Not sure what this proves...

Jason Soon yesterday tweeted with approval this article by the Grattan Institute arguing in favour of electricity network privatisation.   You know the story - private companies can run networks cheaper instead of the unionised government networks.

Yet one of the key tables in the article is this:

But surely this chart is hardly conclusive of the privatisation argument if the comparison is between government owned network Queensland and privately owned network Victoria.

Given the geography and population spread of Queensland, wouldn't you expect network costs to be substantially more expensive?   Yet they are clearly less than double, and the total cost of electricity is virtually identical.  

OK, people can point to the New South Wales vs Victoria columns (and I admit, it's hard to understand why the NSW network costs should be so much larger than Queensland;)  but the point remains - it seems to me the charts show that public ownership is capable of maintaining reasonable network costs and the same electricity costs to consumers.  

Update:  I see that The Australian is even worse - it runs a "fact check" that privatisation is definitely better for electricity prices - but when you click through to the graphs some of them actually show Queensland with smaller electricity costs than Victoria!

The comparisons they rely on most heavily are always about the rate of price increases over the years, including to the network costs, while conveniently ignoring where we are now at with actual prices to the consumer.  

Update 2:  After listening to John Quiggin on the radio this morning:  I should have also mentioned that South Australia did undergo a type of privatisation, yet has very high network costs for a very small and concentrated population, and substantially higher consumer prices.   How is this supposed to support the privatisation case?

Easily conned companies

I have never heard of this woman before, but given the contents of this report, I would be surprised if she turned out not to be an extraordinary fraud.

But what surprises me even more is that someone like her can get a publishing deal and (by the sounds of) a sweet deal with Apple, and those companies do not ask for the most basic of verifications that her claims are true. 

Well, I guess with Apple, Steve Jobs went all "alternative" on his cancer treatment, and fat lot of good it did him.  Maybe it's just in the company's genes, so to speak, to be gullible on matters relating to that illness.

Having second thoughts, Joe?

Hockey trial: 'I don't instruct or control' the North Sydney Forum

Somehow [he says with what he hopes readers will detect as understatement] I don't think the Hockey evidence is going all that well for him at his defamation trial.

Update:  has this been done before?  (I did see one with "Joke", but I thought this was more appropriate):

Now, the Hockey family seem such sensitive souls, I wonder if I should feel guilty about this?   But really, the guy lives in a $6 million Sydney mansion and has several other bits of real estate around the place, and a wife who is a good earner in her own right.    Why shouldn't he be ridiculed into what I would consider a happy, early retirement?   

The (uncertain) psychology of becoming a jihadist

ISIS and the Foreign-Fighter Phenomenon — The Atlantic

Here's a rather interesting article on the psychology of the foreign fighters joining ISIS.

I guess the situation is not entirely new - extreme ideologies have long attracted the unhappy outsider who desires a sense of belonging - but as with climate change denialism, I think it is a bit overlooked that the rapid promulgation (and continual repetition ) of the ideology because of the internet is a novel element. 

The internet is a pretty wonderful thing, but I don't think that anyone speculating on where it would lead us foresaw that it would also facilitate the outreach of some seriously dangerous ideas and ideology.

Local weather

It still seems unusually warm and humid in Brisbane for this time of year.  

I see that there is a cyclone watch for Far North Queensland, although no one seems to think it will affect the weather this far South.    Yet the nights have been still and clammy - it feels like the prelude to a cyclone even down here.

(And by the way, these new "wind speed visualisations", one of which is at the previous link, are very cool, no?) 

In other, not so local weather, (unless you live in the Arctic Circle, I guess)  there is considerable interest in the fact that the winter maximum extent of Arctic ice seems to have occurred very early this year, and is also very low.   Whether this means that the summer ice minimum will be a new record is anyone's guess at this time, but the current conditions are at least consistent with such a possibility.   Only 6 months to go til we know.

There was also a new study out last week indicating that long term measurements, including those by submarine, show a very substantial thinning of Arctic ice.

And finally, I haven't seen the GISS  temperature figure for February yet, but even the UAH satellite series shows that, despite it being very cold in parts of the US, it was not a globally cold month at all.

Local reaction

It would appear that Republicans think they can win the Presidency on the over 50 vote alone...

Rand Paul says calling same-sex unions marriage 'offends' him and that gay marriage should have been replaced with 'contracts'

Surely any potential presidential candidate isn't wise to use the word "offend" in relation to his view of gay marriage if he or she wants the under 50 vote. 

Japanese tourism in two parts

1.  Puts a different spin on writing a "glowing" review:

Fukushima is looking to recruit someone willing to visit the prefecture and help publicize its tourist appeal on a blog or other social media platform.

The position pays ¥10,000 an hour. Applications should be filed by March 15.

The prefecture hopes to attract more tourists while working with the Fukushima Destination Campaign tourism promotion initiative, which will be launched jointly with East Japan Railway Co. (JR East), in April.

Only one person will be hired for the SMS-based campaign, and the job will last for one week. The successful candidate should visit several locations and is expected to work eight hours a day, updating his or her blog or Facebook page at least once a day.

The prefecture will pay up to ¥560,000 for the job.

2.  Here's what Japanese tourism really needs:  more ninja.

Japanese officials are enlisting one of the country’s best-known historical figures — the ninja, the martial arts masters and assassins of feudal times — to encourage tourism.

Governors and mayors from prefectures around the country traded their usual bland suits for ninja costumes Sunday to announce the launch of the Ninja Council.

The council sees local authorities forming alliances with tourism agencies to thrust the ninja — usually known for their ability to become nearly invisible — into the spotlight.

The council will gather and provide information on its website about ninja and about tourist destinations, organizers said. It will also respond to inquiries from home and abroad, and is scheduled to host events to boost the popularity of the dark warriors.

Doing arithmetic unconsciously

The smart unconscious � Mind Hacks

Interesting account here of an experiment which seems to show the unconscious mind can do arithmetic reasonably well.   (Actually, I kinda expected this might already have been known via other experiments.)

Still, you'll read it if your unconscious is interested...

Dream type 2

Last night provided an example of another type of dream - the story driven one,  which can be annoying not to finish, because I wanted to see how it ended.  

This one involved time travel, and a secret, but the secret was not revealed.  I did go into the future, but only into the same household.  The lead female, in this movie-like scenario, was still pleased to see me, which was nice.  Actually, now that I think about it, it seemed I was both actor and participant, but again the details are getting sketchy. 

Dream combinations

So, I was at the doctor's on Friday; yesterday both prawns and wine did come up in conversation with my wife; and last night I noticed a video on line that was something to do with a comic book store, but I didn't watch it.

I suppose that's why I woke up this morning from a dream in which I was in a doctor's surgery, and he had all these comic books laid out on the floor, while also mentioning that he sold wine - made from "air prawns".  In fact, everything he sold was made from "air prawns".  I said something about air prawns being related to silverfish (one of which, incidentally, had been spotted and killed in the house sometime in the last week.)  The dream then got into some protracted nonsense about removing a build up of ear wax, but the details are sketchy now.

Soon after I woke up, and while using the tablet in bed, I noticed a silverfish stationary on the wall beside the bed.  (It is now an ex silverfish.)

Look, it's not exactly up there with Jung's scarab story, and synchronicity related to insects is easier if you haven't put down any surface spray in the house for a while;  but I'm still not sure why my jumble box brain came up with "air prawn"...  

Quantum physics for birdbrains

From Physics World:

Scientists believe that some species of birds navigate using Earth's magnetic field – an idea known as magnetoreception that is backed up by experiments that show that captive birds will respond to changing magnetic fields. Understanding how this happens is tricky. Although electron spins in biological molecules are affected by the Earth's magnetic field, the size of the effect is so small that it should be completely washed out by thermal fluctuations. However, some quantum systems can be extremely sensitive to external magnetic fields, and this is why scientists believe that some birds could navigate by making quantum measurements.

One such bird is the European robin, which appears to have magnetoreceptor molecules located in its visual system. Physicists believe that the measurement process is triggered when a "cryptochrome" protein absorbs light. This causes a flavin adenine (FAD) nucleotide on the protein to form an excited singlet spin state, which involves two electron spins with a combined spin of zero. This state then decays in picoseconds to a "radical pair state" in which the spin of one of the FAD electrons is transferred to an amino acid that is located about 1.5 nm away along the length of the protein.

This transfer is believed to preserve quantum coherence and because each spin is isolated from its surroundings, the resulting radical pair remains in a coherent quantum state for times greater than 10 ns. This, physicists believe, should be long enough for a robin to make a quantum measurement.

The direction in the protein along which this separation occurs provides a spatial reference for measuring the Earth's magnetic field. In particular, the relative orientation of the separation direction and the Earth's field affects the rate at which the radical pair will decay to a protonated state that provides a signal to the bird's nervous system. Scientists believe that it is this protonated state – or subsequent chemical reactions – that links the bird's sensory system to the magnetic-field measurement.

Ticks and a terrible allergy

I was catching up on some episodes of Catalyst last night, and came across the fascinating, if worrying, story of how it has recently been discovered that tick bits (on humans) can lead them to developing an allergy to red, mammalian meats.   What an incredibly annoying allergy that would be to develop! 

The story sounds so improbable, I wondered for a moment whether it was an April Fools show.

But now that I Google it, I see the topic got some publicity in 2013, but I had missed it back then.  Here's a medical journal article about it.

The show also displayed the new recommendation for how to remove a tick - by freezing it with one of the few skin freezing products you can now apparently get from the pharmacy.

This was therefore a really significant show.   (And, I note, that there is no equivalent of any type on commercial networks.)

Unexpected consequences

Drought-Stricken Sao Paulo Battles Dengue Fever Outbreak - WSJ

It turns out that restricting the water supply to a city in drought causes people to store it in in buckets and containers that then breed mosquitoes that spread a disease that is more common when it is wet.

An immature and churlish government

1.  Abbott must stop sacking Labor appointees | The Australian


2.   The Coalition is refusing to guarantee funding to scientific research in Australia, threatening over 1,700 jobs and 27 research facilities.

If you ask me...

...there is actually too little public interest in what the bright spots on Ceres are.

The thing that seems most peculiar to me is that there brightness seems to persist as the asteroid rotates in a way that doesn't look quite like a simple reflection from a flat bright spot.  (OK, it's a video from a nutty UFO source,  but I think its a genuine close up.)

And:  here is one of the "possible" explanations as listed on Cnet:

 6. Aliens' solar concentrators. In a 2008 TED talk, physicist and futurist Freeman Dyson suggested that the dwarf planets of the outer solar system, near Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, would be a good place to look for life. Dyson thought that although finding it might be unlikely, it might not be that hard to search if we simply looked for the reflection of the mirrors and lenses that any life forms would surely need to concentrate sunlight to survive on places like Europa and beyond. It sounds far out, but could it be that we've just found some ancient, abandoned solar concentrators even closer to home than Dyson imagined?

Weird experiences noted

When Things Happen That You Can’t Explain - NYTimes.com

Another big problem with smoking

Smokers responsible for increase in Adelaide house fires 

Wow.  The figures are really surprising:

An alarming rate of house fires linked to cigarettes in South Australia has prompted the Metropolitan Fire Service (MFS) to issue a public warning to smokers.

Since January 1 there have been 47 house fires linked to cigarettes and smoking with firefighters responding to about 160 cigarette-related fires each year.

Commander of community safety and resilience with the MFS, Greg Howard, said he
was concerned by the spike in such fires so far this year.

"If we keep going at this rate we're going to pass our annual level of house
fires caused by cigarettes by the middle of the year," Mr Howard said.

A misleading headline

No link found between psychedelics and psychosis 

Read the article and my point should be clear.   I would have thought the sub-editors for Nature would be more careful with such stuff.

The article notes a condition I had not heard of:

“This study assures us that there were not widespread ‘acid casualties’ in the 1960s,” says Charles Grob, a paediatric psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has long has advocated the therapeutic use of psychedelics, such as administering psilocybin to
treat anxiety in terminal-stage cancer⁴.

But he has concerns about Krebs and Johansen’s overall conclusions, he says, because individual cases of adverse effects use can and do occur.

For example, people may develop hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), a ‘trip’ that never seems to end, involving incessant distortions in the visual field, shimmering lights and coloured dots. “I’ve seen a number of people with these symptoms following a psychedelic experience, and it can be a very serious condition,” says Grob.

Krebs and Johansen, however, point to studies that have found symptoms of HPPD in people who have never used psychedelics⁵.

 

No, I would not watch

Gogglebox Australia: Here's what it is and why you would watch

I guess I have seen bits of Gogglebox for a total of aobut 30 minutes now.   I think it is an awful in concept and execution. 

That is all.