The barmy, barmy Mitfords

Hitler, my sisters and me | Hay Festival | guardian.co.uk Books

It's hard to resist yet another article about the Mitford sisters and their jolly adventures with fascists and communists. One of them is still alive, Deborah, and she is interviewed in this article about a new collection of the sisters' letters.

Just how balmy some of the family were is illustrated well by this passage:

Unity stalked Hitler, sitting in his favourite cafe, staring, until he noticed her, and then met him more than a hundred times; he gave her a flat that had belonged to a young, now absent, Jewish couple. "The Führer was heavenly, in his best mood, & very gay," she wrote to Diana in 1935. "He talked a lot about Jews, which was lovely." She signs off "With best love and Heil Hitler! Bobo", and writes breathlessly about her various encounters. In some ways, the most disturbing aspect of the letters is their clash of tone and content, the gushing of a star-struck schoolgirl about the heyday of the Reich.

Charlotte and Deborah both stress that Unity, who thought it amusing to take a white rat to parties, was, as Charlotte puts it, "completely unsophisticated, rather young for her age. And she was just bowled over". But this does not apply to Diana, whom Deborah believes was the brightest of the sisters. Diana's letters are nearly as gushing. She and Mosley married at the Goebbels' home in Berlin, and, she wrote to Unity, "I felt everything was perfect, the Kit [Oswald Mosley, whom she called 'kitten'], you, the Führer, the weather, my dress ..." (Many Mitfords were drawn in to some degree: Unity persuaded her parents to support fascism, while, in the 30s, Himmler offered Nancy a tour of a concentration camp. "Now why? So that I could write a funny book about them.")

One thing I didn't know before is that the Kennedy family knew the Mitfords too:

The Kennedys were childhood friends; when Joseph P Kennedy was made ambassador to London in 1938, he moved for a while into a house on Princes Gate, in London. The Mitfords had a place nearby. "Kick [Kathleen Kennedy, who married Andrew Cavendish's elder brother] was 18 and Jack, I suppose, was 19 or 20. Young Joe, who was killed, was maybe 22. And so they were just this very exuberant, charming, wonderful family who happened to live in the next street. The odd thing was, at a dance once, my mother said to Andrew, my husband, to whom I wasn't even engaged then, about Jack, 'Mark my words, that young man will be president of the United States.' Isn't that extraordinary?"

It's hard to believe that a 20 year old John Kennedy would not have been leading an active sex life at that time, and the article indicates that some have claimed that Deborah herself was his lover, but she denies it.

It's a small world for the rich and powerful, isn't it?

UPDATE: the original heading I had on this for nearly a day was "balmy balmy Mitfords". As the Mitfords were not exactly like a warm and soft breeze, I actually meant "barmy", but then again I see from Chambers online dictionary that "balmy" is sometimes used for "barmy". So I haven't completely embarrassed myself. Yet.

For the love of Kevin

I saw most of Q&A last night, which was basically an hour of the Prime Minister taking questions from a (mostly) loving audience.

Andrew Bolt has already noted how the audience was stacked.

The odd thing I noticed about it was that the audio on the audience seemed really turned up to 11. Kevin would make a mildly humorous comment, and the audience laughter in response sounded like a laugh track from Seinfeld.

Although there were questions coming from a critical perspective, the whole thing was so controlled it was far from a challenging environment. Our PM is good at avoiding the question, and is still at the stage of blaming the previous government for most things.

I still can't warm to his personality. Beneath all the standard politician talk, I get the impression that he's a tightly sprung, over-controlling robot, who is not as self-effacing as he likes to portray. There is a faux humility in the continued references to his upbringing in Nambour, which I am very tired of hearing about.

Taking fuel efficient flying seriously

It's interesting to see that soaring fuel costs are leading to jets being flown a bit slower, in order to increase fuel efficiency.

But, for the short inter-city hops in Australia, why don't airlines seriously consider going back to modern turbo-prop aircraft? According to to The Times last month:

“Propeller-driven planes achieve massive fuel benefits on shorter journeys,” Kapil Kaul, of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, said.

For a trip of less than 600 nautical miles, or about 90 minutes’ flying time, a turboprob may use as much as 70 per cent less fuel than a similar-sized jet, he said.

According to Treehugger, the environmentalist website, travelling on an aircraft such as a Bombardier Q400, one of the most advanced turboprops, can be more environmentally friendly than going by car (but not quite as green as taking a train).

This post makes the same point.

Of course, such fuel efficiency doesn't hurt from a greenhouse gas point of view, but even if you are a complete skeptic on that, the economics still make a lot of sense.

On IslamicTube today

Wandering around the internet today, I stumbled across IslamicTube.net. It's an Islamic version of YouTube; full of Islamic fun.

In today's "featured" category, there's an extract of a talk from an American sounding black Muslim about how AIDS was deliberately injected into Africans as part of an evil American/WHO plan to keep the population down. You can see it here.

They also seem very keen on little kids who can talk about Islam. There's this 2 year old who knows a series of answers to questions about Islam. Watch it and guess which question and answer I find most worrying:



(This version is on Youtube; I don't think you can embed the videos from Islamictube.)

Going back to AIDS, you can go to the "Science and Facts" channel on IslamicTube and watch the series "Medicine and Islam", which seems entirely devoted to camel's milk. I haven't watched it all, but it would seem from the heading that AIDS gets a mention.

Yes, I must spend more time on IslamicTube.

Of interest if you want to live on the moon

100 Explosions on the Moon

NASA has started watching the Moon to see just how often they can see the flash of a meteor hitting it. It turns out they can see a lot of flashes:

Over the past two and a half years, NASA astronomers have observed the Moon flashing at them not just once but one hundred times.

"They're explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the Moon," explains Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). "A typical blast is about as powerful as a few hundred pounds of TNT and can be photographed easily using a backyard telescope."

As an example, he offers this video of an impact near crater Gauss on January 4, 2008.

Long term residents would live under a couple of meters of dirt to avoid radiation anyway, but here's another reason for them to find a nice cave to live in.

A pleasant surprise

A Modest Glass of Wine Each Day Could Improve Liver Health

Researchers at UC San Diego School of Medicine are challenging conventional thinking with a study showing that modest wine consumption, defined as one glass a day, may not only be safe for the liver, but may actually decrease the prevalence of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD).

Who'd have thought you can say "I'm drinking for my liver"?

Good one, Kevin

CSIRO cuts could have 'unforseen consequences' - ABC News

The science research agency says it has no choice but to close its laboratories at Mildura in Victoria, and Rockhampton in Queensland, after a Federal Budget funding cut of more than $60 million over four years.

And I imagine most CSIRO scientists probably voted Labor too.

Not a good look

Orthodox Jewish youths burn New Testaments in Israel - International Herald Tribune

Just when you thought there was enough trouble in Israel already, we have the additional fun of friction between Orthodox Jews, Messianic Jews and Christians.

Here's an idea for sorting out the Middle East: the UN should mandate that the Disney corporation take it over. Disney World in Florida seems nearly as big as Israel anyway.

They really know how to make queues for attractions work, and they have probably got hundreds of lawyers who can sort out those fights between the different churches over who runs the holy sites.

As for the more serious issue, like resettlement rights for Palestinians: put Mickey and Farfur in a boxing ring and let them sort it out.

This post was brought to you by pseudoephedrine. (I have a cold.)

Unfortunate

Shitterton: The village that dare not speak its name - This Britain, UK - The Independent

From the article:

This isn't the only place in Britain proudly to wear the Shit– prefix – an unholy trinity is formed with Shittlehope and Shitlington Crags, both in the North-east of England – but Shitterton is the only one of the three actually to be named after excrement. According to the mathematician Keith Briggs, who keeps an informative website on this burning topic, the name is probably derived from a river called Shiter, "a brook used as a privy".

The whole article is funny, in a Benny Hill/Two Ronnies kind of way:

Shitterton probably started a slow metamorphosis towards Sitterton during the Victorian era, at the same time as towns and villages on the river Piddle were being renamed to Tolpuddle, Affpuddle and Puddletown – presumably in order not to cause embarrassment to travellers asking for directions.

I see that the Independent ran another article recently on rude place names in England. Go and pick a favourite.

Green heresies

Inconvenient Truths: Get Ready to Rethink What It Means to Be Green

I haven't had time to read all of this yet, but this list of 10 "Green heresies" about how to tackle greenhouse gas looks very interesting.

It includes "embrace nuclear". There really do seem to be a lot of articles from the 'States at the moment promoting nuclear.

When are we going to see the same in Australia?

I just tried to find the on-line copy of John Howard's Nuclear Energy Task Force report, and Googling took me to a page in The Age which contained a link, which takes you to an "error" page in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, noting that the content on the website is being "reviewed".

No matter, here it is archived by the National Library.

Another possible lung cancer test

Blood Test For Lung Cancer May Be Possible

This one, is, I think, different from a couple of other tests that have been noted in the last year or so:

Rather than screening for factors released by the incipient tumor into the blood stream, the test Dr. Vachani and colleagues used looked at gene expression in the subject's own circulating white blood cells. "We found that the types of genes present in these cells could tell us whether or not cancer was present," explained Dr. Vachani.

Sounds promising

Vaccine Triggers Immune Response, Prevents Alzheimer's In Mice

Vaccinated mice generated an immune response to the protein known as amyloid-beta peptide, which accumulates in what are called "amyloid plaques" in brains of people with Alzheimer's. The vaccinated mice demonstrated normal learning skills and functioning memory in spite of being genetically designed to develop an aggressive form of the disease.

Things I would rather not think about

One of the more peculiar things to come out of greenhouse gas concerns has been an interest in innovative (and environmentally friendlier) ways to dispose of human bodies.

First, on the New Inventors recently, there was the idea of burying the corpse in a sack, which discretely drops out of a reusable coffin. Hard to object to the idea really; coffins are expensive, and seem quite a waste. It could do a lot of coffin carpenters out of work very quickly, though, if it catches on.

Secondly, the topic came up on The Science Show last week. The basic proposal discussed there was that cremation produces a lot of CO2, and it would make much better sense to bury people vertically near a tree. The carbon from the bodies will end up in wood in the tree. Again, sounds quite sensible really, and the only objection is probably aesthetic, in that a standing body doesn't look as restful as a supine one.

But the next idea is a step too far. Apparently, it is being taken seriously in the States by the funeral industry. Here it is, from William Saletan's Human Nature blog at Slate :

You may soon have a new option: being dissolved in lye. Well, let's not call it that. Let's call it "alkaline hydrolysis." According to AP reporter Norma Love (what a byline!), the process leaves a "brownish, syrupy residue":

It uses lye, 300-degree heat and 60 pounds of pressure per square inch to destroy bodies in big stainless-steel cylinders that are similar to pressure cookers. ... In addition to the liquid, the process leaves a dry bone residue similar in appearance and volume to cremated remains. It could be returned to the family in an urn or buried in a cemetery. The coffee-colored liquid has the consistency of motor oil and a strong ammonia smell. But proponents say it is sterile and can, in most cases, be safely poured down the drain, provided the operation has the necessary permits.

This has a very high "yuck" factor to overcome. I think I would even prefer being left to be eaten by birds (as do the Parsis, although the lack of vultures is causing a bit of a concern to the neighbours) than being turned into industrial sludge.

Now I must find a more pleasant topic for my next post...

Just what we need...

Extinct gene brought back to life - Science - Specials - smh.com.au

According to the article, this research does not mean it would be easy to recreate an entire Tasmanian tiger; but further work with individual genes may lead to Frankenmouse creations:

Future experiments may be able to extract more specialised genes - such as those that were responsible for giving the thylacine its dog-like features, or its distinctly patterned skin, into a mouse.

"We might be able to produce a striped mouse," said Dr Pask, even one with a thylacine pouch.

Just be careful you don't make a ravenous, sharp toothed killer mouse, Dr Pask.

By the way, after reading some of Larry Niven's science fiction in the 1970's, which featured all sort of genetically modified creatures, I came up with the idea that humans modified to have pouches for fetus growing would have a fair few advantages compared to the current set up. Maybe the future belongs to human/kangaroo hybrids.

Love Saudi Style

She’s never met the man she’s marrying: it’s love, the Saudi way - Times Online

This was an interesting article about a couple of young Saudi men and their views on love and finding a partner.

The two guys interviewed are described as:

...average young Saudi men, residents of the nation’s conservative heartland, Riyadh, a flat, clean city of 5m that gleams with oil wealth, two glass skyscrapers and roads clogged with oversized SUVs. It offers young men very little in the way of entertainment, with no movie theatres and few sports facilities. If they are unmarried, they cannot even enter the malls where women shop.

So what do they do when not working?:

There are eight other children in the house where Enad lives with his father, his mother and his father’s second wife. The apartment has little furniture, with nothing on the walls. The men and boys gather in a living room off the main hall, sitting on soiled beige wall-to-wall carpeting, watching a television propped up on a crooked cabinet. The women have a similar living room, nearly identical, behind closed doors.

The house remains a haven for Enad and his cousins, who often spend their free time sleeping, watching Oprah with subtitles on television, drinking cardamom coffee and sweet tea – and smoking.

Well, I assume the recent episode of a man [sic] having a baby must have gone down a treat!

Clearly, the way to change Saudi society is to insert subliminal messages via Oprah. Maybe Obama could convince her to be a secret psyops agent.

Unhappy campers

Labor's leaders have eclipsed our solar power hopes - Opinion - theage.com.au

The domestic solar power industry is very unhappy with the budget.

I know that a huge amount of government money being spent on this would not be an effective way to fight greenhouse gases, but if only a modest amount is spent encouraging families to use solar, I don't think that it hurts.

Ouch

Europe, please stop funding this man | Features | guardian.co.uk Film

Joe Queenan writes a fierce, but amusing, attack on the recent career of Woody Allen. I haven't cared for much since Crimes and Misdemeanors.

(Meanwhile, that Indiana Jones movie is hovering around a 70% approval rating at Rottentomatoes. Maybe that's not a bad thing: if I'm disappointed in an extremely well received movie, it's hard not to get annoyed at why so many other people over-praised it.)

Just a little creepy

A Purity Ball - The New York Times

Hey, I'm as much for young unmarried people not having sex as the next conservative, but even so I can't help but cringe at the symbolism used at the "Purity Ball" shown as a slideshow linked above.

It's all too much setting themselves up for a fall, if you ask me. Just go and stay a virgin quietly.

A history of Pebble Bed Reactors

There's a blog run by Robert Hargraves devoted entirely to Pebble Bed Reactors. It was dormant for a while, but he appears to have revived it recently, and he's got a link to an interesting recent article by an engineer about the history of the reactors. Well worth a read, and I'll add the blog to my links soon.

McCain has fun

Found via the always interesting Tigerhawk, here's John McCain doing an amusing short sketch on Saturday Night Live:



Glad to see he doesn't take himself too seriously.

Just as I said

Rudd and Swan fudged paltry spending cuts | smh.com.au

My initial reaction to the budget was to call it a con, because of the difference between how it was spun and what it actually did.

Ross Gittins today makes out a very convincing and detailed case that I was right.

Bring it on

Turnbull denies fuel excise leak | NEWS.com.au

I didn't see Insiders yesterday, but heard part of it on the radio. Gerard Henderson was being scathing of Nelson's petrol tax excise policy. Now it appears the preliminary fun and games of a leadership challenge are probably underway.

I guess the plan may well be to see if Nelson can increase his approval rating to anything significant in the next poll. If he is still Mr Around-Ten-Percent, I really can't see the point of letting him hang around any longer, even if the ideal may have been to let Turnbull get more experience as shadow treasurer first.

Nelson is a liability as leader; he should go.

Eye candy

Wild China, a 6 part BBC nature documentary, started on the ABC last night, and it was spectacularly good to look at. Why is the BBC so accomplished at this sort of thing?

Highly recommended.

Begging to differ

Shirley Hazzard: Greatest novelist of the 20th century? - Times Online

Based on Bryan Appleyard's high regard for Shirley Hazzard, I recently bought her last novel "The Great Fire." Now Bryan's gone and interviewed her (see above link), and his admiration is set out clearly there.

Sadly, I am almost half way through the novel and am finding it close to unbearable; last night I nearly decided to simply give up.

I don't mind the more ornate style of writing of your typical mid 20th century author: I have read nearly everything of Evelyn Waugh, and quite admire Brideshead Revisited in particular. In the last few years, I finally got around to The Great Gatsby, and while I felt the material was somewhat slight, I thought the writing had some of the same appeal as Waugh's. Going back further, Conrad can be a bit of struggle for me, but I could still understand him.

The problem with Hazzard, who is old enough to have started writing mid last century, is that I keep finding apparently carefully constructed sentences or paragraphs (she took 20 years to finish it) which none the less I have to re-read to discern the information or mood they are intended to convene. Even then I am not always successful in getting her point.

I don't think I am a particularly thick reader. As she has generally been very well reviewed, I have to give examples to try to validate my complaint.

This first paragraph is, I think, important to the theme of the novel, set shortly after the end of WWII; but that's only my guess, given the way it is written:

In the pattern of disruption that had been Aldred Leith's life for years, arrival had kept its interest. Excitement dwindled, curiosity had increased. Occasion revived an illusion of discovery, as if one woke in a strange room to wonder afreash not only where but who one was; to shed assumptions, even certainties. On the sea that evening, such expectation was negilible. Earlier in the day, in the swaying train, Leith had written to a wartime comrade: 'Peace forces us to invent our future selves.' Fatuity, he thought now, and in his mind tore the letter up. There was enough introspection to go round, whole systems of inwardness. The deficiency didn't lie there. To deny the external and unpredicatable made self-possession hardly worth the price. Like settling for a future without coincidence or luck.

I hope someone out there agrees with me, but I find that to be a semi-opaque mess; not good writing at all.

I learn from Appleyard's interview that much of the novel must have been inspired by Hazzard's real life adventures as a young women in post war Asia. She also makes it clear that she was an artistically inclined youth who longed to escape Australia, and that explains why she has one major character who views the country the same way:

He and Rysom had been raised on the Australian myths of desecration - on tales of fabulous vomiting into glove compartments or punch bowls, of silence ruptured by obscene sound: the legends of forlorn men avenging themselves on an empty continent, which, in its vast removal, did not hear or judge them.

These things, Peter Exley knew, who had been born and raised to it all, and endangered by it. Who had released himself into the lavish hospitality of art. Because of his own hairbreadth escape, the condition did not excite his compassion: the attack on whatever withheld itself in mystery - a woman, a culture, a work of art; the sense of private self. All could be exorcised with a beer and a jeer; the mockery, like the drink, being passing assuagement only, of the wound that would not heal.

Of course, this section makes Hazzard sound like a snob too; but who knows, maybe I would not have been entirely happy in mid 20th century Australia either.

No, I restrict my complaint to her prose style, which I guess is a result of what happens when an author keeps revising her writing over twenty years: it becomes elaborate but tedious and unclear.

The review of the book at Slate I can partially agree with. It notes that:

For all her subtlety and depth, Hazzard does not create memorable or particularly believable characters, or, if she manages to, she doesn't seem to favor them....

Moreover, all of Hazzard's characters lapse at intervals into unconvincingly poetical speech: "Decent people, but the place is laconic. Surprised by peace" is how the old scholar describes conquered Hiroshima to Leith upon first acquaintance.

Her style is described as "oblique", whereas I definitely would say "opaque".

Actually, now that I read more of the reviews, a lot of them do seem to acknowledge flaws, yet somehow they still come around to forgiving them. Take this from another review:

Hazzard's prose is crisp and whittled, sometimes even cryptic. We never get a fully fleshed story of Leith's heroics, nor of the mysterious mentor, a former Japanese prisoner who, on his deathbed, presciently foretells Leith's passage back to a personal life. Horrors are hinted at but never dwelt upon. Hazzard revels in oblique distillation, but she is by no means a minimalist. Her sentences are rich in clauses, and her observations run deep, as do her characters' self-awareness and interior lives.

There's that word "oblique" again. And I would not say that her prose is "sometimes" cryptic; it happens on about every second page, and I just find that intolerable.

Bryan Appleyard wonders why she isn't better known, but it doesn't surprise me at all.

Confusing Fisk

It's hard to tell why The Independent continues to pay Robert Fisk. His style is increasingly confused, and in dire need of editing. Here are some recent examples.

First, talking about a nice meal he was able to have despite the recent violence in Lebanon:

But I brought up the tiny matter of the little massacre in northern Lebanon in which 10 or 12 militiamen were captured and then murdered before being handed over to the Lebanese army. Their bodies were – I fear this is correct – mutilated after death.

"They deserved it," the elegant woman on my left said. I was appalled, overwhelmed, disgusted, deeply saddened. How could she say such a thing? But this is Lebanon and a huge number of people – 62 by my count – have been killed in the past few days and all the monsters buried in the mass graves of the civil war have been dug up.

I chose escalope du veau at the Cocteau – I am sickened by how quickly I decided on it – and tried to explain to my dear Lebanese friends (and they are all dear to me) how much fury I have witnessed in Lebanon.

Fisk should have more self loathing about his writing style than his choice of lunch.

If you need more convincing of his self-indulgent and increasingly opaque style, try the latest column. It contains such gems of journalism such as this:

So let us start at the beginning (be that the Ottoman, French, post-Versailles beginning of Lebanese history). Or let us begin yesterday, when it was broadcast that two Hizbollah members (for which read Shia Muslims) were knifed to death in Aley by Druze Muslims. Outrageous, if true. So let us begin with the statement that the Lebanese army command has decided to let Brigadier General Wafiq Chucair remain in command of security at Beirut airport. And that the Lebanese army commander – General Michel Sulaiman (the favourite for president if parliament, after 18 sittings, decide to choose one) – was determined to restore "law and order".

Thus (if the reader is not already confused) we should advance to the near-present.

Then, talking about an exhibition of Lebanese civil war posters, he writes:

And when I walked round that exhibition, I thought – yes – that this war could never be recreated. I even contemplated an article saying that there would not be another civil war here. On reflection, I should have sent that story to this paper. For despite everything that we have witnessed these past three days (or two years, or the 30 years or 2,000 years, you take your pick), I don't think the Lebanese want another civil war.

Five days ago, I recorded an interview for Saad Hariri's Future channel about my new book, and told my interviewer that I did not think there would be another civil war in Lebanon. Because Hizbollah has cut the cables of the channel, there will be no programme. "You did it for nothing," the young Lebanese woman interviewer told me yesterday. Yes, I think she was right. But I still suspect that the Lebanese will not tolerate another civil conflict.

Whatever you think of his politics, you would surely have to agree that his writing has become awful.

Now it's engineers

High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers - New York Times

First, it was doctors, now it's engineers. Of course, the basic problem is, Japan is going to run out of people soon. It's one of the nations that forgot to have children, and it's kind of sad to watch.

Television love

My five hours with Sony's amazing XEL-1 OLED television.

This is a pretty amusing article by someone who is deeply impressed by the picture quality of the small Sony OLED TVs that you can now buy overseas. He writes:

Like some awesome hybrid of a plasma screen, an LCD, and a Holodeck, the picture on the OLED (it stands for organic light-emitting diode, which means, I think, that the TV is alive) is demonstrably clearer than anything I've seen before. The movie Hairspray is playing when I arrive, and its crisp luminosity makes me forget that Hairspray is absolutely terrible. A colonoscopy video would be compelling on OLED.

There are about 20 big-screen televisions lining the walls of the room, high-definition LCDs and plasmas and whatnot. Compared with the OLED, they all look like they're covered in thin layers of gauze.

The article doesn't mention, though, the question marks raised about the display's longevity. (Sony claims 30,000 hours to get to half-brightness, but a test company claims it will be more like 17,000.) Still, I guess if you're rich enough to buy an 11 inch screen TV for US$2,500, you're reach enough to buy something better in 8 years anyway.

A deeper conspiracy

Unleashed: Unanswered 9/11 questions

What's this? ABC Unleashed is now open to spreading the poisonous blatherings of 9/11 Truthers? This is how my taxpayer funded ABC is using it's money?

Ah, but I suspect there is actually a deeper conspiracy going on. Just how seriously can anyone take a conspiracist with the first name "Hereward"?

Christine Kerr on the alcopops

The real motive behind the alcopops tax hike | The Australian

Christian Kerr sets out a very strong case for very strong cynicism over the alcopops tax increase.

I had been wondering what proportion of alcopops are based on rum and dark spirits, which are almost exclusively marketed to men. Kerr supplies the answer: about 75%.

This indicates that the increase is largely off target, if the concern is to reduce binge drinking in women in particular.

It may also mean that the move is much more unpopular with the electorate than I first imagined, so something good may come from it after all...:-)

Warning: religion

Tonight's very distressing scenes on the television from the earthquake affected areas of China reminded me of a recent article at First Things, inspired by the recent Burma tragedy, about theodicy.

Wikipedia explains that theodicy is " a specific branch of theology and philosophy that attempts to reconcile the existence of evil or suffering in the world with the belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent God, i.e., the problem of evil."

There are several ways a Christian can seek to explain the problem of evil, but I think I am probably now more inclined to take the Jewish/Kantian view, as explained in the Wikipedia article, that it is a bit presumptuous for humans to believe they can work it out at all.

Still, the First Things article I mentioned struck me as expressing very elegantly the emotional power of a theodicy that is based on a traditional Christian belief in real evil and a Fallen creation. It is written by David B Hart, said to be an Eastern Orthodox theologian, and while it is all worthwhile reading, the last paragraph sums it up nicely:

As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that He will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, He will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes — and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and He that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new.”

I feel a little sorry for people who have never felt the emotional appeal of such a belief system.

Solar for the poor means solar for no one

Solar power rebate change cools public demand | The Australian

A DECISION to break a pre-election promise on solar panel rebates is already reaping havoc, with cancelled orders and staff laid off.

Phillip May and his partner, Sophia Moody, are seething after the decision in Tuesday's budget to introduce a means test for an $8000 rebate when household income exceeds $100,000.

Adding to the insult, the rebate introduced by the Howard government first came about because Labor had promised one and that it would be available for households earning less than $250,000.

"This has kicked the guts out of our company," Mr May said last night.

The two directors of small Queanbeyan-based installation firm Solartec have been fielding calls all day from would-be clients who now won't go ahead with energy-saving panels.

On talk back radio yesterday, I heard a caller who was about to install a 2 kilowatt system at an (after rebate) cost of $14,000 arguing that it was only the higher income home owners who would even consider installing panels at this cost. He said he was only doing it to make his contribution to reducing greenhouse gases; not because it was economically viable.

Seems a good point. While there was an argument for changing the rebate system, this method seems a bit perverse.

Pointless replies

Why is there prominence given to Budget replies, especially when the Opposition is years away from regaining power in the lower house? I never watched a Labor one during the Howard years, and I didn't watch Nelson tonight.

The Coalition's decision to oppose the "alcopop" tax increase is not going to win much public favour, and I doubt that the 17 - 25 year old demographic of young women who will most appreciate the move are the Coalition's natural constituency anyway.

Did Nelson mention pensions? It seemed to me, listening to talkback radio on the first couple of days after the Budget, that the most common complaint was that the nation had a spare $20 billion that the government wanted to save for future spending, but it couldn't increase aged pensions.

So, what can you do with a spare few billion dollars? According to this Liberal Party publication from 2007 (which is actually full of interesting graphs and stuff about how the Coalition was benefiting pensioners), Australia is spending about $24 billion a year on the aged pension for about 2 million recipients.

A 10% increase in the pension would therefore appear to cost roughly $2.4 billion. Of course, with the aging population, such an increase might be more problematic for the future; but then again, when will all that superannuation sloshing around start to help the government bottom line?

So, yes it does seem there was some room for improvement to pension rates, although I guess it would be better to add the support in some other fashion than a straight rate rise.

In other movie news...

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes

Early reviews for Prince Caspian are pretty positive. Yay!

I don't know why they chose to open a few days ahead of the Indiana Jones movie. It's being absolutely swamped in publicity terms.

I guess the hope is that the pretty rock solid American Christian audience that I suspect accounted for a lot of the first Narnia movie's box office success is pretty much guaranteed to see this sometime during summer, regardless of when it opens. (Of course, The Lion,the Witch and the Wardrobe deserved its success anyway.)

Least anticipated film of the season

Florist detour and frock stars come up smelling of roses - Film - Entertainment

The only point I can see in having a "Sex and the City" movie made is for women to have some sort of clear test as to their new boyfriend's sexuality. The number of straight men willingly in a cinema to see it (or, at least, there at their own suggestion) will be vanishingly small .

And really, was there ever a worse look in a dress than the open cut thing that bony-chested what's-her-name is wearing in the photo at the link? (Oh dear: I have commented in a bitchy sounding way on women's fashion. No, no, I don't want to see the movie, honest.)

UPDATE: here's a pretty funny column on the same topic, which repeats this comment which apparently appeared after the movie's review in The Times:

I don't think SATC is just for girls. I am a reasonably well-adjusted bloke and I am looking forward to seeing the film with my girlfriend. I am then looking forward to poking my eyes out with red-hot pokers, burning my skin off, and rolling around in salt for a while."—Phil Mann, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Devine Vs Wodak

Puff goes the drug liberaliser - Miranda Devine - Opinion - smh.com.au

It's interesting watching the argument between Miranda Devine and Dr Alex Wodak on the question of marijuana laws. Seems to me Miranda is clearly winning.

Didn't Nicola get the memo?

On the 7.30 Report on Monday, Kerry O'Brien had this exchange with Health Minister Nicola Roxon:

KERRY O’BRIEN: Have you consulted the States on this? You've told them of your decision are they relaxed and comfortable about the prospect of up to 400,000 extra people coming back into the public hospital net?

NICOLA ROXON: Those are estimates from the health insurance industry. They haven't provided us with the basis upon which they make those estimates or whether, in fact, those people will present at public hospitals.

KERRY O’BRIEN: At least they've given us some figures, you haven't given me any.

On the ABC today:

Treasurer Wayne Swan has confirmed his own department predicts 485,000 people will dump their private healthcare cover under changes to the Medicare surcharge that were confirmed in last night's Federal Budget.

The figure is well above what the industry was predicting as a result of the surcharge income threshold doubling to $100,000 for singles and $150,000 for couples.

It's about time our PM had them both in his office for a cup of tea and introduction, isn't it?

Also in the Kerry O'Brien interview, there's a sign that he's starting to get sick of the way the Rudd government media manipulation works:

KERRY O’BRIEN: The decision on the health fund tax levy was leaked to both Fairfax and News Limited newspapers for Saturday morning and then Wayne Swan confirmed it on radio. Are you comfortable that this kind of media manipulation has now become commonplace? Why not, if you want it out, why not just announce it if you want it out there before the Budget? I would have thought that would be a more honest way to do it, wouldn't it?

Why doesn't he ask pointed questions like this to Kevin Rudd himself, to whom he still gives a puzzlingly easy ride?

Budget comments

Short summary: it's all a con.

A lot of the reaction tonight is pretty positive, but those taking a more cynical view seem to me (of course!) to have the more realistic take on it.

This summary here on ABC Online seems pretty right. It's not taking spending cuts seriously at all. Of course, as Turnbull had warned, severe spending cuts were not necessarily good in current circumstances anyway. However, (again as Turnbull complained tonight,) Swan was selling the need for "inflation fighting" spending cuts before today, but he hasn't really delivered on his own promise.

There was an economist writing in the Courier Mail today who argued that assessing the likely effect of a budget on inflation was extremely difficult and depends on assessing the effect of all cuts and spending programs in the entire budget. This makes a lot of common sense, but I can find no link.

In any event, it seems clear that the $2 billion net savings in the budget as delivered will make next to no difference to inflation. Are people forgetting that only a couple of days ago Access Economics was claiming that every $3 billion dollars saved would prevent a .25% interest increase? Some months ago, Ross Gittins claimed that it would take an extra $10 billion in surplus (or a surplus of 2.3% of GDP) to have the equivalent effect. I think I heard that this budget has a surplus of 1.8% of GDP. Therefore, even on Access Economics more 'optimistic' view of how effective spending cuts could be, any praise for this being an inflation fighting budget seems distinctly premature.

On the nature of some of the savings, Alan Kohler made this interesting point I haven't seen elsewhere:

One of the big savings measures is a bit of a fiddle though. The cancellation of the $959 million “Australia Connected” fund that was awarded to Singtel Optus and Elders has been counted as a saving, but the $4.7 billion National Broadband Network amount that replaces it is not counted as an expense because it hasn’t been spent yet and is not detailed in the forward estimates.

And on the point of the "future funds," which really are there just to delay large infrastructure spending until the lead up to the next election, the Crikey budget blog notes this:

...Wayne Swan today indicated both the capital and interest would be spent on appropriate projects. Given the expected inflation environment over the next few years – and the fact that, when it comes to infrastructure, we are suddenly playing catch-up for years of State Government neglect – it’s hard to work out how expenditure by these funds won’t have a similar inflationary impact several years hence as they would now.

The Opposition has made the point that its education endowment fund was a permanent fund that earned ongoing income to upgrade universities; it was not simply a pool of capital to be spent and disappear over a few years.

As I say, all a con.

On the other big political issue of the week (the Medicare surcharge levy adjustment), there is no denying that there was a logical argument for increasing the limits, as there is with taking bracket creep into account in tax tables. But also as with tax bracket creep, governments that adjust too quickly are not really helping their bottom line.

Given that there was no adjustment for 10 years, some adjustment was justifiable now. But to take it from $50,000 to $100,000 for a single person is just ideology at work, not logic. (I've had a quick look at CPI figures for 97 to 07, and it looks to me like $67,500 would be the correct inflation adjusted figure.)

Isn't that effective "tax cut" going to have an inflationary effect?

There's no doubt a significant number of single people will first drop out of private health insurance because of this change, followed by more married couples when the funds increase their already barely tolerable premiums because of the loss of the single people.

It's the first case of a unexpected and clearly bad idea borne of Labor ideology for this government. As Tony Abbott ably argued, it is very likely to make dealing with the problems within the public health system much worse in the long run.

UPDATE: I typed this last night then forgot to post it. I see now that Andrew Bolt was making the same points. Peter Hartcher makes the case for it actually being bad for inflation.

UPDATE 2: I hear that Malcolm Turnbull is running with the case that it is actually going to stimulate inflation, and he may be right.

So, to get my criticisms in order:

It's not that I was looking for a budget that did cut into people's income (eg by not delivering the tax cuts,) but the government is trying to sell the budget on pure spin, as Bolt says.

Swan is selling increased tax as a "saving": does that really make sense? Some of the other savings may well be illusory too, as noted above.

Putting the surplus into funds to be spent in future might not be such a bad thing, provided the process of identifying infrastructure spending comes up with sound projects. From that point of view, the budget is a bit of a "wait and see" proposition, as it may or may work well in the future.

It's not a budget that deserves strong condemnation; on the other hand it is not one that deserves praise either.

It is definitely the most highly "spun" budget we have seen for many years.

Slow blogging

Work, and a need for deep meditation in my underground bunker in preparation for the forthcoming release of a couple of unusually highly anticipated movies, is likely to keep me from posting much for a week.

Also, for whatever reason, I have been finding it harder to find particularly "blog worthy" stuff on the internet in the past few weeks. (Hence my need to post on the rather mundane topic of rating the Indiana Jones movies. Last night, I watched another vaguely remembered Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movie - Sailor Beware - with my son, and enjoyed it a lot. I am tempted to try to explain here why, but I'm not particularly good at that style of writing anyway.)

Anyway, there is likely to be something in the Budget that I will write about, so don't go away for too long.

Moving CO2

Carbon Dioxide Capture And Storage: Grasping At Straws In The Climate Debate?

This short article argues that there is strong reason to be skeptical of CO2 storage being able to be done at the scale really required to be effective:

The Climate Panel sees CCS as offering great potential. In various scenarios it accounts for between 15 and 55 percent of the reduction of greenhouse gases by 2100...

The problem is, according to Anders Hansson, that CCS is still a relatively untested method.

“There are a number of small facilities, in Norway, for instance, where they capture and store a million tons of carbon dioxide per year. Swedish Vattenfall is starting a pilot facility in eastern German this summer.”

Globally, a total of some millions of tons per year is being stored today within the framework of CCS. But to live up to the hopes placed on CCS requires the storage of several billion tons. In other words, this involves gargantuan volumes. In fact, carbon dioxide would be the world’s largest transported good.

“In full scale this technology only exists in the imaginations of the people developing it,” says Anders Hansson. “It’s overly optimistic to place such great faith in it, considering all the uncertainties found in the scientific literature.”

Back to the egg

Another year, another column from Tracee Hutchison about childlessness, and her resentment that politicians tend to concentrate spending on supporting families.

Last year, Tracee said this (in reference to Bill Heffernan's famous "barren" comment about Julia Gillard):

Despite John Howard's and Peter Costello's attempts to distance themselves from their wayward senator's latest spray, they are the culprits of turning the family values mantra into political paydirt and their imminent budget sweeteners to families will reinforce it.

Forget about the clever country we once aspired to be, we've become the conception country.

Exactly as I predicted, the Labor Party attitude is not pleasing her either. From today's column:

Why should single, childless people, many of whom are struggling to find relevance in a kids-and-couple dominant culture, be forced to pay for other people's children through a combination of taxes and imposed maternity leave levies? Isn't that a bit like rubbing our noses in it? Very inconsiderate if you ask me, especially when there's nothing in either budget for us.

The first part of today's column is all about how she has ended up accidentally childless.

I'm not unsympathetic to the sorrow that a single woman in her early middle age may feel at the realisation that they probably are not going to ever have a kid. (Although, as I have said before, I don't know why many modern women who know they want children will still waste years and years sleeping with partners who won't commit to the idea.)

That said, I don't know that Tracee exactly gives credibility to her argument that single people are "ignored" by government by explaining first that she walks this emotional precipice when someone just tries to make small talk with her:

And then, at some point, the mere thought of being asked one more time if you have children makes you want to shriek like a madwoman or slap the nearest person to you very hard indeed. You opt, of course, for a dignified silence for fear of being whispered about in unbecoming sentences such as "no wonder she can't find a fella …"

With such a sound and rational grounding in the issue, she should run for the Greens for Parliament.

A slight overstatement, perhaps

Danger of infection in surgery preparation - National - smh.com.au

There's an orthopedic surgeon upset about idiosyncratic rules in Sydney hospitals:

Dr Robert Molnar has for the past six months unsuccessfully sought an explanation from the Health Department as to why he is not permitted to use alcoholic surgical preparation solution on his patients at Westmead Hospital, yet he is able to at St George and Sutherland public hospitals.

The rules vary across hospitals: alcoholic solution can be used at Fairfield, Concord, Prince of Wales, Royal Women's and Royal Prince Alfred hospitals but is barred at Liverpool, Nepean, Gosford, Canterbury or Royal North Shore.

And why does this matter? Apparently, the alcohol based ones are known to offer better protection against post operative infection:

A Sydney orthopedic surgeon, Doron Sher, said that if the surgeon was appropriately educated the risk of fire was minimal.

"There is evidence in the literature showing that infection rates are lower using alcoholic Betadine," he said. "I use the alcoholic solution when I get the option because I believe that you get a lower infection rate."

But I like this line in the report best, as I assume this conclusion hasn't been verified in studies:

Dr Molnar had used an aqueous antiseptic to prepare the skin.

"You may as well spit on the wound...." he said, noting that alcoholic solution could be used at most private NSW hospitals.

Overdose?

Will changed a week before overdose death - National - smh.com.au

Isn't it an odd choice to be calling a death by Nembutal an "overdose". According to Wikipedia, there are very few things Nembutal can be used for in humans, and of course its fame now is mainly as euthanasia groups' preferred suicide drug.

Seems a bit like saying someone died of a rat poison overdose.

Ridiculous

This bud's for you, and you, and you too - Los Angeles Times

Go and read this piece by Joel Stein that shows how unbelievably farcical "medical marijuana" is in California.

(I always assumed such a system was a joke, but it's a much bigger joke than I ever imagined.)

Pilot shortage

Somehow, I seem to have missed reports about the international pilot shortage. Yesterday, I heard someone on the ABC putting figures on it, and I can't find a link. However, there's already an estimated shortfall of several thousand.

The plight of pilots in China seems particularly harsh. From The Economist in April:

The state is being so heavy-handed because it fears a mass walkout. It maintains an iron grip on pilots through lifetime contracts, enshrined in state law, which they must sign in return for receiving pilot training. With growing demand from the 20 private airlines that have started up in the past four years, these contracts seem like handcuffs. The CAAC requires pilots to pay 700,000-2.1m yuan to break their contracts. This week Shanghai Airlines filed a lawsuit against nine of its pilots demanding even more (35m yuan) if they continue with their plans to leave the company.

The CAAC's figures show a shortage of 5,000 pilots and predict that 6,500 more will be needed by 2010. The lack of local facilities is prompting Chinese airlines to send groups of students to Canada, Australia and Spain for training.

MSNBC had a story about the international shortage mid last year:

Figures released by International Air Transport Association show that global air travel will likely grow 4-5 percent a year over the next decade, though the aviation boom in India and China is expected to exceed 7 percent....

India and China alone will need about 4,000 new pilots a year to cope with their growth.

By comparison, Germany's Lufthansa — one of the world's largest airlines — employs a total of just over 4,000 pilots.

On average, airlines need 30 highly trained pilots available for each long-haul aircraft in their inventory. For short-haul planes they need less, between 10-18 flyers.

Those figures for the number of pilots an airline needs for each aircraft seem surprisingly high, but what would I know about running an airline.

Anyhow, maybe it is all the more reason to build airships. (I figure pilots don't have as much to do on them, and they could get more sleep on the flight.) Or, there is always this solution:


Yes, a small company in Mexico wants to build you a strap on rocket helicopter. (Mexico? Well, I guess they would come in handy for border crossings.) But before you place your order, read the rocket helicopter designer's personal history (from the "About us" heading on the company website):

At the school I was a trouble kid and I ended psychoanalyzed in the Conduct Clinic for abnormal behavior because I didn't liked the school, because they try to teach me things that I didn't want to learn and they don't teach me what I wanted to learn!, it was just a communication problem!.
The only two subjects I liked too much was physics and chemistry unfortunately this classes was only two times per week, I hated the rest of the subjects and the school was a boring place for me.

This was a constant fight with my teachers because I considered that my brain has a finite capacity to keep formulas and data that are important for me and not the name of the horse that was rode by El Quijote or the dates and places of the Napoleon fights and another stupid things that I don't care and never used in my life.

I skipped the school (play hockey) many times and went to work as a helper at a speed garage that prepared racing cars, there I learned a lot of mechanics, to weld, to paint, to work the fiberglass, to modify engines for racing, to port and polish the race car heads, etc., this was the things I wanted to learn and not all the garbage that the teachers wanted me to remember.

Sounds like a young Speed Racer, really.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal has an article today about shortages in all jobs to do with the airline industry, and the safety concerns that this is causing. (Some estimate a shortage of pilots in the order of 42,000 worldwide by 2020.) The most surprising snippet:

In Brazil, pilots at TAM Linhas Aéreas SA last year overshot a São Paulo runway and smashed a new Airbus jet into a building during stormy weather, killing more than 190 people. The pilots were apparently confused about how to reduce engine power and apply reverse thrust.

For those of you who can't get enough of Indiana Jones talk

Indiana Jones Returns, to Steven Spielberg’s Delight - New York Times

Getting tired yet of my linking to material on the new Indiana Jones movie? If so, just skip this.

The article above discusses the series generally, and makes some good points about the Spielberg action style. He has, fortunately, never been into the frenetic cutting of action scenes, an annoying feature of nearly all action movies now. (The same can be said of nearly all dance movies of the last few decades too.) Spielberg is nice enough not to diss all action movies that take that approach, but he's being too kind. It rarely works for me, as it reduces the realism and impact of action when you can tell you are watching a stunt that was repeated umpteen times to allow for all those edits from different angles.

The article also notes this about what remains one of my all time favourite movie sequences:

The perilously long and complicated opening sequence of “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” for example — in which a song-and-dance number (“Anything Goes,” sung in Mandarin) turns into a wild slapstick action scene involving a diamond, a poisoned drink and an elusive vial of antidote, and ends with Indy and his companions jumping out of a plane in a rubber raft — delivers that sort of giddy, mildly deranging stimulation. The staging and the cutting have the “can you top this?” audacity of a silent comedy, and the timing is slyly impeccable: it’s about the length of a Keaton two-reeler.

"Temple of Doom" remains my favourite of the series. For me, it struck exactly the right tone of wit and slapstick humour to offset the action and any violence. Ripping the heart out of a chest never bothered me; it always seems to have been intended to have been revealed as a magic trick anyway. (On the other hand, I always felt that Raider's more serious tone made the impalings and other violence too intense for much of the potential audience of under 9 year olds.)

As for "Last Crusade", it has always struck me as a particularly uninspired in terms of both script and direction. As with the 3rd Star Wars, many of the action sequences were so obviously re-hashes from the first movie of the series, it was very disappointing. I have re-watched it recently, and it remains quite a dull experience.

I always have felt that it was odd that both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series peaked in the middle, yet friends and critics at the time were a little disappointed with the second instalment. Later, it seems opinions were revised of Empire Strikes Back, so that virtually everyone now agrees it was the best of the the lot. Temple of Doom may also be a bit better appreciated now too, I suspect.

So it's fingers crossed for the new movie, but expectations may yet be dashed.

Lane goes racing

I've never been convinced that the Wachowski brothers deserve respect, and the idea that they could make what I recall as the least interesting Japanese anime of the 1960's into a good movie seemed a particularly unlikely proposition.

So, it's with pleasure that I read Anthony Lane's amusing review of Speed Racer. He writes:

A four-year-old will be reduced to a gibbering but highly gratified wreck; an eight-year-old will wander around wearing a look that was last seen on the face of Dante after he met Beatrice. But what about the rest of us? True, our eyeballs will slowly, though never completely, recover, but what of our souls? I reckon the M.P.A.A. should use the advent of “Speed Racer” to revive an old ratings symbol: a big Roman X, meaning “of no conceivable interest to anyone over the age of ten.”

Or, as Stephen Colbert put it "it's the classic story of boy meets seizure inducing lights".

Just resign

Buswell made 'sexual noises': woman | The Australian

So, today we get all the detail of the "chair sniffing" incident. While I have no doubt there are other politicians who are just as crass and immature, a leader can't maintain credibility with a highly publicised incident like this. He should just do everyone a favour and resign. Have another cry and get it over with, Troy; there's probably a place waiting for you on Melbourne's Footy Show anyway.

And at the national level, I would be close to recommending the same to Brendan Nelson. Let's face it:

a. he was voted in by a narrow margin when a couple of eligible voters were absent;
b. his "listening tour" was ill-conceived and is most memorable for the repeated image of him playing with kids on a monkey bar;
c. most journalists rightly view his habit of having a heart breaking anecdote ready for every occasion as being just a tad bizarre and unconvincing. Glenn Milne says today "Nelson, bless his sincerity, is like a piece of emotional blotting paper."

At 9% preferred PM he has no credibility to be leader.

The most surprising thing to me about today's Newpoll was the 4% swing toward the Coalition, which I can only put down to the electorate being more cynical about the 2020 Summit than most media journalists expected (Yay!)

Surely Nelson himself is helping shave a few points off the Coalition's popularity. If so, it may be that the Coalitions "true" primary vote is currently very close to 40%, which seems to me to be not too bad at this stage of the electoral cycle.

So, is there any point to Brendan hanging on any longer? I can't really see it.

Monbiot catches up with me

George Monbiot: If there is a God, he's not green. Otherwise airships would take off | Comment is free | The Guardian

Hey, I first mentioned the return of airships as a possible way to reduce CO2 emissions back in August 2006! (The topic got more space in my post of November 2006.) What's more, hydrogen filled ones were mentioned in my March 2008 list of brilliant ideas for the 2020 Summit.

Now Monbiot is promoting the idea of hydrogen airships (see above). Well, actually he mentions one which would use both hydrogen and helium, which may well be a good idea.

I'm tempted to refer to myself as a blogging prophet who is not being adequately recognised in the blogosphere, and to take up wearing sackcloth and eating locusts in the desert. (Which, incidentally, may just mean a move into the backyard, as Brisbane's normal winter dry spell has already kicked in with a vengeance, it seems.)

Nuclear notes

Alternative dares not speak | The Australian

Alan Moran writes about Garnaut's interim report, noting that it doesn't mention the "N" word.

He mentions a bit of history of interest:

Now there's a rich irony. ALP ministers, many of whom have spent their lives demonising nuclear power, may soon have to start promoting it. Actually, that's a U-turn not without precedent, as nuclear power was once strongly advocated by the ALP: in the mid-1970s, the Dunstan government in South Australia even claimed that a nuclear industry in the state would create 500,000 jobs.

That would be one way Kevin Rudd's reputation would soar in my eyes: if he could actually lead his party into accepting nuclear. (Go have a look at Pebble Beds, Kevin.)

Speaking of nuclear, and energy generally, the Mother Jones current issue is all about the topic. In the article about nuclear, it notes:

To be useful as nuclear fuel, uranium ore has to be refined into uranium oxide (the yellowcake of Niger fame) and then enriched—turned into pellets of 4 percent U-235. The sole U.S. plant that enriches uranium for civilian power reactors, located in Paducah, Kentucky, accomplishes this via an energy-hogging process that consumes 15 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year. Even so, carbon emissions for the entire nuclear fuel cycle come to no more than 55 grams of CO₂ per kilowatt-hour—roughly even with solar. By 2010, when the U.S. Enrichment Corporation is slated to switch to the more efficient method used in Europe, that number should come down closer to 12 grams per kilowatt-hour—on par with wind.

Naked singularities again

Here's a recent paper from arXiv that proposes how naked singularities may form instead of black holes. (My earlier post about naked singularities possibly being created at the LHC is here.)

The more recent paper does not mention the LHC, but the mechanism it describes still seems relevant (correct me if I am wrong, anyone.)

As this paper says:

Spacetime singularities belong naturally to the realm of quantum gravity. We believe that only a complete quantum gravity theory will be able to describe naked singularities properly, dissecting them conclusively or even restoring the WCCC in a more fundamental level.

So: no one knows exactly what a naked singularity would be like, yet (according to some) they may be created in the LHC. (There's a short note on a CERN publication about naked singularities.)

OK, the argument against worrying about them will be the same as that for mini black holes: the earth and all astronomical bodies are constantly bombarded by higher energy particles, and if that hasn't created a naked singularity danger, then nor will the LHC.

And the reason for questioning this might be same as the argument regarding mini black holes: namely, cosmic naked singularities would presumably shoot off at near relativistic speeds , whereas those at the LHC would sometimes have low speed. Maybe ones that hang around a something more to worry about? Also, I am a little curious about what would happen if two of them meet, as would seem more of a possibility in the LHC than in nature.

Meanwhile, we sit around twiddling our thumbs while CERN takes its sweet time to publish the delayed safety paper.

Local electricity storage

A few posts back, I indicated I would do some Googling about household electrical storage, so that my future solar Stirling engine powered house would still let me watch TV at night.

Seems there's not many choices around. Of course, the truly dedicated can buy a huge number of lead acid batteries already, but they have a pretty short life. One site claims that nanotechnology will let us build superbatteries, but as to how realistic this proposal is, I have no idea:

Today, using lead-acid storage batteries, such a unit for a typical house to store 100 kilowatt hours of electrical energy would take up a small room and cost more than $10,000. Through revolutionary advances in nanotechnology, it may be possible to shrink an equivalent unit to the size of a washing machine and drop the cost to less than $1,000. With these advances the electrical grid can become exceedingly robust, because local storage protects customers from power fluctuations and outages. Most importantly, it permits some or all of the primary electrical power on the grid to come from solar and wind.

Still, there does exist one form of battery which allows a lot of electricity to be stored. Futurepundit talked about them last year: sodium sulphur batteries. He links to a USAToday story about them, which includes a photo.

They are big and expensive and used for a many houses, not just one. They appear to be largely a Japanese idea. The New York Times reported last year that one company in America is looking at using them for storing windpower. (The article also notes that they operate at more than 800 degrees F, which makes it sound like you wouldn't want even a small one in your backyard.)

So, OK, they won't fit in my backyard, but they sound a fairly promising idea if used on neighbourhood scale.

Of course, another Japanese idea may help in any plan to live off the grid: house sized fuel cells, which I have mentioned before. I wonder: can you turn these on and off easily, as required, and not affect their efficiency in the process? And can you get away with using bottled natural gas for them, instead of mains gas?

Funny how many of these energy ideas are coming from Japan, hey?

Houses as art

Dezeen’s top ten: houses

Oddly, I found this link via Posthuman Blues.

In another life, I would have liked to have been an architect. (Must be all that time I spent designing houses with Lego. I don't think they even make the roof blocks any more.)

That said, you do have to laugh at the impracticality of some architect ideas for residences. Those that irritate me in particular are the ones that have enormous slabs of glass for walls, as if there is no human desire for privacy. (They also make no sense as far as energy efficiency is concerned.)

However, regular readers would recall my fondness for canvas, in the form of tents and upmarket yurts. Well, I learn from the story above that some architects from Chile have come up with a house which is sort of part normal wall and part tent, and you can readily buy plans off them.

Yes, it's probably got problems in terms of how long you could expect it to last, but the photographs make it look very appealing.

That Austrian case...

Dungeons & Austrians - New York Times

See the link for an opinion piece that points out that the basement incest case is not the first horror basement story from Austria.

Actually, when I saw what the article was about, I thought it might delve into the whole question of whether European horror fairy tales actually do spring from something twisted in the collective unconscious of the area. It doesn't go there, but there'll be an academic somewhere who does.

Meanwhile, it's curious that in Australia, the city that has the general reputation for the most vile and twisted murders is Adelaide, which is seen as having both strong English and (in the hills at least) German influence.

Boris wins; exile threatened

Mayoral election results: Live | Politics | Guardian Unlimited

Of course, with Boris Johnson winning the London mayoral race, over at The Guardian there's an amusing outpouring of name calling of Boris voters (who are obviously just too stupid to vote for Ken), and empty threats of self exile from the city/country.

What is it about lefties and this precious "if the majority don't vote like I do, I cannot live here" attitude? People used to say that conservatives had a "born to rule" attitude, but it's clear that such a belief in entitlement (based on their superior intellect and morality, of course) has long since passed over to the followers of the other side of politics.

PS: Surely even those who hate him would have to agree that Boris made a very gracious acceptance speech. Maybe he will end up like Schwarzenegger: a somewhat unexpected great success when put in the right position.

PPS: Tigerhawk has a good post about the adolescent nature of this "if my candidate loses I will leave politics/the country" attitude.

PPPS: Or, to put it as Nige does at Bryan Appleyard's blog:

What has struck me in all the interviews with those on the losing side - Ken of course included - is the unspoken assumption that a Tory advance represents a reft in the very fabric of space-time, a fundamental anomaly, that can only be the result of 'mistakes', of 'not listening', of a failure to get the message across. I've often noticed this mindset in leftists, the assumption that their project is not only right but self-evidently right, and those who don't buy into it either haven't understood it or are outside the pale of rational discourse, irredeemable and best ignored or sneered at .....

Ocean issues again

Growing ocean dead zones leave fish gasping - earth - 01 May 2008 - New Scientist Environment

It's all inconclusive as to what will happen in future, but it's consistent with my position that the effect of CO2 and possible warming on the oceans is the clearest reason to do something about greenhouse gases.

Well deserved snark

By far the most annoying, bitter, nasty, know-it-all blogger on the left in the last few years is Ken Lovell at Road to Surfdom. His post this week about Iran and most of the world's (not just America's) concern about its nuclear program is his typical schtick: informed by his reflexive anti-Americanism and his apparent confidence that he can tell more about the true state of the world from Adelaide [correction: Tweed Coast?] and his selective reading on the 'net than the governments of the Northern Hemisphere. (Anyone who thinks he has a good point on Iran should read this Economist article first.)

No one bothers any more trying to engage him in debate; he was always snide and insulting in response, and presumably just enjoys the company of the regular sycophantic, and even crazier, commenters. Yet other blogs of the more moderate left refer to some of his posts every now and again with approval. I guess the left loves company, no matter how unpleasant.

I simply can't stand him.

Ah, that feels better.

UPDATE: I see that Ken has psychoanalysed my intense dislike of his blogging style as being due to my not having a regular half dozen commenters who chime in after nearly every post with stuff along the lines of "oh, that's so right, but it's even worse than that."

I don't intend making snark attacks a regular feature here. The post was inspired by the fact that I have noticed more moderate lefties linking to him lately, and my knowledge from past experience that there is absolutely no point in challenging his views at his own blog.

UPDATE 2: Good grief. Someone at Club Troppo's Missing Link today has compared me to JF Beck . It would seem they just believed Ken's characterisation of this blog, rather than actually read it. (Nothing against JF, but somehow I don't think I count as a right wing death beast.)

Also, I don't think Ken realised how few hits there normally are here. His pointing out to the world that I had a snark attack against him has probably trebled my normal weekend hit rate.

A stirling engine for the backyard

I mentioned the Infinia Corporation a year ago, and with all this talk of solar power, I thought it would checking if this alternative idea (of small scale solar thermal using stirling engines) is still around.

It is, and it seems as if they have recent significant funding and (presumably) may be selling the product soon. Their main product of interest should look something like this:

It is, apparently, a 3kW stirling engine that provides electicity, and the website claims that it has a 24 % energy conversion efficiency, low maintenance, and will be(I think they say somewhere) cheaper than solar cells.

I want one for my backyard, simply because they look cool and you can (presumably) also roast a chicken in the focal point of that dish. (Any passing crow that wants a rest on that engine part might be in for a shock, too.)

Now, if only there were economical and small electricity storage systems big enough to get your average house through the night. This calls for another round of Googling!

Fear and loathing in London

Be very afraid: Zoe Williams on the possibility of Boris Johnson as mayor of London

Zoe Williams and a bunch of artistes are all in a frenzy over the distinct possibility that Boris Johnson will be mayor of London.

I haven't heard such hyperbole about a politician since, well since the headier days of Webdiary while John Howard was at his peak. Zoe says of Boris:

He despises gays and he despises provincials (you are all right with Boris if you come from Liverpool but don't sound like a Liverpudlian. Once you've been to public school, then you are from postcode POSH), and he despises Africans. He despises them, and he despises those of us who would hold such judgments to be bigoted and inhuman.

One of the funniest comments that follows is by fashion designer Vivienne Westwood:

"Boris as mayor? Unthinkable. It just exposes democracy as a sham, especially if people don't vote for Ken - he's the best thing in politics. Unthinkable."

Yes, democracy is right and proper only if your candidate wins, hey, Vivien?

About boating accidents

Harbour death crash witness: 'They wanted to party' - National - theage.com.au

The thing that always seems kind of surprising to me about boating accidents is how easily they seem to kill people.

It's probably because the most common form of transport accidents (in cars) often occur at high speed; therefore it is easy to imagine that the crush of metal will kill. Boats, on the other hand, unless they are racing, don't give the impression of travelling fast enough to cause that much mayhem if they collide. But of course, the passengers are unrestrained, and always have water handy in which to drown.

The other thing is that boating crashes are more unusual; it's often hard to imagine how people fail to see other boats in their path or near them. It's probably the more unexpected nature of boating fatalities that make them seem more tragic.

Not sure it's a good idea...

Tom Cruise set to make M:I4

The Mission Impossible series has gone like this:

M:I1 - Cheesily very enjoyable; that De Palma can really direct well when motivated (8/10)

M:I2 - seems to have killed John Woo's career, and none too soon. Awful (2/10, just for curiosity value of the Australian locations.)

M:I3 - better than M:I2 (well, that was no challenge), but directed by some hack who can't compose shots for the big screen, can't move a camera well, and seems to enjoy sadistic scenes a little too much. 4/10.

Can't de Palma, who admittedly is getting on a bit, make a come back? Or even Tom's pal Spielberg? Otherwise, there's not much hope.

Apostasy

A question of belief | Comment is free

Here's an interesting article on the very real problems that apostates from Islam (threat of death in some countries being the big one, but there are many other consequences in other countries.)

It was surprising to read this:

In Sudan and in some states in Malaysia, capital punishment is permitted. In Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Iran, death remains a real possibility for the convert as although it is not specified in law, the countries can invoke this penalty through their application of sharia.

Malaysia? I wouldn't have thought it could happen there.

On going solar

The very sensible Robert Merkel has a very useful post at LP about why government subsidies for solar cell power don't really make much sense overall.

Despite the arguments he convincingly explains, individuals who install the systems and take the benefit of the government subsidies will feel as if they are doing good. It's easy to understand why, when they can look at their roof on a sunny day and think "I am making my contribution". It's a pity the world is more complicated.

Itchy "art"

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Artists catch head lice for show

Clearly, after 100 years or so, it's getting harder and harder to be an avant garde artist.

Who knew primary school children and the homeless were walking art installations?

How to win friends and influence people

Beer and wine tax rise proposed | The Courier-Mail:

A 300 PER CENT increase in beer and wine taxes is being proposed by the Rudd Government's new preventive health taskforce as families battle rising petrol, grocery and mortgage prices.

A stupid dream, then away

Work (and tax!) pressure is likely to keep me from posting/reading the internet much for a few days.

In the meantime, on Saturday night I was woken mid-morning by a child, causing me to remember this stupid dream. Some sort of alien invasion of earth had resulted, not in death or destruction, but just in all men being treated very unfairly. Wages were docked (I forget what for), and we were forced to sleep in some tiny, claustrophobic dormitory type arrangement. At work, a woman co-worker, when shown my pay slip, just found it amusing. I was very disappointed with her inability to see the injustice.

Then a different woman and I were outside an office window, a few stories up, in some window cleaning gantry set-up. It was early morning, and a robot guard was walking down the silent street. We froze, and he didn't see us, so we continued our break in into the alien controlled building. Inside the office, there were jewels, from which voices came, and then 2 of the aliens themselves made an appearance. They just looked like men in silly colourful pantomine alien costumes. They were very easy to kill. I think I stabbed them with something.

The last impression I have is of sitting in a chair with my feet up on a desk, satisfied that I could kill as many of these aliens as I want.

Now I can usually work out pretty quickly what quirky combination of day time stuff has lead to a particular dream. In this case there was certainly an element of Dr Who, which I had been watching on Friday, but the injustice to males took a while. But then I remembered seeing the heading for an article about child support somewhere recently, and that must be it.

Either that or I just have a generic fear of aliens as feminists (or feminists as aliens?), even though they are easy to defeat.

An anecdote too far...

I Peed On Fellini - Book Reviews - smh.com.au

Bruce Elder provides a short review of David Stratton's autobiographical "I Peed on Fellini". (I have read somewhere that Stratton was not sure that the title was a good idea, but presumably someone in publishing convinced him. Let's hope it's not the same editor advising Peter Costello.)

Anyway, the review notes that the book has:

... some very amusing and extraordinary anecdotes (the story of Bob Ellis and the used condom is as fascinating as it is grotesque).

There's no way I'm going to buy the book just to find out what that is about, but it's impossible not to be curious.