If you want to see an inside view of 15 cm spoon in the stomach of a woman who accidentally swallowed it while laughing (!), click here. (Stomachs seem to have a lot more folds inside them than I imagined.)
While you're at the Medical Journal of Australia, you might want to read their sort of silly Christmas offering "The hazards of watching football - Are Australians at risk?"
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Steyn on France
Mark Steyn has a column that puzzles over France's foreign policy, particularly in relation to the Middle East. It has some snippets from history that I did not know about:
....it’s sobering to be reminded that the French were doing the Israelis-are-the-new-Nazis shtick within ten minutes of the end of the Second World War. Jews, wrote the consul-general Rene Neuville, in a lengthy cable from Jerusalem in 1947, are “racist through and through… quite as much as their German persecutors”. The dispatches of Pierre Landy, French consul in Haifa, rely heavily on “the Israeli Gestapo” and similar formulations. In public the political class was usually more circumspect, though not always. President de Gaulle famously raged at a press conference that the Jews were “an elite people, self-assured and domineering” with “a burning ambition for conquest”. In the ensuing controversy, M le President assured the Chief Rabbi that he’d meant it as a compliment.
....it’s sobering to be reminded that the French were doing the Israelis-are-the-new-Nazis shtick within ten minutes of the end of the Second World War. Jews, wrote the consul-general Rene Neuville, in a lengthy cable from Jerusalem in 1947, are “racist through and through… quite as much as their German persecutors”. The dispatches of Pierre Landy, French consul in Haifa, rely heavily on “the Israeli Gestapo” and similar formulations. In public the political class was usually more circumspect, though not always. President de Gaulle famously raged at a press conference that the Jews were “an elite people, self-assured and domineering” with “a burning ambition for conquest”. In the ensuing controversy, M le President assured the Chief Rabbi that he’d meant it as a compliment.
A different Advent countdown
From BBC radio, this Advent countdown gives short cranky, but amusing, audio reviews of the year's movies. The one about The Da Vinci Code is good, but his most despised movie is "Little Man", which I have to say did look appalling when I saw shorts for it.
Why electric cars makes sense
This article in Scientific American addresses the point that occasionally crosses my mind: if electric cars became popular, how much of a greenhouse gas benefit would be achieved when you take into account the extra electric power generation needed? Here's some good news for a change:
...a new analysis from the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) offers more good news: existing electric power plants could fuel 84 percent of "light duty" vehicles if all 220 million cars and trucks converted to electric power overnight....
The analysis noted that the capacity of the U.S. power infrastructure is underutilized. Every evening--and during days of low demand--there is a large amount of spare capacity that could easily be tapped. By charging cars and trucks with electricity at night, American drivers could reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil while potentially cutting power prices as well. "Since gasoline consumption accounts for 73 percent of imported oil, it is intriguing to think of the trade and national security benefits if our vehicles switched from oil to electrons," notes PNNL energy researcher Rob Pratt. "Plus, since the utilities would be selling more electricity without having to build more plants or power lines, electricity prices could go down for everyone."
The researchers specifically excluded power resources such as nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar as each of these already produce electricity at maximum capacity. Yet, plugging in our cars could reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 18 percent.
...a new analysis from the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) offers more good news: existing electric power plants could fuel 84 percent of "light duty" vehicles if all 220 million cars and trucks converted to electric power overnight....
The analysis noted that the capacity of the U.S. power infrastructure is underutilized. Every evening--and during days of low demand--there is a large amount of spare capacity that could easily be tapped. By charging cars and trucks with electricity at night, American drivers could reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil while potentially cutting power prices as well. "Since gasoline consumption accounts for 73 percent of imported oil, it is intriguing to think of the trade and national security benefits if our vehicles switched from oil to electrons," notes PNNL energy researcher Rob Pratt. "Plus, since the utilities would be selling more electricity without having to build more plants or power lines, electricity prices could go down for everyone."
The researchers specifically excluded power resources such as nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar as each of these already produce electricity at maximum capacity. Yet, plugging in our cars could reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 18 percent.
A commuting horror story
Talk about unexpected ways to die:
A 21-year-old woman was beheaded in front of horrified onlookers at a bus terminal in in the capital of the Caribbean island of St Vincent.
Must find something more pleasant for next post.
A 21-year-old woman was beheaded in front of horrified onlookers at a bus terminal in in the capital of the Caribbean island of St Vincent.
Must find something more pleasant for next post.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
It's the season for Virgin Birth discussion
The Times has a lightweight piece about the importance of baths, which mentions a legal case that I had never heard about before:
For much of the 20th century it was popularly believed that a woman should never get into the bath after a male member (no pun intended) of the household. The fear was that if he had been abluting himself a little too vigorously she might be in danger of impregnation. The famous paternity case involving Lord Ampthill gave this myth widespread credence. He filed for divorce after his wife produced a son, even though the marriage had not been consummated. It was suggested that she had conceived after using a sponge in a bath they had shared.
A Google search turns up this Time Magazine article from 1976 ("Was Mother a Virgin?") about the case (which happened in the 1920's). The sponge theory doesn't get mentioned, but I assume it must have come up in court as one of the theoretical ways that a "virgin birth" can happen.
For much of the 20th century it was popularly believed that a woman should never get into the bath after a male member (no pun intended) of the household. The fear was that if he had been abluting himself a little too vigorously she might be in danger of impregnation. The famous paternity case involving Lord Ampthill gave this myth widespread credence. He filed for divorce after his wife produced a son, even though the marriage had not been consummated. It was suggested that she had conceived after using a sponge in a bath they had shared.
A Google search turns up this Time Magazine article from 1976 ("Was Mother a Virgin?") about the case (which happened in the 1920's). The sponge theory doesn't get mentioned, but I assume it must have come up in court as one of the theoretical ways that a "virgin birth" can happen.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Moon doubters
Skepticism about the value of manned space exploration is never far away, and just when NASA starts to firm up a little on a lunar colony, the nay-saying doubters get into print. See this article in Slate, and here at the New York Times. Both sound like re-runs from the early 70's, when the thrill of Apollo 11 was over with pretty quickly.
In the Slate article, when it comes to the question why build a moon base:
NASA itself can't really offer an answer, though it does offer a free, downloadable "Why the Moon?" poster. According to the poster, a moon base would "enable eventual settlement" of Earth's satellite—which might happen someday, but represents an absurd waste of tax money in the current generation. (No one has any interest in settling Antarctica, which is much more amenable to life than the moon and can be reached at far less than 1 percent of the cost.)
The New York Times writes:
Mars has water, apparently, and an atmosphere that greater minds than mine contend could be transformed and thickened enough to breathe, and maybe even past or future life forms. Someday, a few dreamers say, our descendants could walk to a pool of water in the red sand, like the settlers in Ray Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles,” look at their reflections and see Martians.
I haven't read about terraforming information for some time, but I am sure that even the most optimistic time scales for creating a breathable Martian atmosphere is in the order of hundreds or thousands of years. Even by the standards of someone (like me) who wants humanity to expand beyond earth, it's a very long term proposition.
Basically, for a long time, living on Mars is going to be like living on the Moon, with the added benefit of more water. (Assuming the moon has some somewhere.) The disadvantage is that help is a year or two away, compared to a few days for the Moon.
But my main point is that these articles do not address the obvious potential function that a Moon colony can provide, and that's a lifeboat for planet Earth. It's close, it's old, seems relatively stable, and provides a smallish target for passing asteroids. The decentralisation of information by virtue of its digital format perhaps makes its off-planet storage less important than previously, but still it is hard to say what the human and political effects of a truly global catastrophe would be. (For example, an asteroid strike large enough to darken the skies for a few years, leading to starvation and massive loss of life.) Recently, the idea of using the Moon as "gene bank" was mooted too, and maybe this is a more important reason, if you assume that digital information is unlikely to be lost completely.
I don't understand why science writers can't see that this "big picture" idea, which is familiar to all science fiction readers, is something worth taking seriously if it is within technical reach.
In the Slate article, when it comes to the question why build a moon base:
NASA itself can't really offer an answer, though it does offer a free, downloadable "Why the Moon?" poster. According to the poster, a moon base would "enable eventual settlement" of Earth's satellite—which might happen someday, but represents an absurd waste of tax money in the current generation. (No one has any interest in settling Antarctica, which is much more amenable to life than the moon and can be reached at far less than 1 percent of the cost.)
The New York Times writes:
Mars has water, apparently, and an atmosphere that greater minds than mine contend could be transformed and thickened enough to breathe, and maybe even past or future life forms. Someday, a few dreamers say, our descendants could walk to a pool of water in the red sand, like the settlers in Ray Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles,” look at their reflections and see Martians.
I haven't read about terraforming information for some time, but I am sure that even the most optimistic time scales for creating a breathable Martian atmosphere is in the order of hundreds or thousands of years. Even by the standards of someone (like me) who wants humanity to expand beyond earth, it's a very long term proposition.
Basically, for a long time, living on Mars is going to be like living on the Moon, with the added benefit of more water. (Assuming the moon has some somewhere.) The disadvantage is that help is a year or two away, compared to a few days for the Moon.
But my main point is that these articles do not address the obvious potential function that a Moon colony can provide, and that's a lifeboat for planet Earth. It's close, it's old, seems relatively stable, and provides a smallish target for passing asteroids. The decentralisation of information by virtue of its digital format perhaps makes its off-planet storage less important than previously, but still it is hard to say what the human and political effects of a truly global catastrophe would be. (For example, an asteroid strike large enough to darken the skies for a few years, leading to starvation and massive loss of life.) Recently, the idea of using the Moon as "gene bank" was mooted too, and maybe this is a more important reason, if you assume that digital information is unlikely to be lost completely.
I don't understand why science writers can't see that this "big picture" idea, which is familiar to all science fiction readers, is something worth taking seriously if it is within technical reach.
Modern robotics not quite there yet
You must watch this video over at Japundit if you find robot mistakes funny.
(Actually, it is sort of sad too, but the way the screen comes out as if it is a horse about to be put down is what really makes me laugh.)
(Actually, it is sort of sad too, but the way the screen comes out as if it is a horse about to be put down is what really makes me laugh.)
About Pauline Hanson
An excellent post by Andrew Norton about the silly argument that Howard has implemented all of the Hanson agenda. Read and memorise for the next time that argument comes up at a dinner party.
Silly names
This article in the Times about how the British chose the names for their kids is pretty funny, and quite accurate for Australia too, I think:
By and large, of course, it’s wise to try to avoid making decisions that will last the rest of your life when you’re 14. One of the primary arguments against teenage pregnancy — but one that the Government has, as yet, been too scared to address — is that 13-year-old girls tend to bestow awful names. Names which commit to an implacable destiny. Indeed, Destiny is one of them. Destineee is even more one of them. It’s hard to imagine a Governor of the Bank of England called Chantelle. Not least because the headline the next day would be “Oh my God!”, and the Bank of England would have to be renamed the Bank of Blingland. ....
By and large, of course, it’s wise to try to avoid making decisions that will last the rest of your life when you’re 14. One of the primary arguments against teenage pregnancy — but one that the Government has, as yet, been too scared to address — is that 13-year-old girls tend to bestow awful names. Names which commit to an implacable destiny. Indeed, Destiny is one of them. Destineee is even more one of them. It’s hard to imagine a Governor of the Bank of England called Chantelle. Not least because the headline the next day would be “Oh my God!”, and the Bank of England would have to be renamed the Bank of Blingland. ....
The main difference between chav names and ponce ones is that the working classes deploy names that reflect success in the present — Ashanti, Britney, Justin. This is because, for the working classes, there is no rose-spectacled nostalgia for the past. The further you go back in time, the more incrementally awful it was to be poor. For the working classes, there’s no time like the present — or, indeed, the future.
The middle classes, on the other hand, have no fear of the past — when, as far as they’re concerned, all food was organic and free-range, and children played in streams all day while wearing lovely smocks. To reflect this longing for a simple, earthy, “real” childhood, they give their children the names that the working classes in their grandparents’ era would have favoured: Ruby, Charlie, Mabel, Fred.
Bad car news
From the Japan Times:
A top Nissan Motor Co. executive in North America said the hybrid market remains an unprofitable proposition in the auto industry despite the interest in alternative vehicles.
As for the US automotive industry generally, this does not sound good:
"Fifty percent of cars sold in America are sold by companies that lose money selling cars, and that's not sustainable," Thormann said.
A top Nissan Motor Co. executive in North America said the hybrid market remains an unprofitable proposition in the auto industry despite the interest in alternative vehicles.
"Hybrids today are not a very viable economic proposition. It's still a loss-making proposition," said Dominique Thormann, Nissan North America's senior vice president for administration and finance, on Thursday...
Hybrids currently comprise more than 1 percent of the auto market. Federal legislation approved last year provides up to $ 3,600 in tax credits to U.S. consumers who buy hybrids, but automakers are subject to a production limit of 60,000 vehicles eligible for the entire credit.As for the US automotive industry generally, this does not sound good:
"Fifty percent of cars sold in America are sold by companies that lose money selling cars, and that's not sustainable," Thormann said.
What are they doing there?
A surprise from the Aljazeera report on the Iranian Holocaust conference. Here's a photo of some of the attendees:
The article indicates that they are anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews, who don't deny the Holocaust. What strange bedfellows they make.
Iranian Jews are not very impressed with the whole conference idea:
Seems to me the whole idea is backfiring anyway.
The article indicates that they are anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews, who don't deny the Holocaust. What strange bedfellows they make.
Iranian Jews are not very impressed with the whole conference idea:
The conference has upset
"Denying it [the Holocaust] is a huge insult," he said. "By holding this conference, they [the government] are continuing to insult the Jewish community."
Many ordinary Iranians admitted to embarrassment about the event, which follows
Seems to me the whole idea is backfiring anyway.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Penguin film cops a blast
The Independent's Jonathan Romney really, really, took a dislike to Happy Feet (which has generally received good press). The highlights of his review:
But the nadir of digital animation - absolutely the most joyless, imaginatively bankrupt spectacle it has produced - is the penguin extravaganza Happy Feet. I'd rather have spent seven days and nights on an ice floe than have watched this. This tender-hearted eco-minded musical by George Miller (yes, Mad Max George Miller) scores an own goal: you go in favourably disposed to penguins, and you come out wishing you could personally nuke every last one of the wretched creatures out of the Antarctic. Happy Feet is as hideous as its title suggests.....
Happy Feet is so mendaciously dewy-eyed about the wildlife it feigns to respect that it makes Bambi look like a Werner Herzog documentary....
But in terms of humour, or humanity, or real imagination, the film is crass, ugly, wasteful and an impasse for an art form that has, in a mere decade, transformed the way we see screen images. Is this what digital animation has come to - a multi-million-dollar screensaver?
For those who share my love of the art of aggressively negative movie reviews, this one is pretty damn good.
But the nadir of digital animation - absolutely the most joyless, imaginatively bankrupt spectacle it has produced - is the penguin extravaganza Happy Feet. I'd rather have spent seven days and nights on an ice floe than have watched this. This tender-hearted eco-minded musical by George Miller (yes, Mad Max George Miller) scores an own goal: you go in favourably disposed to penguins, and you come out wishing you could personally nuke every last one of the wretched creatures out of the Antarctic. Happy Feet is as hideous as its title suggests.....
Happy Feet is so mendaciously dewy-eyed about the wildlife it feigns to respect that it makes Bambi look like a Werner Herzog documentary....
But in terms of humour, or humanity, or real imagination, the film is crass, ugly, wasteful and an impasse for an art form that has, in a mere decade, transformed the way we see screen images. Is this what digital animation has come to - a multi-million-dollar screensaver?
For those who share my love of the art of aggressively negative movie reviews, this one is pretty damn good.
Sucking up to Huffington
The Observer Magazine had a story on the weekend about Arianna Huffington that went into hyperbole mode when it comes to describing the Huffington Post:
The Post is now the fifth most popular site in the world. It shapes the debate of American politics and gives Arianna real power and prestige. This year she made Time magazine's list of the 100 most important people in the world, and next year she looks likely to climb the list...
The Post has already broken major news stories, changed perceptions and challenged the old way of doing things. Arianna is a media magnate for a new age and uses her position to hammer away for liberal causes: the Iraq war, environmentalism, corporate greed.
How nauseating.
Huffington Post has always struck me as having the most lightweight and bile-filled analysis of any "serious" commentary blog, as if it were run by a whole school yard full of Maureen Dowds. I think it annoys me more than Daily Kos, for example, because the Kos crowd are kids, and can be half forgiven for some of their posing and misplaced idealism.
As for HP, if you value the opinion of has-been Hollywood stars, screenwriters and general hangers-on who want their invitations to Arianna's next cocktail party but backing up Arianna's scathing assessments of everything Bush, visit it by all means.
But don't go there if you want to see any evidence of independence of thought.
(At least for readers who are not from the USA, the Observer article fills in some details of Arianna's background, and is worth a look for that.)
The Post is now the fifth most popular site in the world. It shapes the debate of American politics and gives Arianna real power and prestige. This year she made Time magazine's list of the 100 most important people in the world, and next year she looks likely to climb the list...
The Post has already broken major news stories, changed perceptions and challenged the old way of doing things. Arianna is a media magnate for a new age and uses her position to hammer away for liberal causes: the Iraq war, environmentalism, corporate greed.
How nauseating.
Huffington Post has always struck me as having the most lightweight and bile-filled analysis of any "serious" commentary blog, as if it were run by a whole school yard full of Maureen Dowds. I think it annoys me more than Daily Kos, for example, because the Kos crowd are kids, and can be half forgiven for some of their posing and misplaced idealism.
As for HP, if you value the opinion of has-been Hollywood stars, screenwriters and general hangers-on who want their invitations to Arianna's next cocktail party but backing up Arianna's scathing assessments of everything Bush, visit it by all means.
But don't go there if you want to see any evidence of independence of thought.
(At least for readers who are not from the USA, the Observer article fills in some details of Arianna's background, and is worth a look for that.)
Drunk pilot humour
In the news this weekend:
Maybe video of the incident looked like this:
A DRUNKEN Australian pilot who tried to fly a packed plane to Dubai when he was seven times over the alcohol limit has been jailed in London.
John Cronly-Dillon, 51, was sentenced to four months' jail last Friday by a judge who told him he had brought an unblemished 25-year career to a stupid and ignominious end.
He was arrested after stumbling around during a routine search at Heathrow, making incoherent jokes about "not blowing up my plane" with his breath smelling strongly of drink.Maybe video of the incident looked like this:
Random trivial thoughts for pre-Christmas rush
This is a busy time of year for me, so posting rate may be a little more intermittent than usual.
Here's some random information discovered this weekend:
1. Lego Bionicles have some of the worst assembly instructions I have ever seen. Being able to assemble one within 2 minutes should qualify the assembler for entry into Mensa.
2. To my surprise, the English dictionary that comes with Firefox 2 recognises the word "Bionicles" but only when preceded by "Lego".
3. Lego appears to have re-introduced more general, non-themed sets of blocks, which is a good thing for children's imaginations.
4. I met someone who works for Coca Cola and was told that "Coke Zero" was meant to get away from the feminine image that "Diet Coke" has by virtue of the word "diet". (It is also meant to compete with the success of Pepsi Max in terms of having a stronger flavour.)
However, I reckon if you want a name that will appeal to men as much as women, "Zero" is hardly the way to go. If you put a bunch of men in a focus group and asked them what they associate with the word "Zero", isn't it more than likely going be negative ? "Zero chance" is the first thing I reckon would come to mind for many.
Just how much money on creative types did Coke spend to come up with a dud name like that?
Pepsi Max still tastes better anyway.
Here's some random information discovered this weekend:
1. Lego Bionicles have some of the worst assembly instructions I have ever seen. Being able to assemble one within 2 minutes should qualify the assembler for entry into Mensa.
2. To my surprise, the English dictionary that comes with Firefox 2 recognises the word "Bionicles" but only when preceded by "Lego".
3. Lego appears to have re-introduced more general, non-themed sets of blocks, which is a good thing for children's imaginations.
4. I met someone who works for Coca Cola and was told that "Coke Zero" was meant to get away from the feminine image that "Diet Coke" has by virtue of the word "diet". (It is also meant to compete with the success of Pepsi Max in terms of having a stronger flavour.)
However, I reckon if you want a name that will appeal to men as much as women, "Zero" is hardly the way to go. If you put a bunch of men in a focus group and asked them what they associate with the word "Zero", isn't it more than likely going be negative ? "Zero chance" is the first thing I reckon would come to mind for many.
Just how much money on creative types did Coke spend to come up with a dud name like that?
Pepsi Max still tastes better anyway.
Friday, December 08, 2006
Target Mars
An interesting post over at Bad Astronomy notes that it looks like Mars is still getting a regular pounding from small meteors:
The MGS team also mentioned that if you lived on Mars for about 20 years, on average you’d be close enough to one impact to actually hear it. Given that NASA plans on sending humans to Mars, this is a matter of real concern! It’s a tough problem– these are rocks that are maybe a few meters across, and so there is almost way to detect them. I have no idea how you could reliably find a large enough number of these potential impactors to do anything about them, and you really don’t want one touching down near a settlement.
I think that radiation on the surface is likely to be a problem too, given the thin atmosphere and (I think) not much of a magnetic field. It all sounds like living half underground is probably the only choice for long term settlements there. (At least until they or smash in a few comets and get a real atmosphere going.)
As I have said before, if there is some water ice on the Moon, the only big benefit of living on Mars is going to be a higher gravity, which (for permanent settlement) is probably mainly an issue for any babies conceived and raised there. We need to know the biological effect of animal gestation on the Moon before really worrying about whether Mars is worth the effort.
The MGS team also mentioned that if you lived on Mars for about 20 years, on average you’d be close enough to one impact to actually hear it. Given that NASA plans on sending humans to Mars, this is a matter of real concern! It’s a tough problem– these are rocks that are maybe a few meters across, and so there is almost way to detect them. I have no idea how you could reliably find a large enough number of these potential impactors to do anything about them, and you really don’t want one touching down near a settlement.
I think that radiation on the surface is likely to be a problem too, given the thin atmosphere and (I think) not much of a magnetic field. It all sounds like living half underground is probably the only choice for long term settlements there. (At least until they or smash in a few comets and get a real atmosphere going.)
As I have said before, if there is some water ice on the Moon, the only big benefit of living on Mars is going to be a higher gravity, which (for permanent settlement) is probably mainly an issue for any babies conceived and raised there. We need to know the biological effect of animal gestation on the Moon before really worrying about whether Mars is worth the effort.
Julia doesn't love Kevin?
Labor insider Michael Costello says this about Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard:
I'm not sure, however, that things will quieten down this time. Gillard has disliked Rudd for years. Crean hates him. Crean's ambition, like hers, was first to do in Beazley and a close second was to get Gillard up as leader.
Crean hasn't given up on this second ambition and neither has Gillard. Those seeking support for Beazley found that a common reaction from known Gillard supporters and Rudd haters was that their support for Rudd was to get rid of Beazley, but that would not be the end of the matter. When Rudd stumbles, as all leaders do at some point, he will need to watch his back very carefully.
Given what we know of Mark Latham's personality now, it seems hard to believe that Julia ever genuinely liked him much either. (In fact, it is hard to imagine why any woman liked him.) I take it that her ambition can overcome such reservations, though.Thursday, December 07, 2006
Back to Adams
Maybe I am referring to The Dilbert Blog too often lately, but here's a link to another post that struck me as particularly funny. (By rights, I shouldn't like him, but he proves the point that liberal atheists who have a pretty low opinion of most of humanity can still be very funny as humorists. Not that many of them are, however.)
Speaking of humour and the Left, in the last few months the Comedy Channel here has started showing The Daily Show with Jon Stewart every weeknight. Previously, I had only seen the once a week "Global Edition", and thought the show looked pretty good, despite its politics. On seeing it regularly, though, I have been disappointed. Generally, I reckon they could cut it down to about a one hour weekly show, and every segment might be good. There are an awful lot of misses over the 2 1/2 hours of a full week. A consistent weakness I notice is when he interviews someone that he knows very well. They just spend a lot of time congratulating each other and giggling.
Speaking of humour and the Left, in the last few months the Comedy Channel here has started showing The Daily Show with Jon Stewart every weeknight. Previously, I had only seen the once a week "Global Edition", and thought the show looked pretty good, despite its politics. On seeing it regularly, though, I have been disappointed. Generally, I reckon they could cut it down to about a one hour weekly show, and every segment might be good. There are an awful lot of misses over the 2 1/2 hours of a full week. A consistent weakness I notice is when he interviews someone that he knows very well. They just spend a lot of time congratulating each other and giggling.
The madness of cats
It is now believed that old cats can get pretty much the exact equivalent of Alzheimer's Disease. Not being a cat person, I am curious to know how anyone could tell that a mostly inanimate object (we are talking old cats, after all) had dementia.
The article notes that's what's good for cats is good for humans (or perhaps it's the other way around):
Experts suggest that good diet, mental stimulation and companionship can reduce the risk of dementia in both humans and cats. Dr Gunn Moore explained: "If humans and their cats live in a poor environment with little company and stimulation, they are both at higher risk of dementia. However, if the owner plays with the cat, it is good for both human and cat. A good diet enriched with antioxidants is also helpful in warding off dementia, so a cat owner sharing healthy meals like chicken and fish with their pet will benefit them both."
Sounds just a little too close to his cat, for my liking.
The article notes that's what's good for cats is good for humans (or perhaps it's the other way around):
Experts suggest that good diet, mental stimulation and companionship can reduce the risk of dementia in both humans and cats. Dr Gunn Moore explained: "If humans and their cats live in a poor environment with little company and stimulation, they are both at higher risk of dementia. However, if the owner plays with the cat, it is good for both human and cat. A good diet enriched with antioxidants is also helpful in warding off dementia, so a cat owner sharing healthy meals like chicken and fish with their pet will benefit them both."
Sounds just a little too close to his cat, for my liking.
The killer is in the detail
This is a list of the "diplomacy" recommendations of the Iraq Study Group:
The United States should:
Iran should:
Syria should:
International efforts:
The most interesting part is what "incentives and disincentives" could be used with Iran and Syria? I am assuming the Study Group would not consider Bush threatening military strikes a good idea, even though you get the feeling that such threats are the only kind that might make Iran and Syria act more cautiously.
Many, many commentators will make a similar point, I am sure. See this article in Slate for one.
Then this other article in Slate (which I only read after starting this post) does give more detail:
Meanwhile, I have said for some time that common sense indicates there is no hope of governing a country split along religious sectarian lines when the government allows either or both sides to maintain their own militia. I would have thought that little progress is going to be made until the government decides to disarm everyone, and in particular the "Mahdi army", either by negotiation or force.
The United States should:
- Begin a new diplomatic offensive to build an international consensus for stability in Iraq and the region. The effort should include every country that has an interest in avoiding a chaotic Iraq, including all of Iraq’s neighbors.
- Try to engage Iran and Syria constructively, using incentives and disincentives.
- Renew commitment to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace process, including President Bush’s commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
Iran should:
- Stem the flow of arms and training to Iraq.
- Respect Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
- Use its influence over Iraqi Shiite groups to encourage national reconciliation.
Syria should:
- Control its border with Iraq to stem the flow of funding, insurgents and terrorists in and out of Iraq.
International efforts:
- The issue of Iran’s nuclear arms should be dealt with by the five members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany.
- A possible regional conference on Iraq or broader Middle East peace issues.
The most interesting part is what "incentives and disincentives" could be used with Iran and Syria? I am assuming the Study Group would not consider Bush threatening military strikes a good idea, even though you get the feeling that such threats are the only kind that might make Iran and Syria act more cautiously.
Many, many commentators will make a similar point, I am sure. See this article in Slate for one.
Then this other article in Slate (which I only read after starting this post) does give more detail:
On Page 51, the authors acknowledge that the United States should offer Iran and Syria incentives, "much as it did successfully with Libya." But the Libyans had nothing to lose, and everything to gain, when they agreed to give up their nascent (and still very primitive) nuclear program. The Iranians, by contrast, have great wealth and enormous leverage, not only in the Middle East but with European and Asian countries that depend on their oil.
The authors do take a bold step here. They list a few "possible incentives" that Bush might offer Iran, among them "the prospect of a U.S. policy that emphasizes political and economic reforms instead of … regime change."
Well, I suspect that Iran feels pretty secure that a policy that wants regime chance can be resisted indefinitely. I mean, look at Iraq!Meanwhile, I have said for some time that common sense indicates there is no hope of governing a country split along religious sectarian lines when the government allows either or both sides to maintain their own militia. I would have thought that little progress is going to be made until the government decides to disarm everyone, and in particular the "Mahdi army", either by negotiation or force.
In the (Cheney) family way
Wow. VP Cheney's gay daughter is pregnant. Although not explained, one assumes it is through some donor's sperm. (I wonder if the donor is gay.)
Talk about doing whatever she can to alienate the religious conservatives who support the Republican Party! (Although I guess Cheney is more or less out of politics with the next election anyway.)
Talk about doing whatever she can to alienate the religious conservatives who support the Republican Party! (Although I guess Cheney is more or less out of politics with the next election anyway.)
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
A new form of terror
It would have to be the best flatuence story for a long time:
Flatulence brought 99 passengers on an American Airlines flight to an unscheduled visit to Nashville early Monday morning.
American Flight 1053, from Washington Reagan National Airport and bound for Dallas/Fort Worth, made an emergency landing here after passengers reported smelling struck matches, said Lynne Lowrance, a spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority....
The passengers and five crew members were brought off the plane, together with all the luggage, to go through security checks again. Bomb-sniffing dogs found spent matches.
The FBI questioned a passenger who admitted she struck the matches in an attempt to conceal body odor, Lowrance said. The woman lives near Dallas and has a medical condition.
Found via Boing Boing.
Flatulence brought 99 passengers on an American Airlines flight to an unscheduled visit to Nashville early Monday morning.
American Flight 1053, from Washington Reagan National Airport and bound for Dallas/Fort Worth, made an emergency landing here after passengers reported smelling struck matches, said Lynne Lowrance, a spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority....
The passengers and five crew members were brought off the plane, together with all the luggage, to go through security checks again. Bomb-sniffing dogs found spent matches.
The FBI questioned a passenger who admitted she struck the matches in an attempt to conceal body odor, Lowrance said. The woman lives near Dallas and has a medical condition.
Found via Boing Boing.
Better title needed
New Roads Act as a Highway for Diarrhea
It's from Scientific American and not all that interesting. Just a funny sort of title, I thought.
It's from Scientific American and not all that interesting. Just a funny sort of title, I thought.
Strange matter indeed
My interest in whether the Large Hadron Collider at Cern will accidentally cause the end of the earth continues, but there hasn't been much new at arxiv for a while that seems relevant to my previous focus (the creation of mini black holes).
However, I have recently found some stuff regarding "strangelets," which might also be created in the LHC and are another possible way disaster could happen. (Its risk has been dismissed because cosmic rays in the atmosphere should already have caused it to happen, and seeing the earth is still here, they can't be dangerous. Maybe, but it has been some time since that paper was written, and the problem is you don't get much of a sense that they review new theoretical scenarios on a risk basis all that often.)
I know little about strangelets, and had not previously realised that some scientists think that they may already occasionally pass through the earth, and be detectable as causing earthquakes! The Wired story from 2003 about this is here. As it says:
Most scientists don't think this really was the explanation, but I think that is to do with the timing of the earthquakes, not due to any loopiness about the general idea.
For a more general paper, see this paper from May 2006 (with the intriguing title "Strangelets: Who is Looking and How".) It turns out that there are lots of ways scientists can look for it, in the atmosphere, as well as in lunar and earth soil.
The issue with creating them in the LHC is that maybe it is possible to have strangelets that just don't sit there inert, but can change other normal matter to strange matter too. (I think this is scenario, I haven't re-read it for a while.) "Normal" stable strange matter being created in the LHC would not be much of a problem, as it would have very small mass. But I must look around on the internet for any recent stuff on the dangerous strange matter scenario.
It's an odd thought that, if you are really, really unlucky, you might be killed by a high speed super- massive thing from space the size of a red blood cell.
However, I have recently found some stuff regarding "strangelets," which might also be created in the LHC and are another possible way disaster could happen. (Its risk has been dismissed because cosmic rays in the atmosphere should already have caused it to happen, and seeing the earth is still here, they can't be dangerous. Maybe, but it has been some time since that paper was written, and the problem is you don't get much of a sense that they review new theoretical scenarios on a risk basis all that often.)
I know little about strangelets, and had not previously realised that some scientists think that they may already occasionally pass through the earth, and be detectable as causing earthquakes! The Wired story from 2003 about this is here. As it says:
It's remarkable that some strange guest should sweep through Earth like a hot wire through wax, and that no one would notice as it did so. But though the visitor was very fast and fairly heavy, it was also extremely small: a mass of as much as
10 tons squeezed into something about the size of a red blood cell. If a 10-ton asteroid fell to Earth at 400 kilometers per second, people would notice; something the size of a small car hitting the unyielding Earth at that speed would give up its kinetic energy in an explosion to rival that of a 200-kiloton nuclear weapon. But condensed to the size of a small amoeba, the same mass wouldn't cause anywhere near as much fuss. The fearsome momentum of the microscopic visitor would shatter the bonds between molecules directly in its path and push the bystanders aside. It would do this vigorously enough to melt a small tunnel as it passed, slicing through the rocky earth almost as easily as it passed through air and water....
So, what would it mean for Earth if the dark matter that astronomers believe envelops our galaxy was made of strange matter? Strange nuggets up to a billion or so times the mass of a normal atom would fall to Earth and just sit there, chemically inert and hard to find. Larger nuggets would penetrate the planet's interior before stopping. And nuggets weighing more than a tenth of a gram would pass right through. A large nugget, elbowing its way through Earth at high speed, might be detectable by seismologists.Most scientists don't think this really was the explanation, but I think that is to do with the timing of the earthquakes, not due to any loopiness about the general idea.
For a more general paper, see this paper from May 2006 (with the intriguing title "Strangelets: Who is Looking and How".) It turns out that there are lots of ways scientists can look for it, in the atmosphere, as well as in lunar and earth soil.
The issue with creating them in the LHC is that maybe it is possible to have strangelets that just don't sit there inert, but can change other normal matter to strange matter too. (I think this is scenario, I haven't re-read it for a while.) "Normal" stable strange matter being created in the LHC would not be much of a problem, as it would have very small mass. But I must look around on the internet for any recent stuff on the dangerous strange matter scenario.
It's an odd thought that, if you are really, really unlucky, you might be killed by a high speed super- massive thing from space the size of a red blood cell.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Bad signs
1. Iran introduces more Internet censorship (from The Guardian, via Tigerhawk):
Iran yesterday shut down access to some of the world's most popular websites. Users were unable to open popular sites including Amazon.com and YouTube following instructions to service providers to filter them.
3. The Jerusalem Post reports that a new security assessment by (I think) its own defence force is that the US will not take any pre-emptive strike against Iran:
I guess we all knew this before, but the bad aspect is that such reports confirm to Iran that they appear to be in the clear, except perhaps if Israel decides to take matters into its own hands. But I think there is still considerable doubt about how Israel could conduct such an attack without America's direct involvement.
A lengthy article in the Jerusalem Post notes all the problems with the various possible approaches, and comes up with this variation on a diplomatic solution:
Iran yesterday shut down access to some of the world's most popular websites. Users were unable to open popular sites including Amazon.com and YouTube following instructions to service providers to filter them.
Similar edicts have been issued against Wikipedia, the internet encyclopaedia, IMDB.com, an online film database, and the New York Times site. Attempts to open the sites are met with a page reading: "The requested page is forbidden."...Some news sites, such as the BBC's Farsi service, are also blocked.
2. John Bolton resigns as US ambassador. Tough straight talk no longer to be heard at the UN.3. The Jerusalem Post reports that a new security assessment by (I think) its own defence force is that the US will not take any pre-emptive strike against Iran:
Predicting Iran will obtain nuclear weapons by the end of the decade, the defense establishment's new and updated assessment for 2007 does not foresee the United States undertaking a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear installations, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The chances of an American strike are deemed "low," according to assessments by the security establishment. Israel also believes that international diplomatic efforts to stop Iran will fail, security sources said.
The article goes on to explain that there is little hope of very effective sanctions due to Russia's role.I guess we all knew this before, but the bad aspect is that such reports confirm to Iran that they appear to be in the clear, except perhaps if Israel decides to take matters into its own hands. But I think there is still considerable doubt about how Israel could conduct such an attack without America's direct involvement.
A lengthy article in the Jerusalem Post notes all the problems with the various possible approaches, and comes up with this variation on a diplomatic solution:
Nuclear Defusing might help the parties back off from the brink by changing their expectations so as to dispose them to take measures that would be otherwise inconceivable. It includes making Israel - Iran's avowed nuclear target - a member of NATO and the quid pro quo agreement of Israel to move rapidly to a permanent two-state solution, more or less along the Clinton Plan, and to a peace treaty with Syria in return for the Golan Heights.
Placing Israel under NATO's nuclear umbrella would go a long way toward deterring Iran from threatening or attacking Israel with nuclear weapons. But will NATO, in particular its European members, accept Israel?...
With an increasing Muslim population, sounds kind of unlikely, doesn't it? I reckon if France indicated it was taking this proposal seriously, it would be romantic walks by car fire in Paris for a few months at least.
The end game is meant to be this:
Once Israel is embedded in NATO, and Israelis and Palestinians have embarked on a long-term truce and adopted peaceful coexistence, the international community will promote regional arms control involving NATO, Iran, and other Middle East countries.
In one or two generations the Middle East could become a nuclear weapons free zone.
I'm not going to hold my breath hoping for this approach to get off the ground.
(Readers who have not been here before are also referred to my previous musings about attack by Electronic bomb. That's assuming they exist and work..)Monday, December 04, 2006
HMAS Labor sails off into unchartered waters
Why do I make the nautical metaphor? New Labor leader Kevin Rudd did it first in an interview with Geraldine Doogue:
Geraldine Doogue:
Some might say Kevin Rudd’s using religion himself for his own advantage, to advance himself up the greasy poll of politics.
Kevin Rudd:
If you know anything about HMAS Labor Party let me tell you that doesn’t really work that way. Doing this interview with you Geraldine has got more hazards for me internally than anything that you may calculate may be advantageous for me beyond the party. I just think I’ve got a responsibility to start talking about these things.
Kevin's really got to try to find a way of sounding less pretentious.
I am sure many conservatives like me must have mixed feelings about Rudd. He has experience outside of politics and unionism, which is a big plus. His life achievements do make for a good story, and he could have done well even if he had never entered politics. (Unlike someone like Latham, who also had brains, but only ever tried to make a living via politics, and even then relied to a significant degree on patronage.)
On the downside, this background does make him an outsider within his own party, and he doesn't come across as being sufficiently ruthless as to be able to deal with internal dissent. While having someone who is a sincere Christian in politics always appeals to me, by Rudd's own admission it doesn't exactly endear him to many Labor supporters.
As a political performer, to my mind he also shares quite a lot of the insincerity of Beazley. Kim, who also strikes me as a likeable enough person, often seemed to be only affecting outrage over various government policies. The decision to have all Labor politicians only ever use the phrase "extreme Industrial Relations legislation" as some sort of Trade Mark phrase has not exactly helped in the sincerity stakes. (Also, for how long will all those billboards across the nation showing Beazley tearing up the legislation be a reminder of instability within the ALP?)
At least at the State level we know that brainiac swotty types with no obvious appeal to the general public can lead Labor to considerable success (Bob Carr, and to a lesser extent, Wayne Goss.) Federal leadership in the last 50 years doesn't bring to mind any obvious comparison. I am not sure how to account for this; perhaps it is because the leader's political performance in State Parliament does not have the same type of high media exposure that it does at the Federal level.
I also predict that Julia Gillard will be net loser of votes. As she and Rudd played up the "dream team" image to the extent they almost looked like courting lovers, I reckon he'll live to regret it.
It would be premature to write Rudd off immediately, but my impression is that the omens are not good.
Geraldine Doogue:
Some might say Kevin Rudd’s using religion himself for his own advantage, to advance himself up the greasy poll of politics.
Kevin Rudd:
If you know anything about HMAS Labor Party let me tell you that doesn’t really work that way. Doing this interview with you Geraldine has got more hazards for me internally than anything that you may calculate may be advantageous for me beyond the party. I just think I’ve got a responsibility to start talking about these things.
Kevin's really got to try to find a way of sounding less pretentious.
I am sure many conservatives like me must have mixed feelings about Rudd. He has experience outside of politics and unionism, which is a big plus. His life achievements do make for a good story, and he could have done well even if he had never entered politics. (Unlike someone like Latham, who also had brains, but only ever tried to make a living via politics, and even then relied to a significant degree on patronage.)
On the downside, this background does make him an outsider within his own party, and he doesn't come across as being sufficiently ruthless as to be able to deal with internal dissent. While having someone who is a sincere Christian in politics always appeals to me, by Rudd's own admission it doesn't exactly endear him to many Labor supporters.
As a political performer, to my mind he also shares quite a lot of the insincerity of Beazley. Kim, who also strikes me as a likeable enough person, often seemed to be only affecting outrage over various government policies. The decision to have all Labor politicians only ever use the phrase "extreme Industrial Relations legislation" as some sort of Trade Mark phrase has not exactly helped in the sincerity stakes. (Also, for how long will all those billboards across the nation showing Beazley tearing up the legislation be a reminder of instability within the ALP?)
At least at the State level we know that brainiac swotty types with no obvious appeal to the general public can lead Labor to considerable success (Bob Carr, and to a lesser extent, Wayne Goss.) Federal leadership in the last 50 years doesn't bring to mind any obvious comparison. I am not sure how to account for this; perhaps it is because the leader's political performance in State Parliament does not have the same type of high media exposure that it does at the Federal level.
I also predict that Julia Gillard will be net loser of votes. As she and Rudd played up the "dream team" image to the extent they almost looked like courting lovers, I reckon he'll live to regret it.
It would be premature to write Rudd off immediately, but my impression is that the omens are not good.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
The local "arc of instability"
It's remarkable how the regions close to Australia seem to have all decided to have an outbreak of political and social instability in the last year or two. East Timor, West Papua, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and now Fiji. I am half expecting a popular Maori uprising to storm New Zealand's Parliament House just to round things out.
This article from Quadrant (by Michael O'Connor) last month talks about many of these countries' problems, and makes some interesting points:
As is the case with virtually every serious conflict in Melanesia, the root cause lies in the attempts to rationalise the demand for land and the traditional land rights of the people. It is not enough to assert, as some have, that traditional rights are out of date in a modern society, if only because Melanesia is not a collection of modern societies. Collapse is rooted in the clash between traditional land rights and the pressures on land imposed by a rapidly growing population, the failure—or inability—to modernise traditional agricultural practices, and a failure by the political, administrative and legal systems to resolve disputes. Land troubles cannot be legislated out of existence or ignored; they are real and, in the minds of the traditional owners, of fundamental importance.
And elsewhere:
As with all the other failed or failing states in the region, media reporting focused on the restoration of internal security by the military and police, but the administrative assistance will be much more important. The success of the overall mission will depend more upon this element than on any other. It is not, however, a task for a handful of more or less senior experts with their own bureaucratic culture, but for a corps of administrative and technical personnel at all levels working with their indigenous colleagues, because the challenge is to show that government is for the benefit of the whole community and not just the population of the capital. If the job is to be done properly, Australia is unmistakably launching a new form of colonialism, the nature of which is not yet fully understood or developed but which is none the less real.
If we are to understand this reality—and support the commitment as it deserves—it may be first necessary to abandon the shibboleth that colonialism is irredeemably bad. Likewise, we need to abandon the populist blame game pursued, among others, by the same cheer squads that would consign the former metropolitan power to perdition for failing to provide the new nations with the necessary resources and skills to go it alone. It’s a fun game—blame the colonial master for getting out too early, too late; for failing to provide enough aid, for providing too much aid; for attaching too many strings to the aid, or not enough strings—but it’s not very helpful.
Interesting.
Other Australians of my age can remember, I am sure, how New Guinea used to feature as a tourist destination on Australian TV quite often in the late 1960's and early 70's. Now, I suspect most people would put it close to the bottom of preferred international destinations, despite its proximity. (It did feature on "Getaway" recently, but on a tour conducted by luxury mid-sized cruise ship that was the base for brief excursions into remote coastal villages.)
This article from Quadrant (by Michael O'Connor) last month talks about many of these countries' problems, and makes some interesting points:
As is the case with virtually every serious conflict in Melanesia, the root cause lies in the attempts to rationalise the demand for land and the traditional land rights of the people. It is not enough to assert, as some have, that traditional rights are out of date in a modern society, if only because Melanesia is not a collection of modern societies. Collapse is rooted in the clash between traditional land rights and the pressures on land imposed by a rapidly growing population, the failure—or inability—to modernise traditional agricultural practices, and a failure by the political, administrative and legal systems to resolve disputes. Land troubles cannot be legislated out of existence or ignored; they are real and, in the minds of the traditional owners, of fundamental importance.
And elsewhere:
As with all the other failed or failing states in the region, media reporting focused on the restoration of internal security by the military and police, but the administrative assistance will be much more important. The success of the overall mission will depend more upon this element than on any other. It is not, however, a task for a handful of more or less senior experts with their own bureaucratic culture, but for a corps of administrative and technical personnel at all levels working with their indigenous colleagues, because the challenge is to show that government is for the benefit of the whole community and not just the population of the capital. If the job is to be done properly, Australia is unmistakably launching a new form of colonialism, the nature of which is not yet fully understood or developed but which is none the less real.
If we are to understand this reality—and support the commitment as it deserves—it may be first necessary to abandon the shibboleth that colonialism is irredeemably bad. Likewise, we need to abandon the populist blame game pursued, among others, by the same cheer squads that would consign the former metropolitan power to perdition for failing to provide the new nations with the necessary resources and skills to go it alone. It’s a fun game—blame the colonial master for getting out too early, too late; for failing to provide enough aid, for providing too much aid; for attaching too many strings to the aid, or not enough strings—but it’s not very helpful.
Interesting.
Other Australians of my age can remember, I am sure, how New Guinea used to feature as a tourist destination on Australian TV quite often in the late 1960's and early 70's. Now, I suspect most people would put it close to the bottom of preferred international destinations, despite its proximity. (It did feature on "Getaway" recently, but on a tour conducted by luxury mid-sized cruise ship that was the base for brief excursions into remote coastal villages.)
Lessons of a new husband
Scott Adams (of Dilbert Blog, which I have only recently started following) got married in July this year to a woman namely Shelly. It would appear from Wikipedia that this might be his first marriage. I suppose that it is possible that he has lived with a de facto partner before, but then again this story from his blog makes that seem a little unlikely. (It also made me laugh out loud):
Last night we were having some quality time alone at home and I made the mistake of writing myself a note while Shelly was still talking. She asked me what the note was about. I proudly told her it was about Vladimir Putin and how two of his critics were recently poisoned. It would make a great blog topic. I was quite pleased with myself, until Shelly asked, “Is that what you were thinking about while I was talking?”
Now let me explain something to the single men out there. If you think there’s an easy way to explain to your wife why you were thinking of Vladimir Putin while she is telling you about her feelings, you would be totally wrong. And I hadn’t practiced that conversation so I was caught unprepared. I think I said something along the lines of “I only think of Russian politics during the gaps between your words.” But apparently I’m supposed to be using that time just waiting around.
On a more philosophical note, Adams insists that he does not believe in free will, and in a recent post gave an example to try and help bolster his argument. This attracted 845 comments in response, which just goes to show the odd places where serious discussion of such an issue can take place.Saturday, December 02, 2006
Linked at last
Well, that only took 18 months! Tim Blair evidently moves in mysterious ways, taking my not so subtle hint of a few posts back that a link on his blog roll was long overdue. Thanks TB.
Just to be perverse I should now announce my retirement from blogging.
My history of being linked is fairly tragic. Currency Lad was an early one, but he's has wandered off into semi-retirement without, as far as I know, any explanation. Evil Pundit gave me a kind recommendation but now has disappeared completely (after talking about serious health issues). Does anyone know if he is OK? Catallaxy had a link earlier, then had a massive crash and I haven't re-appeared. Maybe my appearance on Blair's site means he'll soon have a tragic accident ironically connected to global warming and also have to retire. (Cruise ship to Hawaii hits iceberg, leaving Tim stranded on tiny 1 m high island in the South Pacific slowly being inundated by rising sea levels?)
Speaking of which, I think I may have found the perfect Tim Blair Christmas gift:
It's the Global Warming Mug:
Each mug is covered with a map of the world. When you pour in a hot beverage, the mug shows what happens when the world heats up and the oceans begin to rise... Land mass disappears before your very eyes!
Quite handy for choosing where one's long term real estate investments ought to be.
Just to be perverse I should now announce my retirement from blogging.
My history of being linked is fairly tragic. Currency Lad was an early one, but he's has wandered off into semi-retirement without, as far as I know, any explanation. Evil Pundit gave me a kind recommendation but now has disappeared completely (after talking about serious health issues). Does anyone know if he is OK? Catallaxy had a link earlier, then had a massive crash and I haven't re-appeared. Maybe my appearance on Blair's site means he'll soon have a tragic accident ironically connected to global warming and also have to retire. (Cruise ship to Hawaii hits iceberg, leaving Tim stranded on tiny 1 m high island in the South Pacific slowly being inundated by rising sea levels?)
Speaking of which, I think I may have found the perfect Tim Blair Christmas gift:
It's the Global Warming Mug:
Each mug is covered with a map of the world. When you pour in a hot beverage, the mug shows what happens when the world heats up and the oceans begin to rise... Land mass disappears before your very eyes!
Quite handy for choosing where one's long term real estate investments ought to be.
Let me be the first to say...
1. Alan Ramsay is probably in hospital today with severe finger cramps after typing every single word of his SMH column today (as opposed to usual cut and pasting of 70% of it.)
2. I really hope Kevin Rudd is the new leader so that I can see him looking extremely uncomfortable in one of those required "having a beer in his local pub" photos that are deemed essential in every election campaign.
3. What was going on with Julia Gillard's hair yesterday? Did she pick a bad week to get a new style, or did the leadership challenge come on so fast that she had to do the press conference straight out of the shower? (I know that I should either be female or gay for that joke, but what the heck.)
4. Just how long is some of the Left commentary going to be about how this is all a Murdoch plot? It's funny, but I didn't know that Murdoch had much control over Phillip Adams (who came out strongly for Rudd a couple of weeks ago), or the Fairfax press or the ABC. What is Tim Dunlop going to say about this?
5. The best line from Matt Price's piece today:
Logic dictates Coalition disunity should be monopolising the headlines, except logic and federal Labor caucus go together like foie gras and tomato sauce.
2. I really hope Kevin Rudd is the new leader so that I can see him looking extremely uncomfortable in one of those required "having a beer in his local pub" photos that are deemed essential in every election campaign.
3. What was going on with Julia Gillard's hair yesterday? Did she pick a bad week to get a new style, or did the leadership challenge come on so fast that she had to do the press conference straight out of the shower? (I know that I should either be female or gay for that joke, but what the heck.)
4. Just how long is some of the Left commentary going to be about how this is all a Murdoch plot? It's funny, but I didn't know that Murdoch had much control over Phillip Adams (who came out strongly for Rudd a couple of weeks ago), or the Fairfax press or the ABC. What is Tim Dunlop going to say about this?
5. The best line from Matt Price's piece today:
Logic dictates Coalition disunity should be monopolising the headlines, except logic and federal Labor caucus go together like foie gras and tomato sauce.
Friday, December 01, 2006
A surprise for Michael Crichton
The quality of Michael Crichton's books has always been pretty uneven. Without going back and checking, it seems he follows some sort of 6 year cycle between pretty good and pretty ridiculous.
As a fiction stylist he usually leaves a lot to be desired. But even then, some of his books read much better than others.
I therefore don't read everything he publishes, but of his recent books I liked "Prey" (about nanotechnology) and quite enjoyed the plotting of "Timeline", even though the reason for corporate time travel was very disappointing. I did not bother reading "State of Fear" because the basic idea (evil environmentalists creating weather manipulating machines) sounded like something no writer could make me believe. (Besides, some climate scientists he consulted expressed dismay that he either misunderstood or deliberately ignored them.)
Anyway, it is a little surprising to read that his latest book ("Next", about biotechnology) has received good reviews in the States. Maybe a Christmas gift for me?
As a fiction stylist he usually leaves a lot to be desired. But even then, some of his books read much better than others.
I therefore don't read everything he publishes, but of his recent books I liked "Prey" (about nanotechnology) and quite enjoyed the plotting of "Timeline", even though the reason for corporate time travel was very disappointing. I did not bother reading "State of Fear" because the basic idea (evil environmentalists creating weather manipulating machines) sounded like something no writer could make me believe. (Besides, some climate scientists he consulted expressed dismay that he either misunderstood or deliberately ignored them.)
Anyway, it is a little surprising to read that his latest book ("Next", about biotechnology) has received good reviews in the States. Maybe a Christmas gift for me?
Personal flying concepts
Found via New Scientist technology blog, a great article reviewing personal flying concepts developed for a time by the US armed forces. Many of these I have seen before, but had half forgotten. But I don't recall the first one with the pilot standing above chopper blades. Looks very disconcerting.
Murder by magnet
Here's an article that the script writers for CSI or House could use inspiration for a story next season:
Researchers found that while common magnets for home and office use with low magnetic strength posed little risk, stronger magnets made from neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) may cause interference with cardiac devices and pose potential hazards to patients. NdFeB magnets are increasingly being used in homes and office products, toys, jewelry and even clothing....
Two spherical magnets of eight and 10 millimeters in diameter and one necklace made of 45 spherical magnets were tested on 70 patients, 41 with pacemakers and 29 with ICDs. Magnetic interference was observed in all patients. The cardiac devices resumed normal function after the magnets were removed.
I like to think that it must be a very fun job being a researcher for (say) House, as I assume they spend most of their time reading weird case studies in the medical journals that can be varied a little to form the basis of the difficult diagnosis of each episode. Of course, being a doctor might help too.
Researchers found that while common magnets for home and office use with low magnetic strength posed little risk, stronger magnets made from neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) may cause interference with cardiac devices and pose potential hazards to patients. NdFeB magnets are increasingly being used in homes and office products, toys, jewelry and even clothing....
Two spherical magnets of eight and 10 millimeters in diameter and one necklace made of 45 spherical magnets were tested on 70 patients, 41 with pacemakers and 29 with ICDs. Magnetic interference was observed in all patients. The cardiac devices resumed normal function after the magnets were removed.
I like to think that it must be a very fun job being a researcher for (say) House, as I assume they spend most of their time reading weird case studies in the medical journals that can be varied a little to form the basis of the difficult diagnosis of each episode. Of course, being a doctor might help too.
Silly hats and academia in Japan
An interesting article from the Japan Times about Japan and overfishing. It starts off talking about a famous TV fish expert:
He just looks...annoying. Remember, he has been appointed an assistant professor at a Toyko University.
Anyway, the rest of the article gets more serious in talking about how the Japanese need to start eating less tuna (they account for 40% of world consumption of bluefin tuna, and 25% of all tuna!)
In September, the TV personality known as Sakana-kun was appointed to the position of guest assistant professor by the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology.
Famous for his childish demeanor and blowfish-shaped headgear, Sakana-kun certainly knows his fish, and his lack of a college degree doesn't detract from his reliability as a marine expert. Having turned a childhood obsession with octopi into a lifelong study of sea life and all it entails, he first gained attention on the TV Tokyo contest show "TV Champion" when he beat out other piscine otaku with the depth and breadth of his knowledge: the contestants also had to have an understanding of fish cuisine, which is more important on TV than the zoology stuff.
Sakana-kun's motto is "Take a look, take a bite (Mite miyo, tabete miyo)," which makes him the perfect fish expert for TV even beyond his big smile and ingratiating manner.
He just looks...annoying. Remember, he has been appointed an assistant professor at a Toyko University.
Anyway, the rest of the article gets more serious in talking about how the Japanese need to start eating less tuna (they account for 40% of world consumption of bluefin tuna, and 25% of all tuna!)
Kim must be very annoyed
I reckon the thing annoying Kim Beazley most about the leadership challenge would be that did all that dieting and workouts in the gym for no political purpose. Oh well, if he loses he can always console himself by forgetting about the diet completely over Christmas.
On Insiders last week, Kim made it clear he was very happy to have his weight loss noticed:
On Insiders last week, Kim made it clear he was very happy to have his weight loss noticed:
BARRIE CASSIDY: It comes up periodically, too, questions are being raised about your health. Physically, clearly, you haven't been in a shape as good as this for a long, long time. But you did have that recent illness?
KIM BEAZLEY: The illness is fine. My physical shape very kind of you to say that. I've been working very hard on the subject of my physical structure and on the whole I'm being successful with it.
Actually, the way he skipped over the illness question so quickly seemed just a little suspicious to me. Of course this is pure speculation, but I wonder whether part of the reason for the leadership challenge (which all commentators agree is unusual in that it does not appear to have been instituted by any contender) is due to lingering concern by close colleagues about his memory or ability to concentrate.Thursday, November 30, 2006
Teachers and The Age
It's a match made in heaven, lefty teachers and The Age. Big union rallies are being held today, to what end I don't know. It's about a year from a Federal election, and there is no way rallies of whatever size are going to persuade the Howard government to retract its IR legislation after it just had its constitutional right to create it confirmed by the High Court. (Maybe that is the reason for the rallies, a pointless whinge about losing a High Court case.)
So, teachers today in many States are taking the day off to attend these rallies. Here's their justification from The Age letters today:
... I am obligated to stop work so that, hopefully, students at my school do not have to join a workforce where there is no job security, no basic rights and no collective agreements.
I look into my classroom each day and see a class full of students who have hopes, ambitions and dreams which would not be fulfilled under a Howard Government.
Maybe teenagers have changed since I was one, but I somehow doubt they dream all day of the fantastic collective bargaining agreement their union will win for them.
And from a teacher sympathiser:
WHEN teachers took strike action I would always keep my child at home. His absence note would explain that I kept my child at home because I did not want my child surrounded by teachers who were so selfish that they would not surrender a day's pay to fight against injustice or so dull that they could not comprehend the importance of fighting injustice. I encourage all parents to send such messages to schools and to John Howard.
Ohh..we don't want our child contaminated by all those unjust or dumb teachers who happen to take a different view of where the balance should lie in industrial relations, do we?
Look, I'm not saying people don't have a right to disagree with the Howard government's policies on IR and to fight tooth and nail to do the only thing that will change it - elect a Kevin Rudd government. (Beazley has only got to make one more slip of the tongue in the next 6 weeks and he is gone.) But what irritates me is the preciousness of the arguments on display here, that suggest the issue is so dire and immediate that teachers must attend (even when they are not personally affected, as no public sector teacher would be) and that the rallies are going to achieve something.
So, teachers today in many States are taking the day off to attend these rallies. Here's their justification from The Age letters today:
... I am obligated to stop work so that, hopefully, students at my school do not have to join a workforce where there is no job security, no basic rights and no collective agreements.
I look into my classroom each day and see a class full of students who have hopes, ambitions and dreams which would not be fulfilled under a Howard Government.
Maybe teenagers have changed since I was one, but I somehow doubt they dream all day of the fantastic collective bargaining agreement their union will win for them.
And from a teacher sympathiser:
WHEN teachers took strike action I would always keep my child at home. His absence note would explain that I kept my child at home because I did not want my child surrounded by teachers who were so selfish that they would not surrender a day's pay to fight against injustice or so dull that they could not comprehend the importance of fighting injustice. I encourage all parents to send such messages to schools and to John Howard.
Ohh..we don't want our child contaminated by all those unjust or dumb teachers who happen to take a different view of where the balance should lie in industrial relations, do we?
Look, I'm not saying people don't have a right to disagree with the Howard government's policies on IR and to fight tooth and nail to do the only thing that will change it - elect a Kevin Rudd government. (Beazley has only got to make one more slip of the tongue in the next 6 weeks and he is gone.) But what irritates me is the preciousness of the arguments on display here, that suggest the issue is so dire and immediate that teachers must attend (even when they are not personally affected, as no public sector teacher would be) and that the rallies are going to achieve something.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
The lonely job of being anti-Dunlop
I still don't get why Tim Dunlop, now blogging courtesy of News Limited, is not attracting much negative attention from the Right.
JF Beck has ripped into Blogocracy , and I added my comment of support. But why is there so little challenge of Dunlop on his site?
For anyone who cares, I am the lonely "Steve from Brisbane" who has been posting critical comments at Blogocracy. Here are some examples of matters Dunlop has been excited about recently:
1. Ex SAS officer Tinley criticises the government's decision to go into Iraq in what was obviously a highly politically motivated attack. Tim Dunlop can hardly contain himself:
2. Dunlop has been carrying on like a pork chop about how talk of challenge to the leadership of Kim Beazley is to a major degree the fault of the media, and News Limited in particular. His mate Aussie Bob posts at tedious length about how the media misreads polling all the time (conveniently forgetting how good the Liberals have been at gaining ground during Federal election campaigns). Today, Mark at Lavartus Prodeo agrees whole-heartedly; it's a regular Beazley support group.
Boys, boys, if the ABC and Fairfax press are running with leadership speculation too, doesn't this suggest the primary source of the problem is within the Labor party itself? Tonight The Age reports:
Supporters of a change have resolved to make no move before next week to maximise the focus on rallies against workplace laws being held today. But they rate the prospect of an approach to Mr Beazley to step down, or even a challenge by Kevin Rudd as "50-50".
No, no, the media should just ignore talk like that.
3. This one surprises me most: Dunlop posted a YouTube video purporting to show "White House manipulation" of video when it had been thoroughly debunked by Michelle Malkin and others weeks ago. When commentors point this out to him, he posts a not overly obvious semi-retraction at the bottom of the post as an "update", but leaves the offending video in its star position at the top. Tim Blair, you must be following Blogocracy, and if had happened on some other lefty blog I imagine you would have lept on this blunder with enthusiasm. (I remember Tim D let Tim B temporary host his blog while Blair had technical problems. Has this led to a reluctance to criticise him?)
4. Blogocracy has really become an exact clone of the old Road to Surfdom, including now the use of the "Howard's funny face" at the top of some posts. What's more, he posts about how the Left is so much more successful in blogging than the Right, citing Tim Blair as the only successful right wing blogger. Again, I would have expected some response from Blair, but none. Here's what I posted about this at Blogocracy:
But: there are many, many issues on which he is impervious to persuasion, and his anti-Howard schtick runs into the juvenile. If News Ltd wants to be part of blogging because it sees it as an interactive medium to promote discussion amongst its readership, why would it pick a private blog like Surfdom, which had clearly not been attracting much in the way of dissenting discussion, and let it be cloned?
It is just all puzzling to me. (As is the fact that Tim Blair has linked to posts here a couple of times over the last year, but there is no sign that I will ever be added to his blogroll!)
JF Beck has ripped into Blogocracy , and I added my comment of support. But why is there so little challenge of Dunlop on his site?
For anyone who cares, I am the lonely "Steve from Brisbane" who has been posting critical comments at Blogocracy. Here are some examples of matters Dunlop has been excited about recently:
1. Ex SAS officer Tinley criticises the government's decision to go into Iraq in what was obviously a highly politically motivated attack. Tim Dunlop can hardly contain himself:
Can all the pretending stop now? Have we finally reached a tipping point? Will comments today by war hero and former SAS officer Peter Tinley, finally give people across Australia—others in the military, the media, members of the Government—the courage to call the bluff on the prime minister’s discredited defence of the war in Iraq?....
Could there be a more devasting assessment from someone so intimately involved and so obviously dedicated to the military and to the defence of his country?
When it turns out within a couple of days that Tinley is a long time member of the ALP who has been in discussions about preselection, Dunlop can't see why people take the view that it was cynical media manipulation to make this attack without disclosing his personal incentive. Even long time Dunlop supporter Aussie Bob could see the point, I reckon, just that he thought it was funny that The Australian was sucked in.2. Dunlop has been carrying on like a pork chop about how talk of challenge to the leadership of Kim Beazley is to a major degree the fault of the media, and News Limited in particular. His mate Aussie Bob posts at tedious length about how the media misreads polling all the time (conveniently forgetting how good the Liberals have been at gaining ground during Federal election campaigns). Today, Mark at Lavartus Prodeo agrees whole-heartedly; it's a regular Beazley support group.
Boys, boys, if the ABC and Fairfax press are running with leadership speculation too, doesn't this suggest the primary source of the problem is within the Labor party itself? Tonight The Age reports:
Supporters of a change have resolved to make no move before next week to maximise the focus on rallies against workplace laws being held today. But they rate the prospect of an approach to Mr Beazley to step down, or even a challenge by Kevin Rudd as "50-50".
No, no, the media should just ignore talk like that.
3. This one surprises me most: Dunlop posted a YouTube video purporting to show "White House manipulation" of video when it had been thoroughly debunked by Michelle Malkin and others weeks ago. When commentors point this out to him, he posts a not overly obvious semi-retraction at the bottom of the post as an "update", but leaves the offending video in its star position at the top. Tim Blair, you must be following Blogocracy, and if had happened on some other lefty blog I imagine you would have lept on this blunder with enthusiasm. (I remember Tim D let Tim B temporary host his blog while Blair had technical problems. Has this led to a reluctance to criticise him?)
4. Blogocracy has really become an exact clone of the old Road to Surfdom, including now the use of the "Howard's funny face" at the top of some posts. What's more, he posts about how the Left is so much more successful in blogging than the Right, citing Tim Blair as the only successful right wing blogger. Again, I would have expected some response from Blair, but none. Here's what I posted about this at Blogocracy:
Yes Tim, blogs such as yours add so much to current debate when you post a YouTube “White House manipulation” story as if it hadn’t been thoroughly debunked 3 weeks ago. (By the way, your semi-retraction at the bottom of that post is pretty half arsed. If you want people to really know that you think there probably is nothing to that video, why not put an update at the top of the post where people will clearly see it. Or do you think it isn’t conclusively debunked?)
The other interesting thing about that YouTube video is how it has about 213,000 views, compared to the debunking YouTube effort (as linked to by Malkin) has had about 1/7 of that. There is no doubt at all that the Left wing blogshphere is better at constructing an echo chamber, but I don’t see that as something to be proud of.
(I also reckon that the Left’s natural constituancy - students, academics, public servants, and the underemployed - simply have more [time] to spend on listening to the echo chamber than those on the Right.)
As for Blogocracy, it is rapidly going the way of SMH’s Webdiary. I reckon those who disagree are not bothering posting much because it is clear that the site has its own cheersquad that is never going to change its mind on issues surrounding this Howard government. This is not a healthy sign, and frankly I can’t see why News Limited would be thinking it was worthwhile to do a virtual transplant of Surfdom to here. (I would say the same if any other currently free website was transplanted here too.) In fact, I don’t get the whole “every columnist is now a blogger” thing either, unless readers are going to have to pay for the privilege sometime in the future.
To say something positive: Tim D obviously maintains a level of civility at his blogs, allowed in my increasingly critical posts, and is not exactly the "mad" Left.But: there are many, many issues on which he is impervious to persuasion, and his anti-Howard schtick runs into the juvenile. If News Ltd wants to be part of blogging because it sees it as an interactive medium to promote discussion amongst its readership, why would it pick a private blog like Surfdom, which had clearly not been attracting much in the way of dissenting discussion, and let it be cloned?
It is just all puzzling to me. (As is the fact that Tim Blair has linked to posts here a couple of times over the last year, but there is no sign that I will ever be added to his blogroll!)
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Latest Slate Hitchens
From Hitchen's latest column in Slate comes this key paragraph:
The objectionable thing about the proposed Baker-Hamilton "talks" is not that they are talks but that they give the impression of looking for someone to whom to surrender. And they have, apparently, no preconditions. It would be an excellent thing to have direct negotiations with Iran, for instance, with all matters on the table. But if the mullahs did not have to sacrifice their ongoing nuclear deception in order to get to that table, then all the efforts of the Europeans, the United Nations, and the International Atomic Energy Agency to get them to do so would have been shown to be risible. With Syria, there is an even more intelligible precondition to be announced. Most people are unaware of this fact, but Damascus has always refused to recognize Lebanon as an independent state. There is no Syrian Embassy in Beirut. Implicitly and explicitly, this suggests that the country is regarded as an actual or potential part of a "Greater Syria." Is it really too much to demand that Syria acknowledge the self-determination, or "right to exist," of a fellow member of the Arab League? Without this line of demarcation, for one thing, the "withdrawal" of Syrian soldiers and police is a merely tactical thing; a retreat over the horizon while the Assad dynasty waits for better days. These "better" days may well not be long in coming.
The objectionable thing about the proposed Baker-Hamilton "talks" is not that they are talks but that they give the impression of looking for someone to whom to surrender. And they have, apparently, no preconditions. It would be an excellent thing to have direct negotiations with Iran, for instance, with all matters on the table. But if the mullahs did not have to sacrifice their ongoing nuclear deception in order to get to that table, then all the efforts of the Europeans, the United Nations, and the International Atomic Energy Agency to get them to do so would have been shown to be risible. With Syria, there is an even more intelligible precondition to be announced. Most people are unaware of this fact, but Damascus has always refused to recognize Lebanon as an independent state. There is no Syrian Embassy in Beirut. Implicitly and explicitly, this suggests that the country is regarded as an actual or potential part of a "Greater Syria." Is it really too much to demand that Syria acknowledge the self-determination, or "right to exist," of a fellow member of the Arab League? Without this line of demarcation, for one thing, the "withdrawal" of Syrian soldiers and police is a merely tactical thing; a retreat over the horizon while the Assad dynasty waits for better days. These "better" days may well not be long in coming.
The crisis in Hollywood
A long article in The Independent (found via Pajamas Media) talks about the current decline of Hollywood. There is nothing to disagree with here. We have been going through a lean period for enjoyable, quality Hollywood fare for some years now, and it is not clear when it will end.
A secret harvesting of eggs ?
This article about how medical research may be getting eggs for use in stem cell research is interesting. It would seem that supporters of the recent Bill about this do not understand all of the possibilities it may allow.
Ms Patterson has claimed her Bill permits only the creation of cloned embryos, never sperm-egg in-vitro fertilisation embryos, for research. But her Bill does indeed permit the IVF creation of a sperm-egg embryo using an egg from an aborted fetus and an adult male's sperm. This hidden provision to create fertilised embryos for research using ova from an aborted fetus was directly addressed by the Senate inquiry.
Ms Skene, for the Lockhart committee, acknowledged: "The committee's recommendations envisaged that an embryo could be created for use in this way." And no, she said, the committee had not canvassed public attitudes to such a practice.
Ms Patterson has claimed her Bill permits only the creation of cloned embryos, never sperm-egg in-vitro fertilisation embryos, for research. But her Bill does indeed permit the IVF creation of a sperm-egg embryo using an egg from an aborted fetus and an adult male's sperm. This hidden provision to create fertilised embryos for research using ova from an aborted fetus was directly addressed by the Senate inquiry.
Ms Skene, for the Lockhart committee, acknowledged: "The committee's recommendations envisaged that an embryo could be created for use in this way." And no, she said, the committee had not canvassed public attitudes to such a practice.
Hard to imagine
This must be "male contraception week" in the British media. Following my recent post on vasectomy, The Guardian discusses some ideas for male contraception under investigation. This includes one idea which might be a hard sell:
There are several at various stages of development, with the latest a single-dose pill that produces a "dry orgasm", the slightly eye-watering notion that the man experiences sexual pleasure, but does not produce any semen. ...
Under normal conditions, rhythmic movement of muscles running lengthways along the vas deferens and circular rings of muscle around the tube propel sperm during an ejaculation. But the two drugs [a schizophrenia and blood pressure drug] have the side-effect of shutting down the lengthways muscles. "They relax it," says Amobi. That means the sperm don't go anywhere. Usefully, the effect wears off 12 to 24 hours after taking the pills.
Um, I guess you kind of don't know if it has worked until it is too late. And if it had to be used with a condom for that reason (or for safe sex reasons,) there would be no point in using it at all.
There are several at various stages of development, with the latest a single-dose pill that produces a "dry orgasm", the slightly eye-watering notion that the man experiences sexual pleasure, but does not produce any semen. ...
Under normal conditions, rhythmic movement of muscles running lengthways along the vas deferens and circular rings of muscle around the tube propel sperm during an ejaculation. But the two drugs [a schizophrenia and blood pressure drug] have the side-effect of shutting down the lengthways muscles. "They relax it," says Amobi. That means the sperm don't go anywhere. Usefully, the effect wears off 12 to 24 hours after taking the pills.
Um, I guess you kind of don't know if it has worked until it is too late. And if it had to be used with a condom for that reason (or for safe sex reasons,) there would be no point in using it at all.
Women in Afghanistan
The Guardian has a fairly long article about the continuing plight of women in Afghanistan. Although it opens as if its sole point is to criticise the failure of Western intervention to help maintain early improvements to women's status, it does acknowledge that women are still far better off than they were under Taliban rule, and no one thinks it would be good for the West to leave.
Some specific examples of spectacularly bad treatment of women there:
Human Rights Watch says that a third of districts in Afghanistan are now without girls' schools, due to attacks on teachers and students by the Taliban and other anti-government elements; and traditional practices such as child marriage and baad, in which women are exchanged like objects in tribal disputes, still continue unchallenged. ...
Some specific examples of spectacularly bad treatment of women there:
Human Rights Watch says that a third of districts in Afghanistan are now without girls' schools, due to attacks on teachers and students by the Taliban and other anti-government elements; and traditional practices such as child marriage and baad, in which women are exchanged like objects in tribal disputes, still continue unchallenged. ...
Joya talks like this to me, furiously, for more than an hour, almost weeping as she catalogues the crimes against women that still keep them in a state of fear: from Safia Ama Jan, the leading women's rights campaigner assassinated in Kandahar earlier this year, to Nadia Anjuman, a poet murdered in Herat last year; from Amina, a married woman who was stoned to death in Badakhshan in 2005, to Sanobar, an 11-year-old girl who was raped and exchanged for a dog in a reported dispute among warlords in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan last month.
She is desperate for people to take account of the silent women whose voices we never hear. "Afghan women are killing themselves now," she says, "there is no liberation for them." This is not just rhetoric: the Afghan Human Rights Commission recently began to document the numbers of Afghan women who are burning themselves to death because they cannot escape abuse in their families.
Monday, November 27, 2006
An unappealing concept
Apropos of nothing, I just stumbled across a (literally) "high concept" business on the Internet:
My attitude to heights might be little unusual. I like flying, and I enjoy it more on a small aircraft than a huge one. (I feel it is more "natural" for a Cessna to fly than a 747.) But when it comes to buildings, I can get a little nervous standing on an apartment balcony if it is any more than a few stories up.
Maybe it's the tilted angle of that photo, but for some reason it makes me feel queasy just thinking about trying to enjoy food while strapped into a seat with 50 m of air between my backside and the ground.
(By the way, it seems Boing Boing has not posted on this one yet, even though it is right up their alley.)
A unique event meant for anyone who wishes to transform an ordinary meal or meeting into a magical moment that will leave a lasting impression on their guests!
Dinner in the Sky takes place at a table suspended at a height of 50 metres by a team of professionals. Benji Fun, our partner in this event, is the worldwide leader for this type of activities.
This is what it looks like:
My attitude to heights might be little unusual. I like flying, and I enjoy it more on a small aircraft than a huge one. (I feel it is more "natural" for a Cessna to fly than a 747.) But when it comes to buildings, I can get a little nervous standing on an apartment balcony if it is any more than a few stories up.
Maybe it's the tilted angle of that photo, but for some reason it makes me feel queasy just thinking about trying to enjoy food while strapped into a seat with 50 m of air between my backside and the ground.
(By the way, it seems Boing Boing has not posted on this one yet, even though it is right up their alley.)
The pain that only men can feel
For those male readers contemplating having a vasectomy, The Times has an article on the uncomfortable issue of long lasting pain. The solution for some men sounds rather radical:
Dr Black says: “I’ve seen a handful of cases in which pain has continued beyond nine months after the operation.” He suggests that the debate about longer-term post-vasectomy pain exists because of the industry that has sprung up around it. “Some urologists, especially in the US, are making money by removing the epididymis or even the testicles of men in post-vasectomy pain, promising that the pain will disappear,” he says. “But I’ve never seen anyone who really needed this.”
Well, removal of testicles should completely remove the fear of the loose ends rejoining, as is known to happen from time to time.
The problem with this type of issue is that it is very easy for doctors to think it's all in the mind. However, if a specialist himself suffers it, well that's different:
Dr Andrew Dawson, of the Hartlepool Vasectomy Reverse Clinic, is not so sure. He, too, has suffered post-vasectomy pain: “My own problems made me realise that this was something we needed to take seriously. I’ve come across men whose pain has taken over their lives. We’ve performed vasectomy reversals (re-joining the cut tubes) for them, which have been 100 per cent effective and eliminates the pain.”
What might be causing the pain?:
He believes that he can explain what is happening. “Vasectomy is pretty crude really; it just traps sperm in the epididymis. In some, often highly sexed, men this can cause the epididymis to become swollen. Eventually it can rupture — Americans call this a blowout — which will solve the problem naturally but can be very painful. A vasectomy reversal can reduce the pressure.”
I remember asking someone - I forget who - years ago about what happened to sperm that could not get out after a vasectomy. The vague suggestion was something like "the body just absorbs it." Maybe in most people it does, as we don't hear of "blowouts" all that often. Still, it's good to know that my puzzlement about this was in fact a good question.
By the way, this was all dealt with in detail in an episode of ABC's Health Report in 1997! I wonder if there is adequate warning of this possible complication being given now?
Dr Black says: “I’ve seen a handful of cases in which pain has continued beyond nine months after the operation.” He suggests that the debate about longer-term post-vasectomy pain exists because of the industry that has sprung up around it. “Some urologists, especially in the US, are making money by removing the epididymis or even the testicles of men in post-vasectomy pain, promising that the pain will disappear,” he says. “But I’ve never seen anyone who really needed this.”
Well, removal of testicles should completely remove the fear of the loose ends rejoining, as is known to happen from time to time.
The problem with this type of issue is that it is very easy for doctors to think it's all in the mind. However, if a specialist himself suffers it, well that's different:
Dr Andrew Dawson, of the Hartlepool Vasectomy Reverse Clinic, is not so sure. He, too, has suffered post-vasectomy pain: “My own problems made me realise that this was something we needed to take seriously. I’ve come across men whose pain has taken over their lives. We’ve performed vasectomy reversals (re-joining the cut tubes) for them, which have been 100 per cent effective and eliminates the pain.”
What might be causing the pain?:
He believes that he can explain what is happening. “Vasectomy is pretty crude really; it just traps sperm in the epididymis. In some, often highly sexed, men this can cause the epididymis to become swollen. Eventually it can rupture — Americans call this a blowout — which will solve the problem naturally but can be very painful. A vasectomy reversal can reduce the pressure.”
I remember asking someone - I forget who - years ago about what happened to sperm that could not get out after a vasectomy. The vague suggestion was something like "the body just absorbs it." Maybe in most people it does, as we don't hear of "blowouts" all that often. Still, it's good to know that my puzzlement about this was in fact a good question.
By the way, this was all dealt with in detail in an episode of ABC's Health Report in 1997! I wonder if there is adequate warning of this possible complication being given now?
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Red, white and blue butterfly
I spotted this particularly attractive butterfly in the yard today and took this pic. (The butterfly itself is exactly how the camera caught it; but the background has been smudged and blurred by me with an image editor program and my little tablet.) It looks very good if you view it full size.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
From the annals of useless commentary...
Alan Ramsay in the SMH today:
Our Prime Minister lately is behaving and sounding very much like the Paul Keating of old in the ebullience of his arrogance.
Phillip, all of this will be received without criticism when the authorised biography with full details of all your indiscretions is available.
Our Prime Minister lately is behaving and sounding very much like the Paul Keating of old in the ebullience of his arrogance.
Keating in Labor's 13th year of office was insufferable, however mellow the memory. Howard nearing his 12th displays much the same underlying contempt, only differently.
And in The Australian, Phillip Adams continues his one man campaign to "out" every gay (or bisexual?) man he has ever met or heard about.Phillip, all of this will be received without criticism when the authorised biography with full details of all your indiscretions is available.
Friday, November 24, 2006
When in doubt, parachute in the historians
From the International Herald Tribune:
Last week, Kofi Annan gave the Middle East a history assignment. Speaking in Istanbul, the UN secretary general identified the competing historical narratives of Palestinians and Israelis as central to the Middle East crisis and the alleged clash of civilizations between Muslim and Western worlds...
Maybe it doesn't pay to be too sceptical about anything that could possibly help in the Middle East. But really, I imagine one side having much greater difficulty than the other in being persuaded by historians' white papers. (Here's a hint: it's not the side that has trouble accepting the extent of the Holocaust, and does nothing to stop theProtocols of the Elders of Zion being re-hashed as truth.)
Last week, Kofi Annan gave the Middle East a history assignment. Speaking in Istanbul, the UN secretary general identified the competing historical narratives of Palestinians and Israelis as central to the Middle East crisis and the alleged clash of civilizations between Muslim and Western worlds...
To bridge this gap in public perceptions, the [UN] report recommends the drafting of a white paper analyzing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dispassionately and objectively, giving voice to competing narratives on both sides. In recommending historical research as a precondition to political dialogue, the UN report has identified a core problem that dates back to the spring of 1919 when three politicians, Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau, disregarded history in favor of political expediency. Since then, political leaders have grappled vainly with the consequences of this "peace to end all peace" in the Middle East.
By acknowledging the importance of history and seeking to engage historians in the peace process, Annan is creating an opportunity for new approaches to resolving this seemingly intractable conflict.Maybe it doesn't pay to be too sceptical about anything that could possibly help in the Middle East. But really, I imagine one side having much greater difficulty than the other in being persuaded by historians' white papers. (Here's a hint: it's not the side that has trouble accepting the extent of the Holocaust, and does nothing to stop theProtocols of the Elders of Zion being re-hashed as truth.)
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Dawkins' declaration of war
Richard Dawkins 's book "The God Delusion" and his vigorous campaign to get other atheistic scientists to actively repudiate all forms of religious belief is attracting a lot of attention.
(For those who haven't been following this: Dawkins won't even tolerate those who tolerate religious moderates. In his view, giving comfort to any form of supernatural belief means you are also giving comfort to the fundamentalists.)
For a good backgrounder on this campaign, the lengthy Wired article from last month was pretty good. More recently, a New York Times article talks about a conference where Dawkins sought to rally the troops against religion.
Well written anti-Dawkins material can be found in the reviews of Terry Eagleton and Marilynne Robinson. Criticism about how Dawkins treats Stalinism and Nazi Germany so as to try to paint them as not really the product of atheism is well dealt with in Dinesh D'Souza's article here. Even those who are generally sympathetic to his cause often express concern that he is far too stroppy in his rhetoric and is actually hurting the cause he promotes.
He refuses to accept even the "non overlapping magisteria" argument (the view that religion and science are fundamentally about different things, and therefore can co-exist peacefully.)
One of the stupidest comments about all this I found being made by a physicist blogger Sean Carroll over at Cosmic Variance:
Scientists who do try to point out that walking on water isn’t consistent with the laws of physics, and that there’s no reason to believe in an afterlife, etc., are often told that this is a bad strategic move — we’ll never win over the average person on the street to the cause of science and rationality if we tell them that it conflicts with their religion. Which is a legitimate way to think, if you’re a politician or a marketing firm. But as scientists, our first duty should be to tell the truth. The laws of physics and biology tell us something about how the world works, and there is no room in there for raising the dead and turning water into wine. In the long run, being honest with ourselves and with the public is always the best strategy.
Does this guy, who knows so much about dark energy and cosmology, know so little of religion that he does not even understand the definition of a miracle? Fortunately, some of the comments following this post did make the point:
It seems to me a little absurd to criticize scientist for not jumping on things like virging [sic] birth or walking on water. The whole point of these miracles is that they are, precisely, miracles. They are once in a lifetime occurances that take place by divine intervention. I don’t think science has anything to say about that: a non-reproducible, one time event that is by definition outside the natural realm. Evolution is an entirely different game, as it concerns the development of species in a natural way. It can (and has) been tested.
The other point I want to make about is all this is the irritating way atheists like Dawkins talk up the "inspirational" aspects of science and nature. Look at this from an interview with Dawkins:
QUESTION: Professor Dawkins, at the start of your talk, you said that the traditional religions were not only false but also failed to provide a deeper meaning than science and in that sense were not more soulful. I agree with that, to the extent that they attempt to provide an explanation, but another thing that the religions do is give comfort to people if they lose people in car accidents or to cancer and so on, and as far as I've experienced it, the scientific view cannot give people this kind of comfort. So in that sense the religions, even if they're false, are more soulful. And I wonder how you would respond to that.
Dawkins: ....although science may not be able to console you in the particular case of a bereavement from a car accident, it's not at all clear that science can't console you in other respects. So, for example, when we contemplate our own mortality, when we recognize that we're not here forever and that we're going to go into nothingness when we die, I find great consolation in the feeling that as long as I'm here I'm going to occupy my mind as fully as possible in understanding why I was ever born in the first place. And that seems to me to be consoling in another sense, perhaps a rather grander sense. It is of course somewhat depressing sometimes to feel that one can't go on understanding the universe; it would be nice to be able to be here in 500 years to see what people have discovered by then. But we do have the privilege of living in the 20th and very soon in the 21st century, when not only is more known than in any past century, but hugely more than in any past century. We are amazingly privileged to be living now, to be living in a time when the origin of the cosmos is getting close to being understood, the size of the universe is understood, the nature of life in a very large number of particulars is understood. This is a great privilege; to me it's an enormous consolation, and it's still a consolation even though it's for each one of us individually finite and going to come to an end. So I'm enormously grateful to be alive, and let me take up what Steve was talking about, the question of how you can bear to get up in the mornings. To me it makes it all the more worthwhile to get up in the mornings -- we haven't got that much time, let's get up in the morning and really use our brief time to understand why we're here and what it's all about. That to me is real consolation.
Or as Physicist Steven Weinberg has said:
...the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless...
and:
Though aware that there is nothing in the universe that suggests any purpose for humanity, one way that we can find a purpose is to study the universe by the methods of science, without consoling ourselves with fairy tales about its future, or about our own.
Isn't this at heart an extremely elitist view? Fine if you are a scientist, or an autodidact, but what about people who don't have that intrinsic interest or the ability to learn much about, or contribute to, the advance of science?
Maybe it is easy to overstate the importance of religion in the West today, as apart from declining church numbers, we all know people who more or less successfully avoid the "big issues" for most of their lives. But Dawkins and his pals are keen to destroy even any subconscious level of optimism that people may have absorbed from religion (namely, that there is meaning and purpose to the universe, and each person is intrinsically valued not just because other humans deem it so, but because it is true at the transcendent level.)
(For those who haven't been following this: Dawkins won't even tolerate those who tolerate religious moderates. In his view, giving comfort to any form of supernatural belief means you are also giving comfort to the fundamentalists.)
For a good backgrounder on this campaign, the lengthy Wired article from last month was pretty good. More recently, a New York Times article talks about a conference where Dawkins sought to rally the troops against religion.
Well written anti-Dawkins material can be found in the reviews of Terry Eagleton and Marilynne Robinson. Criticism about how Dawkins treats Stalinism and Nazi Germany so as to try to paint them as not really the product of atheism is well dealt with in Dinesh D'Souza's article here. Even those who are generally sympathetic to his cause often express concern that he is far too stroppy in his rhetoric and is actually hurting the cause he promotes.
He refuses to accept even the "non overlapping magisteria" argument (the view that religion and science are fundamentally about different things, and therefore can co-exist peacefully.)
One of the stupidest comments about all this I found being made by a physicist blogger Sean Carroll over at Cosmic Variance:
Scientists who do try to point out that walking on water isn’t consistent with the laws of physics, and that there’s no reason to believe in an afterlife, etc., are often told that this is a bad strategic move — we’ll never win over the average person on the street to the cause of science and rationality if we tell them that it conflicts with their religion. Which is a legitimate way to think, if you’re a politician or a marketing firm. But as scientists, our first duty should be to tell the truth. The laws of physics and biology tell us something about how the world works, and there is no room in there for raising the dead and turning water into wine. In the long run, being honest with ourselves and with the public is always the best strategy.
Does this guy, who knows so much about dark energy and cosmology, know so little of religion that he does not even understand the definition of a miracle? Fortunately, some of the comments following this post did make the point:
It seems to me a little absurd to criticize scientist for not jumping on things like virging [sic] birth or walking on water. The whole point of these miracles is that they are, precisely, miracles. They are once in a lifetime occurances that take place by divine intervention. I don’t think science has anything to say about that: a non-reproducible, one time event that is by definition outside the natural realm. Evolution is an entirely different game, as it concerns the development of species in a natural way. It can (and has) been tested.
The other point I want to make about is all this is the irritating way atheists like Dawkins talk up the "inspirational" aspects of science and nature. Look at this from an interview with Dawkins:
QUESTION: Professor Dawkins, at the start of your talk, you said that the traditional religions were not only false but also failed to provide a deeper meaning than science and in that sense were not more soulful. I agree with that, to the extent that they attempt to provide an explanation, but another thing that the religions do is give comfort to people if they lose people in car accidents or to cancer and so on, and as far as I've experienced it, the scientific view cannot give people this kind of comfort. So in that sense the religions, even if they're false, are more soulful. And I wonder how you would respond to that.
Dawkins: ....although science may not be able to console you in the particular case of a bereavement from a car accident, it's not at all clear that science can't console you in other respects. So, for example, when we contemplate our own mortality, when we recognize that we're not here forever and that we're going to go into nothingness when we die, I find great consolation in the feeling that as long as I'm here I'm going to occupy my mind as fully as possible in understanding why I was ever born in the first place. And that seems to me to be consoling in another sense, perhaps a rather grander sense. It is of course somewhat depressing sometimes to feel that one can't go on understanding the universe; it would be nice to be able to be here in 500 years to see what people have discovered by then. But we do have the privilege of living in the 20th and very soon in the 21st century, when not only is more known than in any past century, but hugely more than in any past century. We are amazingly privileged to be living now, to be living in a time when the origin of the cosmos is getting close to being understood, the size of the universe is understood, the nature of life in a very large number of particulars is understood. This is a great privilege; to me it's an enormous consolation, and it's still a consolation even though it's for each one of us individually finite and going to come to an end. So I'm enormously grateful to be alive, and let me take up what Steve was talking about, the question of how you can bear to get up in the mornings. To me it makes it all the more worthwhile to get up in the mornings -- we haven't got that much time, let's get up in the morning and really use our brief time to understand why we're here and what it's all about. That to me is real consolation.
Or as Physicist Steven Weinberg has said:
...the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless...
and:
Though aware that there is nothing in the universe that suggests any purpose for humanity, one way that we can find a purpose is to study the universe by the methods of science, without consoling ourselves with fairy tales about its future, or about our own.
Isn't this at heart an extremely elitist view? Fine if you are a scientist, or an autodidact, but what about people who don't have that intrinsic interest or the ability to learn much about, or contribute to, the advance of science?
Maybe it is easy to overstate the importance of religion in the West today, as apart from declining church numbers, we all know people who more or less successfully avoid the "big issues" for most of their lives. But Dawkins and his pals are keen to destroy even any subconscious level of optimism that people may have absorbed from religion (namely, that there is meaning and purpose to the universe, and each person is intrinsically valued not just because other humans deem it so, but because it is true at the transcendent level.)
An outbreak of common sense at The Guardian? (And I get to talk about airships)
If the figures in this article in the Guardian are correct, it really does make all the European panic about flying and greenhouse gases sound rather ridiculous:
UN scientists from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate aviation's contribution to global carbon emissions to be just 2%. To put things in perspective, road traffic contributes 18% globally, while the fossil fuels used to generate heat and power contribute 35%.
...I am not arguing that aviation should be left alone to pollute as it sees fit. Consume less fuel and you emit less carbon. Aeroplane manufacturers understand. Over the past 40 years - starting long before Kyoto - fuel efficiency improved 70%. And the next generation of aircraft will have a fuel efficiency of just three litres per 100 passenger kilometres. That is much better than any hybrid car on the market.
Of course, airships are inherently lovely anyway, and there always seems to be some company hoping to be about to revive the giant airship. Popular Mechanics ran this article recently about "hybrid airships" which are an interesting idea:
Hybrid airships use gas to generate 30 to 80 percent of the lift they need to get off the ground, and depend on aerodynamic lift--the flow of air over wings or fuselage--for the rest. That means that when hybrids stop moving through the air, they sink. The advantage? Once on the ground, they stay put. A major problem for conventional airships is the difficulty in handling them on the ground. Large and buoyant, they're always eager to fly away on the slightest breeze. The Goodyear blimp requires 17 handlers; the zeppelins of the '20s and '30s employed hundreds.
I would have thought that their use around Europe would have been most appropriate. The distances make for more reasonable travel times, with lots of nice scenery to look at .
UN scientists from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate aviation's contribution to global carbon emissions to be just 2%. To put things in perspective, road traffic contributes 18% globally, while the fossil fuels used to generate heat and power contribute 35%.
"But you are growing uncontrollably," is the usual retort. Our industry is growing at between 5 and 6% per year because people want to travel. The biggest growth is in rapidly developing economies, such as China, India and eastern Europe. Their hard-earned wealth is helping them to travel the world. This is balanced by slower growth in more mature markets. And the net impact - estimated by the IPCC - is that aviation's contribution may grow to 3% by 2050.
And further down:...I am not arguing that aviation should be left alone to pollute as it sees fit. Consume less fuel and you emit less carbon. Aeroplane manufacturers understand. Over the past 40 years - starting long before Kyoto - fuel efficiency improved 70%. And the next generation of aircraft will have a fuel efficiency of just three litres per 100 passenger kilometres. That is much better than any hybrid car on the market.
Airlines have also understood. In the past two years, fuel efficiency has improved 5%. They are doing everything from making spoons lighter, to optimising the amount of water in toilets.
Our own association's efforts to straighten routes, reduce congestion and eliminate delays slashed carbon emissions by more than 12m tonnes in 2005 - equivalent to removing 3m cars from Britain's roads.
Damn. One of the cooler things I wanted to see come out of an anti greenhouse gas campaign was a return of the large scale passenger airship. Sounds like it is hardly necessary.Of course, airships are inherently lovely anyway, and there always seems to be some company hoping to be about to revive the giant airship. Popular Mechanics ran this article recently about "hybrid airships" which are an interesting idea:
Hybrid airships use gas to generate 30 to 80 percent of the lift they need to get off the ground, and depend on aerodynamic lift--the flow of air over wings or fuselage--for the rest. That means that when hybrids stop moving through the air, they sink. The advantage? Once on the ground, they stay put. A major problem for conventional airships is the difficulty in handling them on the ground. Large and buoyant, they're always eager to fly away on the slightest breeze. The Goodyear blimp requires 17 handlers; the zeppelins of the '20s and '30s employed hundreds.
Defence in the US had paid money (under its nicely named but defunct "Walrus" program) to investigate these heavy lift airship-ish things, but whether a large scale one will ever be built seems unclear. Companies that like to talk up airships often come up with nice graphics and concept illustrations. Aeros Corporation's is worth looking at.
I would have thought that their use around Europe would have been most appropriate. The distances make for more reasonable travel times, with lots of nice scenery to look at .
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
An interesting snippet
From the PM's commission's report on the feasibility of nuclear power in Australia:
Compared with other non-combustion
technologies, such as solar and wind power,
nuclear power requires a much smaller footprint
for equivalent power generation. A current 900 MW
nuclear power plant, with a footprint of less than
1 km2, would produce as much electricity in a year
as 70 km2 of solar photovoltaic panels, or about
1000 wind turbines, taking into account the
efficiencies, availabilities and capacity factors.
Compared with other non-combustion
technologies, such as solar and wind power,
nuclear power requires a much smaller footprint
for equivalent power generation. A current 900 MW
nuclear power plant, with a footprint of less than
1 km2, would produce as much electricity in a year
as 70 km2 of solar photovoltaic panels, or about
1000 wind turbines, taking into account the
efficiencies, availabilities and capacity factors.
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