Hollywood v The Red States

I thought Mark Steyn would have something witty to say in a review of "Brokeback Mountain", and he does:


"They don’t really talk much for the rest of the movie. But one chilly night, alone up on Brokeback Mountain, in the early hours in a pokey tent, something clicks. I’m no expert in gay seduction but I found this scene oddly unpersuasive: they go from opposite ends of the tent to penetrative anal sex in about six seconds....

And from that point on the film settles down into not so much a “gay western” but a gay version of Same Time Next Year:.."

I think more than one reviewer has called it a "chick flick" despite the gay protagonists. Which immediately made me think: if girlfriends and wives normally have a bit of trouble getting their male partners to go see a hetero chick flick, what chance do they have with a gay themed one?

The most remarkable thing about this year's Hollywood awards season is how much it looks like Hollywood has conspired to annoy the "Red States" in America. Brokeback, Syriana (CIA stuffs up the world), Transamerica (about a transexual), Munich (too sympathetic to Palestinians.) All we need is another Michael Moore documentary to make it a perfect liberal field.

To me, the current period in Hollywood seems a lot like the early to mid seventies, where (as I recall) there was not a lot of fun, happy or (for want of a better term) life affirming movies around. (Jaws and Star Wars changed that for about a decade.) Yet, critics praise that darker period as being very good creatively. Critics like the dark side more than the light, and so do Oscar voters, as the difficulty of a comedy actor winning one shows.

So let's hope Iraq improves soon, and the middle east does not blow up, so we can get back to more enjoyable movie fodder.

Further note: a post at Ed Driscoll made the same point about this year's films (as did many other places, I am sure), but Driscoll also points out that the very liberal Robert Altman is to get an award at this years Oscars. Hard to believe he won't be political in his acceptance.

How to deal with Iran?

The Australian: Leanne Piggott: The sensible option on Iran [January 19, 2006]

The article above seems to have a controversial take on how to deal with the Iranian problem. In short, Ms Piggott (whose general political views I am not familiar with) thinks the West should support an Iranian opposition movement which most Western governments still list as a terrorist organisation. She thinks that they should not be counted as such, because they have only killed government officials, and have renounced violence since 2001. Then we just have to wait for the government to be overthrown internally.

Problem is, if the government is as bad as she notes it has been in the past (with 120,000 people executed since 1980!), will an internal uprising ever happen? Just how many years can the rest of the world afford to wait?

Unlimited Wealth Just Around the Corner ...LOL

Astute readers may notice tiny Google Ads appearing here now. I'm not even sure how they work yet, these little bar headings at the top, except I am a little annoyed that the first name I see up there today is Noam Chomsky! (But clicking on it seems to lead no where at the moment.) Oh well, I think they said it can take a couple of days for the system to start working properly.

I note that there seems to be a significant chunk of the internet about how to make money from a blog, but most of it seems to be of the circular kind that involves showing other people how to make money from their blog. Maybe my best chance is to add a Paypal button and hope a mad millionaire who is particularly impressed with a post about cats being the cause of schizophrenia will reward me for saving the world.

Tip toe-ing around Iran

Europe softens line on Iran to woo swing votes - World - Times Online

From the article:

"British, French and German diplomats had begun drafting the referral resolution before the IAEA. Diplomats said that it called on Iran to “extend full and prompt co-operation to the agency” and called for “additional transparency measures”. But it made no reference to the threat of sanctions.

The softening of the European position seemed to be aimed at wooing Moscow and Beijing, which have strong commercial links with Iran and are deeply opposed to any measures that might harm them.

“The question of sanctions against Iran puts the cart before the horse,” said Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, whose country has a $1 billion (£566 million) contract to build Iran’s nuclear reactor. “Sanctions are in no way the best, or the only, way to solve the problem.”

His view was echoed by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman who favoured “patience” and the resumption of talks between Iran and the three leading European Union nations."

Global freezing

They're trying to break into jail as city heads for -40C - World - Times Online

(Article is about cold weather in Moscow, and Russia and Europe generally.)

Stupidest "conspiracy" ever?

Al Jazeera

See the link above for a bizarre "co-incidence or conspiracy" story from those loonies at al jazeera.com.

What "conspiracy" do they think this might prove? That the designer of the new US notes used to work for Mad magazine?

Creative research

The Scientist : Lancet study faked

Another medical research fraud is reported above, although the topic (effect of non-steroidal anti-infammatories on oral cancer) is unlikely to draw much public attention.

The type of fraud here is interesting, though. Namely - complete fiction:

" Last week, the hospital began investigating rumors that Sudbo had invented more than 900 individuals who served as the basis for a Lancet paper published on October 15, 2005....

"What I've been told is that he sat in front of his computer and made the whole dataset up and convinced his co-authors it was genuine," Horton said. "It's completely inexplicable." "

Sort of funny, really.

Someone please write to The Japan Times

The Japan Times Online

I generally like the Japan Times, but they have a regular contributor Roger Pulvers, an author and artistic gadabout who seems to live mainly in Japan now but still claims a deep understanding of the Australian social psyche.

His column about the Cronulla "race riots"(linked above) is appalling:

"In fact, the blame for Australia's worst race riots since the country abandoned its heinous White Australia policy more than 30 years ago can be laid squarely at the feet of Mr. Howard. Over his past nine years in office, Howard and his coterie of yes-ministers have effectively re-embraced an image of Australia as an Anglo-Celtic outpost in faraway Asia. While the United States and the United Kingdom have continued to integrate non-Anglo-Celtic minorities into their societies, Australia's enthusiasm for multiculturalism has been largely a colorful lifestyle veneer pasted over a structure of ingrained provincialism.

Thanks to Howard and his cohorts in power, however, even that veneer is being stripped away and the true color of the Australian ethos is resurfacing.

With its inhumane detention of refugees and asylum seekers, among them many children, its gung-ho participation in the American and British incursion into Iraq, its lack of a Bill of Rights guaranteeing freedom of expression, and its newly reinforced sedition laws, Australia is now arguably the Western world's least democratic democracy."

Oh please.

Kos: "but they started it!"

Kos of Daily Kos fame does not like the suggestion that maybe he and his ilk are inadvertently helping Bush.

Amusingly, he says:

"We are a reaction to the politics of personal destruction pioneered by the right's Clinton-hating brigades, the vile and corrosive rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and company, and the politics of demonization which the Right practices against blacks, immigrants, and gays."

So, he and his followers decide to fight that by going into what would have to be the most extreme, vitriolic and fact-resistant sloganeering and abuse against a US administration I would say the world has ever seen, even at a time the country has faced an attack on a scale it hasn't seen since WW2?

Surely the height of personal attack against Clinton was the rumours of his involvement in a murder. But who ever took that seriously? On the other hand, Kos has helped convince a large part of the world that Bush is a murderer of tens of thousands, and a complete idiot to boot.

Kos comes across as is an immature prat who might come to realise it one day; hence his sensitivity to the idea that he may be helping the Republicans. If you want to read a journalist profile of him, which comes out as far from flattering, see here.

A sample:

"The conventional wisdom is that a Democratic Party in which Moulitsas calls the shots would cater to every whim of its liberal base. But though he can match Michael Moore for shrillness, the most salient thing about Moulitsas's politics is not where he falls on the left-right spectrum (he's actually not very far left). It's his relentless competitiveness, founded not on any particular set of political principles, but on an obsession with tactics —and in particular, with the tactics of a besieged minority, struggling for survival: stand up for your principles, stay united, and never back down from a fight. '“They want to make me into the latest Jesse Jackson, but I'm not ideological at all,'” Moulitsas told me, '“I'm just all about winning.'” "

Great.

Where is Kim Jong Il?

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Kim-spotters hunt elusive leader

He's gone walkabout in China, apparently. Good article about it in The Guardian link above.

Mark Steyn again

Ham-handed Dems didn't lay a glove on Alito

Thank God we don't have a similar process for the appointment of High Court judges that the US has for its Supreme Court. It seems a huge waste of time.

Mark's column on the Alito hearings is his usual fun read, but I wanted to point out his end paragraph:

"Michael Barone made a characteristically sharp analysis the other day about the political impact of the Internet: "The left blogosphere has moved the Democrats off to the left, and the right blogosphere has undermined the credibility of the Republicans' adversaries in Old Media. Both changes help Bush and the Republicans." That's very well put. On the left, new media have only yoked the Dems ever more tightly to old weaknesses -- not least on national security and foreign policy. This November will be another bust."

Sounds a plausible analysis.

Attention men

Curry And Cauliflower Could Halt Prostate Cancer

Interesting story about promising research on natural products being good against prostate cancer.

Personally, I think cauliflower is one of the blandest vegetables, but I quite like it curried as a side dish with an Indian meal. (I like plain broccoli though, and get plenty of that too.) So I trust I am doing my prostate good. (That's an odd sentence for a blog.)

The blandest vegetable of all time, though, has to be the choko. If you have never heard of it, don't bother looking it up. Green watery mush.

Theo Dalrymple on murder, and some other thoughts

Dalrymple is always an interesting read, and he has been diagnosing the deterioration in British society from his psycho/social point of view for some time. In the Australian today, he talks of the "sameness" of your common domestic murderer, for whom he has written quite a few reports for court purposes. His overall impression:

"I am overwhelmed by a sense of the unfitness for life of all the participants in these sordid dramas: their main problem was that they had not the faintest idea how to live and yet - this is the hallmark of modernity - they were plentifully supplied with ego.

They had received no guidance from religion, naturally enough, since God is dead for them, and never has been very much alive. As for social convention, it has not so much been destroyed as turned inside out. The poor who once prided themselves on such things as respectability, cleanliness, honesty, orderliness and thrift, often in the most difficult circumstances, now pride themselves on their bohemianism. Disorder and chaos are a metonym for freedom and authenticity. But they are bohemians without being artistic, and the result is a squalor scarcely credible in times of supposed prosperity."

My only problem with his writing is that, while he may be good at the diagnosis, I don't recall him suggesting solutions.

Tony Blair, being of the Left (well, for certain purposes anyway) does believe in the "nanny State" solution, but it's hard to imagine this working. Mind you, I am not sure what the solution is myself, except that it seems that those on the Left inadvertently aggravate the problem by their emphasis on government being the solution to every social problem, rather than individual accepting more personal responsibility.

By the way, this leads me to get off my chest something that has bugged me for years. I want to defend Margaret Thatcher's famous line "there is no society, only individuals". I took it to mean that to always talk about things being good for society overall is typically an idealist's line, which can (at least in extreme socialism) result in toleration of all sorts of evil against individuals provided it has a good intention of being for the benefit of society overall. I think Thatcher's comment was directed towards emphasising the need to look at the effect of policy not on the overall benefit of the group, which can often be difficult to clearly ascertain anyway, but on individuals, on the assumption that you have happy individuals, you will have a happy society.

Of course, the Left took it to mean that she was emphasising individual greed over a 'common good', and her wording probably nnecessarily left that attack open. But I think she was just emphasising individual happiness, which is quite a different thing. She also presumably did not share the assumption of some on the Left that an individual succeeding always means there is someone else who is a loser.

On the whole issue of the problem of idealism and socialism, some recent posts over at Catallaxy by Andrew Norton have been very good on this, and my comments on Thatcher were brought to mind by his post here. I liked the comment by Rob on 10 January, and hope he doesn't mind my extracting it as a whole:

"The natural place for an idealist is on the left: if you believe the world is wicked, unjust and unfair, and is there for the making better of it, where else - with the decline of conventional Christian beliefs in the social and personal efficacy of of good works - would you go? The task of governments, in the eyes of the left, is to right social wrongs, and make the world a better place. A subtle, unacknowledged sub-text is that it makes the world a better place of the believers - often the urban, affluent middle class, especially that part supported by public moneys (although they usually nod in the direction of the workers).

That’s why, as some have pointed out above in the thread, they tended to think in terms of intentions, not outcomes. If socialist governments meant well, were idealistic - or gave the world a reasonable excuse for believing them to be so - the downstream results could be (largely) forgiven, or written off as unfortunate. This is also what sits behind the exculpatory view that socialism was a good idea but one that was imperfectly executed. All intelligently articulated ideas look good on paper. It’s what happens when they are put into practice that counts.

The reality is that you can’t make society fair, equitable or just by executive fiat. You have to wait for deeper processes thtn those amenable to government coercion to do the job. Amazingly (and quite against idealist expectations), it’s worked pretty well in the capitalist west - though one cannot discount the role of the left in civilising what would otherwise have been probably a much more savage process. You can’t make people better than they want to be, but, fortunately, most people seem to have a predeliction for decency, honesty and fairness - possibly because, as some of the theorists for capitalism argue, it is actually in their own interests to be so.

Socialism ‘in theory’ was an ideal. No wonder it attracted idealists. There is no better Australian example than Manning Clark. No fool, and not unaware of what the Soviets had done in recent decades, he still managed to hoodwink himself (in ‘Meeting Soviet Man’) into believing that a totalitarian police state offered more hope for a better world, and a better ‘man’, than the liberal democracy that generously fed and watered him."

Can Anne Summers use the internet?

In the Sydney Morning Herald today, left luvvie Anne Summers writes that the New York liberal left is getting tired of Hillary Clinton because she is cuddling up too much to some on the Right to try to improve her overall popularity.

Anne includes this curious sentence:

"Clinton is also criticised for her seeming shift to the centre on abortion rights, for her loony belief that video games such as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas have secret sex scenes embedded in them, and for her recent co-sponsoring of a new flag protection act that, said Andersen, will make flag burning and inciting riots "even more illegal than they already are".

Hmm, I thought it was well established that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas did have a sex game in it (until it became well known anyway.)

Sure enough, but a few seconds on Google leads to this article on Wikipedia, which appears to confirm that it was indeed included as a "secret" part of the game, at least in the sense that the scene was on the game, even if a mod was needed to access it. (A wikinews story even has a link to video that shows the scene, although it seems from the previous link that the nudity may have been added by someone else.)

There seem to be thousands of links from Google confirming this story.

Last week it was Anthony Albanese, this week Anne Summers. Those on the Left seem to have particularly poor "googling" skills at the moment.

Those tough europeans

OpinionJournal - Featured Article

From the WSJ link above, about the EU's weak response to Iran refusing to play ball with its nuclear facilities:

"...even as Iran announced plans to break the IAEA seals on the centrifuges of its Natanz uranium enrichment facility, Austrian Chancellor (and temporary president of the European Union) Wolfgang Schüssel warned that it would be premature to discuss sanctions. Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, added that "every effort must be made to convince the Iranians to return to the previous situation, to negotiations." Mr. Solana's idea of getting tough with the Iranians is apparently to beg them to show up for lunch."

Mouthing off in Europe over a Coke and Mac

Gar�on! Un Coca-Cola, S'il Vous Pla�t - Europeans hate America these days. So, why are they still buying our stuff? By Daniel Gross

Above is an amusing article from Slate about how it would appear that Europeans, despite being very anti America at the moment, are not exactly punishing American brands. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Doctor Dog

New Scientist Breaking News - Dogs as good as screening for cancer detection

Dogs are very, very useful.

At last, the electronic book comes of age?

Sony Reader Electronic Paper Book: Science Fiction in the News

"Electronic paper" seems to have been coming for years and years. Finally, a product is released using it (see link above).

It looks very cool to me. I was going to say "why doesn't it play MP3s too", but then on the Sony page itself (which is linked from the article above) it confirms that it does. I presume they could issue e books with "mood music" to listen to while you read too. Or background sound effects, if an entire page is set in a storm, for example. (Just a thought...)

Now cost: a device that can carry 80 books around (or more with added memory, it seems) is pretty damn convenient, especially for school or uni students. (Also pretty disastrous to leave on the bus seat by accident!) But how much would people pay for one? My guess: anything much above $450 to $500 (Australian $) might be pushing it.

Some more on climate change ...

Researchers Confirm Role Of Massive Flood In Climate Change

The link above talks about how it is believed that a massive flood of fresh water from North America into the Atlantic about 8,200 years ago did affect the ocean currents and reduce temperature suddenly in the northern hemisphere.

Interestingly, though, the study also says this:

"...the team's results showed that the flood had much milder effects around the globe than many people fear--including the dramatic shifts in climate depicted in the 2004 movie 'The Day After Tomorrow'.

According to the model, temperatures in the North Atlantic and Greenland showed the largest decrease, with slightly less cooling over parts of North America and Europe. The rest of the northern hemisphere, however, showed very little effect, and temperatures in the southern hemisphere remained largely unchanged. Moreover, ocean circulation, which initially dropped by half after simulated flood, appeared to rebound within 50 to 150 years.

"This was probably the closest thing to a 'Day After Tomorrow' scenario that we could model," said LeGrande. "The flood we looked at was even larger than anything that could happen today.""

Seems to be a good idea to live in the Southern Hemisphere.

Mark Steyn on Climate Change

Sorry, but I am short staffed at work at the moment, so blogging rate has suffered. (Actually, I have been involved in another forum in a semi-argument with a physicist over particle accelerators, micro black holes and the fate of the earth, which I will have to discuss in detail here one day soon.)

Anyway, in today's Australian, Mark Steyn gives some good reasons to be sceptical of the environmentalists on climate change, and makes mention of sea change rises that generally confirm my comments of a few posts back. (Incidentally, even if I do say so myself, I think I did a reasonable job of quickly debunking Labor's environment minisiter's policy launch last week, but no one in the right wing world of blogs that I visit seems to have noticed.)

On climate change generally I am more inclined to be a fence sitter; on the other hand, I can see no real sense in clinging to Kyoto, as it is indeed the politics of empty gesture at its worst.

Briefly on Narnia

I noted recently how the movie version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy seemed to me to get nearly everything wrong.

Happily, the first "Narnia" movie seems to get everything one would expect from the story close enough to 100% right.

I don't intend writing a review as such. There have been sufficient good ones in the media already, and I would mention David Edelstein's review in Slate as being pretty spot on. Strangely, I seemed to notice more hostile reviews in the British media than the American. See this one in The Times. But then, the Guardian review (as opposed to the Polly Toynbee commentary I posted on previously) gives it a "perfect" score. Strange, hey.

As the "positive" reviewers note, the movie differs from Tolkien in that it has a human intimacy (contributed no doubt by the fact that it has recognizeable humans in it!) Regular readers may recall I have no time for Tolkien at all. I guess that part of his appeal is due to the fascination that readers can develop with any really unique and detailed "universe" that writers of very lengthy fantasy (or science fiction) novels have to engage in.

However, with his review of Return of the King, Roger Ebert summarised well my whole objection to the LOTR (even though he still gave the movie 3.5 stars):

"There is little enough psychological depth anywhere in the films, actually, and they exist mostly as surface, gesture, archetype and spectacle. They do that magnificently well, but one feels at the end that nothing actual and human has been at stake; cartoon characters in a fantasy world have been brought along about as far as it is possible for them to come, and while we applaud the achievement, the trilogy is more a work for adolescents (of all ages) than for those hungering for truthful emotion thoughtfully paid for."

The funny thing is, even though the book and the movie are directed to a younger audience than Tolkien's, "Narnia" does have that emotional connection. For me, anyway.

Pacific Islands and Global Warming: does Albanese know how to use the internet?

Labor's Shadow Environment Minister Anthony Albanese, obviously looking for opportunities to get his face on the media during a quiet patch, made some surprising claims yesterday:

""It's quite clear whole countries could literally disappear under rising sea levels in the next decade; it's the pointy end of climate change, and it's happening in our region," Mr Albanese said."

Let's see, how many seconds does it take to google "sea level rises Pacific", and to reveal some interesting facts:

In 2000, the BBC reported:

"Ahead of this week's global warming conference in The Hague, Pacific nations were told about the results of a scientific reassessment of historical tide-gauge data in their region.

The study found that Pacific-wide sea levels had risen at an average rate of about 0.8 millimeters per year. The trend was measured using only those recording stations with hourly data stretching back more than 25 years.

Dr Wolfgang Scherer, director of the National Tidal Facility (NTF) of Flinders University, South Australia, which undertook the review, told BBC News Online that the much larger increases in global sea level predicted by some climate models were not apparent in their regional data.

"There is no acceleration in sea level rise - none that we can discern, at all," he said."

This would suggest that within a decade, the sea level might rise by 8 mm. Ok, let's be generous, and allow 12 mm, or half an inch. (Or let's go the whole hog and allow for nearly an inch.) If that's enough to sink an island, I would think that they must already use boats instead of cars most days of the year.

So where does the hysteria about Tuvalu sinking some from? Try this article (which also shows that for some recent years, the sea level around the island nation actually dropped!):

"Tuvalu'’s 10,500 people live on nine tiny atolls. They are densely packed; 403 people per square kilometer; Australia has 2.4, New Zealand just under one. Kiribati has 111 people per square kilometer....

Scherer says data from Funafuti shows no evidence of sea level rise. '“As at June 2001, based on the short-term sea level rise analyses ... for the eight years of data return show a rate of 0.0 mm per year, i.e. no change in average sea level over the period of record.'”

They found a major anomaly in 1998, an El Nino year, when sea levels actually fell by 35 centimeters (14 inches). The monitoring project will next year install satellite monitoring equipment that will determine whether the atolls themselves, as distinct from the sea, rise and fall....

The historical record, both recent and pre-historic, shows storm surges, which bring the sea across the land, destroying gardens, have long been a fact of life. In places like Kiribati and Majuro, for example, the highest point above sea level is on bridges 11 feet and 20 feet high, respectively; virtually everyone lives about five feet above sea level.

'“That is the over-riding psychology behind it,'” Scherer says, adding that population pressures are aiding the political drive to move people to Australia and New Zealand. '“Sea levels have been rising since the last ice age.'”"

Of course, to the Green movement, any problem with low lying islands is (at least implicitly) the fault of the industrialised West. See this from the Green Left Weekly of barely a month ago:

"On November 24, plans were put in place to evacuate the 980 people living on the six Carteret atolls, after they battled for decades with the effects of climate change. The Papua New Guinean government will move 10 families at a time to Bougainville, 100 kilometres away. Within two years the Carterets will be uninhabitable, and they are likely to be completely submerged by 2015. "

Clearly, it is utter rubbish to suggest that islands currently facing problems with the sea level are in trouble because of rises that have occurred in recent years. Indeed, Anthony Albanese's claim that countries could disappear within the next decade is also bilge, but he obviously doesn't bother checking things himself.

So even if you fear that the Liberal government's Ian Campbell has become too much of a captive of the global warming crowd, at least he is still ahead in the common sense game:

"Responding to Labor's calls for the Government to accept environmental refugees from the Pacific whose countries were flooded as a result of climate change, the Minister for the Environment, Ian Campbell, branded the suggestion absurd."

Of course, the fact that a significant percentage of the population probably does believe that islands are already in trouble from global warming is also caused by the media being happy to uncritically report such press releases (and only follow with a denial from the other side the next day, after some mud has no doubt already stuck in impressionable minds.) The media's performance in this area is pathetic.

UPDATE: It gets worse. Albanese slags off at the government's response as follows:

" 'Climate change is real and it's hurting our Pacific neighbours now," Mr Albanese said.

"PNG citizens on the Carteret Islands have become the world's first climate change refugees.

"Tuvalu is expected to be uninhabitable because of rising seas levels over the coming decade."

He said Tuvalu had twice called for help from the federal government and been twice rejected....

Greens leader Bob Brown said Senator Campbell was ignoring the evidence about rising sea levels as a result of human induced global warming.

"The minister's claim that there is no evidence to suggest that Pacific island populations are in any imminent danger of being displaced by rising sea levels is absurd," he said.

"The threat is real and imminent.""

Bob, Anthony: you seem to picking one area of the global warming debate where the current effect (namely, next to nil) is actually clear and entirely measureable. Where is the evidence for the disaster for Tuvalu within a decade??

UPDATE 2: From Wikipedia:

"To date, sea level changes have not been implicated in any substantial environmental, humanitarian, or economic losses. Previous claims have been made that parts of the island nations of Tuvalu was "sinking" as a result of sea level rise. However, subsequent reviews have suggested that the loss of land area was the result of erosion during and following the actions of 1997 cyclones Gavin, Hina, and Keli. [23] [24] The islands in questions were not populated. Reuters has reported other Pacific islands are facing a severe risk including Tegua island in Vanuatu, data shows no net sea level rise. According to Patrick J. Michaels, "In fact, areas to the west such as [the island of] Tuvalu show substantial declines in sea level over that period."[25]"

This year's "death by mochi" toll

Mochi mortem

See the above link for the ever interesting Japundit's story on how many people died this year in their attempt to enjoy traditional New Year mochi (cooked rice pounded until it is a soft, sticky, stringy mess) in Japan.

In my experience, which is not vast, eating fresh mochi as a sweet (with red beans in the centre, say) is not a problem. But eating very soft mochi in soup has sometimes made me gag, because unless you are careful to swallow it all in one lump, it can string out with part of it heading south while still attached to part at the back of your throat. Get the idea?

Anyway, every year several people in Japan choke to death, usually the elderly, while eating it on New Years Day. If 4 died in Tokyo, I would guess that maybe 20 or more died across the nation.

A long post on some movies

* Regular readers might remember my skepticism about "King Kong" being a runaway success at the box office, despite early positive reviews. (Who needs a 3 hour version of a B grade story, no matter how good it looks.) Looks like I was right. ("Narnia" is now at $225 million in the States; "Kong" is $175 million.)

I haven't seen Narnia yet.

* Did see "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" on cable the other night. Although I was tired, and that can certainly dull one's enjoyment of a film, it still seemed to me that it got everything nearly perfectly wrong. All of the characters seemed underplayed, as if a flat delivery would somehow work better than the panic-y, eccentric and much more charming performances given in the TV series. Actually, I read somewhere in the reviews of the movie that Douglas Adams did not like the TV series, and I am curious to know why.

The movie also had far too little of Marvin the robot (for me the funniest character in the book) and far too few extracts from the Guide itself.

The changes in plot were more or less acceptable, and Trillian herself was quite charming, but this movie was for me a very big disappointment overall. It got 60% approval on Rottentomatoes too. How?

* Spielberg's Munich has attracted a lot of controversy in the States. I predict that David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz (from the ABC's "At the Movies") will give it high marks, as it apparently can be read as a pretty much "liberal" take on the Middle East conflict, and any movie with a "liberal" sensibility gets an automatic extra star from those two reviewers.

I still have high hopes that I will like the film, but then I happen to think that Spielberg could direct the 'phone book and make it compelling. Even a flawed Spielberg film can be interesting for the ways in which it is flawed. (There is perhaps one exception: "Always", which was both a box office and critical failure in the 1980's. For me, it is the only truely forgettable film he has ever made.) Anyway, Roger Ebert has 2 interviews with Spielberg defending "Munich" from some of the "political" criticisms of it.

* Speaking of Ebert, who writes reasonable reviews, but also has a very liberal outlook and somewhat erratic tastes; he absolutley loathed the recent Australian horror flick "Wolf Creek", giving it zero stars.

David Stratton, meanwhile, shared most of Eberts' reservations, saying this in his review:

" But I do think the film is incredibly sadistic. I think it's foul in some ways in terms of violence. I think it really is thoroughly nasty."

Yet he still gave it 4 stars, though saying he was very "conflicted" about it.

The star rating can be accounted for by his habit of giving any Australian film an automatic 1 to 1.5 star increase simply because it is Australian, and that he probably knows lead actor John Jarrett very well. One suspects that if this had come out of America, local sensitivities would not have overwhelmed his obvious repugnance to the strong violent sadism (most notably directed against the female characters too) of which he and Ebert both complain.

I have never understood the appeal of "horror". Suspense and frights can be satisfying without being gruesome, and I don't understand how writers or directors can take satisfaction from being involved in creating that genre.

Some counter-intuitive points about smoking

Peter Martin's article in the Sydney Morning Herald today was very interesting. Some highlights ('bold" is mine):

"Then they [2 Melbourne Institute researchers] examined the effect of the extra bans on smoking in public places introduced in some states. They found that while these encouraged older Australians and the very young to quit, people aged 18 to 24 were actually less likely to quit in those states in which a ban had been introduced.

This "rebellion" effect appears to pop up all over the place when it comes to fighting smoking. It had been thought that increasing the price of cigarettes would cut the number sold and improve the health of smokers. It certainly cuts the number sold. In Australia, a price increase of 10 per cent cuts sales by about 4 per cent. But a price increase doesn't necessarily cut the amount of nicotine taken into smokers' bodies....

She [economist researcher Francesca Cornaglia] found that while increases in cigarette taxes did cut the number of cigarettes sold, they appeared not to cut at all the level of continine in smokers' saliva. As she put it: smokers were smoking fewer cigarettes but were smoking each one "more intensively"....

Banning smoking on public transport, in shopping centres and in schools appears to improve non-smokers' health. But banning it in places where smokers "go out", such as restaurants and bars, makes the health of non-smokers worse. It pushes smokers away from those establishments and back into their homes where they pump smoke into the air breathed by their children and loved ones. Cornaglia suggested a better public health measure would be to allow the creation of special smoking establishments where smokers could breathe smoke over each other."

I guess that is what bars used to be, except that non smokers wanted to use or work in them too.
All very interesting. While I never smoked, many in my family did for at least some time in their lives, and I have never felt fanatically against it; especially as going out to bars and nightclubs during my young adulthood (at a time they were still quite smokey) was not my "thing" anyway. However, the more I read about its health consequences, and hear of relatives and friends whose health now leads them to deeply regret their past habit, the more loathesome I feel the industry really is. Has any mad dictator anywhere yet tried banning it totally? I wonder what the unforeseen consequences of that would be?

Some cautious optimism on AIDS

news @ nature.com�-�AIDS at Christmas time�

The link above is to a more or less optimistic editorial in Nature on the increasing ability to fight AIDS, even in the poorest countries, with anti viral drugs.

Note that evil capitalism has not prevented this: "The issue of drug pricing has become less acute, as mechanisms have been established to supply HIV treatments at a reasonable cost." But stupidity is not helping, especially in South Africa:

"South Africa is one of the wealthiest countries on the African continent, but less than a fifth of the nearly 700,000 people who need drugs are receiving them. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the country's health minister, meanwhile continues to emphasize herbal remedies, most recently in a speech in Durban on 1 December."

Surprisingly, the Wikipedia entry about her notes that Tshabalala-Msimang is a real doctor, with medical training from Russia and Europe. It's a wonder that Queensland Health didn't offer her a job!

More bad news on Iran

It seems somewhat ironic that the Guardian is currently running hard with the "nuclear danger from Iran" issue.

Have a look at these 3 recent Guardian stories:

"Tehran ends freeze on nuclear fuel research"

" The Iranian government has been successfully scouring Europe for the sophisticated equipment needed to develop a nuclear bomb, according to the latest western intelligence assessment of the country's weapons programmes." (The intelligence assessment is that of the Europeans, so it presumably won't be seen quite as dubiously as intelligence from the US.)

"Intelligence report claims nuclear market thriving" From this story, note the following:

"...it is not surprising that much of the document focuses on Iranian activities - not only in the nuclear field, but in bio-chemical and conventional weapons, notably its "very ambitious" missile programmes. The document lists more than 200 Iranian companies, institutes, government offices and academic outfits said to be engaged in weapons research, development and procurement, and mostly subordinate to the defence ministry in Tehran's armed forces logistics department.

Russia, which has just clinched a billion-dollar missile deal with Iran, is identified as crucial to Iran's military programmes, especially the missile development; 16 Russian companies and academic institutes are named as helping and profiting from the Iranian military effort. They range from the Glavkosmos space agency to St Petersburg's Technical University.

The Iranians, as well as the Pakistanis and the Syrians, are also benefiting from North Korean military prowess and exports, the document says, noting that "the export of arms equipment is currently reckoned to be North Korea's most important source of income."

So the "axis of evil" comment by George W Bush is seemingly given support via stories in the Guardian. How interesting...

Christopher Hitchens keeps at it

Are Elections Democratic? - Dictatorships are hardly preferable. By Christopher Hitchens

See the link for Christopher Hitchen's latest reasoned attack on the anti-war isolationists who are determined to be pessimistic about every apparent advance in Iraq.

For those who still smoke

Just One To Four Cigarettes Daily Triples Risk Of Dying Of Heart Disease Or Lung Cancer

I think I missed this one from September last year. I find this study pretty surprising too, as I think a lot of people would assume that a couple of cigarettes after dinner would do so little harm as to not be worth worrying about. Seems clearly wrong...

For those who received chocolates at Christmas

A Few Squares Of Dark Chocolate A Day May Stave Off Artery Hardening In Smokers

The above story seems to indicate a pretty remarkable effect of the consumption of dark chocolate, at least in smokers:

"After two hours, ultrasound scans revealed that dark chocolate significantly improved the smoothness of arterial flow, an effect which lasted for eight hours. Blood sample analysis also showed that dark chocolate almost halved platelet activity. Antioxidant levels rose sharply after two hours.

White chocolate had no effect on endothelial cells, platelets, or antioxidant levels.

Dark chocolate has more antioxidants per gram than other foods laden with the substances, such as red wine, green tea, and berry fruits, say the authors, who suggest that the beneficial effects of dark chocolate lie in its antioxidant content.

"...Only a small daily treat of dark chocolate may substantially increase the amount of antioxidant intake and beneficially affect vascular health," conclude the authors. "

One thing to note, though, is that this was very dark chocolate (74% cocoa solids), and from what I can gather most commonly sold dark chocolates are maybe around the 30 to 40% mark. I did try a 70 or 80% one from a specialty shop once, and it was rather on the bitter side. I think Lindt might sell a very high proportion one too; maybe it tastes better.

New Year Greetings for 2006

I hope to resume a more or less "normal" rate of blogging soon.

I note that the on-line magazines such as Slate and Salon have a fair amount of "filler" at this time of year. These are sometimes good and interesting, though, and here are some I recommend:

From Slate: a warning to all those who have a romantic idea of opening a coffee shop. (Sure it is written from a New York perspective, but I bet the same thing happens here all the time.)

Also from Slate: a woman has a go at being an inflatable mascot at a basketball game. Quite a few funny lines (and I share her mental inability to take any significant interest in team sports. Or even solo ones.)

From Salon: a writer who stumbled into being a newspaper food critic for a couple years explains how debilitating the job became.

Speaking of food critics, I have always enjoyed listening to Alan Saunders on Radio National. He seems too smart to not share the same reservations that the Salon article writer has about the whole field of "food porn", yet he keeps at it (broadcasting and sometimes writing on food in all its aspects) for years.

Some Christmas Thoughts

1. God it's hot. (I was reminded that Christmas day 2004 in Brisbane was not all that hot. Unfortunately, this has been wiped from my mind in view of the other 9 stinking hot and humid Christmas Days in the last decade.)

2. I will not have a mid life crisis that involves become a caterer. Estimating the amount of food to be consumed by 15 adults and 4 children proved to be impossible.

4. This years game of "how long can we keep eating that ham" is currently on.

5. Giving ham skin to a dog might make it vomit.

6. I just remembered now - I forgot to put out the party poppers. (That's about number 20 on a list of things we forget to serve or do on Christmas day.)

7. I now have to join the rest of the world and read "The Da Vinci Code".

8. One of the local TV stations was so desperate for something to show on the Christmas Day evening news that they went to the international terminal at the airport and filmed people arriving and being hugged by their relatives.

9. Spa pools spend most of their time broken.

10. If they moved Christmas Day to 18 December, maybe most small businesses could close for 2 weeks instead of only one. Would suit me.

More worrying news about Iran

Waiting for the rapture in Iran - Yahoo! News

Iran's president is a real worry. (See the Christian Science Monitor story above.)

Why oil rich countries can stay poor

The curse of oil | The paradox of plenty | Economist.com

An interesting article in the Economist (link above) on the "curse of oil". This kind of backgrounder is what this magazine does best.

Tell us something we didn't know already..

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist... 12/14/2005

And you thought Qantas in flight service was bad...

In the Sydney Morning Herald:

"An off-duty pilot was sentenced to 14 years in jail today for killing Indonesia's top human rights activist in a crime judges said was politically motivated.

Judge Cicit Sutiarso did not say whether the court believed that Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto was acting on someone else's orders when he placed a lethal dose of arsenic in food served to Munir Thalib on a Garuda airlines flight to Amsterdam on September 7, 2004."

What I want for Christmas

These are all from The Red Ferret Journal :


To quote: "Ladies, spoil the man in your life this year with the LBC (Laid Back Computing) 2000 computer rig. Your cuddly couch potato will thank you with tears in his eyes as he unpacks his slob prop and accessories, just watch his cute little love handles jiggle with joy. $1600.00 says ‘I adore you’ better than any cardiac arrest machine ever will."

Next:



A 3 foot flying model rocket with a little digital video camera in its nose. Every geek needs one.

And finally:


The sound proof microphone, perfect for karaoke practice!

Your very own Bio Dome Habitat for Christmas

SmithsonianStore.com - Bio Dome Habitat

Looks sort of cool, but a little too small. An evil boy could have fun putting one sort of animal in one part, and its food in another.

Scary thoughts before Christmas

The Officers' Club: The Top 20 Nuclear Close-Calls

From the interesting Officers' Club blog, the article linked above about the top 20 times the Earth nearly went "kaboom" makes for interesting, although not exactly Christmas-y, reading.

While talking death and destruction, I am still reading more about the possible dangers of the new CERN particle accelerator, and maybe can post about it soon. (It still doesn't look good to me.)

Some bits I like on the Sydney problem

The Australian: James Morrow: Self-loathing is the newest hate crime [December 19, 2005]

James Morrow's piece in yesterday's Australia on the Left's response to the Cronulla "race riots" (linked above) was good. I like the Germaine Greer teenager analogy very much.

Gerard Henderson covered much the same ground in the Sydney Morning Herald today, but with a bit of historical perspective too.

And more on Stephen Crittenden (Radio National) watch: I missed most of it this morning, but I heard the very start of an interview with (I think) a historian who was talking about certain Australian 19th century race riots, with Stephen making the observation that, contrary to what commentators are saying, the race riots in Cronulla are not unusual in a historical context. Yes, it's just as if Australian society is exactly the same as it was in 1860. (Insert teeth grinding noises here.)

Yesterday, Stephen had on someone from St Vincent De Paul Society about their research indicating that costs of living increases hit the poor disproportionately. Funnily enough, I could find no mention of this research on Google News; but I do recall that the Society's researcher on poverty has come up with some pretty contentious reports in the past.

The Society might not be wrong about this - I don't know. But I would like some balance in the reporting, and not just the lefties and anti Howard crowd getting a free and disproportionate run during the Radio National summer. (He did give Howard's friendly critic - and Sex Discrimination Commissioner - Pru Goward a run this morning; I think maybe Stephen was disappointed that she didn't have much of a go at the Federal government ignoring her warnings on most matters this year. )

String theory query

New Scientist Nobel laureate admits string theory is in trouble - News

This snippet from New Scientist does not increase my confidence in the risk assessments of the new particle accelerator (see my post a few down on the possible risk to the Earth of running the new CERN facility.)

"Nature" says Wikipedia relatively accurate

Internet encyclopaedias go head to head : Nature

I found this story via Boing Boing. In short, in a blind review of articles by Britannica and Wikipedia by some scientist types, the Wiki was only marginally less accurate. Yay.

Sounds like a sorta fun gadget

The Fly Pentop Computer - How an educational toy became a hot holiday gadget. By Paul Boutin

Deep and meaningful...and funny

A Lazy Layman's Guide to Quantum Physics

Readers may note that the internet is an endless source of distraction for me. If I find current affairs for the day dull, I may end up checking out interpretations of quantum physics, just to see if I have missed something.

Today, I stumbled across the page linked above, which is a succinct and humorous guide to the different interpretations of quantum physics.

(Actually, I think it misses a relatively recent one called the "many minds" interpretation, but I am having trouble making any real sense out of that one at all.)

Let's at least try to pretend, Stephen Crittenden

Each summer, it seems that the ABC's Radio National gives Stephen Crittenden (who normally does the Religion Report) a chance to run the Breakfast show for a few weeks. He always irritates, as he makes no pretence at all to objectivity or to disguise his strong disdain of the Howard government.

Yesterday, it was a reference to Howard's "dog whistle politics" as being at part to blame for the Sydney "race" problems. No using the disingenuous (but at least attempted) disclaimer of "some would allege that.."

This morning, it was a question about David Hicks (repeated both to his Marine lawyer and Hick's father) saying that "wouldn't the release of David now that he will get a British passport just confirm that the only thing keeping him in prison was the Howard government's sheer bloody mindedness?" (This is not a direct quote, but I am confident it is close enough.)

Look, most of his Radio National listeners would take no offence; I am sure it would attract more lefties than right wing inclined. But that's not the point; a national broadcaster has to make some attempt at neutrality. The Breakfast show is not it's host's editorial style show; it never has been. Someone should make an official complaint against Crittenden - unfortunately I do not currently have the time.

A post on not posting

Seasonal duties are making it harder for me to get around to blogging. It's also a little harder to find stories at this time of year worth commenting on. Parliament is finished; the more important commentators head off to their Christmas parties and don't return until January or February; to fill in time, part of the media get into the ungratifying business of talking about whether "Christmas" is under attack. The Brisbane weather has also been hot, humid and stormy, with the added "fun" of extended blackouts.

I can't even find anything useful to add to the Cronulla "race riots" of the weekend. (Except for the observation that NSW Premier Iemma is remarkably uncharismatic in his television appearances. I didn't think Bob Carr was that great a media performer either, but at least you didn't get the impression that he needed prodding to stay awake during interviews.)

I also am still looking at whether tiny black holes that might be created at CERN from 2007 might destroy the Earth. It deserves a longer post than my last one, and Zoe Brain has not entirely convinced me not to worry.

The Iraq elections may enliven me, but at the moment I should concentrate more on getting more work done so there is some money for Christmas.

I should not joke about particle accelerators

The Potential for Danger in Particle Collider Experiments

See the link above, for a fairly recent, and credible sounding, explanation of how the new CERN accelerator may really mean the end of the earth.

Why is this not attracting attention? Has anyone mentioned the Fermi Paradox in relation to this issue too?

UPDATE: interested readers should have a look at my long Jan 06 post on this here.

One of the more interesting news stories on "Narnia"

USATODAY.com - C.S. Lewis' stepson keeps 'Jack's' magic alive

A particle accelerator ate my planet

New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - Astrophysicists weigh up risks of cosmic wipeout

You know, I am still a little worried about the use of new super big particle accelerators when it seems they don't really know what may turn up. (See the links at the side of the article.)

UPDATE: readers interested should check my much longer post on micro black holes (from January 06) here.

It's not just Tony

The Australian: Renate Klein: Abortion drug not the safest method [December 09, 2005]

Interesting article in the Australian today (see above) from someone who sounds ideologically a million miles from Tony Abbott, yet she sets out her reasons for opposing the early abortion drug RU486. The way she describes it the process of using the drug does sound unpleasant, and she makes a good point that, even if warned of the possible risk of infection, women may have trouble recognising the symptoms.

Aborting little criminals not so likely after all

Economics focus | Oops-onomics | Economist.com

Interesting story in the Economist on how the claimed link between easier abortion in the US and lower crime rates is looking very shaky now.

So you thought greenhouse gases were a worry...

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Geologists Link the "Great Dying" to Volcanism

A short article in Scientific American (above) makes it perfectly clear just how unfriendly the earth's environment can be (even before nasty people came on the scene to ruin the Garden of Eden.) To quote:

"Roughly 252 million years ago, life on the earth nearly ceased to exist--as much as 90 percent of marine life and 70 percent of terrestrial life died out. At around the same time, a vast up swelling of magma covered between one million and four million cubic kilometers of what is now Siberia. The eruption continued off and on for about a million years, with basalt lava and poisonous gases seeping up through cracks in Siberia's mantle....

The researchers argue that the deadly gases of the Siberian eruption killed vegetation across the globe, just as much smaller modern eruptions have produced acid rain and other plant-killing phenomena. Without roots to hold the soil in place, rivers and streams washed most of the dead vegetation to the sea where it then blocked the sun's light and sucked up all the oxygen. "What began on land ended in the sea," Visscher says. "It seems there was no place to hide at this time of great dying."

And when could it happen again?- Any time now.

On the demise of Margo

Some random thoughts:

* Where will artist in residence Robert Bosler now find an outlet for his impenetrable prose?

* Those with the biggest attachment to Webdiary only have themselves to blame. They displayed no respect for the conservative voice, and made the site into their own lefty Howard Derangement Syndrome echo chamber. Conservatives mainly visited the site to laugh at it.

* I remain a little puzzled about Margo herself. In her TV appearances (especially on Sky News in the last election run up) she used to present as significantly less mad than she does in her written pieces. I mean, she could smile and laugh a little, something you get no sense of at all when she writes. But since Howard won the last election, she has been so overwrought over the "death of democracy" under Howard (who is so evil he can present a false face of benevolence to the public) for so long it was getting clear that she was living on the edge. And her "community" only encouraged her belief system.

* After going independent, I think I heard her on Radio National's Friday morning forum once , and have been surprised she did not find a regular gig somewhere there. Also, why did she stop appearing on Late Night Live? Was it a full blown falling out with Phillip Adams?

Oh well, I am sure it will do her good to stop thinking about politics.

Some modern Chinese history

FrontPage magazine.com :: Leftwing Monster: Mao Zedong by Steve Mosher

Article above is lengthy (I haven't finished it yet) but it seems an interesting short history of Mao's nasty rule over China. (Seems short on actual figures for people killed during various government initiatives, but I am sure estimates are available elsewhere.)

Can't trust forests to get anything right

Study: Temperate Forests Could Worsen Global Warming

So cutting down temperate forests would reduce global warming?

Secular vs religious government in Iraq

More Iraqis look to vote secular Dec. 15 | csmonitor.com

Link above is to a story in the Christian Science Monitor of interest about the upcoming Iraqi election.

Miscellaneous thoughts

On Australian politics: how much will the Gerard appointment scandal be hurting Peter Costello in 6 month's time? Not a bit. Gerard's gone, and it is one of those issues that intensely interests political journalists, but not the general public, especially at this time of year. (And those who do take an interest also remember the Labor government's appointment of mates to the Reserve Bank).

On movies:

"King Kong": I find it extremely difficult to see why a silly 1930's semi-fantasy should have any resonances with today's adult audience, and this version is also so long as to put it out of reach of a very young audience. I predict only moderate success.

"Narnia": despite my fondness for CS Lewis, I only read these books as an adult, and so do not hold them in the same affection as do many who read them as children. Still, the shorts of the movie look impressive, and early reviews of the movie are positive. I will see this one.

"Brokeback Mountain": it might be a good movie with good performances, but you have to wonder how big the potential audience is for a serious gay cowboy movie.

"Munich": Currency Lad is sweating this one a bit too much, I think. Spielberg is a liberal, of course, but I don't think you can find any evidence of moral relativism in his films. Given his jewish heritage and support by way of things such as the establishment of Shoah Foundation, it seems hard to believe he is going to leave much room for criticism of the Israeli take on the events. My biggest concern is the screen writer is Tony Kushner, the gay writer of "Angels In America", which just tried too hard to be deep and meaningful, in my opinion.

On alcohol: (the only drug endorsed by Opinion Dominion,) more good news, sort of.

All you want to know about the coming Iran problem

Excellent post here (The Officers Club) on what would be involved if Israel tried to take out Iran's nuclear capacity.

All a bit of a worry, to put it mildly.

Scott Ritter plays to small house

Margo Kingston's Webdiary: On democracy and war with Scott Ritter

The link is to a Webdiary post on Scott Ritter's Victoria visit. Seems he may not be attracting much in the way of an audience:

"A small group of us huddled together in the middle of the Basement Lecture Theatre, Sidney Myer Asia Centre, at Melbourne University. I thought our international guest would have been playing to a packed house. To my amazement, hardly anyone turned up. Embarrassed audience members speculated during question time as to the reasons for the poor attendance."

Must have been small if the number is not even mentioned.

Scott claims to have paid a personal price for speaking out:

"During questions Ritter admitted to having paid huge personal costs for his speaking out. Not only himself, but also his family. He worried about his two children.....

Ritter admitted to having passed through a period of terrible depression, but that he had now come out of that and his personal future, his well being and happiness, looked good."

Did anyone ask him whether being caught chatting up underage girls on the internet might have had something to do with his depression? Nice to know he had kids while doing that too.

Koko's special interest

Lawsuit Over Koko the Gorilla's Nipple Fetish Resolved

From the above link:

"Two former caretakers who refused to bare their breasts to a 300-pound (136-kilogram), sign-language-speaking gorilla named Koko have settled a lawsuit against the Gorilla Foundation.

Nancy Alperin and Kendra Keller claimed they were fired after they refused to expose their bosoms to the primate, and after reporting sanitary problems at Koko's home in Woodside, an upscale town south of San Francisco.

The pair claimed they were threatened that if they “did not indulge Koko's nipple fetish, their employment with the Gorilla Foundation would suffer,” the lawsuit alleged.

Alperin and Keller claimed that Francine “Penny” Patterson, the gorilla's longtime caretaker and president of the Gorilla Foundation, pressured them to expose their breasts as a way to bond with the 33-year-old female simian.

“On one such occasion,” the lawsuit said, “Patterson said, 'Koko, you see my nipples all the time. You are probably bored with my nipples. You need to see new nipples.” "

Make up your own comments!

More news on the marxism front

China plans to update Marxism - World - theage.com.au

According to the story above, China plans on just re-defining away any conflict between its marxist theory and the government's actual practice. This will presumably mean that no one will take marxism seriously any more, just as liberalising churches find that their congregations don't bother taking them seriously. (They don't bother attending church.)

Who will take over from Kim Jong il?

End of the line for a North Korean dynasty - Opinion - smh.com.au

Reprinted for the LA Times, the Sydney Morning Herald (link above) runs an interesting piece today on what will happen succession wise when Kim Jong-il kicks the bucket. I like this bit:

"In Seoul, a South Korean national security official likened Kim Jong Il's predicament to that of an emperor in the waning years of a dynasty. "He wants to create a three-generation dynasty, but he knows the people would not like it," said the official. "Besides, he spoiled all of his sons. They like Michael Jordan and computer games. They went to Swiss schools. … They are too Westernised to be dictators."

Let's hope that is true.

Gerard Henderson on "fascism"

The rise of fascism as an easy insult - Opinion - smh.com.au

Gerard Henderson writes well today on the ridiculous misuse of "fascist" as a lefty insult to the Howard government. (Link above.)

Speaking for all his profession...

Law Council of Australia - Media Release - 4/Dec/2005 - Law Council Launches Final Assault on Counter-Terror Laws

I have noticed the current Law Council of Australia President (one John North) hyperventilating a lot on the news lately against the new anti-terror laws. I think it might be where Beazley got the idea to compare us to North Korea and Cuba.

The Law Council's latest release it at the link above. He makes much of the fact that the Council "speaks for the legal profession." Well, only in the sense that those in the legal profession generally belong to State law societies, which are constituent bodies to the Council. While lawyers can vote for their State law society president, they have (as far as I know) no vote for president of the national body. I would guess that the great majority of lawyers take no particular interest in what the Law Council of Australia is doing.

I can assure all readers that neither the Council (nor the State societies) invite voting on, or poll their members about, what their position should be on various political issues. Those lawyers who have a particular act to grind on some area (especially where law reform may remove a field of work, or publicity will help their practice) take an active interest; the rest just get on with work.

So don't think that John North actually knows in any quantitative sense whether the majority of Australian lawyers agree with the Council's position on this. He has made no attempt to establish this, and as opinon polling is indicating wide public support for the laws, it would be surprising if there was not at least a substantial minority of lawyers who were comfortable with the laws.

I don't mind if a "representative" body doesn't bother its members all the time for their opinions; but at the same time they should not speak as if they have detailed knowledge of the extent to which their members agree with a policy position.

The Guardian Vs Aslan

The Guardian seems to be spending a lot of time on attacking the CS Lewis Narnia stories before the movie is even released. Polly Toynbee's article ("Narnia Represents everything that is most hateful about Christianity") is not quite as "anti" as the headline suggests, but it's bad enough.

The last paragraph:

"Children are supposed to fall in love with the hypnotic Aslan, though he is not a character: he is pure, raw, awesome power. He is an emblem for everything an atheist objects to in religion. His divine presence is a way to avoid humans taking responsibility for everything here and now on earth, where no one is watching, no one is guiding, no one is judging and there is no other place yet to come. Without an Aslan, there is no one here but ourselves to suffer for our sins, no one to redeem us but ourselves: we are obliged to settle our own disputes and do what we can. We need no holy guide books, only a very human moral compass. Everyone needs ghosts, spirits, marvels and poetic imaginings, but we can do well without an Aslan."

Funny, but I thought that the basic point of Christianity was that people do have to take responsibility for how they "treat their neighbour" because that is the basis on which you will be judged.

As for the suggestion that the world would be better off working out our earthly problems with no sense of divine guidence, a pretty good argument can be made that it was precisely this attitude that was behind the murderous plague of communisim and facsism that blighted the 20th century.

(OK, maybe the Crusaders and the Inquisition might have killed more if they had modern technology too, but then again modern communications might also have ended these trends faster too. Islamofacsism is a danger, but luckily it would seem the aggressive interpretation of their holy book is a small, though dangerous, minority.)

Of course, having a religious faith is not a guarantee of living a moral life, and the major faiths also have not been an impediment to wars being raged. On the other hand, I think the degree to which atheists have been inclined to blame faith for human suffering has been greatly exaggerated. And this particular line of attack on Christianity (that it removes an idea of personal responsibility) is well off the mark.

Vodkapundit on terror

I've been forgetting to drop in on Vodkapundit lately, but here's a post of his that is well worth a read. (It's about taking the jihadist terror threat seriously, even if Bin Laden never has the same number of devotees that communism had.)

Update: I see that Pajamas Media has referred to this already. Maybe I should add PM to my blogroll, but will it survive?

Now there's an idea..

The ABC reports tonight that Saddam and his lawyers threw another tantrum today:

When the defence threatened to walk out the judge replied that the court would then appoint substitutes.

This brought a moment of high drama with Saddam on his feet shouting: "This is Iraq, we will not accept state officials defending us. They're American stooges."

As the lawyers walked out, Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti - who is also among the accused - shouted: "Why don't you just execute us?"

Please explain..

New Views of the Universe: The Kavli Inaugural Symposium in honor of David Schramm (2005), Preliminary Program

Cosmology interests me, even though it is a difficult field to understand. But then, with an abstract like this for a talk to be given at conference in Chicago later this month, who can blame me?:

"The large number of vacua in the stringy landscape may lead to interesting new cosmology. First, tunneling between from one vacuum to another (e.g. tunneling through a series of minima in a tilted cosine potential) provides a new mechanism for inflation: Chain Inflation. Second, a dynamical solution to the cosmological constant problem may be provided by a field with the same potential but without tunneling. After inflation, the universe reheats, and different regions of the universe fall into different minima of the potential. Domain walls shove aside higher energy vacua in favor of lower energy ones, but it is shown that this process stops before the universe can fall into very negative energy vacua. Gravitation itself provides a cutoff at a minimum vacuum energy, thereby leaving the universe with a small cosmological constant comparable in magnitude to the current vacuum energy."

Hard to find news on child poverty rates

Child poverty rates

The link above is a relatively optimistic story on research into child poverty in the USA. It is relevant to Australia because the Federal government's welfare law reform which will encourage mothers to work.

It's also interesting to note how hard it was to find this story.

I found the article via the EurekaAlert news site, and even its link to the article did not work. Searching Google and Google News did not locate anything. By visiting the Cornell News site and doing a search, it was finally found.

Good news does not travel well.

Could they be modified to take needle-sharp poison tips too?

USB Powered Air Darts - Marks & Spencer

See link above for a very cool Xmas gift, found via Boing Boing (link at side).

Some thoughts on Asian drug laws

If you want to see the detail of just how tough the Singaporean drugs laws are, have a look at the website for its Central Narcotics Bureau. More than 500g of cannabis - death. Same with more than 15 g of heroin. Talk about tough.

The Nguyen and "Bali Nine" cases have made me think about arriving in Asian airports and seeing the warning posters about the death penalty for drugs. As far as I can recall, these posters are not done with the intention of giving a drug carrier any last minute chance of "declaring" the drugs before they enter the country. (In fact, I am not sure whether they are put up before or after customs.) There is no equivalent of the 'fruit bin', and even if you wanted to thrown out the drugs strapped to your body, removing them discretely may be somewhat of a challenge. There may be a possibility of going to the toilets before going through customs to remove and flush the drugs, but I am not sure that all airports have toilets accessable in that part. Or if they do, perhaps the airport authorities take a special interest in what goes on in there.

My point is, if as a country such as Singapore is going to insist on a death penalty for "trafficking" in drugs, why not give the potential trafficker a last minute opportunity to avoid death by declaring the possession? This would be particularly fair for any drugs smuggler who claims (as have some of the Bali Nine) that they have been forced into it under threat of harm to them or their family.

Such declarations should, as an absolute minimum, guarantee that the person will not be executed, but I would propose that the consequence be a relatively short period of jail - say a month or two- with assistance provided to ensure a safe return to the country of residence. (You would have to have some jail to dissuade people from getting free flights home by carrying drugs into the airport. However, it is much cheaper for the country to pay a $2000 plane ticket than to keep them in jail for any length of time.) Of course, the Australian could then have a life ban on entry into Singapore (I will use these countries as the example.) Perhaps the 'free flight' home could also be conditional on an interview with the Federal Police, and their being satisfied that the person has provided as much information as they can on anyone connected with the deal in Australia.

I presume that there could be no prosecution in Australia for the possession in the foreign country. Perhaps some other administrative punishment could be imposed.

The result would be that the drugs never get through customs to harm Singaporeans; the person gets enough jail so that there is no attraction to "take advantage" of the system; they can never return to Singapore in future; no drugs are returned to Australia; and perhaps some information is obtained to track any drugs bosses in Australia. Sounds like win/win for all concerned to me.

Now, for all I know, maybe the Singaporean courts might be a little softer on those who "declare" drugs at the airport, at least if the quantity is not such that it carries a compulsory death sentence. (I presume that must happen occasionally, although the death penalty posters may make it less likely.) However, if the sign before customs said "declare illegal drugs now and you will not hang in this country" maybe it would happen more often.

It would be an additional argument for Singapore for the "fairness" of the death penalty for those who fail to take advantage of this last minute reprieve. (Although I want to be clear that I do not support the death penalty for drugs, ever.)

Someone in Singapore agrees with this idea (which I had been thinking about before I found their post.)

As for the Nguyen case itself, I still find it terribly sad for all concerned. There has been over-reaction by some on both sides of the debate here, and the executioner himself should be retired immediately as a result of his appallingly insensitive comments to the media.

The concentration should be on getting Singapore and other Asian countries to look seriously at whether the death penalty is working as a deterrent; the inherent injustice of having compulsory death sentences in particular; and why they think that an offence that may involve no harm to any other person should carry such a sentence. (With the small quantities involved for it to be deemed trafficking, it is entirely possible that some people have hung for being caught with their own drug supply.)

Frogmouths, I believe

Picture taken on recent holiday. Actually there were 4 of these frogmouths sitting low in the same tree. A family, I wonder?

Stupid Beazley (sedition again)

Kim Beazley seems to think that making silly statements will endear him to all those comedians, cartoonists and Margo Kingston readers who fret that they will be locked up soon because the government is updating sedition laws that have been around for, oh, nearly a century.

Says Kim:

"I do not know why the government insists that we should lower ourselves to the standard of North Korea, Syria and Cuba."

Kim, there's a reason we don't let comedians and cartoonists run the country, so there's no need to encourage their (in the main) stupidly ill-founded worries. (As Piers Ackerman says today, it appears that most of the cartoony critics have not read the Bill, as they ignore the fact that the offence is being updated to make it clear that it has to involve urging violence, and there is a good faith defence.)

I have posted previously that the new laws are not perfect and probably do need some changes (but that related mainly to the issue of prohibited organisations, for which there is a definition of "seditious intent" that is actually unrelated to the offence of "sedition" itself.) But that said, most of the criticism (see this 7.30 Report story for example,) has been completely misguided.

As Phil Ruddock has made pretty obvious, although he agrees to a review next year, he wants the laws in now to give mad jihadists who want to encourage violence something to think about. Big Kim doesn't care though, he's just trying to score points for ridiculous overstatement, it would seem.

If you are a real glutton for punishment, and already know how long each Robert Bosler post to Margo Kingston's site can be, you can look at his co-authored entry on this. Here's his opening paragraphs:

"There is an extremely powerful but subtle effect hidden in these sedition laws. This subtle effect operates on the same silent convention that has, for instance, abused women returning again and again to the man who does it, or a person returning again and again to self-destructive behaviour. It works because, even whilst a person knows something is bad for them, there is a chimerical comfort, a strange sense of security in the situation.

It works like a private running commentary behind a person's thoughts, urging that person to return to that chimerical comfort, that strange restraining sense of safety, while their front-of-mind thoughts attempt to move out, move forward and to grow."

And on it goes for another gazillon words of deep and meaningful psycho-babble about how the laws will subconcsious bring fear to the heart of the nation (or some such guff.)

Get a grip! Or change hands, one or the other.

Stupid headline

Cannabis could reverse psychosis - National - theage.com.au

Headlines are often misleading, but when it comes to questions of the public understanding of the risks of a drug, you would think they would take more care.

The Age obviously doesn't worry about that. The headline of the article (linked above) - "Cannabis could reverse psychosis" is completely misleading. The article itself points out that cannabis is now widely believed to cause psychosis, but the interesting thing that has been discovered is that it appears that one chemical - when given alone to mice - appears to help "drug induced behavourial disturbances." In other words, while there is one psychosis inducing chemical in cannabis, there also might be once which is an "antipsychotic." The researchers are not saying that the "good" part wins out in this brain tussle when you use cannabis.

But you have to read the article to understand that. Kids who don't read past headlines may well be comforted to continue their habit. (Although my prejudices also make me think not too many pot smoking youths read The Age anyway!)

Reasons to be skeptical of $100 laptops for the poor

Waiting for That $100 Laptop? - Don't hold your breath. By Cyrus Farivar

The Slate article above expresses some common sense about the proposed $100 crank-powered laptop idea for poor countries. Other attempts to introduce cheap computers to the rural poor in developing countries haven't got far:

"In 2001, a group of computer scientists in Bangalore, India, developed the Simputer. It was supposed to be a cheap (around $200), robust computer for India's rural poor. But according to the Associated Press, the brains behind the Simputer have sold only 4,000 of an expected 50,000 units in 2004 and 2005. In addition, only about 10 percent of Simputer buyers live in rural areas. Why? Probably because they have more important things to do than write e-mail.

There's no reason to think that Negroponte's computer will win wider acceptance in the Third World. The fact that each laptop comes with a built-in WiFi card won't be of much use if there isn't a WiFi access point nearby. How many access points do you think there are in rural Egypt?"

More possibly worrying - but who really knows? - news on global warming - or is that cooling?

New Scientist Breaking News - Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age

Reported everywhere today is research that the deep Atlantic currents do seem to have changed significantly in the last few decades, with the worry being that it could be the start of dramatically cooler weather for Europe.

But, there is plenty of room for uncertainty, because (as the New Scientist article linked above mentions) average temperatures in Europe have been on the way up, not down.

Give it another 4 years or so before anyone can really tell.

I also get sick of reports of this stuff referring to "The Day After Tomorrow". (Even news@nature does this.) I linked to the New Scientist version of the story because it does not mention it.

A short history of Limbo

Lose limbo, but salvage purgatory - Opinion - smh.com.au

For those with any interest in curious Catholic beliefs, Paul Collins gives a brief history of Limbo in the Sydney Morning Herald today (link above.)

I remember being told about this by Catholic nuns in primary school, but it was never given much emphasis.

Paul ends with a mention of purgatory. I think it can be cut out safely by just revisioning it as being on the outer edges of Hell, which is not (at least until the end of the world) permanently sealed. I think that is how CS Lewis thought of it, and (I stand to be corrected) Dante. Certainly, I have read the entertaining Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle science fiction-y reworking of Dante's Inferno (called "Inferno") from a couple of decades ago.

Strange

Here's something a little odd I wonder about. Some time ago I lightheartedly posted a small pic from a science fiction movie and named the image file I uploaded "big head", to reflect the fact that the character has, well, a big head. Since then, my site meter indicates that there are a ridiculous amount of people in the world who search for "big head" on google or other search engines. What's more, sometimes people who come here via that search actually do seem to stay a little while, looking at a few pages.

This is odd. Of course, I could delete that file from the post, but do I want the drop off in my hit rate?