Unpleasant lives

Observer review: Bad Faith by Carmen Callil

I'm about a third of the way through this book, which is a very detailed biography of Louis Darquier, an appalling Frenchman who ended up working in the Vichy government as "Commissioner for Jewish Affairs" and was responsible for the deportation of thousands of French Jews to Auschwitz.

There are quite a few things in the book which I did not know about France and Europe between the wars. For example, as a small time wannabe politician and general rabble rouser in Paris in the mid 1930's, Darquier started making anti-Semitic statements, and immediately found himself the beneficiary of Nazi money.

I hadn't realised that the Nazis at that point in time were quite so obsessed with the "Jewish problem" that they were not only setting up for the "solution" in their own country, but were also going out of their way to support anti-Semitism anywhere it popped up in Europe.

Darquier seems to have turned into an anti-Semite in 1935, and it appears to have had the unexpected consequence of ending his financial problems. He and his wife had, for years before that, spent most of their time moving from hotel to hotel to avoid paying their huge bar and food bills, while he tried (unsuccessfully) to become a novelist and journalist. They sponged off his brother for financial support.

Then, put onto the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" by some French nationalist quasi-intellectuals of his acquaintance, his problems were solved. I do not quite understand why the thorough debunking the Protocols had received in the early 1920's in England just didn't catch on in Germany, or much of Europe.

The odd Australian connection to the story is that Darquier's wife was an Australian woman from Tasmania. She also became a hopeless drunk, a financial leech on her husband's family (even though they couldn't stand her) and a mother who completely abandoned her only daughter to a nanny in England, who often went unpaid for her efforts as well.

Oddly, even though it is very well written (save for one exaggeration I reckon she makes about Tasmania), and seems to have received plenty of favourable reviews in England and America, I found it for sale here in a 'remaindered' book shop for $10. Occasionally (very occasionally) you can come up with high quality reading in such shops.

If you enjoy true life stories of extremely unpleasant people, I can recommend this book.

The eternal entry ticket

Woman seen scattering ashes at Disneyland- Travel - LATimes.com

Odd story from last week I had missed.

Panpsychism discussed

Mind of a Rock - New York Times

A pretty good read from Jim Holt here about panpsychism, which he describes as the following hypothesis:

Perhaps, they say, mind is not limited to the brains of some animals. Perhaps it is ubiquitous, present in every bit of matter, all the way up to galaxies, all the way down to electrons and neutrinos, not excluding medium-size things like a glass of water or a potted plant. Moreover, it did not suddenly arise when some physical particles on a certain planet chanced to come into the right configuration; rather, there has been consciousness in the cosmos from the very beginning of time.

It's a cute idea, but I didn't think it had much current support. Not so, apparently:

The Australian philosopher David Chalmers and the Oxford physicist Roger Penrose have spoken on its behalf. In the recent book “Consciousness and Its Place in Nature,” the British philosopher Galen Strawson defends panpsychism against numerous critics.

I didn't think that Roger Penrose's controversial ideas on mind could quite be described this way.

Here's a review of another book defending it.

I know that Augustine rejected pantheism, but am not entirely sure whether panpsychism has ever really attracted that much attention by famous Christian theologians. (Maybe it has simply been dismissed as too improbable to consider.)

Kind of interesting, anyway.

Why change now?

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iran eyes nuclear options abroad

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to discuss with Arab nations a plan to enrich uranium outside the region in a neutral country such as Switzerland.

He made the announcement in an interview for Dow Jones Newswires in Saudi Arabia where he is attending a petroleum exporters' summit.

Gulf Arab states recently proposed setting up a consortium to provide nuclear fuel to Iran and others.

Hadn't Russia offered to do this for Iran ages ago? What is causing Iran to suddenly find it something worth talking about?

Something to make Brisbane proud

Yes, Brisbane can come up with deadly and innovative weapons with the best of them:

Metal Storm reaches Navy test range

I either didn't realise, or had forgotten, that the Metal Storm company, which has been busy developing uber guns, is based in Brisbane. One of their systems is being tested by the US Navy now, as (from memory) one of its proposed uses would be for ships to spray a defensive curtain of metal against incoming missiles.

The Metal Storm website has lots and lots of information, with photos and videos of their systems, and indeed the company appears to be a very significant enterprise. Yet, according to the CEO's latest bulletin, despite all the international interest, they are disappointed in the current share price.

If only I had a stockbroker.

Cuckoo

Daddy dearest: Many men are finding out they are not the father after all

The paternity testing industry is finding itself much more popular:

Almost a quarter of paternity tests conducted by one of Australia's largest DNA laboratory companies show the man submitting a sample is not the father, compared to an estimated one in 10 "exclusions" 10 years ago.

The number of tests taken in Australia has doubled from 3000 in 2003 to more than 6000 last year.

As a result, at least one men's rights groups is suggesting compulsory paternity testing at birth. Just how many surprises this would reveal seems pretty unclear:

Some experts say the proportion of negative paternity tests reflects the fact that the men coming forward already have reasonable doubts, and that of the entire population, only 1 per cent of fathers are not the "real" parent.

The men's rights group are opposed by feminists who see this just as men seeking to punish their unfaithful partners. But the men's rights argument has this very plausible strand:

"People's lives are being ruined by this. It is not just the men, it's the children who grow up thinking one person is their father and then find out it's someone else.

"In the future, more and more health treatments are going to be based on genetic technology, so it is going to be even more important to know who your biological father is.

"Mandatory testing would get rid of all these problems."

Indeed, it seems the modern push to allow for re-union with fathers for those conceived with anonymous donor sperm has often cited the importance of a child being able to know their genetic inheritance.

The other thing to consider is that testing may mean that for every purported father happy with the result, there is likely to be a previously undisclosed father who is unhappy. Feminists can't really argue then that the men as a group are going to the winners of compulsory testing.

Of course, there would be some cases where a father accepts that a baby may not be his and his happy to treat it as his own anyway.

How about a compromise system then: compulsory testing unless both of the parents sign forms confirming they do not want it. By doing so, the father would accept financial responsibility for the child forever, regardless of whether later testing reveals he is not the father. The later testing would be available for the child's benefit in the event of separation.

In fact, in a post last year I had nearly forgotten about, I had suggested compulsory paternity testing at separation of the parents. This has some good arguments going for it too.

But if the priority is going to switch to children having a right to know their true genetic inheritance, then switching the system to one of testing at birth would be more important.

Every UFO should have one

Technology Review: Stopping Cars with Radiation

Anyone familiar with the history of UFO's (or even those who recall a key scene in Close Encounters,) will probably think of the possible flying saucer connection when they first see this story:

Researchers at Eureka Aerospace are turning a fictional concept from the movie 2 Fast 2 Furious into reality: they're creating an electromagnetic system that can quickly bring a vehicle to a stop. The system, which can be attached to an automobile or aircraft carrier, sends out pulses of microwave radiation to disable the microprocessors that control the central engine functions in a car. Such a device could be used by law enforcement to stop fleeing and noncooperative vehicles at security checkpoints, or as perimeter protection for military bases, communication centers, and oil platforms in the open seas.

The system has been tested on a variety of stationary vehicles and could be ready for deployment in automobiles within 18 months...

Unfortunately, though, it is not believed to be the ready explanation for UFO car stalling stories from the 1960's:

The radiated microwave energy will upset or damage the vehicle's electronic systems, particularly the microprocessors that control important engine functions, such as the ignition control, the fuel injector, and the fuel-pump control. However, electronic control modules were not built into most cars until 1972, hence the system will not work on automobiles made before that year.

As this article shows, car interference cases really kicked off in the 1950's, and in fact my strong impression is that such reports have become much less frequent since the late 70's despite Close Encounters' popularity. (Clearly, though, that movie may have been very influential at the subconscious level with respect to the popularity of alien abduction claims in the 1980's.)

The Condon Report notes that lab tests were done in the 60's to see if a strong magnetic field could stall a car, and the results indicated this was not a plausible explanation. However, whether tests were ever done on the effects of strong microwaves on the cars of the day is something I don't know. Maybe everyone is assuming it will only work on microprocessors in modern cars, but are we sure?

It will be the youngster's fault

Rudd's youth appeal trumps PM | The Australian

There's a lot of talk in The Australian this morning about how Kevin Rudd's appeal to the under 35's will be the main source of his likely triumph.

Yes, the demographic that values idealism more than practical results on the ground, and does not (for the most part) yet have children at school, or mortgages, is about to hand government to Kevin Rudd.

Oh well, you have to let youngsters learn by experience, I suppose, even if we know it will all end in tears.

What is going on at McDonald's?

I've noticed something at McDonald's. While I think they used to actually cook frozen hamburger on a grill, now in the cooking area all I can see is a sort of oven-like device full of slide in trays. It seems hamburger patties are being cooked or re-heated in this thing now.

As I suspect it is no more than a "warming" device, does this mean that the hamburger meat is now pre-cooked before it gets to the store?

Just curious. I can't say I have noticed a significant difference in quality of the hamburgers.

I admire the company for its re-branding as a healthier food outlet, as well as the much more attractive and "adult" look of many of their stores.

The new (possible) TOE

McCabism: An exceptionally simple theory of everything

Gordon McCabe clears up the situation with this new (yet to be tested, but possibly promising) theory of everything:

The diagram here represents the 240 roots of the Lie algebra of E8, each of which purportedly define a possible type of elementary particle. Every Lie algebra has a maximal commuting subalgebra, called the Cartan subalgebra. In each representation of a Lie algebra, the simultaneous eigenvectors of the elements from the Cartan subalgebra are called the weight vectors of the representation, and their simultaneous eigenvalues are called the weights of the representation. In the special case of the adjoint representation, (a representation of a Lie algebra upon itself), the weight vectors are called the root vectors, and the weights are called the roots. The roots uniquely determine a Lie algebra.

Err... yes, thanks Gordon for helping make that clear for the rest of us. (Or how about just telling us if it has any surprises regarding possible explanations for dark energy, dark matter, and the fate of the universe.)

UPDATE: if you want to see a physics blog where it is discussed in great detail, try this. Still hard (no, impossible) to fathom, of course.

UPDATE 2: hey, this is more like it. Go here and watch a lovely animation that gives a bit of a clearer overview as to what it is all about. It looks so pretty, I certainly hope it's true.

Three odd stories concerning women

1. Menstrual blood could be rich source of stem cells - New Scientist

Menstrual blood: it's not far behind paedophilia and child murder in the ranks of topics about which it is absolutely impossible to come up with any comment that could plausibly be called "witty". So, moving right along:

2. Apparently, some Australian women breastfeed their kids up to age 7. Very, very few I gather, but some. Mind you, I heard a caller to talkback radio today say that as a student teacher, she had seen women attend school for the purpose of breastfeeding their kid in grade 1! (She also claimed some women protracted breastfeeding as a tactic to help defeat an estranged husband's custody or visitation rights!) Can this be true? She sounded sane, but I have just never heard anything like this.

3. They are working on a new design for a female condom. The first version never caught on. This is how they plan to improve it:

The old design hung passively from the rubber ring, which could shift around and sometimes hurt; the new design has dots of adhesive foam that adhere to the vaginal walls, expanding with them during arousal.

Err, somehow I just can't imagine that the idea of having such a device stuck in place with adhesive foam is ever going to be an easy sell to women. In fact, I reckon the developers may as well just give up now.

More equity coming my way?

Room for prices to rise in Brisbane, Melbourne

The general manager of Australian Property Monitors, Michael McNamara, says median house prices in several property markets have levelled off in the $500,000 to $550,000 band.

A pattern seems to be emerging: when a city's median home price reaches about half-a-million it stays there.

"The cities with a median price up over the $500,000 mark just don't seem to have any more fuel left in the tank; they seem to be stagnating," McNamara says. He thinks that communities in the country's two most expensive property markets, Sydney and Perth, are approaching "peak debt".

The article says that Brisbane and Melbourne haven't reached that median price yet, but doesn't say what the median is for Brisbane.

But this article seems to give the answer:

According to APM’s analysis, Brisbane median house price lifted 2.4 per cent over the September quarter to reach $399,755. That worked out to an extremely solid 16.7 per cent rise for the year.

And further down:

Mr Matusik said the predicted November interest rate could put a serious dampener on housing demand in the River City.

“With an increase in supply and higher interest rates our modelling is that price rises will be slow in Brisbane at somewhere between 6 and 8 per cent growth in the next 12 months,” he said.

“But looking beyond that an acceleration of price growth is likely because of the lack of new stock.”

Hmm. Soon I will be able to borrow for a 42 inch LCD TV in every room. (Plasmas seem to be a bit passe now.)

Something I bet you didn't know

I spy no temples in Kyoto | The Japan Times Online

This story in the travel section of the Japan Times is pretty fascinating:

Maizuru is more than another beautiful seaside town; it's home to the closest Japanese Navy base to North Korea. There's a slight film-noir feel to this place. Until about seven years ago, the police box in front of Higashi Maizuru Station had a poster up asking people to report sightings of strange men in rubber rafts landing on the beach in the dead of night.... Even today, fisherman occasionally report seeing strange lights along the beaches or boats without lights at night running into the many coves around Maizuru harbor.

That's a part of Japan where they probably really take locking the front door seriously, for fear of ending up in North Korea.

But the main historical thing I didn't realise, and which I bet few Westerners know too, is this:

During World War II, about 570,000 Japanese soldiers were sent to the Soviet Union, of whom about 472,000 ended up in Siberian POW camps by the end of the war. Getting the soldiers back home would prove to be a lengthy undertaking.

The first repatriation ship arrived in Maizuru on Oct. 7, 1945, just two months after Japan's surrender, and the last one docked on Sept. 7, 1958. After 1950, Maizuru become the only port in Japan to receive repatriated soldiers, many of whom were physically and spiritually broken. Between 1945 and 1958, more than 664,000 soldiers who had been stranded in the Soviet Union and China, including most of the POWs in Siberia, arrived home via Maizuru.

It took 13 years for all the POWs to be returned from Siberia! What were Russia and China doing: trying to age all the soldiers out of fighting again? Fascinating.

Anything would be better than these

The last couple of evenings I happened to see A Current Affair on Channel 9. During this last year, I have also seen snippets of Channel 7's competition, Today Tonight.

It is absolutely absurd that the competing 6.30 pm "current affairs" programs have taken to doing many stories devoted to criticising programs on their competing television networks. This week, for 2 nights in a row, A Current Affair devoted lengthy stories to criticism of Channel 7's "National Bingo Night," or whatever it is called. (It's not a "real" game of bingo, which is hardly surprising given that it is pre-recorded months ago.)

Of course, Channel 7 has gone into this too. Instead of taking ABC' s "The Chaser's" (usually spot on) satire in its stride and ignoring it, Today Tonight has run many stories with pretty ludicrously over-the-top criticism of The Chaser, purely as attempted revenge.

And when Today Tonight yesterday got an injunction against The Chaser running a sketch this week, not only did (apparently) Today Tonight itself devote time to the story, but A Current Affair also had a segment about how the other two shows were fighting!

This is unbelievably puerile, bitchy and just really pathetic television.

There is no saving 6.30 pm current affairs. It has been appalling for, I don't know, 20 years or so, yet amazingly it has found a way to reach even lower standards and be even more irrelevant, as well as profoundly demeaning to all who make it.

Politics, politics

Saw some of Kevin Rudd's campaign launch. He seemed badly unprepared for use of the autocue. When used well, you're not constantly aware of its presence. With Kevin, and the strange angles the autocue seemed to be at, it was clear that he was always reading off them. He is probably tonight punishing some media lackey for this fault.

As to content: nothing to get excited about. Seems to making rather a fetish of computers and students, which seems a little odd in a year when laptops have become so cheap you could pick up a decent enough second-hand one for primary kids for less than $300. (A new one for $700, and that should last a good few years.) Just how many families can't afford that?

On advertising: I haven't been seeing a lot of commercial TV recently, but I still have the impression that Labor seems to have a bottomless bucket of money for advertising this campaign. Liberal ads seems few and far between. If business doesn't like the outcome of the election, it only has itself to blame for what appears to be poor support of the Coalition in terms of donations.

UPDATE: Annabel Crabbe has a typically witty and accurate take on the policy launch.

News Limited headlines and coverage today are so upbeat, it seems they have jumped ship to Labor completely. The End of Certainty indeed, Paul Kelly.

If the next Newspoll is as bad as this week's, I don't know that there would be any downside for the Coalition to come out much more aggressively against Rudd personally. It has always seemed that his control freak and "say whatever it takes" nature irritates journalists, yet they are generally party to helping him maintain this. I thought John Laws' little anecdote on Enough Rope about Kevin was typical:

JOHN LAWS: Yes I’ll tell you I noticed it, I noticed it the other day and it, it intrigued me. I was going to do an interview with Kevin Rudd and I was going to pre-record it at half past seven in the morning because he was going to Perth in an aeroplane or something. I said “Is that you Kevin?” He said “Yes, eh John how are you?” And I said “Good, how are you? I bet you’re a bit a tired.” He said “Oh”, he said “tired, you know it’s hard work.” And I said “Well I imagine it is but the end result if you achieve it surely will be worth the effort?” He said “Oh yes,” he said “but sometimes, you know, just so damn hard.” And then he stopped and obviously one of his people said to him “That’s being recorded” and there was a hesitation and he came back to me and said “Are, are you, are you, are we recording?” And I said “Yeah.” He said “But I was just talking to you.” And I said “Well that’s the idea of the interview.”

JOHN LAWS: And he said “Well my people’d rather you didn’t play that.” Now he’d behaved in quite a normal pleasant fashion.

ANDREW DENTON: Mm.

JOHN LAWS: I mean, I know him, I’ve had lunch with him on more than one occasion and I know his wife, had lunch with her, so it’s not as if we’re not good acquaintances. But he was terrified that he should appear to be natural, which really surprised me. I would have thought it would have done him a tremendous amount of good to sound like just a nor-normal every day bloke. And then when I said “Alright, well if you want to do it, we’ll start it again,” he sounded like a totally different man.

Yeah, OK, you can hardly condemn Rudd for wanting to sound upbeat in an interview, and yes of course I know all politicians manipulate image; but if many journalists are leery of the controlling aspects of his character, as I am sure they are, it's fair enough for the public to be as well.

UPDATE 2: it may well be a case of "any port in a storm" when I start quoting Kenneth Davidson with approval, but he makes some decent points against Rudd's computer and broadband fetish this morning:

If Rudd Labor was serious about an education revolution it would be based on the latest survey of internet usage by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which showed that 76 per cent of households with children under the age of 15 already had access to the internet.

Why subsidise the majority of parents for spending already undertaken without subsidy? If Rudd Labor wanted to extend student access to the internet, and improve overall school retention rates, it would have focused its $2.6 billion on poor primary and secondary schools, poor areas with a low computer-pupil ratio and internet access, and provide the money necessary to provide access supervision outside school hours.

The reason why a targeted approach to funding based on needs wasn't considered is because it wasn't a vote buyer.

As Annabel Crabbe (and I) sad before, the big bonus for Dads across the nation will be that the high speed porn access they already have will be subsidised by Labor.

A silly election post...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that this has been a dull election campaign.

I would like to see more fire and passion on the Coalition side, at least. All this stage management ruins most of the spontaneity, save for the odd yell from a cranky passing shopper.

It makes me nostalgic for the public political rallies of the past. The problem is, the unions are so well organised against Workchoices, they would be bound to be a noisy out-numbering presence at any publicised Coalition rally.

My fantasy suggestion: unannounced city rooftop appearances with loudspeakers by John Howard and some of his ministers, just like The Beatles in "Let it Be". Of course, it has to be a building only a few stories up, and near a public mall or square. There must be suitable venues...

The mind image I have of this amuses me a lot.

Why aren't I in charge of a campaign?

Drugs and insight

And then I became a junkie ...

This is a lengthy extract of a book by an English comedian about his drug addled days. (I assume he is over it all now.)

There's nothing new here, I suppose, except that there is a kind of endless fascination with hearing about how completely and utterly stuffed up most drug addicts have to make their lives before they come to the realisation that they have to change.

Posting hiatus continues...sort of

Gosh, UFO's are in the news, Kevin Rudd has to slap down another high profile candidate, and rich school principals are weighing into politics in a really weird sort of way ("you bastards, what are you doing making it even minimally easier for students to come to our school?")

And I don't have time to do lengthy posts on these topics.

Just quickly: I didn't see election-themed Four Corners on Monday. The fact that Coalition supporter Harry Clarke liked it, and the virtually unhinged mob at Road to Surfdom hated it, would indicate that it may have been worth watching.

Surfdom has dropped off my regular reading list, as it has become the poisonous play pen for Ken L and his friends, but I dip the toe in occasionally. The comments about the Four Corners program are particularly amusing:

I mean dont we all know and have known for a long time that the ignorant masses are just that. Ignorant masses. That is why they have voted for Howard et al for the last 11 years. Just dont discover it now, be forever alert and alarmed.

Always with the generosity of spirit, those on the Left.

As for Nasking, always the most tired and emotional:

i feel exactly the same way Phill…& my health has gone down the gurgler since i started commenting on political blogs in 2004…tho the rot started in 1996 mentally ’cause i knew deep in my heart where Johnny boy & his cronies would take this Country…i watched the election w/ some bigoted Sth. African bast*rd who claims to be part of our extended family…he mocked & laughed his head off when Keating lost…i haven’t spoken to him since.

That night i felt the cold hand of the ‘bad karma’ spectre reach into my chest & clutch my ticker…& the breath of the same evil f*cker w/ the head of a grinning Howard penetrated my brain & called upon the ‘black dogs’ to assault it day & night. I swear i haven’t breathed easy or felt truly happy since.

Now there's a person who needs a break from commenting.

Busy, busy

The bunker building progresses well.

(Actually, work is just really busy, and attempts to contact the CIA are proving less fruitful than expected. No posts until later today/tomorrow.)

Political commentary of the day

Both Paul Sheehan's and Glenn Milne's commentaries today are worth reading.

Meanwhile, Newspoll probably confirms that last week wasn't great for Howard. (My feeling about the concentration on Howard's "sorry is not an apology" is that it a result of the distorting media filter that Milne talks about - in the sense that it was only a very small part of a long media engagement. I guess Latham could claim the same about that handshake, come to think of it.)

It's true that the Coalition has had trouble finding the overarching, pithy, punchy theme for its campaign: "Don't vote for a twerp" mustn't have passed muster at the focus groups. But given where they are in the polls, I'd give it a try if I were campaign manager. Labor has spent 10 years calling John Howard much worse.

I might need to restrict posting to evenings this week, if I can. During the day I will be learning how to use a backhoe to dig the underground bunker in the back yard where the family and I will live for the next three years after election night. Just to be safe, I'll also ready some pits for the spiked mantraps that may be helpful to keep the re-possessing banks and homeless, workless neighbours at bay. (If a vote 55% TPP happens, it'll be two terms of the Rudd at least, unless he's knifed in the back by a member of his own Cabinet. Are the betting agencies taking money on that yet?)

UPDATE: sorry, first version of this referred to Peter Hartcher's column instead of Paul Sheehan's. Been rectified.

The campaign launch: I saw some of it live on TV. Howard gave pretty good delivery, I thought, and his section on Labor's changing opinions was actually pretty sharp and witty.

As for the actual policies: the home ownership savings accounts - will be accused of "me-too-ism", but maybe is the best that could be done in the circumstances. The removal of CGT on homes co-owned by parents and kids struck me as more significant, and well worthwhile.

The other policies: I am waiting to read more detail about them.

Colebatch on interest rates

Will Rudd cut inflation? - Federal Election 2007 News - FederalElection2007

Good to see someone in The Age confirming that Kevin Rudd is really selling a crock when it comes to interest rates. In fact, by Rudd going on about Howard needing to "take responsibility" for higher interest rates, isn't he setting himself up for the same criticism being used against him in 3 years time?

Mark Latham thinks that blaming a "skills crisis" for current interest rates is also "overblown", just as I had suspected. (Although it is a little disturbing to find oneself agreeing with him about anything.)

Don't diss deodorant

Cast Aside Underarm Protection, if You Dare - New York Times

This article argues that deodorants are now overused. Most people, it suggests, probably barely need it at all if they wash once or twice a day.

A lot must depend on the particular bacterial flora that inhabit your body. My father never used deodorant a day in his life, laboured in the summer humidity of Southeast Queensland for a living, and never smelt at all. Sadly, such mysterious immunity from body odour never extended to the rest of the family.

The New York Time article notes that:

Gabrielle Glaser, the author of “The Nose: A Profile of Sex, Beauty, and Survival,” argues that the phenomenon [ a "fear of dampness and smell"] started in the early 1900s when marketers urged immigrants to eliminate their body odor to become more American.

“If you were new to the country, you wanted to do whatever you could to not offend,” said Ms. Glaser, a former contributor to The New York Times. “During the Depression, the marketing encouraged people to think that they could lessen their anxiety about losing their jobs by making sure that they didn’t stink.

He makes it sound like it was a pure cynical marketing ploy, but who could dispute that reeking of BO might have been a disincentive for employing an immigrant?

Then there is the argument that comes close to suggesting deodorant use is the cause of increased divorce:

“There is experimental evidence in humans to suggest that we may have some mating preference for those who have a different immune system then we do,” Dr. Preti said. “The scent caused by underarm bacteria is part of what signals a different immune system.....From a biological standpoint, deodorants are overused because they can make people seem more attractive than their basic biology.”

Well, sounds vaguely plausible, but most people would take the higher risk of a mating mismatch over sitting next to someone who reeks on the bus.

Emotional Lego

Microtrends: Brickfilms - Times Online

These original Lego films are pretty good.

Trouble

US fears Israeli strike against Iran over latest nuclear claim - Times Online

This seems to be attracting little attention in the Australian media.

Global warming news

Cirrus clouds might not be playing the positive feedback role in global warming that most scientists assumed. (Less of them around may mean a welcome negative feedback.) Possible good news gets the smallest of media attention, though.

Meanwhile, Planktos wants to try more ocean iron fertilization, but are getting threats from environmentalists and criticism from many others.

I don't know, seems to me to be rather hypocritical to be both in a panic about global warming and also oppose full assessment of possible alleviation measures.

Unknown stuff on the way

LHC completes the circle

One day I will get around to tagging all my posts about mini black holes, strangelets, mini time machines and other LHC stuff. In the meantime, feel free to use the blog search feature.

Getting away from it all

Antarctic Team To Install Seismographs, Where 'No Man -- Or Woman -- Has Gone Before'

The team ... will go to remote regions of Antarctica to place seismographs in both east and west Antarctica, to learn about the earth beneath the ice, and glean information about glaciers, mountains and ice streams. The location of their field camp, called AGAP-South, has never been visited by humans before, and the entire region of Antarctica has only been traversed by a Russian team 50 years ago and by a Chinese team last year.

It's good to know there are still places to go where no human footprint has been before. Of course, if I were there I would also be worrying about discovering UFOs under the ice with shape changing aliens on the loose.

Germaine has too much time on her hands

Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - art: Why has the world gone pink mad?

Things improve, slowly

A life, stolen - Times Online

This is a long story about the harshness of the British mental health system of the 20th century, and how its repercussions are still felt today.

It does often surprise me to think how different and harsh some attitudes were within very recent times.

In fact, I am also surprised at some cultural differences that still exist. In the area of divorce, for example, it seems that the attitude of some Chinese and (perhaps to a lesser degree?) Japanese is that, in the event of remarriage, the father is better off severing all ties with the children of his first marriage, and each party makes their own completely new life. Perhaps re-establishing some contact with the child as an adult is OK, but the father takes no part in their formative years.

I have seen this happen with someone I know well, and although his character is generally likeable, he accepts without question his family's attitude that he should have no contact with his first child. (In fact, he already had nearly no physical contact, but was in regular communication with her. Now even that has stopped, even though he did see her again for the first time in years before he re-married.)

This strikes me, and I would think most other Australians, as terribly, terribly sad for the child. I would hope that it is a cultural attitude that will slowly die out, but it still seems strong at the moment.

Take your own fire extinguisher

In Russian renaissance, safety takes backseat - International Herald Tribune

From the report:

More than 17,000 people died in fires in 2006 in Russia, nearly 13 for every 100,000 people. This is more than 10 times the rates typical of Western Europe and the United States, according to statistics from Russia's government, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States and the Geneva Association, a Swiss organization that analyzes international fire statistics....

The death toll - hovering this year at about 40 people a day - flows from myriad factors. Among them are aging electrical and heating systems in public housing and rural homes, dilapidated firefighting equipment and widespread violations of safety codes.

High rates of alcoholism and smoking are also factors, fire officials say, because intoxicated people are often unable to escape fires, or inadvertently set them.

More trouble coming

China's economy generates billionaires by the dozen - International Herald Tribune

China has a lot of new billionaires, but there is reason to expect they won't stay that way forever:

Analysts are skeptical about the way China's stocks are valued, particularly those with huge amounts of untradable government shares, like PetroChina. But to the buyers in Shanghai, at least, it dethroned Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company in the world. And by the same criteria, they would consider China Mobile the world's most valuable telecommunications company. ICBC, a state-owned bank that was nearly insolvent a decade ago, is worth more than Citigroup to the speculators.....

But many analysts argue that there is nothing underlying the skyrocketing valuations - or, sometimes, that the companies' obscure finances make it impossible to know. And if the Chinese stock market is a bubble, the new billionaires will disappear as quickly as they rose, since much of their wealth was generated by the stock markets, as well as by the Chinese real estate boom and the Chinese economy, the fastest-growing in the world.

And if you thought the US had inequality in income:

As much as the bounty of billionaires is a source of pride, it is also a potential cause for concern in a nominally communist country. Per capita income in China is less than $1,000 a year.

"One issue is social stability," said Emmanuel Saez, a professor of economics at the University of California. "In Latin America you had such a concentration that revolutionaries wanted to redistribute it."

For Melbourne Cup Day...

A story about horses you many not have heard before (from the History of Psychiatry):

Anthropophagic horses have been described in classical mythology. From a current perspective, two such instances are worth mentioning and describing: Glaucus of Potniae, King of Efyra, and Diomedes, King of Thrace, who were both devoured by their horses. In both cases, the horses' extreme aggression and their subsequent anthropophagic behaviour were attributed to their madness (hippomania) induced by the custom of feeding them with flesh. The current problem of 'mad cow' disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) is apparently related to a similar feed pattern. Aggressive behaviour in horses can be triggered by both biological and psychological factors. In the cases cited here, it is rather unlikely that the former were the cause. On the other hand, the multiple abuses imposed on the horses, coupled with people's fantasies and largely unconscious fears (hippophobia), may possibly explain these mythological descriptions of 'horse-monsters'.

These psychiatrist seem to think it is all mythology, but it seems to me just as likely that when a horse bites, it's actually tasting you...

The narrowing

There's not a lot of excitement in the papers about the latest Newspoll, but it's given me a nice warm feeling for the following reasons: at least the polling is going in the right direction; there are enough people (barely) who could still swing it around to the Coalition; and there must be one or two innovative announcements to come from Howard yet.

Seemingly, the voters won't completely blame the Coalition for another interest rate rise, so maybe that won't be as influential on the polls next week as some think. It remains possible that increasingly dire financial shakes that may come overseas in the next fortnight could work in the Coalition's favour.

Ah yes, time for a port and an imaginary cigar. Except I am work and need to stop posting. Bah.

Cosmology news

Even get the feeling cosmology has many more uncertainties in it than the experts like to admit?

It's possible that the universe is 20% lighter than previously thought because of some rubbery interpretation of certain measurements. (Sounds a lot when its mass and density helps determine whether it will ever turn into a "crunch" in future).

There is also a suggestion being made that dark energy may be an artefact of the local bit of the universe we live in. I am sure most cosmologists would be happy to get rid of dark energy as a concept, but no one is really convinced the problem is gone yet.

Maybe they should just stick with it being turtles all the way down.

Another Pebble Bed reactor advantage

Science Show - Uranium supplies underestimated

The Science Show had an interesting interview on the weekend, in which this (new to me) feature of Pebble Bed nuclear reactors was mentioned:

Martin Sevior: The Chinese are pursuing pebble bed reactors and those are about four times as efficient in the use of uranium as light water reactors.

Robyn Williams: Could you explain how the pebble reactors work?

Martin Sevior: The pebble bed reactors basically have...your uranium is embedded in a carbon matrix which serves as the moderator. In a standard nuclear reactor, light water is the moderator. Water is also a very good absorber of neutrons, so carbon is much more efficient in that way, it doesn't absorb neutrons. So you can actually employ less uranium for the same about of power because instead of your neutrons being lost through absorption in water, they can initiate more reactions.

Now, I would still like to know the answer to a question I asked earlier this year: do they need to use much water in their operation? If not, we can forget about the Labor scare campaign of a string of nuclear power plants along the Australian coast.

Loose lips

Another journo backs Price on Garrett's backflips

Well well. Charles Wooley does indeed support the idea that Peter Garrett has been going around giving winks and nods about Labor electoral promises:

"Peter Garrett agreed, he intimated that 'What we say in Opposition might not be what happens in government.'''

The biggest significance of this may be for Garrett's ministerial ambitions. They have receded faster than Peter's hairline.

Got off lightly, it seems

Goat killer forced to make apology

A 26 year old, pretty normal looking woman (go to the link), got up to something rather abnormal in a Brisbane outer suburb last year:

The court was last month told Arnold had been drinking at a Friday the 13th party at Bellbowrie when she and three others decided to conduct a mock satanic ritual.

Documents tendered to the court last month stated the group drove to a property on Moggill Road, Pinjarra Hills and stole the goat, which was grazing at the front of the property.

They then broke into the church, which was under construction but close to opening, and dragged the animal to a raised platform where they slaughtered it.

So far, so bizarre. But was this a completely abnormal bit of behaviour over which she felt deep shame the next day? Seems unlikely:

The goat's head was later found by police in the freezer of Arnold's home, along with a camera containing photos of members of the group with the head.

A newspaper clipping reporting the incident was also found on top of the fridge.

Of course, solicitors sometimes have to put the best spin they can on acts which are very hard to spin:

Arnold's solicitor John Jacob said his client suffered from an alcohol addiction but psychiatric reports indicated she did not have a "macabre predisposition" to commit violent offences.

"There is nothing in Ms Arnold's personal background or her psychological character that makes her any more likely to be involved in offences of this nature," he told the court.

"(But) when she drinks alcohol she makes poor decisions."

Her punishment: 2 years probation, no conviction recorded. Has to consent to psychiatric treatment (although for what it is not clear.)

Warning: all young men in Brisbane looking for a date. Study the photo at the link. Commit it to memory. Remember just how poor her decision making can be.

This has been a public service announcement of Opinion Dominion.

Money and sanity

Recovery From Schizophrenia: An International Perspective.

Apparently, according to a WHO international study, living in poorer countries gives a better chance of recovering from schizophrenia:

Outcome from schizophrenia is routinely better in developing world settings, and this difference becomes apparent during the initial 2 years of illness. But even for developing world patients with a poor early course, outcome is superior to that of developed world patients with an equivalent early course. Employment rates are substantially greater for developing world subjects, and some authors have attributed this to the freedom from the economic disincentives to employment that can accompany the provision of disability benefits in the industrial world (1). The editors, who include a well regarded medical anthropologist, are cautious about attributing the improved developing world outcomes to specific cultural factors. Shantytowns may not be ideal "communities of recovery," they point out, and extended families can be tyrannical as well as supportive. They conclude, however, that family involvement may be a key positive factor. They point to "the extraordinary engagement of Indian families in the course of treatment," (p. 280) coupled with low criticism and reduced demands. They also point to a startling difference in one component of social inclusion. Nearly three-quarters of Indian subjects with schizophrenia were married at follow-up, compared with about one-third of people with the illness in the developed world centers.

How odd.

Reviving polytheism

Bring back the Greek gods - Los Angeles Times

I missed this a couple of weeks ago - the Los Angeles Times runs an article arguing that polytheism makes more sense than monotheism, and suggesting that the modern world would be better off with it.

Yes, I think we should have some type of contest for new, more appropriate gods for the 21 st century.

I would like to take the article to task on several of its suggestions, but have no time right now.

The funniest serious gadget for some time....

Mangroomer DIY Electric Back Hair Shaver - wax-free smoothness at a stroke - The Red Ferret Journal

Eating at Teneriffe

It's rare that I get to eat out at somewhere new that I feel I can wholeheartedly recommend.

Today, my wife and I tried out a "European Tapas bar" at Teneriffe, the former dockside industrial area of Brisbane now full of woolstores and warehouses that have all been converted to apartments for young couples, old couples, and gays; which essentially means the suburb seems childless. (We had to leave ours locked in the car for a couple of hours.)

The name of the tapas place is Salon, and you can go look at the menu at its website. It also had a pretty eclectic drinks selection, and everything was just great. They do the breakfast menu until 2pm, the waiter told us. (I suppose it takes that long for the ecstasy to wear off from last night's clubbing.)

I have been wanting to eat at a quality tapas place for some time, and was not disappointed.

All Brisbane readers are encouraged to support it; I want it to still be open in 12 months time when we next have the opportunity to have a Sunday lunch alone.

(And need I say it: just kidding about the kids.)

What a resume; what a life

Spotted this in a New Yorker review of a couple of books about the history of cars:

In 1921, a team of G.M. researchers looking for a way to prevent knock discovered that by adding small amounts of tetraethyl lead, or TEL, to the fuel supply they could solve the problem. By that point, the toxicity of lead was already well known. Indeed, one of the G.M. researchers behind TEL, Thomas Midgley, very nearly poisoned himself while working on the additive, and several workers at a plant experimenting with TEL died gruesome deaths as a result of exposure to it. (Midgley went on to invent Freon, which was later discovered to be destroying the ozone layer.)

The author apparently argues that even in the 1920's, chemists proposed avoiding the problem by increasing petrol octane, which is the solution that, 50 years later, was finally forced on the car manufacturers after untold public health harm by leaded petrol.

Anyway, I had never heard of Thomas Midgley before, even though it sounds like he almost singlehandedly did the world in; which is quite a feat, really.

Let's see what Wikipedia has to say about him....Ah well, there you go: typically, I am not original in my thoughts:

One historian remarked that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in earth history." ^[1]

He also died in a "stranger than fiction" fashion:

In 1940, he contracted polio at the age of 51, which left him severely disabled. This led him to devise an elaborate system of strings and pulleys to lift him from bed. This system was the eventual cause of his death when he was accidentally entangled in the ropes of this device and died of suffocation at the age of 55.

I hope we have all learnt something from this post*.

*(I have no idea what, but it was sort of fun.)

Clapton goes clean

There are two anecdotes about Eric Clapton which I hadn't heard before in the Salon review of his autobiography. (Mind you, I have never followed his life story closely; maybe the first one is common knowledge?):

Clapton was prone to outrageous behavior when drunk, which was now most of the time. He did one entire show lying down onstage. He was particularly fond of crude practical jokes. The nadir came when he decided to play a trick on his drummer, who had taken a girl back to his hotel room in Honolulu. Intending to spoil his pal's night and give him a good scare, Clapton grabbed a samurai sword, walked out onto a ledge 30 stories up, and made his way into the drummer's bedroom. Neither the drummer nor the girl were amused, and neither were the police, who came to the door with guns drawn, thinking he was some kind of assassin.

Odd how he was lucky to avoid the (much later) sad fate of his son.

The other story is how he came finally came clean, and it's a perfect fit for the AA approach:

In 1987, driven by fear that Conor would grow up to see him as the drunken mess that he was, he returned to Hazelden, where he had a dramatic revelation that proved to be what he says was the turning point in his life: "In the privacy of my room I begged for help. I had no idea who I thought I was talking to, I just knew that I had come to the end of my tether, that I had nothing left to fight with ... I surrendered." Clapton writes that he has never wanted to take a drink or a drug in the 20 years since that moment.

Let's hope it stays that way.

More on politics

Some random thoughts:

1. why hasn't some Liberal sympathiser put up on Youtube the video snippet I saw this week of Maxine McKew getting all carried away dancing in the street at Bennelong? Labor figures dancing after the Keating election win did them harm in the 1996 election. Maxine looking as if she is celebrating already is equally not a great look.

2. Kevin Rudd has come out first with some home buyers assistance, although it would seem it is all about only saving a deposit, which has little to do with the problems with servicing large mortgages.

I have been betting all along that the Liberals would have a substantial policy on home buying assistance, and I hope that such an announcement figures in the official campaign launch, and is more far reaching than the Labor policy.

By the way, when are the official campaign launches? They are always interesting to watch not so much because of content, but more as theatre.

3. The Coalition advertising campaign seems more reactive than anything else, and that's not good. Too much time spent aligning the ads with the focus groups, I think.

4. More talk today about possible big financial meltdowns being just around the corner. Peter Costello may have been right to raise the issue when he did. It should work in the Coalitions favour, but who knows with this electorate...

5. Catallaxy actually has a good discussion going on at this week's open forum about tax cuts and interest rates.

Grrrr...

What is it with ABC journalists wasting time in interviews with John Howard about transition arrangements with Peter Costello? Kerry O'Brien started off his second interview with a question about this last Monday's, and Barry Cassidy did it again on Insiders today (transcript not up yet). Do they think they know something that the PM is not telling us? Otherwise, I thought the PM's position on this was very, very clear, and why waste time asking him about it.

Then I turn over to Sunday, and catch the end of an interview in which, I reckon, Kevin Rudd was being handled very gently by Laurie Oakes. There were all sorts of things he said that could have been challenged (in particular, his simultaneous claim that its Howard who is into scare campaigns, and that Peter Costello as PM would make Work Choices tougher!) There's no doubt Labor is running scare ads too, with more to come.

Then Laurie says post-interview that there was still a touch of Captain Cranky about Howard this morning...maybe it's because of the type of interviewing he is having to put up with.

Better off not knowing

Brain imaging seen leading to more false alarms | Science | Reuters

Turns out that if you have an MRI of your brain for no particular reason, you might get a surprise:

Improvements in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have led to increased detection of minor brain abnormalities that may worry the patient, but often will never cause any problems, according to study findings reported in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The study involved 2,000 people, between 46 and 96 years of age, with no symptoms of brain disease who underwent MRI between 2005 and 2007.

Dead brain tissue was the most common abnormality, seen in 7.2 percent of subjects. Other abnormalities included benign brain tumors and ballooned blood vessels, also known as aneurysms.

This terminology is very "cute":

While incidental findings on MRI, sometimes referred to as "incidentalomas," may prompt further investigation they should never be used as the sole reason for receiving a particular medical or surgical treatment, van der Lugt emphasized.

Weird country

Here's a short but interesting article from The Economist on what it's like to visit North Korea as a tourist.

Don't expect much choice in accommodation:

Most Westerners are put up in a hotel on a river island, an Alcatraz of fun that they may not leave unescorted. To keep curiosity at bay there is a swimming-pool, a bowling-alley, a putting-green and two saunas (one hot; one seedy).

One assumes that the North Korean government is aware of the "seedy" sauna, and figures it at least keeps tourists occupied on something other than thinking about the decay all around them.

Just don't mention clear air turbulence

The Airbus A380, 'flying villages' and the future of flight - International Herald Tribune

The arrival of the Airbus A380 has received rave reviews and generated much interest (with beds on board naturally leading us into Richard Branson-esque mile high club talk yet again,) but it has also encouraged silly talk of new mega-size airplanes being places where people will be encouraged to stand and walk around:

Virgin Atlantic (which has ordered six A380s, with delivery delayed until 2013) says it plans to offer such amenities as a fitness center, a casino, beauty salons, bars and restaurants, and a family area.

"We want to give passengers the choice to move around in this plane," a Virgin spokeswoman said. "The idea of sacrificing seats for space is something we have done with Upper Class on our 747s, with a bar and lounge area."

Either Boeing or Airbus (I've misplaced the link) has an interactive guide showing couples standing having a cocktail at the bar.

Yeah sure. So what about the routine advice you get now from (I think) all airlines that when you are seated you should keep your seatbelt on?

It's surely not at all safe to actually encourage passengers to mill around bars, gyms or "family areas", and I reckon its basically dishonest PR to pretend this will be become the norm.

Here's a passage from CASA that is relevant:

In-flight turbulence is the leading cause of injuries to passengers and crew. ....

From 1981 through 1997 there were 342 reports of turbulence affecting major air carriers. Three passengers died, two of these fatalities were not wearing their seat belt while the sign was on. 80 suffered serious injuries, 73 of these passengers were also not wearing their seat belts.

Just give me more leg room in economy and I will be happy to stay seated as long as I can.

Who would take a holiday there?

Dubai and rape: French youth tells his story - International Herald Tribune

A pretty appalling story about Dubai and its criminal legal system.

Weird science time again...

[0710.3395] If LHC is a Mini-Time-Machines Factory, Can We Notice?

Readers may recall that the Large Hadron Collider (due to start up next year) might, or might not, create large numbers of mini black holes, which might or might not decay completely, perhaps leaving remnants the exact nature of which seem not entirely understood. It might also create strangelets and other exotic things, like Saturn shaped black hole rings, about which the good people at CERN keep saying "don't you worry about that, citizens of Earth."

This is a new one, it seems: there have been a couple of papers recently saying that it might also create twisted bits of space- time which will effectively be tiny time machines.

I haven't read the paper above carefully yet, but its general gist seems to be that such time machines may be hard to detect as they are also expected to evaporate, but maybe they will cause some effect which will be detectable. (Hopefully, expanding to swallow the earth and sending it back to the big bang will not be one of them.)

All very interesting, if you are interested in this sort of thing.

By the way, I have been told via private email from someone who knows a bit more about this that CERN has agreed to do some more safety review stuff. Can't say that I have seen this confirmed anywhere on the Web, though.

The movie few are waiting for

X-Files stars, crew reunite for secretive sequel | Entertainment | Television | Reuters

Who knows, maybe it will be OK. I wouldn't hold my breath, though.

Now, this gives me a good excuse to intone the magic words "Gillian Anderson, Gillian Anderson, Gillian Anderson", and if I throw in the phrase "infamous nude sex scene", hey presto my miserable Friday visitor figures should improve.

Palin on tour

Michael Palin will be in Brisbane for a talk at City Hall next Thursday 8 Nov at 6.30pm.

This seems to be a pretty well kept secret by Dymocks, who are running the event. There might be $20 tickets available still; I have to wait for the booking person to ring me back today after she has counted them up on her abacus, or whatever she has to do.

Geoff: message received, will see if I can get one for you too.

Allergic to Cats

The show Cats is the lamest, most tedious excuse for a musical ever written or performed. (But I should point out that I have never seen anything of Starlight Express, which may be even more awful.)

Its box office popularity seems to be the ultimate success of marketing over quality in the history of musicals.

The only conceivably worse concept for a musical would be one based on horses. (Please, don't tell me if it has been done.)

Wait a minute: come to think of it, a musical performed by a cast of 30 two-person pantomime horses might be better than Cats.

OK, it's good to get that opinion off my chest after 20 years. It's what's blogging was designed for, isn't it?

Tibetans are special

How Tibetans Enjoy the High Life: Scientific American

Here's an interesting story on how it is that Tibetans manage to live in such thin air:

The Tibetans increase their blood flow by producing prodigious amounts of nitric oxide in the linings of the blood vessels. This gas diffuses into the blood and forms nitrite and nitrate, which cause the arteries and capillaries to expand and deliver oxygen-bearing blood to the rest of the body more rapidly than normal. ... Also, the nitric oxide by-products circulating in Tibetan blood are 10 times greater.

In fact, the Tibetan levels of these nitrites and nitrates are higher than those in patients suffering from a bacterial blood infection—septic shock—and the blood flows are typical of people suffering from high blood pressure. Yet, they have no ill effects in Tibetans. "We don't see an increase in vascular resistance," Beall says. The Tibetans also appear to have higher levels of antioxidants in their bodies, perhaps to help reduce the risk of putting so much nitric oxide—a free radical—into their bloodstreams.

The curious thing is (which, incidentally, I haven't seen mentioned in any of the versions of this story about Tibetans, but just was my own recollection) is that nitric oxide has an important role in penile erections.

Is Viagra not needed in Tibet?

Build your own rocket plane

North American X-15 Downloadable Cardmodel

Found via Air & Space Magazine, which is full of articles this month about the X-15.

Absinthetinence

Comedy Central: Shows - The Colbert Report

At the website, go and scroll down the video list and check out the video of Colbert's Absinthetinence pledge (it's currently the third one down.)

It is very funny comedy writing.

There is something good natured about the frequent silliness of Colbert Report, I reckon, which is missing from the general sourness of The Daily Show.

UPDATE: here's what I presume will be a more permanent link to the clip.

China, food, safety etc

774 arrests in China over safety - International Herald Tribune

Doesn't China have ways of dealing with this problem other than via arrest?

Who cares?

Panasonic Introduces Next-Generation Blu-ray Disc Player

I may be proved wrong, but Blu Ray seems a clear case of a technology that is so far ahead of market interest, it's seems nearly pointless to bother putting more out there. (At least until they can be made cheaper.)

Pretty obvious

Male preference could have negative impact

New studies commissioned by the U.N. Population Fund predicted that as males outnumber females, because of pre-natal testing to determine the sex of fetuses and subsequent abortions of unwanted females, a surge in sexual violence and trafficking of women could occur.

News for your accountant

Monkeys reveal brain is hard-wired for counting - life - 30 October 2007 - New Scientist

While monkeys might not yet have mastered calculus, recent studies have shown that they can learn understand some basic aspects of arithmetic and, in a rare case, multiplication.

Andreas Nieder at the University of Tübingen in Germany and colleagues trained two rhesus monkeys to count by showing them various numbers of dots on a screen followed by Arabic numerals....

"Although monkeys don't have language they can understand a symbol and what it refers to," she explains.

Nieder, meanwhile, believes that the monkeys can count to far higher numbers. "I'm convinced that they could go to infinity," he says.

There must be a joke to be made somehow, or a funny passage in a faux Douglas Adams book, about the very idea of a roomful of monkeys counting to infinity. Go to it, comedy writers.

Last political post for today

I'm posting so much about politics lately I'm starting to bore myself.

But before I search the Web for something else, did you see Howard's remarkably relaxed and cheery performance on Lateline last night? It was in stark contrast to another stressed looking performance on 7.30 Report the night before, although I still say that Kerry O'Brien is coming out with much stronger aggression in his interviews with Howard compared to Rudd.

(I clearly remember Kerry looking increasingly downcast on the election night coverage in 2004 as the extent of the loss by Labor became apparent. He will be positively suicidal if Howard scrapes back in this time.)

I also just heard Malcolm Turnbull on AM sounding very, very chipper too.

It's amazing how quickly the mood can swing in election campaigns.

UPDATE: funny how I posted last week about the government in England getting all wobbly over a 20% renewable energy commitment by 2020 and now Kevin Rudd decides to commit Australia to the same figure. If England, with some years of the commitment behind it, is saying it doesn't look achievable, I would be very surprised if it is here too.

Sadly missing from Australian politics

Indonesian president releases album - Music - Entertainment - theage.com.au

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has found a new use for his presidential pen, composing an album of 10 heartfelt songs for release across the nation this week.

My Longing for You, a 50-minute album released on compact disc, features pop songs written by the president and performed by prominent Indonesian singers.

The cover shows Yudhoyono clutching an acoustic guitar, his solemn face looming over a line-up of musicians who perform songs such as The Sun is Shining, A Song Under the Moonlight, The Power of God and Good Luck in Your Struggle.

Forget leaders debates, and the worm, what we need is the Election-vision Song Contest. You might think Labor has the advantage, what with Peter Garrett on board, but he would have a hell of a lot of trouble working out his lyrics at the moment.

In fact, I can imagine Kevin storming on stage and ripping the microphone out of his hand, while he launches into an amended version.

About interest rates

Fumbling the economy - Opinion - theage.com.au

Tim Colebatch writes about how the Howard government policies affect inflation and interest rates. It's interesting reading, but I remain sceptical about 2 points:

1. As per the Labor line, Colebatch argues that skills shortages lead to increased wages, which lead to inflation and higher interest rates. Howard is blamed for dismantling "Working Australia", which (in theory) would have skilled people up for the boom that was to come.

My scepticism is about just how big a factor this can really be. My intuition is that, in the big scheme of things, increased wages for tradesmen and other skilled workers is not likely to be that important.

2. Colebatch writes:

...instead of using budget policy to ease pressure on interest rates, as in the past, Howard has increased the pressure by shovelling money into voters' pockets while the Reserve tries to slow their spending. On Treasury projections, personal income tax will shrink from 12.1 per cent of GDP in 2004-05 to just 10.3 per cent in 2008-09 — adding $20 billion a year to consumers' spending power.

In past booms, monetary and fiscal policy have worked together. More jobs and higher wages increased tax revenues, reducing the need for rate rises to slow the economy. Now the Government has dropped its end so it can deliver big tax cuts.

But how legitimate is it to keep surpluses high as a means of controlling interest rates? Sounds a bit odd to me.

Colebatch does also list the ways that Howard can either claim credit for helping rates stay under control, or simply say that certain matters are not really within its control.

It's worth reading, despite my scepticism about some of his points.

Conservatives win, sort of...

The slow creep of conservatism - Opinion - smh.com.au

Gerard Henderson's column runs the entertaining argument that concludes "it seems we are all conservatives now". Worth reading.

You won't read this elsewhere

It must be the mind control waves being beamed into voters by our new comet-riding alien overlords which accounts for an unexpected Newspoll result favouring the Coalition. (Well, it's as good an explanation as any you are likely to hear in the media.)

Howard on Kyoto

Garrett clarifies Labor climate stance | The Australian

People like symbolism, there's no doubt about it. This "leading by example" argument for ratifying Kyoto plays well to the public, but surely it only makes some sense if the treaty process is actually working. Do people think China won't notice that the nations signed up to it are achieving nothing?

It would seem that Malcolm Turnbull thinks along the lines of "why should the Liberals (and me in particular) suffer the loss of the electorate's brownie points for the symbolism, even if the thing doesn't work." It makes political sense in a way, but is also quite cynical.

John Howard made the keys points on AM this morning, not that anyone will pay attention:

"Even if all of the countries that signed up to Kyoto had met their targets - which virtually none of them have - the fall in the world emissions on 1990 levels would be 41 versus 42 which is a difference of one per cent,'' he said.

"That is a meaningless outcome because the Kyoto Protocol for all its symbolism has not in practice been effective.

"That is the reason why Australia has not been willing to ratify it, although unlike most of the countries that have ratified it, we are probably going to meet our Kyoto target of 108 (per cent emissions reduction) over 1990 levels.''

Of course, everyone (including Turnbull) should also read the recent Nature article about the failure of Kyoto as well.

In fact, if he hasn't already done so, I don't see why Howard would not be citing this article as supporting what he has long been saying. (And the other thing that needs constant reinforcing is that the government has not ignored making reductions in greenhouse gases even though it did not ratify Kyoto.)

The continuing bad luck of JW Howard

It seems to me that when the Australian dollar was at it weakest some years ago, public perception was that this was a matter of some embarrassment to national prestige.

Now the dollar is at its highest level since 1984 (!), yet there is no beneficial perception in the public mind. What's worse, Toyota takes the opportunity to point out that it is making its operations unprofitable and raise the issue of tariff protection again, which always has popular appeal even though it makes little economic sense. According to the report just linked to, Senator Carr's initial reaction was reject further tariff protection to the car industry, yet it leaves open the likes of Kevin Rudd, SA premier Mike Rann and the unions to make sympathetic sounds about the importance of keeping manufacturing alive, and arguing over tariffs again.

The public perception will be that Labor will do more to keep manufacturing here, even though it doesn't seem to me there is any legitimate criticism to be make of Coalition support to the industry thus far. The anti tariff forces in Federal Labor will surely win, and its very likely that support Labor does supply will be pretty much along the same lines as what the Coalition might be talked into anyway.

Just dumb bad luck for the Coalition again, I reckon.

No way to run a country

China vows to clean up polluted lake - International Herald Tribune

Last week I referred to an article that talked about severe pollution problems in a famous lake in China.

It seems that the government has decided to clean it up, but look at the way the wheels turn there:

This spring, urban sewage and chemical dumping caused an explosion of bright green pond scum that coated much of the giant lake with a fetid algal coating. Panic quickly followed in Wuxi, a nearby city that depended on the lake to supply drinking water for its 2.3 million residents. Officials were forced to shut off the drinking water supply for several days.

Er, yes, sounds serious. Yet there initial response had been to to arrest the local farmer who started the warnings:

Several local officials have been fired or demoted, and state news media have reported that regulators have already closed as many as 1,000 factories in the area.

But the new crackdown has not helped Wu Lihong, a local environmentalist who has spent more than a decade trying to force official action. Wu, a feisty peasant, had repeatedly protested against the chemical factories and the local officials who protected them.

Wu was arrested shortly before the algae crisis and was later convicted in August on questionable charges. He is now serving three years in prison, even as his direst warnings about the lake have come to pass.

Alien invasion saves John Howard?

Mystery Comet Explodes into Brightness

Clearly, the current space shuttle mission is actually a welcoming party, but they'll probably be disintegrating before they can say "Klaatu barada nikto".

Clutching at straws, you say. Tell that to your new comet-dwelling alien overlords!

Howard's record by Hartcher

Typical. The Sydney Morning Herald's Peter Hartcher has an article that leads the News Review section of the paper this morning, but it seems not to be on the web. Called "Smashing the Myths", it deals with several favourite anti-Howard memes and lists the evidence for or against them. I can summarise the myths that Hartcher debunks as follows:

1. John Howard has made more Australia more selfish (except for the fact that they both donate much more money now and volunteer more time)

2. Howard can't work with Asia (except that in fact Australia has been more engaged with Asia than ever). Hartcher notes that even Keating dropped this line last month, when he said "any clown" could manage relations with Asian powers. (I had missed that.)

3.Howard has ruined the immigration programme (in fact has more immigrants than ever, and with less public resistance to it than when Keating was in.)

4. The economy is strong mainly because of the mining boom (as Gerard Henderson noted earlier this week, economists don't agree).

5. The 2004 Free Trade Agreement with the US sold out the national interest and would cause economic damage. (There is no reporting of the harm it has caused because it has caused none.)

So far so good, in the sense that Hartcher cites a lot of evidence to support his "myth busting" under each of the headings. When he gets onto the Howard negatives, though, the evidence becomes questionable.

The negative list is:

1. Howard took Australia to war in Iraq on a false premise. Well, at least he is not saying "Howard lied" about this. Hartcher cites the US Senate Select Committee on the pre-war intelligence. Hartcher might be a bit more even handed by adding that even the likes of Kevin Rudd believed the "false premise" too.

2. Howard and the Howard government have told lies. Here Hartcher really goes off the rails for a minute, as the evidence he cites is public opinion polls indicate most people believe it! Yeah, right, that's the way to 'get to the truth' of this proposition, Peter. Why do we need journalists at all if the polls will tell us what happened.

3. The Howard government has increased regulatory burden on businesses. Well, guess I can't dispute that, but it is part and parcel of introducing a new tax (GST) that, as far as I can tell, is deemed a great success.

4. The government has treated some immigrants and refugees punitively and manipulatively. In fact, I accept some criticism of the government about this, but at least it is remarkable how boats with would-be refugee claimants are no longer drowning in the Timor Sea.

5. The Howard government wasted a decade denying man-made global warming was real. Hartcher actually makes a point I was not aware of: Howard initially gave high praise to the Kyoto treaty. I didn't recall that, and shows that all politicians can make mistakes!

Overall, it was a good article.

Tattoos you may regret

Maybe I will get around to commenting on the Dumbledore was gay schtick soon, but in the meantime the story has meant fame for a 36 year old (non gay) Dad with a huge Dumbledore tattoo on his back. Really, isn't having large tatts done to please children enough to bring you to the attention of the Children's Protection services?

Anyway, here's some tattoo comedy (maybe it started out as a dolphin or something):

How not to win friends in the government

Three rate rises ahead, says ANZ - FederalElection2007News - FederalElection2007

Presumably, Mike Smith of ANZ does not think it likely he needs to have friends in the Howard government, with his prediction not just of a rate rise in November, but two more to come after that.

This is another case of terrible luck for John Howard. As far as I can tell, no one can point to any actual policy of the Howard government that is leading to the current pressure for interest rate increases (matters such as droughts, the US home lending crisis, and house price increases seem to be all that is cited.)

George Megalogenis points out today that nothing Rudd would do as PM has any prospect of affecting interest rates in a downwards direction in the short to medium term, so it's not like people can expect relief on home mortgages by voting Labor.

Howard is still arguing that relaxing IR laws will have an inflationary effect, and therefore interest rates will still be lower under the Coalition. But, of course, Labor will argue that Howard and Costello have already failed their last election "promise", so why believe them now, and that is likely to be the argument that will stick in voter's minds. (After all, it is politically difficult for the Coalition to suddenly push the line too hard that the recent interest rates are really out of its hands.)

Things are not looking good for Coalition recovery...

Read this, Labor Party

Time to ditch Kyoto : Article : Nature

When Nature magazine runs a commentary arguing that the Kyoto treaty is hopeless, you know something is up:

In practice, Kyoto depends on the top-down creation of a global market in carbon dioxide by allowing countries to buy and sell their agreed allowances of emissions. But there is little sign of a stable global carbon price emerging in the next 5–10 years. Even if such a price were to be established, it is likely to be modest — sufficient only to stimulate efficiency gains³. Without a significant increase in publicly funded research and development (R&D) for clean energy technology and changes to innovation policies, there will be considerable delay before innovation catches up with this modest price signal.

On present trends, for another 20 years, the world will continue installing carbon-intensive infrastructure, such as coal power plants, with a 50-year lifetime. If climate change is as serious a threat to planetary well-being as we have long believed it to be, it is time to interrupt this cycle.

The commentary even argues that the much touted (by Greenies) idealist symbolism involved in getting all countries to sign up to Kyoto works against it:

The notion that emissions mitigation is a global commons problem, requiring consensus among more than 170 countries, lies at the heart of the Kyoto approach. Engaging all of the world's governments has the ring of idealistic symmetry (matching global threat with universal response), but the more parties there are to any negotiation, the lower the common denominator for agreement — as has been the case under Kyoto.

The G8+5 Climate Change Dialogue, established in 2006 to convene the leaders of the top 13 polluters, was a belated recognition of the error of involving too many parties, each with dramatically different stakes and agendas. In September, the United States convened the top 16 polluters. Such initiatives are summarily dismissed by Kyoto's true believers, who see them as diversions rather than necessary first steps. However, these approaches begin to recognize the reality that fewer than 20 countries are responsible for about 80% of the world's emissions. In the early stages of emissions mitigation policy, the other 150 countries only get in the way.

Kyoto critics 1; Labor Party idealists 0.

Yes, but...

Climate is too complex for accurate predictions - earth - 25 October 2007 - New Scientist Environment

This report notes:

Climate change models, no matter how powerful, can never give a precise prediction of how greenhouse gases will warm the Earth, according to a new study....

The analysis focuses on the temperature increase that would occur if levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled from pre-Industrial Revolution levels. The current best guess for this number – which is a useful way to gauge how sensitive the climate is to rising carbon levels – is that it lies between 2.0 C and 4.5 C. And there is a small chance that the temperature rise could be up to 8C or higher.

To the frustration of policy makers, it is an estimate that has not become much more precise over the last 20 years. During that period, scientists have established that the world is warming and human activity is very likely to blame, but are no closer to putting a figure on exactly much temperatures are likely to rise.

Which is why I argue that the case for keeping CO2 levels down based on ocean acidification is more sound.