Yawn

I'm feeling a little out of sorts lately. It's probably the spring time return of early morning sun. My body clock seems to have switched to a 6 am wake up, every morning, regardless of what time I go to bed.

The lack of daylight saving in Brisbane and the nearby coast can really play havoc with sleep. Years ago, I was living in a place where a particular wild bird used to start every summer morning with its loud and distinctive call at the very crack of dawn. Seriously, it was not when the sun rose (which is early enough - as you can see from this table, it's 4.45 am for a good few weeks of November and December) but just as soon as there was some vague brightening in the sky. (Actually, that table I just linked to includes listings for "civil twilight start", which might indicate roughly the time the bird started its call. You can see it's 4.19 am in November and December.) The call would continue for about 20 minutes, then stop. I never heard it again during the day.

Can you imagine how annoying it is to be woken for 20 minutes at 4.20 - 4.45 for about 3 months of the year? It was impossible to sleep through. I occasionally took to trying to throw things into the neighbour's tree that it seemed to live in, but it was just out of range. I never identified what the bird was, and now I have forgotten the exact sound it made.

In my books, going to bed after 10 pm is not all that radical an idea. In fact, I have routinely been about a 11 - 12 pm sleeper for about as long as I can remember. If you can sleep in til 6 to 7 am, that's fine. But 4.30 - that's ridiculous.

I don't have too big a problem with birds where I live at the moment. Instead, it's the stupid young adults in the house behind me that like to sit outside at 2 am (or, this last Sunday morning, 5 am) and have loud conversations. Their entertainment area is hidden from view from our bedroom window behind some palms, but they seem to think that if you can't see them you can't hear them. I recently wrote to the parents about it and (to their credit) did get a call of apology for what their sons and friends do. The number of times we have heard them late on a weekend night has decreased a little since then, as has the volume of conversation, but now it seems to be on the way up again. I wish them misery from noisy inconsiderate young people when they have reached my age.

Then, this morning, at 12.45am, someone let a bunch of fireworks off somewhere near the house. It was "cracker" type, perhaps left over from Chinatown, but the only house which may have Chinese neighbours mostly seems to be in darkness. There was no sign of who let them off when I looked at the window. No sound of laughing or anything. I don't think they were aimed at my house in particular, and I heard a neighbour's door opening to see what was going on. Strange.

Fly the not-so-friendly skies

Air India pilots, crew come to blows at 30,000 ft

A mid-air incident that would sound a little improbable in a comedy:

The cabin crew alleged that pilots harassed a 24-year-old female colleague who later filed a molestation complaint against them with the cops after the flight landed in Delhi.

The pilots, on the other hand, accused a male flight purser of misconduct that seriously compromised flight safety...

No party denied that blows and abuses were exchanged as bewildered passengers looked on. Sources said that the female cabin crew member and the co-pilot sustained bruises.....

There were unconfirmed reports that at one stage the cockpit was unmanned, as the crew was busy fighting outside. Things allegedly degenerated to the point where the captain threatened to divert the plane to Karachi, likening the situation, sources said, to a "hijack".

Cockroach lesson

Cockroach inspires heart created by Indian doctor Sujoy Guha - Times Online

This story starts with a very unexpected claim:

A ground-breaking £1,500 artificial heart inspired by the anatomy of the cockroach could revolutionise human cardiac care, scientists in India believe.

But it seems to make sense:

The human heart has four chambers, but only the left ventricle is responsible for building the pressure that moves blood around the body. Depending on one chamber to do the hard work places this part of an artificial heart under enormous strain....

By contrast, his prosthetic heart builds pressure in stages, through five chambers — a model based on the anatomy of a cockroach. He has been working on his prototype heart, which is made from titanium and plastic and runs on batteries that can be recharged from outside the body, since the early 1960s.

The heart of the cockroach has 13 chambers, which build pressure in a series of steps. If one fails, the animal still continues living. “When I was learning my biology I became fascinated by the cockroach,” Dr Guha told The Times. “It is hardy [and] survives extreme conditions. It came into this world before humans and will survive beyond us.”

You learn something every day.

Chronologically confused

This has been a chronologically confusing week. First, discovering that James Bond is much younger than me made me feel old; but by midweek, a TV show which seemed to me to have been off the air for longer than it actually has (Hey Hey It's Saturday) reappeared, except on a Wednesday night. Furthermore, its host looked like he had just stepped out of the deep freeze, with nary a wrinkle to be added to his face over the last 10 years. (I heard a Brisbane radio announcer saying the next day that "he's had work, no doubt about it.") But really, few of the crew looked as further aged as I had imagined they would.

The success of the Hey Hey reunion show is no doubt annoying Catherine Deveny, which is always a good thing. But it clearly was a winner: the comments of the mid to high brow readers of the ABC news website are overwhelmingly positive. An often repeated theme is that it was a pleasure to have back on TV something other than crime shows or reality TV.

I didn't see all of it, but was pleased enough with what I did see. (If, however, they do come back on some sort of permanent basis, they really do have to stop featuring the never-retiring John Farnham.) But overall, I was never too cool for the show.

It was always lightweight, friendly TV made by a fairly quick-witted bunch of people, even if you could tell that you wouldn't want to spend any time with Somers in person. You didn't need to sit down and watch from start to end, but as something on in the background that you could dip into while getting ready to go out somewhere; or on a dateless night, while having a few glasses of wine and a meal of some just cooked new recipe, it was just right.

Yes, here's to the return of daggy TV.

Another giant robot visits Japan

I can't seem to link directly to the story, but have a look at today's Japan Times [sorry, photo seems to have gone from here, see update below] to see a photo of full scale Tetsujin (otherwise known as Gigantor in the West) just finished in Kobe.

Why build a giant robot? The article mentions that the city was devastated by an earthquake in 1995, and:

Residents built the steel statue to express their hopes for the city's revival with the help of the classic comic hero from the 1950s

Of course. Devastating earthquake: build giant robot. Let's hope Indonesia reads the fine print in any offer of assistance from Japan.

UPDATE: Sorry, the Japan Times seems to be making it hard to track down its Tetsujin photo. You can see it instead here at Kyodo News, and I'm sure there will be many more photos to come when it is officially open.

And in further big robot news, I see that South Korea plans to build the biggest giant robot statue of them all, of Voltar, a giant robot with which I am not terribly familiar. Yes, it's a regional Giant Robot Race, because we all understand the prestige that goes with having the biggest robot. Don't we?

Where did evolution go wrong?

Fruit fly sperm makes females do housework after sex

(Then again, maybe the female fruit fly keeps going back to the mate and saying "get out of bed, you haven't mowed the yard yet.")

Your hunch was probably right

Major quakes can weaken seismic faults far away, scientists say

I always thought that it seemed that major earthquakes in distant locations happened in clusters.

There also seems to be an unusually large amount of natural disaster and death and general mayhem going on around Australia at the moment. Maybe time to look for a suitable charity to donate to.

Not your average school fete...

Decapitation: School fete turns violen:

Police in Papua New Guinea are hunting for a notorious criminal after violence at a school fete left eight people dead and a severed head hanging from a power pole.

According to local media, an armed gang attacked villagers gathered at the fete in Kainantu district last Friday, and killed four people.

One report said the gang's leader interrupted a speech by a local magistrate, produced a gun and shot him dead.

The villagers retaliated by killing three of the gang members. One was beheaded and the head hung on a power pole.

Speaking of old...

I noted yesterday (in a report about the Hugh Jackman and the mobile phone incident) that his co-star, Daniel Craig, is only 41. Wikipedia confirms this.

I think I have discovered a new benchmark for deciding you are getting old: when James Bond is significantly younger than yourself.

Cranky old man

Gore Vidal: ‘We’ll have a dictatorship soon in the US’ - Times Online

Is it possible for Gore to sound any crankier? A sample:

America has “no intellectual class” and is “rotting away at a funereal pace. We’ll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn’t realise how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is...

His voice strengthens. “One thing I have hated all my life are LIARS [he says that with bristling anger] and I live in a nation of them. It was not always the case. I don’t demand honour, that can be lies too. I don’t say there was a golden age, but there was an age of general intelligence. We had a watchdog, the media.” The media is too supine? “Would that it was. They’re busy preparing us for an Iranian war.”...

Has he met Obama? “No,” he says quietly, “I’ve had my time with presidents.” Vidal raises his fingers to signify a gun and mutters: “Bang bang.” He is referring to the possibility of Obama being assassinated. “Just a mysterious lone gunman lurking in the shadows of the capital,” he says in a wry, dreamy way.

Restless youth (with some justification)

Gulfnews: Saudi Arabia flogs teenagers after rare riots in eastern region

Saudi Arabia flogged a group of teenagers after a rare riot in the eastern region of the kingdom in which shops and restaurants were ransacked, a witness and local newspapers said on Tuesday.

Human rights activists and liberals condemned Monday's flogging, which Saudi newspapers said happened after groups of young people smashed windows of restaurants and shops in Khobar on Saudi national day last week.

Quite reasonably, the suggestion is that youth has nothing to do in that country:

"This terrible event reflects the need to allow more space for the youth in terms of sport clubs, movie theatres and recreation facilities," said columnist Abdullah Al Alami, who lives in Khobar.

Restaurants, movie theatres and concerts are banned in the Gulf state, while many restaurants and sometimes even shopping malls cater to families only.

Religious police roam streets to make sure no unrelated men and women mix.

"Young males are shunted to the street, with nothing to do and no place to go," former US diplomat John Burgess said in his Saudi blog "Crossroads Arabia".

A strange version of dementia

Younger onset dementia - Health Report

Here's an interesting article which deals with a type of dementia I hadn't heard of before: young onset frontotemporal dementia:

John Hodges: Frontotemporal dementia means it's affecting the frontal lobes predominantly and the main hallmarks of that are personality change and language deficits, which we call aphasia.

Lynne Malcolm: Give me an example of the sort of behaviour that might present in frontotemporal dementia?

John Hodges: Becoming socially inappropriate, saying embarrassing things, the type of things one might think but not say. You know, meeting somebody that you haven't seen for a long time and saying 'oh, you've put on a lot of weight,' or, you know, 'you're very fat since I saw you last time.' Or often rather sexually disinhibited comments, particularly the men, which is usually put down to, oh well, you know, one too many drinks. Because part of this disinhibition is that people often do start to drink too much alcohol. Problems with judgment, often making unwise decisions, becoming very gullible to scams and losing a lot of money, making bad investment choices, these are all symptoms that are related to us by families that we see.

This range of symptoms mean that the cause is often not recognised for some time. Instead, depression is usually first suspected. So what are the early signs?:

John Hodges: Well we don't want an outbreak of everybody with a little bit of an occasionally inappropriate thing being thought to have frontotemporal dementia, but I think a persistent change in character. I mean the one thing the families say about people with frontotemporal dementia is, you know, 'they are no longer the person they used to be. There's been a real change in their empathy and judgment.' So I think that's a very important hallmark.

And it turns out that a difficulty with understanding sarcasm is part of it too.

I wonder to what exact there is a degree of self awareness of the personality changes in the early stages.

Overall, a very unusual disease.

In other dementia news: playing a game in which you stand a good chance of repeated concussion is not a good idea.

Another Andy still alive

Andy Williams accuses Barack Obama of following Marxist theory

The only reason I link to this is because of my surprise that he is still alive. It's the same type of surprise I had last year when Andy Griffiths turned up still looking sprightly too.

Andy's face is looking suspiciously smooth, if that's a recent photo.

Different approachs

Scrubbing the Atmosphere - TierneyLab Blog - NYTimes.com

Apparently, an article in Science notes that research into technology to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is not getting government funding, but it may be able to make an economical contribution to the problem. Unfortunately, the article itself seems to be behind a paywall. (Is it about time that the science journals made all papers relevant to AGW and ocean acidification free to the public, as their contribution to public education on the topic?)

Another thing: a couple of year ago, I noted that there were a couple of suggestions on the 'net that CO2 from power stations could be turned into solid sodium carbonate. You would not have the problems associated with pumping liquid CO2 into the ground.

Is that idea completely without merit? Is that why we never seem to hear about it?

Not all ice after all

In my absence, I didn't get to mention how surprisingly pretty Iceland in summer looked in last week's Foreign Correspondent. It has grass and meadows? People swim there in summer? Who knew?

A question of maturity

Coming Out in Middle School - NYTimes.com

I haven't yet spotted any conservative comment on this lengthy NYT Magazine article about the increasing phenomena in America of very young adolescents "coming out" during Middle School, so I'll have to make my own.

The article is written by a young gay journalist who, while apparently very supportive of gay youth, does at least admit to some surprise that kids at that age (the article mentions mainly from 10 to 14 year olds) should be so confident of knowing or understanding their sexuality.

Indeed. Apart from the girl who decided she was bisexual at 10, and apparently went on a "date" with a girl soon after, if you read some of the conversation that goes on as a few young folk take the journalist around their Middle School, you get a strong sense of the teenage immaturity on display:

All three were members of the school’s G.S.A. “Even though this is a liberal area,” Alison explained, “it’s still hard to be gay at this school. Most people won’t even come to G.S.A. meetings because they don’t want people other than their close friends to know they’re gay or lesbians, even though straight people also come to meetings. I get called a lesbian all the time even though I’m not.” She continued, “People are totally paranoid.” She suggested that they “come up with some code words on the down low so we can tell you what’s up without anyone knowing what we’re saying!” (They settled on “paw” for gay and “woof” for bisexual.)

Hmm. Already we seem to have a couple of 12 year olds with an unhealthy, gossipy interest in other's sexuality, and resenting the fact that some other students resist the idea of being "out". Let's see how this pans out:

As we walked past the gym, a group of boys came rushing out. Justin pointed to a short, muscular eighth grader in a baseball cap. “Paw!” he said.

Alison looked surprised. “Isn’t he a woof?”

“No, he just thinks he’s a woof,” Justin said.

Amelia looked confused. “What does woof mean again?”

A minute later, they fixed their gaze on a boy sitting against a wall listening to his iPod. “Paw,” Alison told me. “I mean woof!”

“Yeah, he’ll make out with anyone,” Justin confirmed. “Totally bisexual.”

“No, he’s not!” Amelia said, apparently distraught by the news.

“Oh, stop getting all mad just ’cause you like him,” Alison told her. “Everyone knows he’s a woof.”

After pointing out a handful of girls who are “definitely woofs,” Alison turned to me and recalled a recent “lesbian moment” of hers. “I totally had the hots for this girl in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ ” she said with a giggle. “I was, like, ‘Whoa, I’m really attracted to you right now!’ ”

“Jesus was hot in that, too,” Justin offered.

(Odd that the last comment was left in, given the ire it will raise in some Christians.) But further down:

As we came to the end of our tour, we approached a handful of boys sitting in a circle on the pavement eating lunch. “Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof!” Justin said, barely able to contain himself. “They’re all woofs.” One boy heard him and turned to us. “What’s a woof?” he asked us.

“Never mind,” Justin said.

“I don’t think he’s really a woof,” Alison told me, referring to a boy in the circle. “I think he’s straight but just confused.”

“He’s not confused,” Justin assured her. “He’s confused,” he said, referring to another boy in the circle. “He doesn’t know what he is. He changes his mind a lot.”

I was certainly confused trying to keep track of it all, but Alison told me not to worry. “We can’t even keep up with who’s gay or bi and who’s into who, and we go to school here!” she said.

Are we supposed to feel good that there is an large support group movement (the GSA - Gay Straight Alliances - which are popping up in many American Middle Schools) for youngsters like this who spend their time assessing every passing person's sexuality? Justin, who I assume we are to believe is a gay boy in need of support, comes across as a pretty offensively immature individual who is happy to engage in exactly the type of labelling that is at the heart of "straight" bullying of "gays."

I'm not alone in finding the article doesn't exactly do some of the kids any favours by quoting them so clearly:

I have no doubt that the author meant to champion their pride and their cause, but along the way, certain passages (and especially quotes) come off as glib and disrespectful of the kids’ views of sexuality, magnifying their immaturity and forwardness for impact and humor.

If you ask me, the goal of preventing bullying (a worthy enough thing of itself) has swung way too far in the other direction if it is encouraging kids in the pre-teen to early teen range to concentrate on their sexuality, of whatever kind, at that age. Effective and strict rules against bullying on any grounds, including sexuality, should not be that hard to teach and enforce, surely, without the need for groups that seemingly encourage pre-pubescent sexuality self-analysis. The article, perhaps inadvertently, supports the concern that many kids simply do not at that age have the maturity to usefully engage in, or act upon, that sort of self analysis.

You should see the bathtub this goes with

Duck! › Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion

Follow that pod

Are Magnetically Levitating 'Sky Pods' the Future of Travel?

Of course it's a good idea: it's futuristic, involves levitation, and means you can say "I'm catching the pod today". Everyone wants to travel by pod, don't they?

Nomination for Nobel prize

I had often wondered who had invented the suitcase with wheels, as it has always seemed to me that he or she deserved fame, riches and the travelling public's eternal gratitude. Now I know: In the bag

Going up

Paul Sheehan makes some very good points which I had not realised about Australia's growing population, and the Rudd government's role in this.