Rape is rape—explained so clearly even a drunk could understand it

It's pathetic that in 2017, we still have to explain to men what rape is.

But apparently, we still do.

So here's what rape is, in a handful of tweets so simple even a totally wasted drunk should be able to comprehend.

Stop blaming the victim!

Trump orders all climate scientists to bend over and jam their heads under the sand

Well close enough.

Trump has ordered the US Environmental Protection Agency to remove all climate change information from its websites.

My mind boggles at how this is all going in the USA.

What next? NASA told to de-orbit all climate research satellites? Or perhaps they'll just have to recalibrate them to "alternative facts"?

Resuming transmission

Cheers and welcome back!

A perfect storm of issues has effectively kept me away from this blog for most of the last 18 months.
I moved to a region called Hervey Bay in Queensland, where the weather was brilliant and the oceanfront lifestyle even better. "Get a beach house." I took it to heart.

Unfortunately, the internet in said beach house was complete shite – 1.5Mbps down on a good day. My dreams of living next to the ocean and running a consulting business from my home office evaporated as I spent more hours on the phone trying to get a workable connection than actually on the web.

This is where I insert insults about Malcolm Turnbull's 'Fraudband' unravelling of the National Broadband Network, once a truly inspired national infrastructure project for the new(ish) millennium.

Get a beach house—preferably with decent internet!

Launch Alert - SpaceX taking Bigelow testbed to ISS

Bigelow Expandable Activity Module

LAUNCH ALERT

Only a few minutes until #SpaceX launch their next Dragon 9 rocket to the International Space Station #ISS, with the launch scheduled for 1643 Miami time, or 2043 UTC, 0643 AEST.

Watch live on http://www.spacex.com/webcast.
Alternative: www.nasa.gov/ntv

This launch is particularly interesting for two reasons:

SpaceX robotic landing barge

1/ SpaceX will attempt another landing of the reusable first stage on their robotic landing barge. They've successfully landed a first stage on solid ground, back at the launch pad it took off from. But so far success has eluded them for barge landings. The barge is important because it doesn't require the first stage to essentially turn around and double back to the landing pad - something that requires a lot more fuel.

What auroras really look like

What the Aurora Really Looks Like from Phil Hart on Vimeo.

When you look through a telescope at a nebula, you could be disappointed for feeling a little disappointed. You're used to seeing those amazing Hubble pictures, or even ones by local astrophotographers. But instead what you are looking at could usually best be described as…well…a bit of fog or smoke. Maybe the barest hint of colour.

Yet a photo of the same subject, even one just a few seconds long, can have beautiful reds, greens, blues.

So what gives? Essentially your eyes are viewing in real time, while your camera can take in orders of magnitude more light. And then we photographers go and enhance the effect inside Photoshop. Not changing the shot, mind you—just enhancing what is already there.

Knowing this, I've often wondered what viewing auroras would be like 'in the flesh'. Timelapses of writing curtains of vivid greens, reds, purples and pinks look fantanstic, but what would I actually see if I saved some (many many) pennies to travel chasing auroras?

On the growing irrelevancy of Rupert Murdoch's pom pom waving dead tree media

This is a great analysis of why the influence of the Murdoch press is less and less something to worry about:
insidestory.org.au/why-bill-shorten-and-labor-can-afford-to-ignore-rupert-murdoch

Only 4% of Australians buy one of their papers. Less than 10% read one. They are already fixed in their political views.

Their influence beyond their own stable is rather less than you'd imagine, and mostly to talkback radio:
"a self-aggrandising and self-referential noise machine, and their volume and bluster should not be mistaken for outreach."

So maybe it's time the rest of us consigned the Murdoch media to the irrelevancy box, and stopped getting hot under the collar about their latest outrage?

The Moon/Venus/Jupiter conjunction as no-one on Earth saw it

Recently there was a conjunction of the crescent Moon, Venus (also in crescent phase) and Jupiter.

It was captured by US Astronaut Scott Kelly, currently Commander of the International Space Station, with another planet added in—Earth!

Day 114. #Moon #Venus #Jupiter...#Earth Good night from @space_station! #YearInSpace pic.twitter.com/GsOxOKt34S

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) July 19, 2015

It's rare for photos from the ISS to also feature the starfield background. There is just so much ambient light from Earth that it drowns out the fainter stars for photos. Unless you take one photo exposed for the Earth and another exposed for the stars, and combine them in Photoshop. But even then it's very hard not to have the Earth blowing out the stars where they are very close to each other.

NASA has been know to add in the relevant starfield from a completely different shot. And there's nothing wrong with that—our eyes see a much broader range of light than a camera can capture in one shot. So it's just using tools available to more closely represent what the astronauts themselves are actually seeing.

Which all makes the timing on this shot all the more wonderful to have achieved. But then, he is orbiting Earth every 79 minutes, so he probably had a few chances to get it right!

Kelly is well worth following on Twitter—he posts some great material from his unique perspective. Such as:

A great "maiden speech" that would ring just as true in the Australian Parliament right now

Mhairi Black, at just 20 years of age, is the youngest person to enter the UK Parliament.

Her maiden speech is going viral and for good reason. She nails the Conservatives to the wall. And she calls out her own Labor Party. And it would be completely in place in our own Parliament...

For me, the hallmark of the speech was about the difference between weathervanes and signposts.

It's where Kevin Rudd fell down, most certainly where Julia Gillard fell, along with so many of her poll-obsessed colleagues, many of whom are still there, still behaving the same.

Tony Abbott is a signpost though, of that there is no doubt. I just hope that Australian voters are starting to realise that the Australia he is pointing to—pursuing—is a dire place, an insular, hateful, vindictive and self-obsessed society, surviving in an environment we will be mortified to admit we handed to our children.

SpaceX Falcon/Dragon launch explodes right before Stage 2 ignition

It seemed like another perfect launch for SpaceX.

They had not had any launch failures since their development stage. 18 successful commercial launches.

(Failures to land the Falcon first stage back on their remotely-controlled landing barge of course don't count, as they are highly experimental phases, and the primary roles of the launches did not depend on them.)

But just moments before MECO—Main Engine Cut-Off—and firing of the second stage, the craft exploded. Exploded so comprehensively that there seemed virtually nothing left to fall into the Atlantic Ocean.

Watch the launch, and at 3:15 the failure:



Another angle, with the "anomaly" occurring at 2:45:

SpaceX to have another go at landing Falcon rocket today

SpaceX is launching another Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station later today.

And they will be having another go at landing the first stage Falcon rocket booster on their remotely-controlled floating platform barge. (Check SpaceX owner Elon Musk's little 'in joke' written under the platform target.)

Launch times:

My time, AEST
12:21AM 12, May Tue 2015