An amusing line

Just noted this while reading a Washington Post column about Rick Perry:

If Perry’s style resembles anybody’s in George W. Bush’s White House, in fact, it is that of former vice president Dick Cheney, whose just-published memoir, “In My Time,” might as well have been titled “Right Every Time (Even Though I Was Surrounded by Idiots).” Think of Perry as Bush without the charm.

As noted at another blog

Probably, re-reading this in 5 years time will make no sense at all, but I just want to preserve it as a comment I made at Andrew Bolt's blog. Maybe I should add background links later:

Andrew, your acknowledgement towards the end of the column that maybe some people think it was “mean” of you to be asking people to judge her character based on an old relationship from nearly 20 years ago.

This indicates to me you know it was sleazy - done in tandem with Michael Smith in a manner to maximise the drama (and ratings) about how revelations to come would bring down Gillard - when in fact all of the time the bulk of the story had been known and reported for years.

You would also know of other politicians with ex partners who have done wrong - if you want every politician to be judged by their past relationships you know the gossip would never end.

Then, when Milne’s carelessness (or whatever it was, I still don’t understand) gave the PM reason to blast the paper for a detail that was defamatory - you carried on like a drama queen about how her getting upset about this was like suppression of free speech.

She was upset at your foreshadowed sleaze, Andrew, and she had every right to be.

She called the paper out for actual defamation, which you repeated in your column with the attempted arse covering line “I’m not sure that’s right.”

Your behaviour in this matter has been disgraceful, and you’ve let your efforts at “kingmaking” go to your head since you had success with getting Turnbull chucked out.

A real shellacking

Mediawatch last night really showed up Alan Jones for his errors, bullying demeanour, and attempt to clear himself later, as a result of the Canberra truck rally last week.

An asteroid of our own

Apparently, some Chinese scientists think it would not be so hard to put some nearby asteroid into Earth orbit.

If they picked one full of minerals, it might be worth doing.

Nuclear for the Moon

The first nuclear power plant for settlements on Moon, Mars

It's light on details, but it appears thought is going into the design of small, molten salt nuclear reactors to power manned outposts on the Moon or Mars.

Then, all we would need is a rocket to get there...

Arsegate

So, the big political news over the weekend was all to do with what Tony Abbott said to Tony Windsor about his (Tony's) bottom 12 months ago.

Apparently, some people think he would not make a slightly crass joke about (considering) selling his arse to get the Prime Ministership, but I know that somewhere, on the internet, there is a very similar arse related comment that he is supposed to have said to someone (I think while visiting an aboriginal community?) given in explanation as to why he left the seminary (which he found far too "gay".) I haven't been able to find the quote via Google yet, but I know it is out there somewhere. Readers who find it are welcome to put the link in comments!*

Meanwhile, people have to remember even former Liberal staffer Niki Savva wrote:

In private, Abbott talks openly about sex to almost anybody who will listen, and usually at great length. And the conversation continues in public. Journalists persist in asking Abbott for his views on sex and he keeps answering their questions. Even though women resent it when he tries to tell them what they should do with their bodies, he refuses to shut up.

He thinks about it too much. Sex, I mean. Certainly he talks about it too much.

I don't think the Abbott quote sounds out of character at all, and I thought it hardly worth his while denying it. (Unless, of course, he didn't say it, I suppose....) Of course, it may be the fact that the quote indicates he'd do anything policy wise to get the leadership is the thing he objects to, but still the suggestion that he doesn't talk "like that" sounded to me like a denial that he has a "colourful", sometimes arse-related, turn of phrase.

Anyway, the biggest problem with the current union scandal within the Labor side is that is preventing people from remembering what a pillock Tony Abbott can be!

* Update: quote found, from the Sydney Morning Herald, no less:

The teaching staff members at the seminary were influenced by the reforms of Vatican II, and not at all to Abbott's liking. Some of the young seminarians were practising homosexuals. When many years later Abbott and Quarmby met Noel Pearson on business, Abbott jokingly said, according to Quarmby: "Peter and I were the only seminarians who didn't get f---ed."

Yeah, I find the reported quip to Windsor very unlikely (not).

Mungo is right this time

A political crisis like '75? Tell 'em they're dreamin'

I don't normally find much to agree with in Mungo McCallum's political commentary (he was one of the worst Howard haters around, if I recall), but he is right in his comparison of the 1975 Whitlam crisis and the fake crisis the Right is trying to promote today:

And this brings us to the second difference: the crisis of 1975 was actually about something. The government had attempted to bypass both the states and the Treasury to raise an overseas loan of $4 billion and the whole process had gone horribly wrong. A cast of weirdos in white shoes and green sunglasses had emerged making improbable promises and brandishing carpet bags. Whitlam had been forced to sack two of his most senior ministers for deliberately misleading parliament over their own roles in the affair.

This gave Malcolm Fraser the "unusual and reprehensible circumstance" he need to justify the blocking of supply, a move only made possible by an unprecedented breach of convention: on the death of a Queensland Labor senator, the state premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen had appointed as his replacement not another Labor member, as was accepted practice, but an anti-Labor stooge. With the numbers in the senate Fraser committed his own breach of convention, confident that it would force Whitlam to an election.

Whitlam fought back, attempting to find alternative means to pay the civil and military public service. Lawyers, up to and including the chief justice became involved, both openly and covertly and there was talk of both a general strike and of military intervention. This really was a political crisis; no wonder the place went apeshit.

But today... well, what crisis? The polls are against the Government, as are the shock jocks and sections of the media, but for the administration, it's pretty much business as usual. By international standards the place is in good shape, and although there are plenty of dissatisfied voters, there are no signs of a genuine people's revolt – the streets are largely empty of marchers. And as for the Parliament – it's noisy, but no more so than it has been in other times in its history. In the uproar after the crisis of 1909 the speaker dropped dead in his chair; Harry Jenkins remains robust.

Compared to 1975, it's pretty Mickey Mouse stuff. Whitlam had to sack cabinet ministers; Julia Gillard is having problems with a single backbencher. Fraser responded by blocking supply; all Tony Abbott can block is parliamentary pairings. Fraser's lust for power at least produced drama on a grand scale; Abbott's manifests itself in stunts and spite. Wacky and frantic it may be, but 1975 it's not. Trust me; I was there.

He is spot on.

The Right divided

Evolution, Climate Change Could Divide the Republican Party - Ronald Brownstein - Politics - The Atlantic

Have a read of this article and be amazed at, amongst other things, the polling that indicates the science attitude of the Right in America.

In a 2010 Pew survey, only about one in six Republicans said they believed human activity was changing the climate. In a Gallup survey this March that phrased the question differently, 36 percent of Republicans said they believed pollution from human activities had contributed to "increases in the Earth's temperature over the last century," while 62 percent of Republicans attributed those changes to natural changes in the environment. Rejection of the scientific consensus on climate change has become an article of faith for virtually all elements of the GOP coalition. Even in a secular, well-educated state such as New Hampshire, for instance, University of New Hampshire surveys since April 2010 have found that only about one-fourth of Republicans believe human activity is changing the climate. National figures provided to National Journal by Gallup combining surveys from 2011 and 2010 show that college-educated Republicans are even more likely than their non-college counterparts to reject the notion that human activity is changing the climate.

This is driven by the confluence of religious beliefs (see the article's summary of polling on evolution) and the free market/ libertarian small-government-and-all-taxes-are-evil ideology.

It is ideology playing games with the future.

Troublesome algae

Algae that turned toxic stumps scientists

This article talks about a type of ocean algae that sometimes makes people sick, but it's hard working it all out:

The study of harmful algal blooms is complex. Dinophysis, in particular, are difficult organisms. Experts around the globe hadn't been able even to grow them in laboratories until South Korean researchers figured that out in 2006.

Plus, they are weird little critters. Some, but not all, individual species create toxins. Some are only poisonous sometimes. And it's not at all clear what determines when they change.

"I have books from back in the 1930s that show pictures of this same organism," said Rita Horner, a research scientist and algae specialist at the University of Washington.

"I personally have knowledge of it being here since the 1960s. The algae isn't new. Just the toxin is new. But we don't know enough about the biology of the organism itself to know what caused it to change."

Said Bill Cochlan, an oceanographer and phytoplankton expert at San Francisco State University: "You can have blooms and it's not a problem, or you can have blooms that are a real problem. The Number One question is when and why are they toxic?"

Let's hope ocean acidification and CO2 fertilization does not have something to do with it.

Which reminds me, I haven't posted anything about ocean acidification for a long time. There have been some interesting studies, so I will post about it again soon.

Overstepping the mark?

Of course, we all know that the apparent evidence coming out relating to the way Craig Thomson’s credit card was used does not look good for him, but I am surprised that no one has come out yet to say that some journalists are surely overstepping the line in declaring already that he has committed crimes.

In particular, Michael Smith, who has played a big role in this, said directly yesterday “Craig Thomson stole money from the Union,” and invited Thomson to sue him if that wasn’t true. (There is no transcript, but you can listen to what he said at the second recording at the link.) Now, given that Thomson did cease his high profile defamation case against Fairfax, Smith knows that he is at little risk of facing a fresh one.

But as a right wing radio talkback jock who has clearly always hated the Gillard government, Smith clearly hopes that Thomson is charged with offences and that this will bring down the government if Thomson loses his seat.

But surely he realises that statements like that can be, at the very least, problematic for getting a fair trial? Is it only because there is no actual charge yet (and may not be for some weeks or months) that he feels he can talk about the situation like this? Certainly, this site indicates that sub judice rules apply from the time someone is charged, arrested or a warrant is issued.

Still, I am interested to see if anyone else comes out and criticises Smith for coming out directly with this statement.

UPDATE: Andrew Bolt refers to the "illegal use" of union funds, and indeed the current head of the union assumes a crime has been committed. Paul Sheehan also says "crimes have been committed", but in all cases they do not say specifically by who. It may be that Smith is the only journalist who has come out and said Thomson has stolen money. What will Alan Jones say about it today, though? Andrew Robb has also said Thomson is a thief, but under parliamentary privilege. Talking outside of parliament, I think George Brandis has been more careful to couch it terms of possible crimes that may have been committed.

The best commentary on the matter I found this morning in The Age by Shaun Carney, which includes this:

But the niceties of the law do not really interest the Coalition; they are merely vehicles by which they can continue their assault on Thomson's state of mind and Gillard's political authority. Any legal case against Thomson for misappropriation of union funds would take years to be mounted, listed and heard.

Even then, a conviction might not meet the relevant section of the constitution, which deems a person unfit to sit as an MP if he or she has been ''convicted and is under sentence, or subject to be sentenced, for any offence punishable under the law of the Commonwealth or of a State by imprisonment for one year or longer''.

Yesterday, opposition leader Tony Abbott veered close to over-reach, with his extraordinary claim that the issue was stopping the government from dealing with more serious problems.

He told the ABC in the morning that ''while the government is completely distracted by the Craig Thomson matter it's not properly able to attend to the pressing problems the country faces''. He made the same claim later in the day while arguing that normal parliamentary business cease in order for Gillard to make a statement about the matter. The ''distraction'' has been generated all along by Abbott. The Thomson affair merely adds to the semi-permanent state of crisis that continues to engulf the Gillard government. Its opponents, both inside and outside the Parliament, are trying everything to blast the government from office. Last week, around 3000 protesters gathered outside Parliament House to voice their opposition to the government and its carbon pricing policy. On Monday, a few hundred more turned up, most of them by truck, calling for a new election.

I'm not sure he's right that it will take "years"to get to trial, but he's certainly right that the "distraction" claim by Abbott is a silly bit of political game playing.

Meanwhile, the business of government continued, with plain packaging for cigarettes legislation passing through parliament.

As I have said before, there is no actual crisis relating to economic management, or any persistent failure of this government to get its legislative intentions through parliament. It is pure political spin by those who oppose the Gillard government (and, admittedly, that includes a lot of the general public) that there is an actual governance crisis happening.

Red Potatoes

Rice is nice but spuds are new top banana

Facing more frequent droughts, falling water tables and widespread soil erosion, the government has designated the potato as a ''strategic'' crop in the latest five-year plan and is investing millions of dollars in researching new varieties.

This northern spring Beijing hosted its second international potato expo, hoping to cash in on China's new-found love for the spud. The potato is proving attractive both to Chinese consumers and to government officials charged with achieving China's target of being 95 per cent self-sufficient in food.

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With 20 per cent of the world's population, and just 7 per cent of its arable land, China is also hoping that the potato - which produces three or four times more calories per acre than rice or corn - can alleviate poverty by boosting farmers' outputs and incomes.

Probably some Chinese geneticist is working right now on the stir fry-able potato.

When ideology trumps common sense

Is there really a free market economist in Australia who believes that having quarantine services to our island continent to help prevent things like foot and mouth disease, rabies, screw flies, giant African snails, and other agricultural diseases and blights of many kinds which are clearly of great economic cost in other countries from getting a foothold here is a case of mere "rent seeking" and should be abolished?

Yes there is, and his insurance argument is even nuttier, as people in the thread have tried to show.

Amazing.

I think he is also known for being sympathetic to the completely free flow of people between countries. As wildly impractical and unpopular as this would be, at least you can argue that that would have some humanitarian benefit - no more fleeing masses of humanity held up for years in refugee camps. But I wouldn't have thought the likes of the giant African snail, or various bacteria and fungal spores, have quite the same claim to freedom of international movement.

No, this is a case of ideology stupidly trumping common sense. That is all there is to it.

When common sense and reading trump science

There are, I argue, cases where the reasonably well informed public can look at a science report and say "well, that sounds like a ridiculously premature conclusion," and you then have to wait around for years before science finally cottons on.

One reason I like to cite studies confirming the connection between marijuana use (at least at a young age) and mental illness is because I reckon this is what happened in that case. Many parents and relatives of those who developed schizophrenia in their early adulthood in the 70's or 80's, and who knew their child had gotten into marijuana use in their teenage years, were basically ahead of the science.

Anyway, here's another area where the science report was against common sense. It appears that, some years ago, a study involving testing for sexual arousal of self described bisexual men claimed that they didn't seem to be bisexual at all. The same university now has a study saying, hey, we seem to have found some men who do show a bisexual arousal pattern after all.

The apparent conclusions of the original study were surely always wildly implausible and stupid, given the evidence of everything from ancient history to Oscar Wilde (see item 2) and even present day tabloid interviews with "gay" icons like Ricky Martin. We won't bother discussing what the Greeks and Spartans got up to, but people might have missed Martin recently saying this last year:

Oprah read out a passage from his new memoir 'Me', which said: 'The thing is I didn't just like her a lot this woman drove me crazy, the attraction, desire and physical passion I felt for her tore me up in every way.

'It was physical chemistry overload, the way we both moved together. The whole thing drove me insane.'

These days, Ricky is more certain of his feelings.

'I am not bisexual, I am a gay man,' he declared.

'For many years I thought I was, I was confused because when I was with a woman everything was perfect but people loved to see me with women and I thought 'I'm gonna make this work'.

'I felt it with a woman, I felt passion and it felt good. And I'm sure I'm not the only gay man that felt attraction towards women. I never lied I told her it felt amazing.

'Sometimes I really did fall in love with women, for many years I did. They're still my friends today.'

Sounds like an endorsement of the fact that he got highly aroused by some women, and could fall in love with them, as he could also do with blokes, yet for whatever reason "bisexual" is not a good enough description for him. Whatever. It is, incidentally, a sign of the worrying consumerist modern attitude to reproduction that few people even care to remark on how a man like him, for whom making babies the natural way and in a loving relationship was always an eminently achievable thing, should instead choose to have twins by impregnating a surrogate mother with donor eggs, and neither female participant knew who the father is.

The New York Times report on the recent bisexual affirming lab study contains this obvious statement about any study that hopes to prove something by putting arousal to the test in a lab:

Despite her cautious praise of the new research, Dr. Diamond also noted that the kind of sexual arousal tested in the studies is only one element of sexual orientation and identity. And simply interpreting results about sexual arousal is complicated, because monitoring genital response to erotic images in a laboratory setting cannot replicate an actual human interaction, she added.

“Sexual arousal is a very complicated thing,” she said. “The real phenomenon in day-to-day life is extraordinarily messy and multifactorial.”

Now, I suspect that someone reading this blog might say, why do I allow for skepticism of some science studies, but am so against skepticism of climate change science.

The difference here is, there is not much scope for common sense when assessing many of the basics in climate change. You can't directly sense the immediate warming effect of greenhouse gases; you can't directly know what the climate was like before you were born. Hence, the original type of skepticism was often against there being any possible greenhouse effect at all, because it is easy to pretend, based on your senses, that nothing is happening.

Of course, climate change skepticism has largely moved away from that approach now, although Judith Curry still engages in lengthy and tedious debates with hold outs. It's mainly "lukewarmerism," or (the other popular approach of the last couple of years) natural cycles which we don't understand yet. It doesn't matter that a cycle has to be driven by something changing, and modern technology has given us excellent means to detect all climate forcings as they happen; it's all an appeal to drawing charts as if it always is going to reveal a truth. (It seems to me you used to see this a lot in financial chartists too, but no one pays much attention to those approaches any more.)

The one area in climate change where I think you can have a valid skepticism is on the issue of attribution of particular unusual events. This is difficult statistical matter at the best of times, but NOAA itself seems to be very keen lately to say that particular events, such as the remarkable Russian heat wave of last year, are not attributable to climate change.

I, on the other hand, suspect that NOAA is being a bit overly cautious on the issue, and that it is likely to become clear in the next 5 to 10 years that (not widely anticipated) changes to atmospheric circulation are indeed attributable to changes related to AGW, and are a serious consequence of it. I could be wrong, but that is where I judge the correct skepticism of climate science should currently take you.

More Republican embarrassment

Tax poor people: Republicans want the IRS to nail "lucky duckies." - By David Weigel - Slate Magazine

A fascinating article here on the weird ways Republicans - even non climate change denying ones like Huntsman - think about taxes, and how they got there.

There is now an exceptionally high degree of ideologically driven agenda around amongst right wing economics commentary coming from the States (and Australia) which has been fully absorbed by the likes of the Tea Party, and thus become more politically influential than ever. It leads to blow outs into nuttiness, especially in the area of tax, whether it be arguing against increasing taxes on the obviously rich (people earning over $1 million a year, as Buffet recently suggested, and the WSJ criticised because it was "lending his credibility" to tax increases on the middle class,) or arguing that any increases in taxes from the mining sector in Australia is going to lead to catastrophe.

Of course, the fact that carbon pricing can involve a "tax" is also enough for many to run screaming from that relative mouse in the room. (Well, OK, more like a rat maybe. I am trying to find the right metaphor for a relatively small effect on the total economy.)

As far as I am concerned, the economists of either the left or right who cling too closely to ideological driven agendas of what will work are not to be trusted. This happens on the Left too, of course, and in fact that used to be why moderate right wing parties used to be thought to be sounder economic hands. The evidence from the US is that this is, by and large, no longer the case.

Vital science

500 years ago, yeast's epic journey gave rise to lager beer

Well, I didn't know that the origin of the type of yeast which led to lager beer first being made in Bavaria 500 years ago was a bit of a mystery. This article explains all, starting with this:

In the 15th century, when Europeans first began moving people and goods across the Atlantic, a microscopic stowaway somehow made its way to the caves and monasteries of Bavaria.

The stowaway, a yeast that may have been transported from a distant shore on a piece of wood or in the stomach of a fruit fly, was destined for great things. In the dank caves and monastery cellars where 15th century brewmeisters stored their product, the newly arrived yeast fused with a distant relative, the domesticated yeast used for millennia to make leavened bread and ferment wine and ale. The resulting hybrid — representing a marriage of species as evolutionarily separated as humans and chickens — would give us lager, the clear, cold-fermented beer first brewed by 15th century Bavarians and that today is among the most popular — if not the most popular — alcoholic beverage in the world.

One of the scientists says:

"People have been hunting for this thing for decades," explains Chris Todd Hittinger, a University of Wisconsin-Madison genetics professor and a co-author of the new study.

I guess this says something about the sometimes peculiar priorities of science. They don't even seem to suggest that this discovery will lead to better beer, so what was the point?

Answer: very

BBC News - Who, What, Why: How dangerous is firing a gun into the air?

In this article, the BBC handily provides a long list of incidents in which people in various countries have been inadvertently killed by celebratory bullets falling to earth.

Is this why we like the look of grass?

New human gene in wallabies (Science Alert)

Here is a bit of odd information about the biology of kangaroos that comes at the end of this story about how genetic sequencing of wallaby genes shows up "surprising similarities" with human genes:

She said kangaroos and wallabies, like all marsupials, have many unusual biological characteristics. “They give birth to tiny under-developed young after a very short pregnancy, which is then followed by a long and sophisticated lactation period while in the mother’s pouch.

“This includes the simultaneous provision of two types of milk from adjacent mammary glands to offspring of different ages. This is like the left breast and right breast making milk of two completely different compositions," Professor Renfree said.

Neat trick.

Clear reception?

Spirit Voices: The First Live Conversation Between Worlds | Society for Psychical Research

So, a paranormal investigator making a TV series in an allegedly haunted Irish hotel claims he got recordings of perfectly clear spirit voices making meaningful responses to a medium in another room.

Sounds kind of easy to fake, andthis bit of video shows his methods (using violin sounds in the recording process) seem a tad arcane.

Still, his books seems to have reasonably impressed someone reviewing for the Society for Psychical Research.

I wonder if the reason we don't hear from the dead so often is due to high "roaming" charges for their mobile phones to Earth.

Incidentally, this also reminds me of Robert Rankin's black comedy novel Fandom of the Operator, in which someone discovers that there exists a literal telephone service to the dead. I thought the book was pretty awful, actually, and have blanked out all other details of the plot, but I liked the premise, at least.

I mean, it is pretty intriguing to think about the societal implications of having scientific proof of an afterlife, isn't it? On the one hand, most humans have believed it for most of history anyway, but on the other hand, removing the mystery beyond all doubt would put a fair bit of a spanner in the works of modern philosophy and science, to put it mildly.

New, old movies

What's going on in Hollywood at the moment? Here are three old franchises undergoing actual, or planned, expansion. My comments follow, in increasing order of alarm:

* Ridley Scott is making a prequel to the Alien films. (Might be OK, but bear in mind he only made the original one, and he has a very hit and miss record in his career.)

* Ridley is also, according to that link, going to make another movie in the Blade Runner universe. (Given that we are only 8 years away from the setting for the original movie, it had better a sequel in order to have any plausibility at all.)

* Sarah Jessica Parker is said to be interested in a third Sex and the City movie, and/or TV series. (Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.)

How (some) clever people make money

Lottery wins come easy, if you can spot the loopholes - physics-math