Australians under attack in some future war may be able to call in cyber specialists able to infect an enemy aircraft with a Trojan horse virus and force it to land or to crash, its pilot helpless to intervene.

That’s one reason, says national security specialist Des Ball, that Australia needs to develop its own offensive cyber capabilities.

This extraordinary notion, worlds away from the layman’s view of dogfights, ack-ack fire and even long-range missile attacks, is contained in a series of papers, to be released today by the Kokoda Foundation think tank, on security challenges facing Australia.

In a joint paper, Ball and former Royal Australian Air Force officer Gary Waters say the government acknowledged in the defence white paper that cyber warfare posed a serious threat to Australia’s military capabilities and to the nation’s critical infrastructure and commercial operations.

“The cyber threat is clearly escalating,” they say.

“The…

Climbing over the zenith of the Rocky Mountains,

I caught my first glimpse of this bass relief,

which is arguably the most beautiful of its kind, in southern India.

And right then, right there, I was hooked…..Actually I  had fallen in love with the rock formations  around Madurai

you can see some of the photos here..

http://sriramjanak.wordpress.com/2012/06/02/speaking-rocks/

I live in madurai , a city ,in the state of Tamil nadu , in the south of India.

It is famously known as the temple city  or the Athens of the east.
Madurai is surrounded by several mountains.  Madurai city has 3 hills as its city boundary.

Yanaimalai, Nagamalai, Pasumalai named after Elephant, Snake and Cow respectively.

Many stone statues and other artifacts are present in these hill

I have been exploring these hills alone and with friends for the past year or so.

I will share photos of…

Because of collective ignorance, stupidity and fantasy.

Some may have read about the recent “honor killings” of two young girls in Pakistan. They had inflicted a great stain upon the honor of their family by dancing happily in the rain. Here is a video presented yesterday at PJ Media’s Trifecta.

To refer to the perpetrators of such crimes as subhuman is to dishonor apes and rattlesnakes. However, that seems to be a far from universal view, even in the United States and Formerly Great Britain.

Pat Condell recently had this to say about the religion of peace:

Anjem Choydary is a “peace loving” Islamist who

is urging his followers [in England] to sign up as recruits to the newly-launched Islamic Emergency Defence — which vows to create a network of “task forces” to redress wrongs and mete out instant justice.

He also seems to enjoy converting young Brits…

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By accepting his new relative, the GOP speaker sets a positive example.

We’ve all been there. Someone you care about starts dating someone you may not consider ideal for him or her. Maybe you think he or she has a less-than-ideal career. You may think to yourself, “There’s nothing wrong with being an exotic dancer, per se.” It’s just not who you pictured your baby brother settling down with.

You may have nothing against atheists personally. You just know that your best friend’s dad is a minister, and dating someone who considers church a waste of time won’t exactly be easy for her or her family. Maybe your cousin volunteered for President Obama’s campaign. So when she introduces you to her die-hard Tea Partier boyfriend, you think, “Her name’s not Mary Matalin, his isn’t James Carville and this isn’t going to last.”

But sometimes something…

USA TODAY
http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/2491487

FROM

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A 10-year-old boy was killed in San Diego after an accidental shooting Tuesday.

According to police, the child and a 9-year-old girl were handling a loaded gun in the garage of a housing complex when the shooting took place, local news outlets report. Though the boy, identified by ABC 10News as Eric Klyaz, was rushed to a local hospital, he succumbed to his injuries later that day.

As the Associated Press notes, the girl’s 14-year-old sibling was babysitting at the time, and no adults were present. After the shot rang out shortly after 4 p.m., adults nearby ran to the garage and discovered Klyaz had been shot in the chest. Police found a 9 mm semi-automatic at the scene.

“I heard a loud pop and said that didn’t sound good,” a neighbor told Fox 5 News San Diego. ”I found a boy curled up…

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Bobby “Blue” Bland, a distinguished singer who blended Southern blues and soul in songs such as “Turn on Your Love Light” and “Further On Up the Road,” died Sunday. He was 83.

Rodd Bland said his father died about 5:30 p.m. Sunday due to complications from an ongoing illness at his Memphis, Tenn., home surrounded by relatives.

Bland was known as the “the Sinatra of the blues” and heavily influenced by Nat King Cole, often recording with lavish arrangements to accompany his smooth vocals. He even openly imitated Frank Sinatra on the “Two Steps From the Blues” album cover, standing in front of a building with a coat thrown over his shoulder.

“He brought a certain level of class to the blues genre,” said Lawrence “Boo” Mitchell, son of legendary musician and producer Willie Mitchell.

Bland was a contemporary of B.B. King’s, serving as…

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 When news first broke of Paula Deen’s indelicate turns of phrase, I ignored it.

C’mon. What American hasn’t used the word nigger? We teach children the word each time Mark Twain’s Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer are assigned in class.

After the initial headlines, there came anecdotes so salacious that she was a no-show on The Today Show, where she’d been scheduled to give a mea culpa and get on with her life.

Through it all, my admiration never waned for her along with Martha Stewart and B. Smith, women who’d turned housework into home-making, built empires and given millions of women immense pride in the work they do for their families.

Then, I heard Ms. Deen speak of her great-grandfather’s having gone into a barn and shot himself because the Civil War had been lost and “he didn’t know how to…