Missing from any Anzac Day march I've ever seen

...is anyone dressed like this:

....although I suppose if they were allowed in the march, they'd be slipping over anything resembling a banana skin on the road. 

Yes, I guess these chaps (real soldiers from World War 1 - you can read about their entertainment troupe at the Australian War Memorial blog) could give a whole new meaning to "Company clown".  

I'm tempted to try to make some pun or other about how they died - many times, on stage - but that would be inappropriate.

Lurking around

I have my doubts I should have been there, but the creaky old stairway that looked not very safe was no longer blocked off (probably due to some work being done on the weekday, by the looks), and there was no one around.   So I had a look in this roof space area that I'm not sure has ever been open to the public.  (Maybe it was when it used to be used for something else.   And I do have childhood memories of its former use.  But now that I think of it, the handrail you can see in one photo looks fancy enough that it used to be for public access.   And why put a nice big stained glass window in if it couldn't be seen by the public?  So yes, I think it probably was formerly open, but hasn't been for a long time.)

The very observant reader of this blog may know which Brisbane building I refer to.

Good Lord - Donald Trump sounding not unreasonable

Donald Trump was asked about anti-transgender bathroom bills. His answer was … correct. - Vox

No, this is not the start of any turn around in his credibility.

It's just that it's near impossible for any person to be completely wrong on every single political/cultural issue.

Not grokked

Prince Defied Conventional Notions of Race and Gender - The New York Times

He did?

Not meaning to sound mean spirited; and not meaning to detract from the sadness felt by his fans; and perhaps showing my musical and cultural ignorance to an embarrassing degree:  but I "grokked" Prince to an even lesser degree than Bowie.

Bowie in interviews could come across as a knowing performance artist who was witty and pretty normal beneath it all:  I'm not sure that Prince ever seemed to be more than an embodied performance.  (Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with that, people.  You could say that about quite a few eccentric but talented artists. And, of course, it is not as if I - or many people, it seems - knows what he was like in private.)

I should stop writing now, as it's generally not wise to be going against the popular flow so soon after an artist's death.

Good to know

Need to remember something? Better draw it, study finds

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have found that drawing pictures of information that needs to be remembered is a strong and reliable strategy to enhance memory.

We pitted drawing against a number of other known encoding strategies, but drawing always
came out on top," said the study's lead author, Jeffrey Wammes, PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology. "We believe that the benefit arises because drawing helps to create a more cohesive memory trace that better integrates visual, motor and semantic information."

Extraordinary video

China dust devil lifts boy into air - BBC News

(Note:  boy not seen lifted into the air in video, but seeing the effect on the ground, the picture showing him in the air is entirely plausible.)

Canned fish, re-visited

Last year, I wrote of my search for the nicest canned sardines (and referred readers to a much more extensive taste guide than I could manage.)  (By the way, I recently found that, oddly, the deli style shop sitting in the middle of the spanking new Pacific Fair extension on the Gold Coast had a really extensive range - including my favoured Portuguese brand - at very cheap prices.   Haven't tried the Croatian ones yet - not sure if I should.)

Since I'm trying to shed a few kg again (I now know I definitely have to do what Michael Mosley said he does - move from a 2/5 diet to a 1/7 diet if I want any hope of maintaining my lower weight,)  I'm back on the sardines for lunch kick, but I've also been trying the range of canned herring which seems to have become popular.

And I must say, I am enjoying them.  King Oscar's are fine, and even the attractively packaged Brunswick brand (which I quite disliked for sardines) has a  canned kipper in water which was quite acceptable.  I haven't tried the Aldi brand yet - I think they are from Poland, but in a can which is a bit inconveniently too much for one person.

The canned fish I never care for is the "flavoured" tuna (or salmon).   They're never terribly nice, and it just seems a way to minimise the amount of tuna in the can with cheaper filling.  But a good quality tuna in olive oil is always nice:  and it forms the basis of my daughter's favourite meal - salad nicoise, as prepared by me.  (It is one of the few dishes - very few dishes - which my children acknowledge as being better when made by their father instead of their mother.  I did win the Great Chicken Cook off last Christmas too, with my Italian baked chicken versus teriyaki baked chicken, even though my wife did not realise it was a competition.  But I digress...)

Although I haven't had it for a while, there are some cans of broiled fish in soy sauce sold in Asian supermarkets which make for a nice enough light meal on rice.  Just as with the old cans of braised steak and onions, you can heat it up by boiling the can before you open it, and just tip onto a bowl of rice.  Here it is, this brand:

Next up:  it's about time I put pen to paper about my observations of precipitation (and shovels) when I visited Yorkshire.  :)

Speaking of people who annoy me...

...I'm so glad that we now have the IPA view on Britain exiting the European Union getting an airing in our Senate via its conservative fop James Paterson.

Next up:  I expect a decent lecture on the righteous adventures of Milton Friedman in Chile. 

[All /sarc, of course.]

Irritation noted

Beyondblue anxiety mental health campaign worthless: Helen Razer

I've recently noted how annoying I find Razer's whole writing oeuvre,  which I find difficult to describe clearly.  "Tendentious anti-tendentiousness" seems to summarise this column which I don't recommend.  She has something of the quality of perpetual irritant Brendan O'Neill: writes a 100 words when 20 would do, always seems to be wanting to find something to complain about.

Little reported drought

India drought: '330 million people affected' - BBC News

Some more detail on the fairly dire sounding conditions in India at the moment to be found at this report in the Times of India.

The long term issue, is, of course, what effect climate change will have on the variability of monsoon seasons.   What's pretty certain is that India would have to be one of the most sensitive countries to climate change, and building coal powered electricity plants is not going to much help them deal with drought or floods.

Update:  here's a story about the continuing drought in parts of Africa, too.

Have the anti-circ obsessives responded yet?

Circumcision Does Not Reduce Penile Sensitivity Or Affect Sexual Pleasure Later In Life

I presume they have, but a quick Google hasn't shown up where.

Update:  haven't located the outrage yet, but I'm not looking very hard.  In the meantime, I see that Village Voice ran a story late last year on the "wacky world" (their words, but I agree with them) of foreskin restoration. 

Good question...

How on God’s Green Earth Is the B-52 Still in Service? | WIRED

From the article:

Even with the modernization, the currently flying B-52s are all about 55 years old, about the age humans start getting calls from the AARP. This is where the over-engineering comes in. “The airframe itself remains structurally sound and has many useful flying years ahead of it,” the directorate official says. “Most of the B-52 airframes are original and their longevity is a testimony to the original design engineers.” In other words, they did a killer job making a durable airplane. 
Even the flight controls—the yokes in the cockpit, the seats, the control surfaces on the wings and tail assembly, the cable linkages between them—are largely the same as they were when they were built in 1960 and 1961. Of course, inspections are frequent, and the airplanes undergo heavy maintenance inspections every 4 years, during which mechanical and structural elements may be replaced as needed, along with possible replacements of any of each sample’s eight Pratt & Whitney jet engines. But for the most part, the crews in charge today have got their hands on the same BUFFs that crews touched decades ago. In some cases, recent crew members have been sons and grandsons of previous-generation B-52 crew members.

Yep, that's the biggest surprise:  that the airframes are still good.  I presume though that they don't pull G, and I would guess that is pretty much the reason you can't expect a fighter airframe to last anything like that age.  (AFAIK).

For those who haven't experienced it

What does depression feel like? Trust me – you really don’t want to know | Tim Lott | Opinion | The Guardian

I feel that this is an important thing for people who haven't suffered very deep depression (like me) to understand.

Speaking of people with depression, or at least the serious blues:  it seems to me as someone who follows Bernard Keane's twitter feed that he's not been in a great way for some months now.  He mentioned around Valentines Day that he was single at this time  for the first time in years, so I am assuming a marriage/relationship break up? (or, I suppose, a death of a partner?); he's complained frequently about insomnia; and a tweet today sounds something like depression.  Are people who know him personally talking to him about this?   It really tends to read like a public cry for help, in many respects, so I hope someone is answering it...

Battery news

Seemingly good news on the fuel cell/battery research front:

*  urine powered fuel cells seem to be moving ahead.  One day, people may have a better reason to take their smart phone into the toilet with them (heh):

The research team from the University's Department of Chemical Engineering, Department of Chemistry and the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies (CSCT), have worked with Queen Mary University of London and the Bristol Bioenergy Centre, to devise this new kind of microbial fuel cell that is smaller, more powerful and cheaper than other similar devices.

This novel fuel cell developed by the researchers, measures one inch squared in size and uses a carbon catalyst at the cathode which is derived from glucose and ovalbumin, a protein found in egg white. This biomass-derived catalyst is a renewable and much cheaper alternative to platinum, commonly used in other microbial fuel cells.

The researchers worked on the cell's design to maximize the power that could be generated. By increasing the cell's electrodes from 4mm to 8mm, the power output was increased tenfold. Furthermore, by stacking multiple units together, the power was proportionally increased.
Currently, a single microbial fuel cell can generate 2 Watts per cubic metre, enough to power a device such as a mobile phone. Whilst this value is not comparable with other alternative technologies such as hydrogen or solar fuel cells and other methods of bioenergy digesters, the significant advantage of this technology is its extremely cheap production cost and its use of waste as a fuel, a fuel that will never run out and does not produce harmful gasses.

The research team is now looking at ways of improving the power output of the microbial fuel cell and is confident that by optimising the design of the cell, they will be able to increase the cell's performance.

 Mind you, this type of story always seems to end up with "more research and improvements are expected", but we rarely hear of such innovative products coming onto the market.

*   New, cheap but better chemical batteries may be on the way too:

An unexpected discovery has led to a rechargeable battery that's as inexpensive as conventional car batteries, but has a much higher energy density. The new battery could become a cost-effective, environmentally friendly alternative for storing renewable energy and supporting the power grid.

Don't put your child in the pool, Mrs Worthington

What with poor old Grant Hackett being a goose again, it's really hard to imagine why parents would encourage their children to get into the world of competitive swimming, given all the turmoil that Australian ex-swimmers seem to get themselves into.  Terrible hours for the parents, too.

Road transport safety, and other complaints

OK, I'll accept that the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal's ruling about minimum rates of pay for contractor drivers may have been flawed, given that even Labor was arguing for a delay in its implementation.

However, did the Liberals really have to deny a connection between remuneration and road safety?   As this report notes, the report they relied upon was dubious at best.

The other thing that irks me about this:  libertarian, free market types who hate the idea of government imposed minimum standards on contractors' remuneration are supposed to be big on privacy and dubious of government surveillance.   Yet when it comes to ensuring contractors don't have to drive ridiculous hours because of the low charges big customers can extract from them, the only alternative they have to offer (presumably) is complete technological recording (and someone checking) the details of every single trip.   It reminds me of their attitude to street violence and alcohol:  they'd prefer to have police standing on every street corner to catch every single bit of bad public behaviour, instead of winding back licencing hours as the indirect method of achieving the same result.    They have a distinct tendency to prefer quasi authoritarian oversight of behaviour rather than a more"meta" interference with the way a business can trade.   Because:  business; we love business. 

They also tend to love the "sharing economy" apps like Uber and Airbnb.   Yet, there is concern that Uber results in drivers getting screwed, too.  And Airbnb can be a nightmare for residents in apartment blocks that have suddenly become more like apartment hotels, but without the reception area and staff to police behaviour.   And the regulatory response seems slow and inadequate.

But, hey, Business.  Money.  

Update:  clearly, I'm in a Lefty mood today, so I'll post part of First Dog on the Moon's funny cartoon today about the strange surge of Marxism panic that is appearing in the Australian Right:

Arachnophobes: do not click on the link

Hidden housemates: Australia's huge and hairy huntsman spiders

I'm no big fan of large spiders, so sorry, I'm not about to try to catch a huntman spider and put it outside as the writer suggests.  (Besides, how hard would that be?)

She also seems to have selected photos for this article which are especially guaranteed to freak out any arachnophobe who clicks on the link.

The gay fascist architect

Famed Architect Philip Johnson’s Hidden Nazi Past | Vanity Fair

It's a little hard these days imaging a gay rich American of the 1930's getting enamoured of Hitlerian fascism via Nietzsche, but as this rather fascinating article explains, it did indeed happen.  (I suppose a similar thing can be said of upper class gay English academics and communism.)  

Can't say I knew anything of the anti-Semitic conspiracy mongering of one Father Charles Edward Coughlin before I read this article, either.

This delivery of religion via media pop star has been a big thing in a America for a long time, hasn't it?  (I wrote about it in my discussion of "Anything Goes", too.)

Worrying diseases

Deadly animal prion disease appears in Europe : Nature News & Comment

So, there's been a prion disease (similar to "Mad Cow" disease) floating around part of the world's deer, elk and moose population, and now it has spread (via unknown route) to Norway.

The most worrying thing I find about the report is that the disease is spread between animals via prions in saliva, urine and faeces.  It also seems possible that the disease can arise spontaneously.

If ever a human variant got going, and it was so easily spread, it would be a truly dire problem to deal with.  Especially if prions could be spread through treated sewerage into drinking water. 

I'm going with "daughter of Luke Skywalker"

J.J. Abrams Says Rey's Parents Not In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Then Clarifies Comments | E! Online

Re-watching Force Awakens this weekend, I'm more convinced than ever that Rey is Luke's daughter.   I would think it likely that Luke inadvertently put mother and child in danger; perhaps the mother was killed, and he decided the only way to protect his daughter was to hide.  I presume he left her in someone's care, but they got killed too?  I have to re-watch the "flashback" scene of Rey again, though...