On the gay front

Widespread reporting today of one study indicating similarities between gay brains and those of the opposite sex. One part that surprised me:

The researchers said that the study cannot say whether the differences in brain shape are inherited or due to to exposure to hormones such as testosterone in the womb and if they are responsible for sexual orientation.

But this is something they plan to look at in a further study of newborn babies to see if it can help predict future sexual orientation.

Would such a study be ethical? Are PET scans completely without risk, and just how important is it for science to pin down when such brain changes (if this study is correct) are formed?

As other people have argued before, it's not even certain that it is helpful for the gay lobby to encourage a belief that it is innate. On the one hand, they can argue against discrimination because it is not something they can choose (a cultural idea that has widespread currency already in the West;) on the other hand, it can still be taken that they are, in a sense, a biological mistake. If it is clear that babies are born that way, would a course of the right hormones be able to "cure" them?

And how would such studies also make sense of the (apparent) widespread bisexuality of Ancient Greece? The question of what exactly was going on in Greece, and a couple of other ancient civilisations, is perhaps a little difficult to be sure of from this point in time; but still, given that their neighbours at the time even thought they were strange indicates that they probably were.

On a related matter, the New York Times last week ran an article on how gay marriage is panning out in Massachusetts. I think it has been found in all places allowing it that there is an initial rush to the registry by couples who have been together for years anyway, followed by rapidly dwindling numbers. In Massachusetts:

Of the more than 10,500 same-sex couples married here since May 17, 2004, 6,121 wed in the first six months. There were 2,060 weddings in 2005; 1,442 in 2006; and 867 in the first eight months of 2007, the most recent data show.

More figures of interest:

The Census Bureau recorded 23,655 same-sex households in Massachusetts in 2006.

Nearly two-thirds of the weddings have been lesbian marriages, including one between two women named Melissa McCarthy. And while nearly half of straight people marrying are under 30, more same-sex married couples of both sexes are older — nearly a third are in their 40s.

So it sounds like about half of gay couples living together there are married now, but with the diminishing numbers who are getting married annually, will that really continue to be the case?

As for the view of the meaning of marriage that some gay males have:

Eric Erbelding and his husband, Michael Peck, both 44, see each other only every other weekend because Mr. Peck works in Pittsburgh. So, Mr. Erbelding said, “Our rule is you can play around because, you know, you have to be practical.”

Mr. Erbelding, a decorative painter in Boston, said: “I think men view sex very differently than women. Men are pigs, they know that each other are pigs, so they can operate accordingly. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Still, Mr. Erbelding said, most married gay couples he knows are “for the most part monogamous, but for maybe a casual three-way.”

Well, I'm glad we overturned millennia of humanity's understanding of marriage so that some gay men who want to continue to openly play the field can still get the financial benefits of having a favourite boyfriend. (Yes, I know, we don't criticise heterosexual marriage as an institution because some - very, very, few I suspect- enter into "open" marriages. But if such attitudes are widespread amongst married gay men, I think it does mean they don't treat marriage seriously, and it weakens the case as to why they should be accommodated.)

It also makes a bit of a joke of the "conservative case" for gay marriage, which I have heard Justice Michael Kirby (amongst others) argue. Let them marry, they say, and it will encourage monogamous relationships and stable families and that is a good thing as far as conservatives are concerned.

Sounds nice in principle, but really, it doesn't realistically take into account nature. As a rule, men (both gay and straight) find sex without commitment easy, and evolutionary biology plausibly explains why. Even with modern young women willing to have purely recreational sex, it still carries more risk of emotional or procreative complications compared to 2 men who meet purely for sex. Making gay marriage available is not somehow going to suddenly make the great majority of them think that they would be better off getting into monogamous relationships any time soon.

Gay women, on the other hand, still seem to have the nesting instinct even when their partner is another woman. Not much of a surprise there. They didn't need any encouragement to "settle down".

But worse than all of this, as far as I am concerned, is the procreative interests of gay couples. That lesbians use artificial insemination to have babies seems to me far more offensive to the conservative viewpoint than the nature of the relationship between the adults. That argument, however, seems to be lost in the West, at least for now.

UPDATE: a reasonably well argued conservative commentary on the topic is at American Spectator.

Something to wonder about

Sewage disaster leaves over 700 gallons of human feces in Kingston woman’s home

I only post about this because of this part of the report:

"This was completely flooded with feces and water and pee, and of course I smelled it. When I came in and I called the city guys and it’s estimated at 786.24 gallons of human feces got backed up into my house," Riley says.

Well, just lucky it wasn't 786.45 gallons. (Why on earth is that figure so precise?)

More religion

Bush 'may convert to Catholicism' - The Independent

Tony Blair and now George W? How interesting.

Meanwhile, Liberal Anglicans are doing their best to stop their church resembling anything even vaguely unified by holding a prominent "marriage" of two gay priests. Despite the priest who led the ceremony denying that it was provocative, it was liturgically as close as a marriage service as possible. According to The Times:

Had it not been two men standing at the altar, any observer would have taken the service for a traditional wedding. The service – at the Church of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London – began: “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God . . . to join together these men in a holy covenant of love and fidelity.” After a confession of sin “through our own deliberate fault”, the congregation heard a lesson from 1 Samuel 18, a Bible passage about the love between David and Jonathan.

Dr Lord was asked: “David, wilt thou take this man as thy partner, in the sight of God? Wilt thou love him, comfort him, honour, and keep him in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?’” to which he responded: “I will.”

They also pledged to love each other physically, as in the traditional Anglican marriage service, stating: “With this ring I thee bind, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.”

Oh no, that's not provocative at all!

What fun the Lambeth conference will be this year. Rowan Williams may as well be looking at how to formally end the worldwide communion right now.

Prince Caspian

For those readers who have been dying to know what I thought of Prince Caspian (cue crickets chirping), here it is.

Reviews for Prince Caspian fall into 3 broad categories:

1. The irreligious who can't stand CS Lewis' use of fantasy as an allegory for Christianity, and therefore cannot bear any of the Narnia films due to their quasi-proselytising nature.

2. The irreligious who feel that Prince Caspian works as adventure and is more enjoyable than The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe because it's allegorical content is considerably diminished compared to the first movie. A lot of Australian reviews I have read fall into this category.

3. Those who who admire CS Lewis and his aims, and are therefore a little disappointed that the movie does seem to soft peddle the serious side.

I'm not entirely sure that I have read any review that clearly falls into category 3, but that was my reaction. I suspect that (apart from the appalling timing of releasing it a week before Indiana Jones in the States) there are probably significant numbers of American Christians who share the view, and this is a partial explanation for why it seems destined to make barely half of what the first movie made. (Still, as far as I can tell, it won't lose money.)

On the positive side: it looks fantastic, and the use of computer effects is kept to a level where it is not making you think "look at those 50,000 combatants who are obviously all CGI". (I'm looking at you, "Lord of the Rings".)

The story also has the benefit of real humans playing real characters (contrast, again, LOTR) and the acting is fine. Also, Andrew Adamson is really a talented director.

On the downside, Aslan comes and dispenses wisdom and assistance only a couple of times. It's been so long since I read the book (if I did at all; I can't even recall clearly which I have read beyond three titles,) that I am not entirely sure if it is the same there. Certainly many reviewers have noted that the book is perhaps the least interesting of the Narnia series.

I certainly don't want to put anyone off seeing it: it is a fine movie; just one that feels a little lacking if, like me, you loved the first one. (By the way, you can always tell a movie has impressed people when a fair few stay in the cinema watching the credits. That did happen at the screening I went to.)

Of course, one of the most disgraceful things is that Sex and the City beat it at the Australia box office on opening weekend. Can't the Pope issue some sort of condemnation of that film? If we lived in Old Testament times, I would expect God to demand the human sacrifice of Sarah Jessica Parker (on an altar erected in front of some fashion house in New York, the contents of which would form the funeral pyre for her body) as a condition of letting the rest of humanity survive. And that would sound perfectly reasonable to me.

Aussie fuel cells

I've mentioned before that in Japan they are using natural gas fuel cells for household electricity.

On Saturday Extra on Radio National this weekend, they were talking about an Austalian company which is developing them too. There is no transcript available, but you can listen to it on streaming audio here. (It starts about half way through that segment.)

The link to the company itself is here. I don't think it is not mentioned on their site, but was in the interview, that it is CSIRO research which the company is trying to commercialise.

We won't be seeing them anytime soon in Australia, however. According to the interview, they are being commercialised for the European, Japanese and North American markets. This is because the cost of electricity here is such that they are not yet cost effective.

Just what the world has been waiting for...

...robots that make smells:

Pomi (Penguin Robot for Multimodal Interaction) can see, hear, touch and emit smells as well as making faces, Friday's Korea Times reported. It was developed by the state-run Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) which plans to put Pomi to commercial use. The institute said Pomi's software, which imitates human expressions of emotion, will be available on the market by the end of next month. The robot can move its lips, eyebrows and even pupils freely to make faces and can emit two kinds of fragrances to match its emotions.

Let's all pray that the Korean's never design a kimchi eating penguin robot that can "emit" smells.

The strength of a weed

Health - Life & Style Home - theage.com.au

The link is to a story about very thorough sounding research in the US which shows that marijuana is indeed much stronger than it used to be in its THC levels:

The latest analysis from the University of Mississippi's Potency Monitoring Project tracked the average amount of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, in samples seized by law enforcement agencies from 1975 through 2007.

It found that the average amount of THC reached 9.6 per cent in 2007, compared with 8.75 per cent the previous year.

The 9.6 per cent level represents more than a doubling of marijuana potency since 1983, when it averaged just under four per cent.

I note that it is talking averages too, so presumably a significant amount in use is above that level.

Last year, The Guardian reported that tests in the UK indicated the average there was 14% (with a small number of samples at 20%).

I'm not sure if similar research is done in Australia. Will have to look around some other time.

Analysing Japan

Pajamas Media : What’s the Matter with Japan?

This commentary on the social problems within Japan (viewed in light of the recent Akihabara killings) is spot on.

A key thing that they have to change is the cultural attitude to mental illness and depression. I may have mentioned before, but an Australian friend who lives in Japan (and until recently worked in an administrative position in an english language school) told me that they always did whatever they could to avoid their foreign teachers being taken by police to a psychiatric hospital, because once in there was no telling when they would ever get out. Involuntary admission to a Japan psych ward is something to really fear, apparently.

Even non-psychiatric medicine can expect patients to be stoic to an extent that we haven't seen in the West for many years. A few years ago I was told by a Japanese specialist who performed stomach endoscopies that they were done without any anaesthesia, and as a result were very unpleasant for the patient. (He said he would take a lot of convincing to ever undergo one himself, as he knew how awful they were. I don't know that your gag reflex ever properly stops while you've got a tube down your throat into your stomach.)

As it happens, I had a stomach endoscopy once in Australia in the early 1990's, and knew nothing about it until I woke up. He could not really explain why Japan did not believe in anaesthesia for this procedure. I am sure that he knew that this was not just a peculiarity of the hospital he worked in.

One thing I did not know is that, according to the article, Japan's relatively generous medical insurance schemes do not cover psychiatric treatment.

Amazing, hey?

Real life ocean acidification

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Natural lab shows sea's acid path

Here's a very interesting recent report on some science being done in ocean areas near Italy that already are more acidic due to volcanic CO2 bubbling through the sea.

As expected, the news does not look good for corals, sea urchins, sea snails, and mussels. (I assume that oysters, although they don't get a mention, would also not fare well .) One thing that does well appear to do well is seagrass. I suppose that might mean that one winner out of ocean acidification might be dugong/manatees. I don't know whether they taste any good, though.

Here's the abstract in Nature, but the article itself is behind a paywall. Grrr.

It's also interesting to note the recent stories about the surprising number of bacteria found to be living in the earth's crust under the oceans. The exact role of these in carbon cycling is unknown, but would seem to be potentially very significant. Kind of hard to study bacteria that live best under great pressure, though.

I assume that bottom living bacteria would be very significant to the feared production of poisonous gas if the ocean becomes warm and acidic enough. All a worry.

UPDATE: I hope the tone of my post didn't sound too dismissive of concerns about this.

The Nature paper attracted attention in The Times and The Telegraph. Here's what one of the scientists said in the latter:

Dr Hall-Spencer said: "What we saw was very dramatic and shocking.

"All the predictions made in lab experiments about acidity causing the disappearance of species is coming true.

"When we looked in the field it was already happening.

I must admit I though a lot of the claims being made about species disappearing amounted to scaremongering but now I have seen it with my own eyes.

"Our field studies provide a window on the future of the oceans in a high CO2 world. We show the dramatic ecological consequences of ocean acidification including the removal of corals, snails and sea urchins and the proliferation of invasive alien algae."

"Our observations verify concerns, based on laboratory experiments and model predictions, that marine food webs will be severely disrupted and major ecological tipping points are likely if human CO2 emissions continue unabated."

Also, I note that, although there was a lengthy Sydney Morning Herald story on ocean acidification on 7 June, it did not mention this paper. In fact, I can't see from Google that it has been reported anywhere in the Australian media. Sort of odd, isn't it, given the implications for the Great Barrier Reef?

Why Israel must survive...

Because it seems to be the only Middle East nation with a sense of humour.

This Time blog link explains all:

Iranian Prez stars in Israeli TV Ad - The Middle East Blog - TIME

But oddly, one of the comments about the post thinks that the fact that Israel TV carries a parody about Ahmadinejad threatening nuclear destruction means that "it shows how the "threat" from Iran has been so indoctrinated into Israeli culture that it is accepted as common and undisputed fact."

I would have thought the opposite is more likely; if the population really fears immediate destruction, they presumably wouldn't find the ad funny. (That's not to say they don't fear a nuclear threat in the future.)

Anyway, as I am sure I have said before, can those who make excuses for Iran having nuclear weapons ever point to any Israeli leader talking about the imminent disappearance of one of their neighbours?

As for the ad itself, here's the Youtube link.

Stand on the scales, please

To Save Fuel, Airlines Find No Speck Too Small - NYTimes.com

This article explains what steps the airlines are taking to try and economise on fuel. Some of it I find hard to believe:

Up in the cockpit, Delta is studying whether it is feasible to divide the heavy pilot manuals required on each flight between the captain and first officer, so pilots are not toting duplicate sets of five or six books that each weigh about a pound and a half.

On the other hand if this is true:

“Every 25 pounds we remove, we save $440,000 a year,” Mr. McGraw said...

airlines in countries with significant populations of the obese must be really suffering! Why shouldn't airlines be offering cash back offers for passengers under the national average weight if they are willing to stand on the luggage scales before boarding?

UPDATE: at the risk of referring to the Colbert Report just a little too much, he covered this possibility in last night's show (which I saw after my post):



Also on that episode, he had an interview with a guy who has a book out on the 1950's "comic panic" in America. I had referred to this recently when talking about the Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis movie "Artists and Models". If the topic interests you, the interview is both interesting and funny. (You can find it at Colbert Report website yourself.)

A Wednesday compilation

* The amazing adventures of Kevin Rudd: Last week, Labor figures were saying "no, no, no, the Japanese don't think we have snubbed them." This week, the PM being questioned at length about this in Japan (by Japanese journalists) makes that argument just a little hard to sustain. And is it really a good idea to come across as a smart arse by saying "well, you didn't visit us either."?

Andrew Bolt has covered well the silliness of giving money to Toyota to do what they were going to anyway. I expect the next question time in Parliament will go on about this at length, and rightly so.

* Crab scam: Also in Japan, the fraud is of a fairly esoteric nature. Read about the great Japanese crab scammers here.

* A new way of saying "when Hell freezes over": "when Tim Blair becomes a hypermiler": Wired has an article about "hypermilers" (being people who have become obsessed with driving in such a way as to get maximum fuel economy from their cars.) Some of the methods are just nuts:

Fulton routinely gets 55 mpg from his 1997 Toyota Paseo, a car the EPA rates at 29 mpg. He started hypermiling about 18 months ago when he landed a new job 37 miles from home and got tired of burning so much gas. He mastered "pulse and glide" -- turning off the engine and coasting while driving. "This technique alone dramatically increased my mileage from 38 mpg to 47 mpg on my first tank," he says. "I was blown away."

Well, let's just sit back and wait for the first manslaughter conviction for a hypermiler who couldn't use his power steering to help avoid a deadly collision.

* Indiana Jones and the Green Left Weekly: Just what you were waiting for: a socialist left critique of Indiana Jones! The reviewer complains:

The indigenous people who help Indy in his exploits are sympathetically portrayed, but those who resist are seen as ignorant and superstitious. And some really nasty racism rears its ugly head.

An audience survey of the most popular scenes in Raiders revealed that most people’s favourite scene was when Indy guns down a sword-wielding Egyptian man with a pistol in a crowded square. What if the situation was reversed and a sword-wielding white man was gunned by an Arab? Would it still be the public’s favourite scene? I don’t think so.

That's what I like about the po-faced Left: the way they attempt to crush the simple enjoyment out of life. (It is also analysis like this that made the first Austin Powers movie very funny. You know - the part where suddenly the movie veers into looking at the effect on the bad guys' families after they're killed.)

Monday compilation

Here are some stories that caught my attention recently:

* How unlucky can you be? To be born albino is pretty unlucky. But to be born albino in certain parts of Africa is taking things to a whole new level. A pretty amazing story in The New York Times explains that albino people s are being killed in sub-Saharan Africa because of magic:

....recently in Tanzania...at least 19 albinos, including children, have been killed and mutilated in the past year, victims of what Tanzanian officials say is a growing criminal trade in albino body parts.

Many people in Tanzania — and across Africa, for that matter — believe albinos have magical powers. They stand out, often the lone white face in a black crowd, a result of a genetic condition that impairs normal skin pigmentation and strikes about 1 in 3,000 people here. Tanzanian officials say witch doctors are now marketing albino skin, bones and hair as ingredients in potions that are promised to make people rich....

In early May, Vumilia Makoye, 17, was eating dinner with her family in their hut in western Tanzania when two men showed up with long knives....

When Vumilia’s mother, Jeme, saw the men with knives, she tried to barricade the door of their hut. But the men overpowered her and burst in.“They cut my daughter quickly,” she said, making hacking motions with her hands.

The men sawed off Vumilia’s legs above the knee and ran away with the stumps. Vumilia died.

Darkest Africa indeed.

* God gets challenged again: Theodicy gets another discussion in this book review in the New Yorker. Interesting, even if nothing especially new in it.

* I always wanted to live in a dome: It turns out that Buckminster Fuller, famed for coming up with the geodesic dome (and some much sillier designs for all sorts of stuff) was quite the eccentric. Read all about him in a very entertaining article in the New Yorker. Here are some of my favourite sections:

With no job and a new baby to support, Fuller became depressed. One day, he was walking by Lake Michigan, thinking about, in his words, “Buckminster Fuller—life or death,” when he found himself suspended several feet above the ground, surrounded by sparkling light. Time seemed to stand still, and a voice spoke to him. “You do not have the right to eliminate yourself,” it said. “You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe.”...

Castro-like, Fuller could lecture for ten hours at a stretch. (A friend of mine who took an architecture course from Fuller at Yale recalls that classes lasted from nine o’clock in the morning until five in the evening, and that Fuller talked basically the entire time.) Audiences were enraptured and also, it seems, mystified. “It was great! What did he say?” became the standard joke....

Fuller championed, and for many years adhered to, a dietary regimen that consisted exclusively of prunes, tea, steak, and Jell-O. (!!!!!!)

One idea that he came up with was for the "Dymaxion Bathroom—a single unit that came with a built-in tub, toilet, and sink". In fact, I believe this how bathrooms for apartments for Japan are made. Japanese bathing style requires that the entire small bathroom can get wet, so for apartments they are like sealed plastic units that come prefabricated to incorporate into the building.

Once you read the article, have a look at the slide show taken from an exhibition that inspired the New Yorker article.

* Justifying affairs: Across the Atlantic, and Zoe Williams in The Guardian takes a sarcastic look at a book entitled "When Good People Have Affairs". Her favourite of the 17 motivations listed therein: breaking out into selfhood.

On Colbert Report tonight, there's a slightly amusing interview with an writer who has also written about why people have affairs. I suspect that (towards the end) Colbert's personal conservative-ish views are on display here (which is fine by me, of course):



* Books for husbands to buy their wives: Back to the New York Times, and there's a review of two books by couples who tried to help their marriages by having sex every day. What's not to like about that idea?

How to annoy the neighbours

PM visits Hiroshima memorial - TVNZ Portable - tvnz.co.nz

The Australian media is widely reporting today that our PM Rudd is the "first serving Western leader" to visit Hiroshima.

I had my doubts this was true. In fact it only took a visit to Wikipedia to show it's wrong. New Zealand PM Helen Clark was at the Peace Memorial Museum in 2001, as the link above shows.

I think the mis-reporting may be due to Rudd being the first to visit a certain part of the memorial.

So sorry about that, Helen.

Blogging slowdown

It was a nice, basically lazy, long weekend in Brisbane. The family went to the Lifeline book sale. Doesn't Lifeline do this in any other capital city? It is huge, and I assume that Lifeline makes a lot of money out of it.

The record sales area there is a sight to behold, with lots and lots of vinyl LPs from my younger years to be found. My wife actually got some classical music LPs, which meant I spent some time turning them into CD's for the rest of the weekend. I got to hear most of Aida that way. It's mostly dull, I've decided.

The family also saw Prince Caspian yesterday. I will do a separate post about it sometime soon.

But generally this week, posting will be lighter than normal. I need money, as does the tax office, and as much as I enjoy posting intermittently all day, I really have to stop that habit.

(Of course, my invitation to mad benefactors is still open. I would mention you very favourably!)

Aboriginal issues revisited

Northern Territory News

Go the link for a disturbing story of apparent cultural norms in remote aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. Short version: an Aboriginal community officer accepted his 13 year old daughter sleeping with a 20 year old bloke, who has since gone to jail.

The officer (who the newspaper calls a police officer, so I take it that is technically correct) will just face some internal discipline. As for the poor daughter:

The court heard the girl had contracted three sexually transmitted infections and that her baby had died in-utero.

What I also find irritating about the story is this statement by the NT Police deputy commissioner:

"Following the Chief Justice's comments that Aboriginal leaders in communities should demonstrate leadership to prevent the practice of tribal marriages to underage girls, the Northern Territory police are developing an internal information package to assist not only Aboriginal community police officers, but police generally in this regard,'' he said.

As I said back in June last year, what exactly is the insurmountable difficulty that any government has in making sure that aboriginal communities know a few basic laws? As I said then:

....this is an area where I think most people should rightly react along the lines: "forget cultural sensitivities when it comes to knowing what is child (or even adult) sexual abuse. They just need to be told in English (or if they don't understand that, their own language) a few key points: incest is illegal at whatever age; sex between adults and children is illegal. Sex without consent is always illegal too, no matter what age. No one who has an STD should have sex with anyone until it's cured. "

The basic rules just aren't all that complicated, surely.

Meanwhile, I've had some interesting talk with my relatives in Far North Queensland about how things are going in the Aurukun/Weipa area. The tavern at Aurukun now apparently only sells light beer, and this has not gone over well. Grog is smuggled in both overland and via boats. The police search vehicles driving into the township regularly, but grog is dumped in the bush for later retrieval when the residents can see that the polices cars are all back at the station. It is also smuggled in by boats (operated by aborigines, not whites.)

Meanwhile, I am told that Weipa is now not safe to walk around at night. The places that sell alcohol at Weipa cannot refuse to sell to aborigines, and in fact much of the alcohol that ends up in Aurunkun comes from there.

What a nightmare.

Jews out of Egypt

'Egypt is trying to deny our existence' | Jerusalem Post

Interesting story about Jews who were "exiled" out of Egypt since the creation of Israel:

In 1948, around 100,000 Jews lived in Egypt, but by 2007 that number had dropped to between 20 and 100.

Some Jewish groups have sought documents from Egypt relating to the history of the former Jewish residents:

However, Egypt has refused to release the documents to the historical society. Sakkal said this was a consequence of the Egyptians' fear of restitution claims.

The Egyptian government is just a little sensitive about the issue:

On May 10, Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said during a parliamentary conference that he "would burn Israeli books myself if found in Egyptian libraries."

On Obama

There's only so much time to waste in a day, and I have resisted talking about the American Presidential race because I just don't really read that much about it. Not at this stage of the game, anyway.

But I have some impressions about Obama that I may as well share now:

1. There's a certain touch of the Kevin Rudd's about him. Lots of talk about symbolism and changing paths, etc; but pretty empty with clear, concrete policy when you come down to it. It's all to be worked out in the future.

2. Am I the only person who thinks that his political success is about 50% attributable to his voice alone?

3. Some things that raise doubts about his general wisdom: that church, and he was/is a smoker. (Yeah, sorry, but a guy with a family in his forties who still smokes is showing reduced common sense. Tough but true!)

4. His wife looks a little mean to me.

5. I worry that he will be another Jimmy Carter: all well intentioned, but weak when it comes to dealing with difficult nations.

6. He is really going to galvanise the pro-lifers in the campaign if this statement from this article from American Spectator is correct:

And he promises, "the first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act," which would over-turn hundreds of federal and state laws limiting abortion, including the federal ban on partial-birth abortion and bans on public funding of abortion.

7. Apart from youth, the comparisons with John F Kennedy are somewhat off the mark. At least Kennedy had both distinctive military service and 14 years as a federal politician behind him. (Actually, I didn't realise JFK had been in politics for so long before he became President.) That crack that Hilary Clinton made about her experience versus Obama's "one speech" certainly rings very true.

UPDATE:

8. Great gaffe made by Obama about Jerusalem this week. He's really got the trainer wheels on. (How Bush would be slammed by the Democrats if he had said the same thing.)

Every computer should have one

Fake Progress Bar - look busy whenever you want at the press of a button - The Red Ferret Journal

Looks fun

Kung Fu Panda Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes

While you are busy ignoring my warnings of ocean-led environmental catastrophe, it looks like you could do worse than take the kids to go see Kung Fu Panda. (Or just take yourself anyway.)

I saw the shorts at Indiana Jones, and thought it looked "nothing special". But the initial reviews from the States (see link above) are generally very positive.

Ocean acidification, continued

Climate change effect on oceans under-estimated: CSIRO - ABC News

From this very short report:

CSIRO marine scientists say the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and scientists worldwide are neglecting the earth's oceans in researching the effects of climate change.

In an article published today in the journal Science, the researchers argue that the effects of climate change on oceans is being underestimated.

Meanwhile, the Hobart Mercury reported recently about a conference there:

CSIRO marine scientist Bronte Tilbrook said what was already known about ocean acidification was troubling.

"Indications are that we will see some fairly significant changes in the ecosystem," Dr Tilbrook said.

"Under the CO₂ emissions scenarios -- and it's the high ones we seem to be tracking at present -- in about 2060 we'll cross a chemical threshold in the Southern Ocean where one form of calcium carbonate will become chemically unstable.

"It's very early days to say there will be a decline in (fishery) production or an increase -- some species will do better, we just don't know if they're going to be of much value for the ecosystem."

And earlier in the report:

The gathering of some of the region's leading climate change experts was told oceans would reach a carbon saturation tipping point within 50 years and nobody knew what might happen then.

Now, as the article makes clear, these problems are going to happen regardless of successful cuts in current CO2, because of the time it takes for the ocean to absorb CO2. So, you could argue that there is not much point in worrying now anyway.

But, go back to my original posts about this for my argument as to why we shouldn't let CO2 creep up towards 1000 ppm.

Pay attention, people.

Unkind cuts

Male circumcision is a weapon in the sperm wars - New Scientist

This article speculates on why circumcision (and more drastic forms of cuts around the genital area) developed at all.

While I had heard about subincision before, I didn't know about crushing a testicle:

In some African and Micronesian cultures, young men have one of their testicles crushed.

And you thought public circumcision would be something to fear as a 12 year old!

Anyway, the article argues that this is all to do with reducing the risk of younger men impregnating older men's wives. This is particularly the case in polygamous societies:

The older men have also gone through the ritual, and seen their own reproductive effectiveness reduced. But if a man with, say, four wives wants to ensure that any children his wives produce are his, there is pressure to make sure other men can't successfully impregnate them.

The husband's own reproductive ability is impaired, but continuous and repeated access to his wives makes up for it, while any genital mutilation is a greater handicap to an interloper trying to sneak brief occasional sex with his wives.

Sounds plausible, but caution is always advised in such matters of evolutionary biology.

(Incidentally, in the all the guff that anti-circumcision groups go on with, do they ever take into account a preference that women may have for circumcised men? As this article indicates, I would assume that circumcised young men have more of an issue with premature ejaculation, which women don't exactly welcome.)

Me, me, me

I got it right the first time | The Australian

Well, it's sort of fun to watch the emotionally needy Paul Keating say "it was me, me, me" again. He does go on about "lost years" of Howard government diplomacy, doesn't he? What exactly does he think Australia could be doing differently in China or Indonesia now if his great and glorious leadership had continued?

Anyhow, it's good to see Labor people being skeptical of any burst of symbolism from Rudd.

Speaking of needy personalties, as if you didn't know, we can add Richard Woolcott to the list:

....the Herald learnt that Mr Rudd's special envoy for the project, the former diplomat Richard Woolcott, found out about the proposal only two hours before it was announced on Wednesday night.

Can't he just develop an interest in fishing, or something?

Prat

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - Film Reviews - Film - Entertainment

So, The Age gives us a review of Prince Caspian which is purely based on Philip Pullman-like ideological hatred of CS Lewis. Have a look at this line:

Sometimes critics are accused of reading sinister messages into works of harmless entertainment but that won't wash in the case of Lewis - a fierce polemicist who used fantasy as a platform to rail against everything he disliked in the modern world, including democracy, lipstick and progressive education.

I wouldn't mind betting that Wilson, the author of that "review", is a youngster atheist who has never read Lewis.

You can safely assume that Wilson is on his own planet here: both Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton gave it respectful reviews, and they are both liberal lefties who are uneasy about Christian stuff. (Oh, while you are at At the Movies, you should read the conflicting reviews of Sex and the City. It's pretty funny.)

I'll be off to see this weekend. Then I should go wave protest placards in front of Sex and the City.

Tim Train: I expect you to attend this weekend too. And you had better like it!

Red wine and the fountain of youth

New Hints Seen That Red Wine May Slow Aging - NYTimes.com

A chemical in red wine is being tested for its potential to extend life:

He and others have tested resveratrol’s effects in mice, mostly at doses far higher than the minuscule amounts in red wine. One of the more spectacular results was obtained last year by Dr. John Auwerx of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Illkirch, France. He showed that resveratrol could turn plain vanilla, couch-potato mice into champion athletes, making them run twice as far on a treadmill before collapsing.

Of course, the morning after a bottle of red, I'm not usually feeling like going out for a run. And how much bottle equivalent of this compound were the mice given?:

....the animals were fed such large amounts of resveratrol that to gain equivalent dosages people would have to drink more than 100 bottles of red wine a day.

Marathon runners should still hold back on the red the day before, then...

The chickens call her "Kali"

Notes on the urban chicken movement. - By L.E. Leone - Slate Magazine

Ms Leone has chickens at home, and butchers them herself. Her reaction?:

There's a part of me that likes to kill. When I do what I do with a hatchet and a chicken, I feel like crap, and I feel like God. I feel alive and in love and closer than ever to death. So I guess that is, for me, mixed feelings, yes. And the mix itself is welcome and intensely gratifying. In fact, it's almost too much. Too swirly, too soupy. I can tell you that the part of this swirl which seems "good," as opposed to "evil," has absolutely nothing to do with foiling the chicken industry or saving the environment or taking personal responsibility for my role in the food chain. It has to do with getting a little bit bloody and gross, like the complicated, hungry animal that I am.

I dunno: if I were Mr Leone (if he exists,) I'd be a feeling a little nervous after reading that description.

More on French annulments

Fake virgin ruling sparks storm in French parliament - ABC News

As I noted a few days ago, the French law regarding annulment of marriage sounds very peculiar to Australian ears. This article gives some examples of what the courts there have found to be "an error about the person or the essential qualities of the person":

....marriages have been annulled for reasons such as impotence, if a partner does not reveal a previous marriage or a child, or if the wife hides the fact that she had been a prostitute.

Very odd. These sort of factors are (apart from impotence) of a moral nature, and as such might be relevant to church law. But in a secular state, why not just let divorce deal with the issue of unhappiness with what might be called "inadequate disclosure" by the spouse, instead of pretending a valid marriage never took place?

My new retirement plan

Despite free land, no cry of northward ho in Japan - International Herald Tribune

Let's all sing now: (to the tune of "North to Alaska"):

"North, to Hokkaido, a-go north, the rush is on

Way up North, (North to Hokkaido)
Way up North, (North to Hokkaido)
etc"

Actually, I thought the words to that song were different, but I haven't heard it for decades. (And perhaps some of my younger readers will never have heard it.)

Here's an added bonus: with global warming, the weather will probably be nice on the (currently very snowy) Hokkaido within 30 years.

I'm seeing glasses half full today.

The International Herald Tribunal also ran an article last week suggesting that Japan had pretty reasonable prices for real estate now. I had a quick look around some websites, but it's hard to tell. Certainly, you can't beat the interest rates for mortgages:

Fixed interest rates for terms of more than 10 years can be as low as 2 percent at leading Japanese banks, with average rates standing around 3 percent. At GE Consumer Finance, interest rates vary depending on customers' credit profiles, but the top rate now is 4.6 percent.

Now, if only they will have people to run the country in 40 years time, everything would be fine.

Food needed

Rich nations must drop 'beggar thy neighour policies', says UN chief | Environment | guardian.co.uk

An interesting report here on the UN food summit:

Trade barriers should be lowered and export bans removed to stop the spread of hunger, the UN said at its summit on the global food crisis today, as its secretary-general Ban Ki-moon declared world food production must rise by 50% by 2030.

The decision that there is a crisis seems to have come on awfully quickly. Still:

Food prices have risen 83% in the last three years, according to the World Bank. It is also estimated that soaring food prices could push as many as 100 million more people into hunger.

The director-general of the UN's Food And Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, said wealthy nations had spent billions of dollars on farm subsidies and wasteful food consumption.

But of course it can't be a UN conference without some stupidity amongst delegates. The most spectacular example here is, of course, Robert Mugabe:

Speaking this afternoon at the summit, Mugabe defended his policy of seizing land from white farmers by saying he was undoing a legacy left by Zimbabwe's former colonial "masters".

He blamed international sanctions for many of Zimbabwe's problems and said his own policies have been "warmly welcomed" by his people.

"Over the past decade, Zimbabwe has democratised the land ownership patterns in the country, with over 300,000 previously landless families now proud landowners," he said.

Well, proud landowners who don't know how to farm it. Still, having a really, really big backyard for the kids to play in while they lose weight must make them feel good.

But some sense was spoken:

The foreign office minister for Africa, Asia and the UN, Mark Malloch Brown, said Mugabe's attendance was "like inviting Pol Pot to a human rights conference".

He said: "Zimbabwe is one of the few countries whose food crisis is not due to climate change or global prices, but due to the disastrous policies pursued by Mugabe."

Just one idiot speech is never enough for the UN. I didn't realise before, but Ahmadinejad turned up too. Guess whose fault he thinks it is:

...the appearance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, prompted distraction after the Iranian leader attacked Israel.

"European peoples have been most hurt by the Zionists, and today the economic and political costs of this false regime are on the shoulders of Europe,'' he said.

I suppose the Hidden Imam will work it all out, when he arrives any day now.

UPDATE: here's a couple of articles at Online Opinion talking about the international problem.

The darkness

After Years of Effort, Dark Energy Still Puzzles Scientists - NYTimes.com

Here's a pretty good article about the puzzle of dark energy.

Those carbon eating trees

There's been a lot of attention given to Freeman Dyson's article in the New York Review of Books about global warming and its possible solutions.

As a writer, he does have an usually clear and succinct style, which makes the article a pleasure to read.

His discussion about the issue of discounting is a very helpful and useful contribution to debate, I think.

But the second major aspect of the review, in which he expresses confidence that the answer to excessive CO2 will be genetically engineered super trees, hardly seems something that we should make plans around. As some people have said, we're all still waiting for our rocketbelts, household robot servants and a cure for cancer and the common cold. The best predictions of practical applications of new-ish technology can be way off the mark.

Over at Real Climate there is criticism of his views both in regard to discounting and the genetically engineered solution. There are also hundreds of comments following the post arguing in each direction.

It's all interesting reading. Not a mention of ocean acidification though, although presumably Dyson would say that the trees will be the prompt answer to that too.

More Indian crime files

Wife poisons husband to death-Patna-Cities-The Times of India

More amusing choice of words from the loveable Times of India:

According to reports, wife Shobha Devi allegedly poisoned her husband in their house because he had come to know that something was brewing between her and a village guy, Dinesh Yadav.

I really should get back to work...

but in the meantime, have a look at some photos of some very cool buildings by a Japanese architect:

JAPAN-PHOTO | MODERN ARCHITECTURE | WATANABE MAKOTO SEI

I am particularly keen on the Aoyama Technical College, which looks from some angles like the top half of a giant robot.

Here are some much clearer photos of it.

Mahmoud's mouth just won't stop

Ahmadinejad: 'Israel soon to disappear.' | Jerusalem Post

You would think that he might tone down the rhetoric just a little, given that he has most of the world worrying about whether he's developing nuclear weapons. But no, Mahmoud keeps up the threatening language.

By the way, last week Phillip Adams interviewed an Iranian journalist who has written a biography of Ahmadinejad. In the introduction, Adams said:

After his suprise election as President of Iran in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad quickly passed into caricature in the Western media - mocked as a diminutive blacksmith's son with a beaming grin, and demonised as an apocalyptic visionary who denies the Holocaust and seems intent on playing a game of nuclear 'chicken' with the US.

Who is Ahmadinejad really? And how much of a threat does he pose to his country and the rest of the world?

The funny thing is, I think it's fair to say that the journalist did nothing to indicate that he had been "caricatured" at all, and painted a picture of a potentially very dangerous, naive man too certain of his fundamentalist belief that he will hand over to the Hidden Imam.

Adams' cynical introduction, implying the unfairness of Western views of the man, were not vindicated.

Unfortunately, they don't do transcripts of Late Night Live, but if you have time to listen to it, the audio of the interview (at the previous link) is well worth it.

UFOs of the outback

An elderly couple in the Northern Territory say they were buzzed in their car by a "dark silvery" UFO. It's an interesting report, because it is said to have happened at 4pm, which rules out a lot of possible explanations (fireballs, etc) if it had happened at night.

No air force activity up there at the moment? An F111 using terrain following radar would fit the bill.

A good idea

Mile-high urinals | Gulliver | Economist.com

Possibly, we will see urinals in Airbus planes.

They have them in Shinkansen (the "bullet trains") in Japan, and I would have thought that women would appreciate the cleaner sit down toilets that they would leave.

Toxoplasma spreads out

The world's most successful bug hits dolphins - life - 02 June 2008 - New Scientist

Don't you hate toxoplasma gondii? It's everywhere on land, and now increasing evidence that it is spreading to marine mammals. Given that there is some evidence that infection affects human personality, I hope the dolphins don't start attacking swimmers any time soon.

Not only that, they may accumulate in oysters and mussels!

You mean my fondness for well-done meat, and never having a pet cat, is still not going to protect me ?

I think this calls for drastic measures. Outlawing pet cats may be a start.

Old attempts at culture change

Change drink habits? You're joking | David Aaronovitch - Times Online

Aaronvitch is cynical of government attempts to change the culture of drinking.

To back his case, he points out to some historical attempts to decree fashion:

Consider the announcement in 1574 by Elizabeth I of her Statutes of Apparel, telling free-born Englishpersons what they could not wear. The statutes laid down limitations on the fineries to be donned by subjects, and were - or so Her Majesty claimed - motivated by a concern that now sounds wholly modern. Viz, “the wasting and undoing of a great number of young gentlemen and others seeking by show of apparel to be esteemed as gentlemen, who, allured by the vain show of those things... run into such debts and shifts as they cannot live out of danger of laws without attempting unlawful acts”.

Elizabeth had the advantage that she could imprison anyone so much as questioning these laws, let alone breaking them. But not long afterwards we discover various proto-Mailites suggesting that antisocial dressiness had broken out again. Stephen Gosson lamented that hardly had Good Queen Bess “set downe the limits of apparel to euery degree: and how soone againe hath the pride of our harts over-flowen the chanel?” Huge ruffs bothered Philip Stubbes, who, in his The Anatomie of Abuses considered that: “If Aeolus with his blasts, or Neptune with his stormes chaunce to hit uppon the crafie bark of their brused ruffes, then they goe flip flap in the winde, like rags flying abroad, and lye upon their shoulders like the dishcloute of a slut.”

I don't think I was aware of the Elizabethan fashion laws. Still, if I were benevolent dictator, I would be tempted to have another crack at it.

Credit to the Taser

Vital Signs - After Taser Jolt, a Heartbeat Returns to Regular Rhythm - NYTimes.com

This was reported somewhere else last week, I think, but here it is in the New York Times.

Don't tell the Victorian police, though.

Polygamist hair

Judge Orders Sect Children’s Release - NYTimes.com

Have a look at the photo in the above article, and see if you don't agree that forcing embarrassing hairstyles on underage children should alone be enough to allow courts to remove children from that compound.

It's very creepy.

Really?

Microgeneration could rival nuclear power, report shows | Environment | guardian.co.uk

I've only been to England for a couple of holidays, I think in an alleged spring and then an autumn, so the idea of solar hot water or photovoltaic panels working well there always makes me snigger a bit. Just how many warm, sunny days are there in that country?

But the renewables consultants always talk it up, and of course it's just my hunch that the figures must be very rubbery.

Sounds about right

Why China doesn't break | Comment is free

There's occasionally a "Comment is Free" piece in The Guardian in which there appears to be nothing to object to.

Stupid

Boris Johnson blamed for Tube party violence - Times Online

Isn't it extraordinary to think that people were allowed to drink on public transport in London before Boris Johnson? (And that he should then be blamed for stupid yobs who got drunk via Facebook organised Tube drinking parties before the ban came into effect.)

Britain certainly has become a strange place. Sounds like a good dose of conservatism needed, for a decade or so.

That anecdote...

I mentioned a few weeks ago my curiosity as to the details of an unsavoury Bob Ellis anecdote that David Stratton put in his autobiography. Andrew Bolt has revealed it here.

(There is quite a lot of overlap between posts here and at Andrew's lately. I get a small amount of pleasure from seeing when I have posted on a topic a few hours ahead of him, but I guess visitors to both sites might more often assume that I am following his lead. Well, of course sometimes that happens, but I seem to beat him to print on quite a few occasions. Is there any award for that, especially for an amateur blogger? :) )

An update on the LHC, mini black holes and strangelets

There are a few things of note that have happened over the last couple of weeks:

1. Physicist Bee at the Backreaction blog gets a little cranky at having to address the issue, but she sets out in detail in this post why she believes there is no danger at all from mini black holes at the LHC. More importantly, she then respectfully answers those who question or doubt her in the long string of comments that follow. She insists that any arguments against Hawking Radiation existing are not convincing, but she makes many good points. (Including the preliminary one that the extra dimensions that are required to even make mini black hole production at the LHC plausible may not exist.)

Of particular interest in the comments section is the involvement of Walter Wagner, one of the litigants who is trying to stop the start up of the LHC because of perceived dangers.

I have said before that I was not sure what to make of Walter. He has had a varied career, and asking for donations to run a legal case is usually a reason to be concerned about motive. But, his comments in this post impress me. He appears sincere and knowledgeable. It's well worth reading this post and the comments in detail.

2. There's a recent paper on arXiv which does some number crunching on cosmic rays hitting the sun and earth and how they compare to the LHC. Perhaps it's easiest if I just copy the summary here:

The high energy cosmic ray flux impinging on the sun and earth for 4 Gyr is compared to the operation of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at design energy and luminosity. It is shown by two different calculations that both the integrated luminosity and the total hadronic interaction rate from the cosmic ray flux of comparable energy are many orders of magnitude larger than that of the LHC operated for 10 years. This study indicates that it is extremely unlikely that pernicious exotic particles, such as mini-black holes, would be produced by the LHC that would destroy the earth.

Sounds good, except that it is still based on the assumption that Hawking Radiation exists, and therefore doesn't take into account the more complicated arguments as to why slow speed mini black holes created at the LHC might be more of a problem than high speed ones.

However, the section on strangelets (which are another potential worry, even though I haven't spent much time discussing them here) sounds more definitive. Taylor calculates that a negatively charged strangelet would be stopped by the sun, hence if they were capable of causing damage there, it would have already happened.

It sounds as if that is a solid argument.

(Indeed, a similar argument, but with neutron stars, may be the convincing argument about mini black holes not being a danger. That's what CERN is already telling people who email them, apparently. )

3. CERN is still promising to release their new safety report, any day now. I haven't spotted it yet.

A strong review

It's the movie I am destined to hate and despise (on the dubious assumption that I will ever actually see any of it), so I'm a little disappointed that Sex and the City has actually managed about a 50-something-percent approval rating at Rottentomatoes. I was hoping for it to do worse.

There are some savage reviews in there, though; but few of them I have read have lines particularly worth quoting. Roger Ebert gives a very disdainful review, but not a particularly witty one. He is not alone amongst reviewers in noting that a comedy "highlight" is a the uptight character (how shall we put this politely) soiling herself.

What's more puzzling is that there are a couple of good reviews from religious sites. Here's one at Beliefnet (not sure about that site; I've never spent time there, but it sure sounds like it specialises in soft edged spirituality). The one from Christianity Today seems particularly forgiving. This is very disappointing: who can I trust to incorporate reliable conservativism if it's not from a site called "Christianity Today"? (On the other hand, Anglicans still count themselves as Christians, so I should have known.) Funny how it is secular reviewers who are more offended by the empty materialism than the religious reviewers. Dana Stevens in Slate writes, for example:

The show's values are reprehensible, its view of gender relations cartoonish, its puns execrable. I honestly believe, as I wrote when the series finale aired in 2004*, that Sex and the City is singlehandedly responsible for a measurable uptick in the number of materialistic twits in New York City and perhaps the world.

The strongest short review of the movie is from the Orlando Weekly, and it is kinda funny in its savageness:

....we’ll continue to experience befuddlement verging on disgust whenever we’re reminded of Sex and the City (so named, we suppose, because Seriously Rethinking Third-Wave Feminism reads like ass on a poster). We’re totally down with the interpretation offered by a choreographer we know, who once pithily observed that SATC projects onto women “everything that’s wrong with men.” For real: Is it any sort of inroad for a summer film to prove that ladies, too, can surrender to pummeling materialism, a blinkered emphasis on self-gratification and hollow objectification of the opposite gender? Plus, Darren Star and his “creative” crew must be laughing their sphincters loose knowing that their amoral fantasia has been welcomed as gospel by genuine urban women, instead of their obvious target demo: Iowan paralegals too tipsy and titillated to notice that the characters are actually semiotic stand-ins for gay men.

So, no, we don’t have a strong opinion on the thing one way or the other.

I think it's the same reviewer with this even shorter summary (it's on the same page as the slightly longer review):

We’re realists here. We know that nothing we might write could dim a fan’s enthusiasm for rejoining the continuing adventures of Carrie and Samantha and … uh, Dopey, and … uh, the Pink Power Ranger. And maybe that’s as it should be, because everybody has the right to indulge his or her particular pop-culture obsession in a state of unmolested respect. So knock yourselves out, skanks.

UPDATE: I don't know why Rottentomatoes doesn't count Anthony Lane's reviews in New Yorker. Happily, Lane has reviewed it, and he's very funny. Speaking about the special preview he attended:

Not a drop of the forthcoming plot had been leaked in advance, but I took a wild guess. “Apparently,” I said to the woman behind me in line, “some of the girls have problems with their men, break up for a while, and then get back together again.” “Oh, my God!” she cried. “How do you know?”

Interesting, he actually criticises it from a feminist perspective (the women mostly define themselves by their ability to snare and keep a man.) But he ends the review like this:

It’s true that Samantha finally disposes of one paramour, but only with a view to landing another, and her parting shot is a beauty: “I love you, but I love me more.” I have a terrible feeling that “Sex and the City” expects us not to disapprove of that line, or even to laugh at it, but to exclaim in unison, “You go, girl.” I walked into the theatre hoping for a nice evening and came out as a hard-line Marxist, my head a whirl of closets, delusions, and blunt-clawed cattiness.

Strange French law

BBC NEWS | Europe | Row over French bogus virgin case

An interesting case from France:

France's ruling UMP party has opposed a French court's decision to annul a marriage between two Muslims because the wife lied about being a virgin.

The Lille court's decision has also angered feminists who say it amounts to a fatwa against women's liberty.

The court granted the man's request for an annulment after ruling that he had been tricked into a marriage.

Both conservatives and feminists have joined forces to complain about the decision, but the government response:

....a justice ministry spokesman insisted the court's decision was not based on religion or morality but on the French civil code under which a marriage can be annulled if a spouse has lied about an "essential quality" of the relationship.

It sounds like there must be some interesting claims made in applications for annulment in France, then!

In Australia, incidentally, annulment of a civil marriage is exceptionally rare, as it is only available because one party was already married, or under age, or forced into a marriage under duress.

The fact that your partner lied about her sexual history seems an extraordinarily silly thing to consider for annulment.

Dalrymple on methadone

We must kick our methadone habit | Theodore Dalrymple - Times Online

Dalrymple has another go at pushing his line that methadone treatment for heroin addiction is a bad idea. (Or, at the very least, it is a bad idea to provide it indefinitely to addicts.)

I wonder what the situation is in Australia. In the early 1980's, I had a pharmacist friend who I saw dispensing liquid methadone to registered addicts from his pharmacy. This was in Queensland under Joh Bjelke-Petersen: I don't think many people really knew that conservative old Queensland had a methadone program going then. (In fact, I have an idea that Queensland program may have been more "liberal" for many years compared to the ones in the southern states.)

Still, I was under the impression that the Queensland program did not leave patients on it forever. I thought there was an expectation that the patient would move off it within a year or so. But maybe I'm wrong.

Anyway, Dalrymple's article is a fascinating read.

Go UQ

Researchers make breakthrough in renewable energy materials

The University of Queensland gets some PR on line, but the practical application of it all still sounds very unclear.

More trouble coming

Penny Wong in clash with carbon emitters | The Australian

Funny how the Rudd government's honeymoon has been ended by conflicting petrol price policies which are both not going to have any substantial impact on prices.

(By the way: has anyone asked the question - if you have Fuelwatch as a national scheme, and given that volatility in oil prices is expected to continue, how does anyone expect to be able to tell whether the scheme has worked or not?)

Much, much more serious trouble is brewing over energy and carbon trading:

TENSIONS are emerging between major greenhouse emitters and Climate Minister Penny Wong after a number of hostile meetings before the release of the Government's green paper on emissions trading in July.

Senator Wong has told small groups of chief executives from major power and other energy-intensive companies that the Rudd Government's election promise of a renewable energy target was "not negotiable".

One of these meetings in Melbourne last Tuesday completely broke down, with Senator Wong reportedly furious at the way she was being treated by the eight business leaders present, telling them "you wouldn't treat (former Treasurer) Peter Costello the way you are treating me".

I'm not so sure that playing the "you're not respecting me because I'm a woman" card was such a good idea, which is what I assume that report means. If that's correct, one of the guys should have responded "no, it's not that you are a woman. It's because you are a po-faced lesbian." That would have broken the ice; there would have been laughs all around, followed by questions about how good looking is her partner.

(I may have taken too much pseudoephedrine this week.)

Signs of unhappiness

Loyal workhorse escapes knacker's yard - for now - Annabel Crabb - Opinion

I won't be the first to say it, but it does seem a little surprising, doesn't it, that within 6 months of a government that (according to polls) is wildly popular, there are leaks from within.

Someone is not happy, and it would be interesting to know who.

Annabel Crabb notes this about our PM:

The Prime Minister's own attitude to what the Coalition is optimistically calling "Fuelgate" is one of professed nonchalance.

"I think actually having an exchange of views and having a debate where you have a complete embrace of different points of view is the way to go," he told Parliament smoothly on Tuesday.

"We are actually pretty relaxed about having a debate which has different points of view. We do not seek to suppress different points of view."

Poor Mr Ferguson. It was even worse than he had feared.

As all the Prime Minister's colleagues know, Mr Rudd reserves the expression "I'm actually pretty relaxed about that" for moments of particularly uncontrolled private rage.

I hope it is true, and that one day someone comes out and details the PM's private behaviour in more detail.

Something funny going on?

Cold-fusion demonstration "a success" (physicsworld.com Blog) - physicsworld.com

This appeared a few days ago, and apart from being noted on a couple of well read sites, it hasn't attracted any mainstream media attention.

I wonder if it is a hoax. According to the report, there was a lot of Japanese media present. But surely if it was splashed there, it would have been picked up in Western media too. Physicsworld has also not updated the report with any video or any other form of verification.

Anyway, we can always hope they've come up with something useful, regardless of whether it is cold fusion or something else.

Trouble in space

Spacemen call up Earth and ask for a plumber | Science | The Guardian

The International Space Station's toilet is not working. (Or not working properly.)

Most obvious joke about this: imagine what the plumber's call out fee is going to be. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

The prophet who never gives up

The end of the world is nigh. Its name is Gordon - Times Online

He's not easily discouraged, you have to give him that.

Gordon Ritchie believes he has worked out all the details of the end of the world. Trouble is, he keeps making predictions which turn out wrong:

His predictions have not been rash. They've all been thought through very carefully, but many have been wrong. His revelation came to him after a long period of bible study, including six years in the Jehovah's Witnesses. It all fell into place for him in McDonald's , he says. “I felt like leaping up on the tables, shouting, ‘Why are you eating those burgers?'”

He buys and sells shares with enough foresight to make a living, but look at his other predictions:

“Well, when I went on New York radio in front of two million people telling them they were going to be imminently destroyed and then they weren't, yes, I did feel a complete berk,” he says. Similarly, he took out £30,000 worth of advertising in The Sunday Times predicting that the UN would take overall political control of the world. He ran ads in March, July, September and November 2001, revising his prophecy each time. “Yeah, that turned out to be wrong, duh!” says Gordon.

There's more:

So what are his latest predictions? We meet in late April. He says there will be a terrorist attack on the weekend of April 26 in Europe and the US. Er, no there wasn't. On May 12, angels will start appearing to people, just popping up at dinner parties or when you're watching TV. I feel sure I would have noticed that. Don't book your holidays for next August because, by July half of mankind will be toast and we'll be ready for the new kingdom of Christ, he says.

The belief that keeps him going:

“I know I'm right,” he says. I point out that he's not right, in fact he's very publicly wrong. “Well there's a limit to how many mistakes I can make, I suppose,” he says.

Err, no there isn't.

Colbert on that O'Reilly tape

Infatuation

Movies: Whatever Happened to Karen Allen? | Newsweek Entertainment

This is an amusing article by a journalist who, despite talking to the big stars and directors, still didn't have the courage to speak to his heartthrob Karen Allen when he saw her on the street.

Trouble ever brewing

Nuclear agency accuses Iran of willful lack of cooperation - International Herald Tribune

Don't worry, though, Ken Lovell says we have nothing to worry about.

Sad

US director Sydney Pollack dies

I always thought he made or appeared in competent, generally likeable, films.

Mars skepticism

While most things space related interest me, I don't often blog about Mars missions. I don't begrudge planetary scientists their fun, and good science may still come out of these missions; but really, I am skeptical of any optimistic talk of finding life on Mars, or indeed of manned missions.

For humans to travel to Mars, there is a major issue with space radiation. Even on the surface, it's not shielded by a decent atmosphere (or magnetosphere?) and the radiation environment is not so good for permanent living. (Unless you have shielding, the easiest of which is to live under dirt.)

As for bacteria, this summary of a recent paper indicates that any bugs would have to be far underground:

The damaging effect of ionising radiation on cellular structure is one of the prime limiting factors on the survival of life in potential astrobiological habitats. Here we model the propagation of solar energetic protons and galactic cosmic ray particles through the Martian atmosphere and three different surface scenarios: dry regolith, water ice, and regolith with layered permafrost. Particle energy spectra and absorbed radiation dose are determined for the surface and at regular depths underground, allowing the calculation of microbial survival times. Bacteria or spores held dormant by freezing conditions cannot metabolise and become inactivated by accumulating radiation damage. We find that at 2 m depth, the reach of the ExoMars drill, a population of radioresistant cells would need to have reanimated within the last 450,000 years to still be viable. Recovery of viable cells cryopreserved within the putative Cerberus pack-ice requires a drill depth of at least 7.5 m.

Here's another article (based on the same paper, I think) explaining that that scrapping just below the surface is not likely to find anything living.

Really, until they come up with a good answer as to how to ensure astronauts won't be killed during a lengthy voyage to Mars, I just don't know that it is worth the effort to plan for manned missions.

I would much rather intensive investigation of the Moon, with a view to permanent, sheltered bases, to act as lifeboats for humanity.

Yes, but...

Cheap carbon trap cleans up power station emissions - tech - 26 May 2008 - New Scientist Tech

Most of the story is behind a paywall, but here is the start:

Now a team led by Maciej Radosz at the University of Wyoming in Laramie say they have designed a cheap filter that could capture 90 per cent or more of the CO₂ emitted by power stations. "This is a way to capture CO₂ for about $20 a tonne - less than half the cost of current methods," says Radosz.

Yes, but surely the bigger issue with CO2 sequestration is where to bury it, and how to get it there.

Charlie Brooker has doubts

I've made the point many times: the problem with many a Labor supporter is their assumption that those on the Right are either too evil, or too dumb, (or both), to see the obvious truth that only those on the Left have the moral and practical answers as to how to govern.

Charlie Brooker, whose silly scowling photo used by The Guardian has always made me laugh, illustrates this well in his column today. Warming to the idea that your personal view of politics is strongly affected by genetics, he writes:

This would explain a lot. For instance, I know in my bones that rightwing policies are wrong. Obviously wrong. They just are. It's Selfishism, pure and simple. Nasty stuff. Consequently I don't "get" Tories, never have and never will. We don't gel. There's something missing in their eyes and voices; they're the same yet different; bodysnatchers running on alien software. Yet that's precisely how I must seem to them: an inherently misguided and ultimately unknowable idiot. (I'm right and they're wrong, of course - but they can be forgiven for not working that out. They can't help it. They were blighted at birth.)

But even he is now having his doubts, in the sense that he is finding he can't stomach current Labor figures either. Poor boy, he may be starting a much feared middle age retreat towards the right.

I know he is trying to be a bit funny in the way he writes in this column, but I still think he is pretty much speaking the truth in the above extract.

Secret missions

Titanic search was cover for secret Cold War subs mission - Times Online

So, Robert Ballard was engaged by the US Navy to check out the wrecks of the nuclear submarines USS Thresher and USS Scorpion. He succeeded too:

Thresher, had imploded deep beneath the surface and had broken up into thousands of pieces and Scorpion was almost as completely destroyed. “It was as though it had been put through a shredding machine. There was a long debris trail.” Dr Ballard developed a robotic submarine craft in the early 1980s and approached the US Navy in 1982 for funding to search for the Titanic, which sank in 1912 with the loss of 1,500 lives after hitting an iceberg.

He was told that the military were not willing to spend a fortune on locating the liner, but they did want to know what had happened to their submarines.The military were anxious to know how the nuclear reactors had been affected by being submerged for so long.

The story of Thresher is particularly nightmarish:

Thresher, the US Navy’s most advanced attack submarine at the time, sank with all her 129 crew in April 1963 while undergoing seaworthiness tests after dockyard repairs.

A surface ship, Skylark, was in contact when the submarine’s crew reported that a high-pressure pipe supplying the nuclear reactor with cooling water had blown. The accident 1,000ft down, caused the vessel to lose power. It then sank so deep that the pressure hull imploded.

But, according to the Wikipedia entry, the wreckage was already examined in the 1960's after the accident, so it's not as if Ballard was the first to go there. In fact, this report seems to be based on publicity for a National Geographic special, so that may explain a degree of exaggeration here.

Still, an interesting story.

Frozen chips & the clown

Billionaire made fortune in frozen potatoes - Los Angeles Times

File this away in that small corner of your brain that you aren't using right now. The invention of the frozen chip and McDonalds hamburgers are closely connected.

For some reason, I find that interesting.

Want to take the gamble?

Ocean Acidification: Another Undesired Side Effect Of Fossil Fuel-burning

In this general article about ocean acidification, it is noted:

The expected biological impact of ocean acidification remains still uncertain. Most calcifying organisms such as corals, mussels, algae and plankton investigated so far, respond negatively to the more acidic ocean waters. Because of the increased acidity, less carbonate ions are available, which means the calcification rates of the organisms are decreasing and thus their shells and skeletons thinning. However, a recent study suggested that a specific form of single-celled algae called coccolithophores actually gets stimulated by elevated pCO₂ levels in the oceans, creating even bigger uncertainties when it comes to the biological response.

"There are thousands of calcifying organisms on earth and we have investigated only six to ten of them, we need to have a much better understanding of the physiological mechanisms" demanded Jean-Pierre Gattuso, a speaker from Laboratoire d'Océanographie Villefranche invited by EuroCLIMATE. In addition, higher marine life forms are likely to be affected by the rapidly acidifying oceans and entire food webs might be changing.

This is consistent with what I have said before. You already have big changes underway in ocean chemistry, due to the lag time in the ocean absorbing CO2. With thousands of creatures possibly directly affected, and thousand more in the food chain, it a huge gamble to do no planning for reduced CO2 emissions while waiting another 20 years or so for scientists to get on top of the biology of ocean acidification.

Maybe what is needed is some specific research on something people directly like, such as the effect on prawns or oysters. If research can show that ocean acidification will lead to the decline of the beloved Sydney rock oyster, maybe that would get people's attention.

Actually, now that I Google that topic I see that someone says that prawns and crabs won't be affected because of the way they make their shells. But I am sure I have read somewhere else that krill may be affected. (Maybe that is indirectly because of the effect on some types of plankton.) Anyway, here's the quote from The Telegraph:

Mussels, clams, scallops and oysters are expected to be the worst-hit as the oceans grow more acidic. However prawns, crabs and lobsters will escape unharmed as they produce their shells in a different way.

If the effect on oysters is so clear, I reckon a few good Youtube videos showing the effect might be enough to get ocean acidification more attention. I think at the moment people read about it and shrug their shoulders: there is no direct image of the problem for them to worry about. (Whereas if you concentrate on earth warming, you can do a Gore and use pictures of hurricanes and such like, and whether or not they are truly related to global warming, they have an emotional impact to some people.)

By the way, there are a few new posts up at the Ocean Acidification blog listed in my blogroll.

Homer Simpson will be pleased

Doughnut-shaped Universe bites back : Nature News

My opinion of you know what movie

Went and saw Indiana Jones & the KCS. I came out quite satisfied, though I still find Temple of Doom the most enjoyable of the series.

If you are one of those who think Last Crusade was excellent, you may as well ignore my opinion. Unlike that instalment, in which I found there were no thrills to be had and most jokes fell flat, this movie has genuinely exciting, protracted sequences, and a script that does provide some genuine humour. (The script is not perfect, though, and any flaws with the film really lie there, and not with the welcome re-invigorated action direction of Spielberg.)

One curious aspect of the film, though, was that the self referential bits gave me a feeling that it was like watching the last film in the career of an aging or ill director, who's doing a bit of a career summation. I assume that was not the intention.

You would, however, have to assume that the last scene was meant to telegraph that there would be one more Harrison Ford outing in the role before it is (possibly) handed over to Shia LaBeouf. I for one would welcome another outing with this cast.

An aside: They played the short for Baz Luhrmann's "Australia". It shows every sign of bearing as much resemblance to a realistic portrayal of this nation as "Moulin Rouge" did to 19th century Paris. It showed great promise as a great embarrassment, which I fully expect it to be, as I quite intensely dislike everything of Luhrmann's I have ever seen.