doing a cryonics process: for entire body frozen is AUD$160,000, or just have the head preserved at the cut rate of AUD$80,000. The rationales of those who choose the head-only option are hoping that when they are brought back to life, science will give them new bodies as people don't want to bring someone 99.5 years old back in a 99.5-year-old body. The “company” Alcor who provides cryonics services claimed itself is a non-profit organization (located in Scottsdale and Arizona).

Similar to most of the experts and scientists, I am very skeptical about the reversibility of the processes. Although science already have shown that a frozen rabbit kidney can be defrosted and successfully reimplanted it in the living animal, restoring a frozen kidney to an animal in a lab is still a very long way from bringing back to life a human being. No-one has been able to capture the vast complexity of thoughts, memory and personality that makes us what we are. So, for me it is also ethically unacceptable.

Science fiction now is becoming science fact on a daily basis. It is just like what happens in the animation Futurama. Well I would like to live as long as I can, but definitely I don’t want to “prolong” my life for decades or centuries by this kind of freezing process.

Links:
News story: Back from the dead
If you want to bet on the future medicine: Cryonics Institute

Seasons are Changing

Source: Political Cartoon by David Horsey

Just heard from the news today: the latest data gathered from Europe has provided "conclusive proof" that the seasons are changing, with spring arriving earlier each year, according to scientists. Based on a study of almost 600 plant and animal species, scientists are “extremely confident” that they show a very clear picture towards an early spring right across the board, i.e. it is arriving earlier than it did 30 years ago, on average a week earlier. Scientists are sure that global warming is the cause.

The study shows that "spring events" - such as plants flowering - are starting about 10 days earlier in the UK than 30 years ago. Spain is one of the countries who experienced the greatest increases in temperatures and saw the earliest spring seasons. The change in the timing of this key season has potentially huge implications. Some species may well benefit, but the danger is that there will be disruption to the food chain. Birds, for example, can adjust to warmer temperatures by flying to more northern areas in any given year, but the vegetation upon which they rely may take decades or longer to adjust. The long-term consequences of these changes are uncertain. Scientists also warn that this process of change isn't over.

Well, an earlier spring or a longer summer may sound like a great idea, but it will transform the landscape and the patterns of the wildlife living in it , and , what worries us is that plants and animals may not be able to adapt as well as we do.

News Link: Spring is leaping forward each year - experts

Decorations lead to death

Image Source: ibermutuamur.es

Air pollution is a prominent problem in China and it has been drawing a lot of public/government attention for years, especially after Beijing won the bid for 2008 Olympic. However, another category of air pollution, the indoor air pollution, has always been omitted and now it is time to pay more attention due to the increasing cancer incident and medical expense related to this type of environmental problem. Recently, the China's first case of a child killed by toxic fumes given off by indoor decoration materials has come before the court and a compensation of 170,000 Yuan (AUD$27,900 ) was awarded to the plaintiff. The incident is about a four-year-old girl was diagnosed with acute leukemia and died in August 2005 after staying in her newly decorated apartment for 10 months.

In most developing countries, when they talk about indoor air pollution, it is always about the kitchen smoke generated from burning stalks, wood and low-quality coal. However, with rapid urbanization and development, indoor air pollution from buliding materials becomes a new member of the pollution catergory. China, for instance, the incidents of leukemia among children in the country’s metropolises is worsening within the past decades and there is a rising trend of the children of migrant workers catching blood diseases. In Beijing and Shanghai, the incidence of leukemia in children is 4.6 per 100,000, while the highest is about 7 in 100,000 in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. It is believed tha more than half of the blood cancer patients are victims of indoor air pollution from home and school refurbishment and decoration.

Indeed, air pollutants emit from architectural materials and building interiors has long been an issue in many developed countries. Over the past decade, increasingly stringent VOCs (voltaic organic compounds, the major indoor air pollutant) regulations have led to the development of water-based solvent and other alternatives for solvent-based paint. However, in most developing countries including China, they are still stick to solvent-based paint and other low quality building materials, that lots of such material are already abandoned or banned by developed countries.

I believed the reason behind is not only because of the lower environmental awareness/knowledge in developing countries but also the existence of wealth gaps. For most cleaner and better technology, it is very hard for the industry and the market in developing world to absorb without foreign aids. But in current global economic and politic systems, newer and cleaner technologies are always developed by private corporations and such technologies will only be transferred through the market instead of free transfer as humanity aids. It sounds to be again that injustice is one of the inherent characteristic of our society.

News link : Decorations lead to death

Beer Lovers' Rationalization

“Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest.”
– The Buffalo Theory

It is from one of my friends’ email I received recently. He tried to show me a very valid reason for drinking beer by using Darwin’s Natural Selection Theory. In the email, the Buffalo Theory explains:

"When the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first.This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular culling of the weakest members.

In much the same way the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells.Excessive intake of alcohol, as we all know, kills off brain cells, but naturally it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, constantly making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers!.”

If only this were true, we'd all be genius!