Holding my breath

Day three, and yes, I'm still talking about things Mission Impossible 5 made me think about.

Today:  holding your breath.   It's not something I keep in my mind, the matter of how long those insane free divers can hold their breath.

So, from a story about them at the ABC:

The current men's world record holder is Stephane Mifsud of France with a time of 11 minutes and 35 seconds and the womens' world record is held by Natalia Molchanova of Russia with a static breath hold of just over nine minutes.

The sport doesn't allow pre-breathing of oxygen, I believe, but for divers who do that they can get up to 20 to 30 minutes, it seems. 

The claim that Cruise once held his breath underwater on set for 6 minutes is therefore not completely ridiculous, after all. 

Update:   Oh.  The female champion diver I mentioned here has been claimed by her nutty hobby.

The Senate stunt team is back

They're useless, being there mainly for the purpose of self-promotion:  Leyonhjelm/Day to introduce Bill to remove penalty rates.

And yes, I am aiding their "look at me" effort, but if I do so while pointing out that they are actually useless, I don't care.

Bolt backs the Republican intellectual wasteland

Cruz missile could save the US from Obama’s legacy | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Tragic.

Sounds complicated...

Panasonic moves closer to home energy self-sufficiency with fuel cells - AJW by The Asahi Shimbun

I'll just quote this story in full, and note again that Japan seems the most advanced country in terms of use of domestic fuel cells:

Panasonic Corp. said it has developed a catalyst that uses sunlight efficiently to extract hydrogen from water, a technology that could lead to energy self-sufficiency in homes powered by fuel cells.

The company said it tested photocatalysts consisting of niobium nitride that can absorb 57 percent of sunlight, a rate far more efficient than the titanium oxide photocatalysts used today that absorb only ultraviolet rays, which constitute 4 percent of sunlight.

Using this catalyst, Panasonic plans to develop products, such as panels similar to solar cells, for installation on rooftops.

These products in turn will create the hydrogen that fuel cells use to generate electricity.

“Commercial application will be 2020 at the earliest,” Panasonic Managing Director Yoshiyuki Miyabe said. “We want to achieve this as early as possible.”

Panasonic has already started selling home-use fuel cells to generate electricity from hydrogen.

Good cancer news

Pancreatic cancer urine test hope - BBC News

I've known at least two people who have died of pancreatic cancer in my life, and it is one of the worst ones for being undetected until it is too late.  So this is good news.

When conservatives with agendas fall out

It seems Andrew Bolt is very, very upset with Chris Mitchell, editor of the Australian.  Which is funny, given their mutual interest in mudslinging Julia Gillard over events 20 years old and which Bolt never thought important until she was PM; their disgraceful campaign against Gillian Triggs;  their mutual undying support of Abbott in his fascistic campaign to do anything he likes at sea and in offshore detention centres and keep it secret from the public under threat of criminal charges; and (of course) their mutual contempt and wilful ignorance of the science of climate change. 

Update:  I just remembered, isn't News Corp actually paying the production costs of Bolt's TV show?  I suppose that makes Bolt's attack "brave"; but then again, I guess Mitchell may well have no influence at all on whether Bolt's show maintains a budget.

Amusingly, I see that a few Catallaxy threadsters are saying they will end their Australian subscriptions over the paper's support of Adam Goodes, and the aboriginal constitution amendment.   They're very upset that the entire media universe has turned into leftists.    Hahahahahaha.

I also note that it seems to me that the only commentators on the web who supported Bronwyn Bishop were at Catallaxy.   Steve Kates, the lone economist in the world who understands it properly because he knows what Says Law really means, was adamant she should never resign.   Sinclair Davidson said she had been an excellent speaker (again, a view virtually unique on the World Wide Web.)   Alan Moran, banned from the IPA, still has a gig at Catallaxy claiming global economic catastrophe from reducing CO2. 

What an extreme and nutty corner of the interwebs it has become....

Two ocean acidification papers

1.  Ocean acidification measurements across an entire ocean indicate that pH is dropping in a way consistent with modelling.

2.   If you burn fossil fuels on a "business as usual" basis for another hundred years or so, even a future (improbably efficient) means of removing CO2 from the atmosphere is not going to help the oceans much.

I think I have summarised both of these correctly.

I've been thinking...

...about the next Mission Impossible movie.

Seeing they spend so much time on accessing encrypted information stored in places using the weirdest security systems, can't the writer look into something more realistically at the cutting edge, such as quantum cryptography?

Now, I guess the point of that is to make information genuinely impossible to break into, but there is nothing impossible to Ethan Hunt, as we were told in the last movie.  (Perhaps he can be split into a both dead and alive version in a Schrodinger's Cat upscaling.   Would that help with quantum cryptography?   Who cares?)

Candle viewing

How far away do you think the human eye can see a candle?   (I'm assuming we're talking some sort of average size one, too.)

I would have guessed about 1 km, but according to the paper reported here, it's more like 2.76 km.

Your day is now complete.   

Not sure it's how a drink with a buddy is supposed to end...

Viagra 'added to Chinese alcohol' - BBC News

Weekend roundup, with Mission Impossible 5

What a nice weekend:  beautiful warm late winter sunshine; out to Mulgowie farmer's market for lots of fresh vegetables, fruit juice and caramel popcorn (I did have a 12 year old in tow); a couple of craft beers at the Hoo Ha Bar near Southbank;  grilled kipper for dinner (why don't Australians eat more of them?).  Sunday I found myself looking in at what seemed to be a very Anglo Catholic Anglican mass in an old church in Fortitude Valley (the amount of incense they used created a cloud that never fully dissipated the rest of the service);  a fresh sandwich for lunch with steak slices and hot mustard; and a very successful coq au vin cooked by me for dinner.

Amongst all of that, the family went to see Mission Impossible 5.

It is very good.   While the Bond style opening was thrilling, I think the motorcycle/car chase was perhaps the best of its kind that I have seen.  (The editing is fast, but not Bourne fast with shaky cam, and it genuinely looks dangerous for Cruise and the stunt team.)   The night at the opera segment is, as others have noted, a bit Hitchcockian, but it's enjoyable and (what's the word?) sumptuously staged.

I have to admit that the other set piece is, fundamentally, silly (water and electronics are not known for their friendly intermingling); almost up there with the need for a secret gigantic radio telescope to communicate with a satellite in Goldeneye.   But there is still tension in how it is handled, and it is a spectacular setting, that entry point.   (What looked like some silly sci fi physics in the trailer wasn't after all.)  Yeah, it's true:  what I can't forgive in Bond I can forgive in Hunt.  

It does have a bit of a feel that it has been written as a series-summarising send off, but as all reviews have been saying, Cruise looks extremely fit and engaged, and it does have a hint of further story in there with the femme fatale, and Alec Baldwin, so that yet another outing still wouldn't seem self indulgent.

In fact, maybe it will go in a new direction, where the IMF being dysfunctional is not the key plot point, like it has been for most of the other movies.  (OK, maybe it wasn't in MI2, but I prefer not to think of that embarrassing entry.)

Update:   I missed that Cruise has already said that they are planning a sixth, and without as long a gap as with the other installments.   The movie seems to have already made more than $100 million worldwide in its first weekend.  Good.

Amusing myself....

Drinking and conception

Drinking at conception boosts diabetes risk for baby

This finding:

Babies conceived by women who drink alcohol around the time of conception face dramatically increased risks of type 2 diabetes and obesity in early middle age, a University of Queensland
study has found.

The discovery was made by School of Biomedical Sciences scientist Associate Professor Karen Moritz during research into how events – particularly alcohol consumption – before and during pregnancy affect the long-term health of offspring.

is only based on "laboratory rat model", but still, it does sound a potential worry for humans.

Sharks getting aggro?

Surfer mauled in shark attack at Evans Head

I'm sure I'm not the only person thinking that it seems sharks are getting more aggressive against humans lately, including, unfortunately, many of them around Australia.  Have a look at the recent list of attacks in this article, many of which have only given people a fright, but still there are quite a few incidents of aggression that I haven't heard of until now.

Adam Goodes noted

Of course, the Australian sport that I have the least possible interest in (well, apart from cage boxing, I suppose) is Aussie Rules Football, but it's impossible not to comment on the Adam Goodes story.

It seems to me that the on the "this boo-ing has gotten out of control" side is every current AFL player, the management of every AFL team, the AFL management itself, every single politician who has commented on it, including Coalition members such as the down-to-earth indigenous affairs minister Nigel Scullion,  the editorial team at The Australian, as well as everyone down to the cleaning staff at the ABC and The Guardian (but the latter is not unexpected, of course.)

On the "Adam Goodes is a sook and ought to suck it up and he started it all anyway" side is a newspaper columnist who lost a court case about race and has spent a decade or more downplaying racism as an issue to a silly extent; an ex AFL player or two; the intellectual giant of cricket Shane Warne; an economist from South Africa who had never even heard of "ape" being used in a racial context; and a group of right wing columnists who are most notable for despising Julia Gillard and not believing in climate change.

I don't know - I got a feeling in my bones about which side on this might have the better "cred".

Knickers

I was reading the Courier Mail review for Anything Goes from 14 March 1936, and noticed this ad on the page:

"Knickers" seems to have changed meaning over the years...

Update:  a post may be found here giving some details about the fashion for boy's knickers in the first half of the 20th century.   Yet I'm still not entirely sure as to what made "knickers" knickers.  It would seem to be the length as indicated in this photo:

  But the advertisement showing a "knicker suit" in Australia seems to have shorts that aren't below the knee in length.

Update 2:  just in case anyone thinks I'm easily confused - yes, I am aware of knickerboxers - which are what the pants in the photo in the update would be called, and (I presume) knickers is a contraction of that.  Maybe I'm just confused because the "knicker suit" and "knicker pants" in the Brisbane ad don't look long enough to count.

Herbal remedy with the opposite effect (for some)

Taking St. John's wort for depression carries risks: study

I didn't know this was possible (or at least, to this extent) with St John's wort:

Using reports filed with Australia's drug safety agency, the researchers found that adverse reactions to St. John's wort were similar to those reported for the antidepressant fluoxetine—better known by the brand name Prozac.

Those side effects included anxiety, panic attacks, dizziness, nausea and spikes in blood pressure, the researchers reported in the July issue of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology....

The researchers based their findings on doctors' reports to Australia's national agency on drug safety. Between 2000 and 2013, there were 84 reports of adverse reactions to St. John's wort, and 447 reports on Prozac.

But since those are voluntary reports, they do not reflect the actual rate of side effects from either therapy, according to the researchers.  And, Hoban said, bad reactions to St. John's wort are particularly likely to go unreported, since the herb is often not even considered a drug.

According to McCutcheon, it's important for people with depression symptoms to see a health professional before self-medicating with St. John's wort. "That will help ensure you have the right diagnosis," she said.

If your symptoms are actually part of a different disorder, St. John's wort may be ineffective—or possibly even risky. For example, McCutcheon said that in people with bipolar disorder, the herb might fuel a manic episode.

But possibly the biggest concern, she said, is the potential for St. John's wort to interact with commonly used medications.

The herb can dampen the effectiveness of birth control pills, blood thinners and heart disease drugs, along with some HIV and cancer drugs, according to the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative
Health.

Falling pregnant unintentionally due to taking it can't be good for depression!

Masculinity and nature

Cecil the lion: Jimmy Kimmel breaks down on air as he condemns animal's killing

Wow.  Jimmy Kimmel made his name on "The Man Show", didn't he?:  a low brow comedy that joked about masculinity in quite an un-PC, right wing sort of fashion.   (The co-host Adam Carolla appears to make a name for himself still by being the favourite comedian of sites like Breitbart.)

Yet Kimmel gets emotional talking about Cecil the lion.

It's pretty amazing how strongly most of the West has turned against trophy hunting, where what was once seen as something a strong man would naturally like to do (up to perhaps about the 1960's, I reckon) is now condemned as sign of inadequacy. 

Yet, as this Washington Post story notes, it is still big business in Africa, fed mostly by Americans, and includes those ridiculous cases where captive animals are bred and hunted for fun, or whatever the motivation is for this activity.

There's no doubt there is a very different view of our relationship with nature now, but there is still a strong cultural element about it all - it seems to me that the Chinese are far, far behind the West in having empathy  for animal suffering, and the reasons for that I do not know.  (I should Google it one day...)   

I suspect that this story is leading more people to cast a skeptical eye on the claim that trophy hunting is a good, or valid, way of raising money for animal conservation. 

Good. 

Catholics in retreat

The last Catholic priest in the Antarctic - BBC News

Interesting story about religious services in Antarctica.

I like the penguins on the wall at the back of the chapel:

For a special weekly dose of climate change pessimism

What Happens If We Don’t Mitigate?

I see that the Climate Change National Forum site, which seemingly had become quite inactive, has been re-formatted and has more recent posts finally up.

The one at the link is a good interview with 3 climate scientists, including one of my old favourites John Nielsen-Gammon.  He's always been fair:  too fair, in fact, given that he was prepared to help out Anthony Watts with his failed attempt to prove that poor weather station siting was really behind increasing temperatures.  

Anyhow, Nielsen-Gammon is well and truly a realist as to what is in store with temperature rises, and this interview is worth reading.