Lunchtime education

SpecialtyFood.com

I had been wondering why "washed rind" cheeses have an orange rind. (There are a couple of brands commonly sold in Australian supermarkets now, and they are well worth trying if you like "stinkier" cheese. I like the King Island Dairy one; its flavour reminds me of the sea, for some reason.)

The answer is in the link above:

What distinguishes them from other types is that the cheesemaker actively encourages the surface growth of B. linens (Brevibacterium linens). This aggressive bacterium produces a thin, golden-orange rind—think Pont L’Evêque—and most of the beefy, garlicky, frankly “stinky” aromas that washed-rind cheese enthusiasts love.

I just finished eating a piece that was a couple of weeks past the "best by" date. I trust that B. linens cannot overpower my immune system and make me bright orange and dead.

Coming soon to SBS

The Weekend's TV: The Perfect Vagina, Sun, Channel - The Independent

Here's a review of a documentary about the increasingly common interest of women in having their genitalia surgically altered. It would seem some (most?) do it for the worst possible reasons:

A pretty 21-year-old called Rosie wanted to have some of her labia removed after being teased by her sister, who regularly makes derogatory comments about her vagina to Rosie's boyfriends. Rogers seemed to be having the same thoughts as any sane person: it's a new sister Rosie needs, not a new vagina. But Rosie was determined, so we watched in graphic close-up as a cosmetic surgeon performed the grisly operation, with the poor girl, under local anaesthetic, crying on the gurney. Rosie is by no means the youngest patient to have undergone such a procedure. One doctor that Rogers spoke to regularly operates on 16-year-old girls.

I have suggested before that a significant proportion of cosmetic surgeons need to be rounded up and sent to some modern form of Gulag until they promise to use their medical training for something useful. The idea still has appeal.

Seriously poor judgment

The life of John Edwards flame Rielle Hunter | Salon News

In case you hadn't heard, John Edwards' ex-lover Rielle Hunter is an extreme oddball with a very chequered past. If he actually had an affair with someone half sensible, maybe his political career could recover. But especially by getting involved with this woman, he's well and truly done for. Heading back to the law practice might be a good idea.

Odd medical news of the day

Red Bull drink lifts stroke risk: Australian study | Health | Reuters

Just one can of the popular stimulant energy drink Red Bull can increase the risk of heart attack or stroke, even in young people, Australian medical researchers said on Friday.

The caffeine-loaded beverage, popular with university students and adrenaline sport fans to give them "wings", caused the blood to become sticky, a pre-cursor to cardiovascular problems such as stroke.

"One hour after they drank Red Bull, (their blood systems) were no longer normal. They were abnormal like we would expect in a patient with cardiovascular disease," Scott Willoughby, lead researcher from the Cardiovascular Research Centre at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, told the Australian newspaper.

I wonder whose idea it was to undertake this study? Red Bull has responded by saying:

"The study does not show effects which would go beyond that of drinking a cup of coffee. Therefore, the reported results were to be expected and lie within the normal physiological range," Rychter told Reuters.

Further information needed, I think.

Indeed

The Bigfoot press conference and the art of selling a website - CNET News.com

This is a pretty funny take on the Bigfoot circus, and this part is indeed true:

Emblazoned with the URL bigfoottracker.com, a site devoted to their own Bigfoot tracking enterprise, (a site, incidentally, that declares that Bigfoot's DNA has been taken away for 'analization'), the baseball caps worn by Matthew Whitton (aka Gary Parker) and Rick Dyer said so very much.

If you follow the link, you will see that remains uncorrected.

An uninspired post

I'm having trouble finding anything particularly inspiring to post about, so I'll mention the following:

* for all of my reader in Osaka, there's a particularly good deal going on in the Hotel Nikko Osaka at their Beer Hall in the sky (well, the 32nd floor):

A dinner set (¥5,500) includes snacks, plates of assorted hot and cold dishes, a main dish, salad bar and bread, and unlimited drinks for 100 minutes. Customers may choose from draft beer, wine, whiskey, sake, shochu, cocktails and soft drinks.

Mind you, caution should be advised for any function which provides unlimited cocktails available for 100 minutes. Could be some spectacular results on the carpet.

* I'm nearly finished Clive James' first volume of his Unreliable Memoirs. I see it was published in 1980, and have been half inclined to read it ever since then. (I often imagine heaven as being a place where you can spend the first thousand years catching up on all the reading you meant to get around to while on earth. The second thousand might be taken up with lessons on musical instruments. Then there may be a few hundred thousand years each of learning about and spectrally observing alien planets. But I digress.)

I had heard that James was very open about his childhood sexual development in this book, but it still made me feel "way too much information" too often. At least such disclosures do something to give a clearer picture of sexual activity of youth in history. I mean, it is easy to get the impression that childhood/early teenage sex only got really going in a big way since the 1960's, but memoirs like James are a strong corrective to that idea.

Anyhow, I found the book does truly become 'laugh out loud" funny when he gets to his university years, and the chapter about his brief stint of National Service was the best in the book.

* Bigfoot is 96% possum? This is probably the most stupidly run hoax in history

Hold on to your kidneys, Ji

Al Jazeera English - BEIJING 08 - Olympic protest zones lie empty

This is all pretty much a PR disaster for the Chinese, these Olympics. From the above report:

So far there have been no reports of any legal protest in the zones, with those applying uniformly rejected or detained.

Ji Sizun, 55, a self-described grassroots legal activist from Fujian province, appears to be the latest casualty of this system.

He told Al Jazeera on Saturday that he had submitted his protest that day to the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau (PSB).

He said he wanted to demonstrate on behalf of the petitioners who come to Beijing as a last resort to resolve cases of alleged injustice in their home provinces....

He was told to come back Monday, but by Monday afternoon Ji was unreachable.

His family in Fujian believes he has been detained and will be held until after the Olympics, a source said. They spoke with him briefly on Monday but he only managed to say "I have some problems," before the call was cut off.

Let's just hope he keeps his organs intact.

Which brings me to this story from ABC radio last week:

JENNIFER MACEY: Last year David Mr Matas and Canadian former secretary of state David Kilgour released a report investigating allegations of organ harvesting of Falun Gong members in China. Mr Matas concedes it's difficult to find proof of this practise as China won't release official statistics on executions or organ transplants

But he says he has new audio tapes of Chinese doctors admitting they have Falun Gong organs for sale.

DAVID MATAS: We had callers calling in to China pretending to be relatives of patients who needed organs and asking the hospital that they were calling for organs of Falun Gong practitioners on the basis that Falun Gong's an exercise regime that practitioners are healthy and their organs are healthy. And we got admissions on tape throughout China and we've got the transcripts in our report and we've got phone records and we got the tapes from pick up to hang down.

I think I have heard about these taped calls before, but the story is well worth repeating.

The problem is that Falun Gong is a weird cult-like phenomena, although it's not entirely clear why the China government sees it as such a threat. Still, being a cult, people tend to be sceptical about their claims. So any evidence such as that in the phone calls is important.

As I said before, it is a topic that seems to attract limited attention.

Here comes a bad movie

Hitler to get Pulp Fiction treatment in Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards - Times Online

Can't someone tell Tarantino to just grow up?

Surely cheap pulp films were partly about compensating for lack of budget by being sensationalist in their content. But when you have access to large budgets, as does Tarantino, it's just juvenile to keep going on making this style of film.

Own your own dome

International Dome House

Go have a look at this Japanese company's website for (try saying this 3 times quickly) - foam domes for homes.

They make some odd claims - especially under the page "Housing for health". And the introductory video is, well, rather cheesy in a Japanese way.

Yet, when you look at the interiors of some of their examples, they don't look half bad, at least if you admire Japanese ingenuity in fitting a lot of stuff in tiny living spaces.

They look a lot like the sort of igloo dome moon homes I used to draw as a kid. Maybe that's why I want to live in one.

Justice system of India only too willing to help

Six students of Flytech Aviation held for ragging-The Times of India

It's been a while since I've noted an odd story from India, but here's a strange one:

Six senior students of Flytech Aviation Academy, Nadargul, were arrested by the Vanasthalipuram police on Wednesday in an alleged case of ragging...

According to police, the senior students called the juniors over to their place for an "interaction' on August 12. The students were asked to do frog jumps on the steps, measure the room with match sticks and also measure water in a tumbler using caps of a soft drink bottle. This continued from 2.30 pm to 6.30 pm. The juniors filed a complaint with the police. "Cases were booked under the AP Provision of Prevention of Ragging Act, 1997," Vanasthalipuram inspector Chandra Shekhar said.

They need the court system to deal with this? It must be fun being a parliamentary counsel (the lawyers who draft legislation) in India.

Pointless killings

3 aid workers, driver killed in ambush

Three female foreign aid workers, including two Canadians, were slain in a "senseless, heinous attack" by Taliban insurgents south of Kabul, a senior official of the aid agency said Wednesday....

The women and their Afghan driver died in a hail of bullets around 10:30 a.m. local time in a brazen attack in Logar province, southeast of Kabul. A second Afghan driver was critically wounded and remains in hospital. The province's deputy police chief, Abdul Majid Latifi, told Agence France-Presse that Taliban insurgents ambushed the two clearly marked vehicles that were carrying the workers on a 100-kilometre stretch of road between Gardez and Kabul.

He said the attackers broke the windows of the vehicles and then shot the workers at close range.

"There were signs of about 10 bullets on the vehicle but more bullets on the body of the victims. They were hit by dozens of bullets," he said. "We don't know yet how many men carried out the attack."

A person claiming to be a Taliban spokesman took credit for the attack, saying it was done in retaliation for the ongoing NATO-led mission in Afghanistan.

"We don't value their aid projects and we don't think they are working for the progress of our country," said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in telephone interview.

Quantum stuff

Physicists spooked by faster-than-light information transfer : Nature News

I'm not entirely sure that this experiment shows much that wasn't already believed by most scientists, but it seems to have done mainly to rule out some possible explanations. This paragraph at the end is of note:

The experiment shows that in quantum mechanics at least, some things transcend space-time, says Terence Rudolph, a theorist at Imperial College London. It also shows that humans have attached undue importance to the three dimensions of space and one of time we live in, he argues. “We think space and time are important because that’s the kind of monkeys we are.”

God is clearly a quantum mechanic, then.

Cool

US boasts of laser weapon's 'plausible deniability' - New Scientist Tech

From the article:

Cynthia Kaiser, chief engineer of the US Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate, used the phrase "plausible deniability" to describe the weapon's benefits in a briefing (powerpoint format) on laser weapons to the New Mexico Optics Industry Association in June...

Corley and Kaiser did not respond to requests from New Scientist to expand on their comments. But John Pike, analyst with defence think-tank Global Security, based in Virginia, says the implications are clear.

"The target would never know what hit them," says Pike. "Further, there would be no munition fragments that could be used to identify the source of the strike."

A laser beam is silent and invisible. An ATL can deliver the heat of a blowtorch with a range of 20 kilometres, depending on conditions. That range is great enough that the aircraft carrying it might not be seen, especially at night.

By popular demand...sort of

Yes indeed, I warned you not to have high expectations, but here's a House of Pork I spotted in the Meat Pavilion from this year's Ekka. Presumably, Homer Simpson would be very impressed.

This year's expedition was somewhat marred by mild illness, and the kids insisting on buying their stuff too early in the day. Still, my son got to arm himself with enough cheap plastic guns to last a year. (He bought the "Western Ranger" bag, essentially a cowboy set, and was very happy to walk around in the cowboy hat that was far too large for his head. I actually wore it for part of the day. This interest in the Wild West seems to have been caused solely by watching the Martin/Lewis comedy "Pardners" on DVD, which will cost you $8.99 at your nearest Big W or K Mart.)

The evening's arena entertainment continues to be of wildly erratic quality. An exhibition polo match that goes for 30 minutes just isn't interesting. Nor were the German Shepherds that did nothing special at all for 20 minutes. I think whoever thought that these "acts" were going to hold the crowd's interest is regretting it now.

At least the Holden Precision Car Driving Team, which remained unchanged for at least 30 years, has gone. Instead, I fear we are now stuck with a motoX freestyle act that will not change for 20 years.

We need to go back to things being blown up. If I recall correctly from my childhood, there were a few years in which acts based on explosions were all the rage - a clown running into a cardboard outhouse that blew up, for example; or a guy that got in a coffin like box that blew up. But then, outhouses were still known in Brisbane when I was a child - I guess modern kids may not recognise them.

It was only a couple of years ago that we had the human cannonball (video taken by yours truly on a not very good digital camera):



That's more like it. Now if only there was a portable pool of crocodiles between the cannon and the net.

Readers prompted

Some reader had better make a comment here soon, otherwise you may never get to see the House of Pork photo I took at the Royal National Association Show last Saturday.

On China, etc

LILEKS (James) :: the Bleat

James Lilek's comments on the war in Georgia, and China, are all very apt. He's reading a Mao biography at the moment, which leads to this pithy summation:

It’s not that he was worse than Stalin in character; he just had more people to kill. A larger canvas. As the book pointed out: he worked the nation to exhaustion, took everything they produced, and wasted it. Thirty million dead alone in the Great Leap Forward. Now? He’s a fat old weirdo on postcards who looks funny because the picture’s done in a kitschy style. Ha ha, you were succeeded by crafty pragmatists! But. As the book notes, he wanted to start a nuclear war with the West, and was perfectly content to lose half the population of China. He was even considering where he’d build a new city to head the new World Socialist Government. The Sovs thought he was nuts, but of course that didn't stop them from handing him treats and toys.

I know things have changed, and the Bad Old Days are gone, and they don’t do that anymore – except for Tibet, the fate that launched a thousand bumperstickers, and Falun Gong, which is weird and hence, I don’t know, one of those things – but in a sense the same government is in power, no? Mao's picture still hangs in Tiananmen Square. It’s like going to Berlin for the games in 1976 and seeing giant portraits of Hitler.

Japan and China

War and reconciliation: a tale of two countries | The Japan Times Online

This is an interesting article on how China and Japan deal with the Rape of Nanjing. There's a museum in that city now that deals with it.

I like this description of how, in Japan, the controversial Yusuhukan museum near the Yasukuni Shrine deals with it:

There one can view a video of Japanese troops bellowing a collective "Banzai!" from atop the city wall that abruptly cuts to a scene of a soldier ladling out soup for the elderly and young, while the narrator helpfully explains that the Japanese troops entered the city and restored peace and harmony.

Throughout the exhibit, Japan's invasion of China is portrayed as a campaign to quell Chinese "terrorism" — a post-9/11 narrative that demonstrates just how much the present impinges on the past. At the museum, there is no mention of invasion, aggression, massacres or atrocities committed by Japanese troops in China. Improbably, the suffering of Japanese is the only suffering on display.

On the other hand, the writer says:

As a teacher, I have noticed how much better informed Japanese students are now than they were 20 years ago about this shared past. Only one of the more than 100 research papers submitted in my classes on Nanjing expressed anything but condemnation and contrition.

All interesting.

Why are they still here?

Here's three people who, for some mysterious reasons, still have their jobs:

1. Brendan Nelson
2. Sam Newman
3. Sam de Brito

The first two are self-explanatory. I add Sam de Brito's name because, you know, Fairfax press doesn't really need a blogger who shares with us his stories of casual sex and crab lice. (He's been annoying me for years, with his "pulse of modern manhood" schtick.)

"Traditional custodians of the land" needed eco-management training

Extinctions 'due to humans not climate' | NEWS.com.au

Anti-China round up

With the Olympics underway, it's interesting to note some of the recent anti-China commentary by people who refuse to be taken in by a good opening ceremony. (Well, I assume it was good.)

First, Nick Cohen rips into China as being an environmental disaster zone (my words, not his), and yet his ability to annoy Guardian readers still means that many in the comments section have rushed to criticise him.

Next, a Tory (Edward McMillan-Scott) also writes in The Guardian reminding us of China's human rights abuses, and in particular the unresolved matter of whether Falun Gong members are (or were) the subject of organ harvesting. (I mentioned this allegation, which is believed by some quite credible sounding Canadian investigators, 2 years ago on this blog, noting then that it was a topic which seems to attract little attention in the West. Nothing much has changed, it would seem). Of course, the fact that a Tory should write about human rights is just too much for some Guardian readers, and there is one amusing comment to the effect that because Conservatives supported Pinochet, they have no right complaining about China!

Thirdly, Mark Mardue in The Age complains that business interests are only too willing to support the China government and its abuses. He also believes that it is by no means clear that the current crop of young adults will have reforming zeal:

Brought up in a post-Mao era and a system that blanketed out events like Tiananmen Square, talk of such historical moments is as tiresome and vague to them as Woodstock and Altamont are to Western youth. Indeed, young Chinese regard Tiananmen as the ultimate in sentimental Western fantasies, a cliche we hook ourselves on to slight their country's ascendancy.

It's unclear how much the Government will be able to ride the nationalist fervour of this new generation, and how much it has the potential of creating instability even for it.

I don't know. I think instability is still pretty likely.

As for the kids?

Aborigines 'healthier living in country' - Yahoo!7 News

According to the report:

Keeping Aboriginal people actively involved in homeland settlements also offers significant benefits to the environment, said senior economist David Campbell.

"We're finding clear evidence that working `on country' has benefits for the health of Aboriginal people and for the nation," said Dr Campbell from the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre.

He has presented the initial findings of the Livelihoods inLandTM project deep in the heart of Arnhem Land.

Speaking to a gathering of politicians, journalists, tourists and Aborigines at the Garma Festival, Dr Campbell said: "It's a win-win-win proposition."

"The health benefits in terms of reducing levels of high blood pressure, diabetes and kidney disease are quite striking when people are actively engaged in looking after their country," he said.

Hundreds of tiny settlements, with populations of less than 50 people, dot the territory outback.

What about kids who are in these settlements? Surely they can't expect a good education that way, without heading off to a boarding school? If their parents live an extra 10 or 20 years, that's a good thing, but it would have to be balanced against any reduction in opportunity that it involves for the children.

More work for Qantas PR

Drunken Qantas hostie 'causes mass evacuation' - News - Travel - theage.com.au

Would have been funnier if it was a plane that had to be evacuated, but still...

Flakey celebrity news

McConaughey to plant his baby's placenta - Yahoo!7 News

It's good when some actor you never liked anyway turns out to have some flakey New Age-y ideas:

Matthew McConaughey says he has kept the placenta from the July birth of his son and plans to plant it in an orchard, in keeping with what he says is an Australian Aboriginal tradition.

Ice watch

Arctic meltdown could set new record

According to this story, 2008 may yet end up as a bad year for Arctic ice melting:

....the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, the world's leading satellite monitor of ice conditions in the Arctic Ocean, is now hedging its earlier bets that this year's Arctic ice minimum - typically reached in mid-September - would not be as extreme as last year, when 14 million square kilometres of sea ice shrank to just over four million between March and September.

It's now a "neck-and-neck race between 2007 and this year over the issue of ice loss," Mark Serreze, a senior climate researcher at the Colorado-based NSIDC, told the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper on Sunday. "We thought Arctic ice cover might recover after last year's unprecedented melting - and indeed the picture didn't look too bad last month."

But recent storms in the Beaufort region "triggered steep ice losses," he said, "and it now looks as if it will be a very close call indeed whether 2007 or 2008 is the worst year on record for ice cover over the Arctic."

The Canadian government's chief observers of Arctic ice conditions are expressing amazement at the state of the Beaufort Sea.

"We've never seen any kind of opening like this in history," CIS senior ice forecaster Luc Desjardins said of the Beaufort's exceptional loss of ice this summer. "It is not only record-setting, it's unprecedented. It doesn't resemble anything that we've observed before."

I'm sure Andrew Bolt is following with interest.

A Dowd column worth reading

Op-Ed Columnist - Keeping It Rielle - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

You should read Maureen Dowd's column on John Edward's confession. It's very biting, and funny:

Even in confessing to preening, Edwards was preening. His diagnosis of narcissism was weirdly narcissistic, or was it self-narcissistic? Given his diagnosis, I’m sure his H.M.O. would pay.

The creepiest part of his creepy confession was when he stressed to Woodruff that he cheated on Elizabeth in 2006 when her cancer was in remission. His infidelity was oncologically correct.

Art and water don't mix

Creating solutions to a water crisis - International Herald Tribune

This is what happens when artists are invited to look at the issue of water management:

Taking pride of place in the garden is Pig Toilet, an experimental dry sanitation project devised by the Dutch artists Atelier Van Lieshout. It combines a pigpen with a human toilet, the contents of which are eaten by the pigs, rather than being flushed away and wasting water. "It sounds disgusting, but it works," said Crawford. "In the 19th century there was a vigorous debate between the advantages of dry and wet sanitation systems. The urgh! factor is the reason why wet systems won, but dry sanitation was a perfectly workable solution."

Well, we're just lucky we don't have Peter Greenaway doing an installation on avoiding a world food crisis.

No comment needed

No-nose Bicycle Saddles Improve Penile Sensation And Erectile Function In Bicycling Police Officers

Weekend thoughts

Olympics Opening Ceremony: I fell asleep sometime around the puppets making an appearance. The commentator said that this section had originally been intended to be much bigger, but it had been cut back. Pity really. With Gerry Anderson as an adviser they could have mounted a puppet re-enactment of some important ancient Chinese war, and probably kept me awake.

I woke up briefly to see athletes making an entrance. As this was predicted to take 2 hours, I went to bed, thinking I could catch the highlights in the morning.

Of course, being held only once every 4 years, I had forgotten that television rights to the Olympics are so closely guarded that if you miss the live broadcast, and perhaps one repeat on the network that secured the rights, you get to see absolutely nothing on the world's media the next day. (Well, I think I saw 10 seconds of the opening drums, and 3 seconds of someone on a harness lighting the torch.) Maybe I will never know what I missed out on.

Back to those massed drums. Whenever I see lots of young Chinese men, it reminds me of the forthcoming Testosterone Crisis (TM). China will either have significant unrest in 10 to 20 years because of its ridiculous gender imbalance, or supplant Great Britain and become the gayest nation on earth. Or possibly both.

Of course, this will also be around the time of the Carbon Wars (TM), but the internal unrest will make the taking out its coal plants much easier.

I think I have a future as a stupid futurist.

The Weather: Geez, after a mild July, August in Brisbane has been unusually cold. Sitting in evening air at Machinery Hill at the Ekka on Saturday was the coldest I have felt there for many a year. Further report on that outing due later today.

The Prime Minister: I don't think it's just my personal reaction here. After watching him swan around the Olympics, hanging out with sport stars and celebrities, and reporting on overheard conversations between important people he got to sit near, I feel confident that no one on either side of politics much likes Kevin Rudd at a personal level. For the Left he is, at best, the Prime Minister-we-had-to-have-to-get-the-Liberals-out-of-office. They forgave Keating's personality defects because he was their "big ideas" guy, and his invective amused them. That doesn't wash with Kevin.

He certainly comes across as kind of immature for a national leader, I reckon. I am very sceptical that poll approval numbers reflect genuine affection for him in the populace.

Sensitive Arabs

Nissan orders Israeli ally to pull commercial | The Japan Times Online

JERUSALEM (Kyodo) Nissan Motor Co. has ordered its Israeli business ally to immediately stop airing a television commercial depicting Arab oil barons angered at the high fuel efficiency of a Nissan car, officials of the automaker said Thursday...

The major Israeli paper Haaretz, in its online edition, showed video footage of a news program on Saudi Arabia's MBC TV that quoted a Saudi representative as saying that Persian Gulf states may boycott Nissan unless it apologizes.

Odd thing hits Needles

Here's an interesting bit of TV News from Las Vegas. Sounds like something odd happened out in the desert earlier this year.

But perhaps the best thing about watching this is just looking at how, um, attractive the town of Needles looks:



UPDATE: The comment about Needles was meant to be sarcasm, in case anyone didn't realise. But then, maybe I was too harsh about the town: from the photo with this article, it looks like you can buy a nice enough house facing the river. But then again, it does say this:

"Have you been downtown?" asked City Councilman Richard Pletcher. "It's like little Hiroshima. It's HiroNeedles."

Resentment has been mounting for years, but the county's decision to reduce the Colorado River Medical Center, the town's once proud hospital, to a small urgent-care facility has sparked open rebellion. Needles is now considering leaving California to join Nevada or Arizona or to create its own independent county.

"This is not a publicity stunt. We are serious about secession,"

Just what we need: the new micro-nation of Needles!

UPDATE 2: from the dark recesses of my brain, I just recalled that Snoopy's brother Spike came from Needles. (I Googled that link to confirm my hunch.) The fact that this snippet of information was still there to be retrieved gives me confidence that my aging brain is not too decrepit, yet.

Talk about bad timing

Greyhound scraps ads about worry-free bus travel - Yahoo! News

Greyhound has scrapped a billboard ad campaign that extols the relaxing upside of bus travel in the wake of a bus attack in Canada where a man beheaded and cannibalized another passenger.

The ad's punchline was "There's a reason you've never heard of 'bus rage.'"

...he's just a naughty boy

Ex-spy claims to be ‘new Messiah’ - Gazette Live

A FORMER spy claimed he was the new messiah in a “Sermon on the Mount” on top of Roseberry Topping.

Middlesbrough-born David Shayler, who was jailed in 2002 for leaking secrets including allegations the secret services plotted to assassinate Libyan Leader Colonel Gaddafi, preached to a handful of climbers during the sermon last night.

I like this part the best:

Reiterating his claims to be the new Messiah, Mr Shayler admitted people “might find it strange” for this to happen in Middlesbrough.

He said: “When people think of Middlesbrough, they tend to think of unemployment, child abuse and a failing football team. But I want to set the record straight.

“Why not promote Shayler as the Messiah and get people here on pilgrimages?”

The story has photos of the new Messiah in action too.

An uneven Word

This segment from Colbert a couple of nights ago is of wildly uneven quality. One of the jokes well and truly outlives its welcome, and early on it probably has a greater liberal smart arse quality to it than is usual for the show. But then, at about 3 minutes in, it becomes very funny.



(Not sure if that video link is working right. Will check it again later.)

Catholics don't like Obama

'Catholic problem' dogs Obama and Democrats - International Herald Tribune

I didn't know this:

The problem is all the more compelling for the Democrats because Senator Barack Obama, their likely nominee, lost the Catholic vote badly to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton - like Obama a supporter of abortion rights - during the primaries in states like New Hampshire, Missouri and Ohio. In Pennsylvania, Catholic voters preferred Clinton to Obama by a 40-point margin.

The report puts it down to Obama being seen as being very liberal on abortion rights, but I wonder if there is more to it than that.

Poor Indians

Everything in India is changing but treatment of the poor - International Herald Tribune

The opening sets the scene:

MUMBAI: Here in the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, the doyen of this city's hotels, what you think of the new India may depend on whether you are the person having soap squeezed onto your hands or the person squeezing the soap.

In every men's washroom at the Taj is a helper. As you approach the sink, he salutes you. Before you can turn on the tap, he does it for you. Before you can apply soap, he presses the dispenser. Before you can get a towel, he dangles one. As you leave, he salutes you again and mutters: "Right, sir. O.K., sir. Thank you, sir."

It's the salutes that really appeal to me.

Domestic workers apparently sleep in the hallway:

At 1 a.m. back in the boss's apartment building, the hallways are often covered with bodies. They belong to servants and sweepers who work inside by day but sleep outside by night, who clean the toilets but would not dare use them. They learn to sleep on cold tile, with tenants stepping over them when returning from Champagne-soaked evenings out.

As you can see, the article is about how those who are getting richer in India still treat the poor very badly, and there is a new film on the the subject. I like this comment by a viewer from the middle class:

The film was good but "one-sided," he said: "Maybe there are 70 percent of the people who treat them bad, but there are 30 percent who treat them good."

Not encouraging

Airline cockpit blackouts are not being tackled - New Scientist Tech

In the Airbus A320, failures of the primary wiring system carrying power to the cockpit have not always led to the backup system kicking in automatically, leaving pilots dangerously distracted as they struggle to restore normality. This happened on 37 flights up to May 2007, prompting Airbus to publish a modification to the A320's electrical system.

The bigger picture

Remember the reaction by Ellen DeGeneres to the shooting earlier this year in California of a 15 year old self-proclaimed gay boy Larry King? It's here if you missed it. According to the ever- emotional Ellen, it was all about gay hate and discrimination.

Before I continue, the usual disclaimer (of course he didn't deserve to die.) But, as I suspected at the time, the unseemly rush to embrace this case by gay groups as an example of the poor treatment of homosexuals was a ridiculous over-simplification.

Newsweek bravely runs a long account on the background of the late Larry King. According to the article, he had various diagnoses of psychological problems as a child (ADHD, "reactive attachment disorder", autism). He started telling students he was gay when he was 10. He hung out with girls. By 12, he was on probation for a vandalising a tractor and in counselling. At 14, he told his (adoptive?) father that he was bisexual. His father says he did not reject his son because of this, but Larry started telling teachers his father was hitting him. Authorities put him in a group home, and he was taken to gay youth group meetings.

He started dressing like a girl, wearing make up to school and stilettos (!). (Do they allow girls to wear stilettos?) He told his mother he wanted a sex change operation. The article strongly indicates that he was not exactly shy and retiring about these changes:

....teachers were baffled that Larry was allowed to draw so much attention to himself. "All the teachers were complaining, because it was disruptive," says one of them. "Dress code is a huge issue at our school. We fight [over] it every day." Some teachers thought Larry was clearly in violation of the code, which prevents students from wearing articles of clothing considered distracting. When Larry wore lipstick and eyeliner to school for the first time, a teacher told him to wash it off, and he did. But the next day, he was back wearing even more. Larry told the teacher he could wear makeup if he wanted to. He said that Ms. Epstein told him that was his right.

Ms Epstein, an assistant principal, is gay herself, and is seen by some of the other teachers as having been far too encouraging of Larry. One teacher complained:

She [the teacher] was approached by several boys in her class who said that Larry had started taunting them in the halls—"I know you want me," he'd say—and their friends were calling them gay.

Ms Epstein appears to have generally downplayed the prospect of any action.

The most amazing story of teacher support for Larry is this:

One teacher was very protective of Larry, his English teacher, Mrs. Boldrin. To help Larry feel better about moving to Casa Pacifica, she brought Larry a present: a green evening dress that once belonged to her own daughter. Before school started, Larry ran to the bathroom to try it on. Then he showed it to some of his friends, telling them that he was going to wear it at graduation.

There's plenty more in the article; it's a fascinating read.

The thing is, Ellen got this story completely wrong. Assuming the reporting is basically accurate, (yes I know, perhaps a risky assumption) it shows how amazingly willing the Californian education and child protection system was to accommodate and even encourage a troubled, possibly gay, possibly transgender boy, who insisted that he live out his perceived sexual or gender identity in a highly attention seeking fashion since before he was even a teenager.

His killer had a troubled background too, from a broken home with drugs and domestic violence featuring. His was left alone a lot, and seems to have an unusually detailed knowledge of Nazi Germany. He was, in short, far from your typical example of how a modern, half-way well adjusted American teenage boy would react to silly taunts by a cross dressing boy such as Larry gave out.

Anti-harassment strategies in schools in America seem so to have gone so far that they are emphasising sexual identity issues rather than de-emphasising them, which I would have thought is the more appropriate attitude for the education system.

Here's my simple version of a school policy for sexuality issues, based on privacy:

1. You are all too young to be having sex anyway, you know.
2. You've likely got 60 years ahead of you, as an adult, to work out who you are and who you want to sleep with.
3. We therefore don't care who you're currently attracted to, or even what gender you think you are or should be, and no one else needs to know either. For all you know, your feelings about all this may change in future anyway.
4. You have the right to privacy as to your feelings, and that right should and will be respected. No harassment over presumptions about your sexual feelings will be tolerated.
5. Just get on with some learning, hey?

Sort of a "don't ask, don't tell" policy I guess.

Update: Doesn't it seem that there is an enormous amount of wasted time the American school system could save itself in policing dress codes by introducing student uniforms? What exactly is the reason uniforms seem to have never existed there in the public system?

Solar "superstorms"

Bracing the Satellite Infrastructure for a Solar Superstorm: Scientific American

I don't think that I had heard about the 1859 "once in 500 years" solar superstorm before:

As night was falling across the Americas on Sunday, August 28, 1859, the phantom shapes of the auroras could already be seen overhead. From Maine to the tip of Florida, vivid curtains of light took the skies. Startled Cubans saw the auroras directly overhead; ships’ logs near the equator described crimson lights reaching halfway to the zenith. Many people thought their cities had caught fire. Scientific instruments around the world, patiently recording minute changes in Earth’s magnetism, suddenly shot off scale, and spurious electric currents surged into the world’s telegraph systems.

Well, at least it would save me the cost of a long trip from Brisbane to see an aurora. The downside: it's quite possible that it could knock out the electricity grid for weeks:

According to studies by John G. Kappenman of Metatech Corporation, the magnetic storm of May 15, 1921, would have caused a blackout affecting half of North America had it happened today. A much larger storm, like that of 1859, could bring down the entire grid. Other industrial countries are also vulnerable, but North America faces greater danger because of its proximity to the north magnetic pole. Because of the physical damage to transformers, full recovery and replacement of damaged components might take weeks or even months. Kappenman testified to Congress in 2003 that “the ability to provide meaningful emergency aid and response to an impacted population that may be in excess of 100 million people will be a difficult challenge.”

This seems a good excuse to see what videos of aurora can be found on Youtube. I want to see real-time video too; usually you see time lapse stuff and it doesn't give you much idea of how quickly the aurora move and change.

Here's a clip which seems to give a good idea of their real time appearance:

Last night's ABC

Two stories of note on ABC TV last night:

1. The 7.30 Report ran a story about CSIRO research on ocean acidification in the waters around the Great Barrier Reef. Nothing much new here, as all they are doing now is getting extensive water samples so as to be able to take measurements as a baseline for future changes. Still, of some interest.

2. On Foreign Correspondent, a very remarkable and creepy story from Cambodia about a 7 year old boy who loves his gigantic, boy-eating sized python, which the family believes the spirits sent to look after them. If it was Australia, allowing your boy to cuddle up with a life threatening animal might attract the attention of the child protection authorities.

The way the family treats this python has to be seen to be believed. The video is not up on the ABC website yet, but when it is, it will be well worth watching.

Another bit of obscure WWII history

OPB's 'Wind and a Prayer' revisits Japan's U.S. attack - OregonLive.com

From the article:

The documentary "On a Wind and a Prayer" tells the long, complex tale of Japan's dedicated but futile attempts to harass North Americans by creating panic and tying up various kinds of service crews with unpredictable but widespread damage....

Japan's spotty but persistent assaults on America came by submarine and hot-air balloon. The Gearhart Mountain fatalities resulted from a balloon that had been launched from Japan. Of about 9,200 balloons sent into the prevailing winds starting in November 1944, some 920 should have reached North America, by Japanese estimates. By 1946, 265 had been found. Another 40 have turned up over the decades.

"On a Wind and a Prayer" also touches on Japan's submarine assaults on the U.S. coast, including the February 1942 shelling of an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, Calif. On June 20 another sub bombarded Vancouver, B.C., and the next night another sub fired on Fort Stevens near Astoria. On Sept. 9, 1942, a float plane launched from a Japanese submarine started a small forest fire near Brookings.

The raids caused little damage and no injuries. Nor was there damage or injury to the Japanese subs and crews; decades later, we must admit they were intrepid. They also exemplified the sorry state of coastal security in 1942.

"Wind" also mentions the "Battle of Los Angeles," a profoundly confused panic in which U.S. military units fired some 1,400 artillery and anti-aircraft shells based on rumors. The melee inspired Steven Spielberg's 1979 epic farce "1941." The farrago actually occurred in late February 1942, Spielberg's title notwithstanding. Spielberg did not mention the three people killed by artillery fallout or the three people known to have died of heart attacks caused by the frenzy.

Sounds like a good documentary to watch out for.

Yet more Middle East intrigue

Middle East: Top Assad aide assassinated at Syrian resort | The Guardian

There's also an interesting interview with a former Muslim (son of a Hamas MP, no less) who has converted to Christianity, here.

Ocean acidification, melting ice, etc

I see John Quiggin has linked to me as one of only two conservative bloggers who argues strongly for fast action against greenhouse gases. (Harry Clarke is the other.)

Well, I guess that means I had better start posting again on the topic. In fact I have been fighting the battle at another blog lately, with some success I think. (Well, one hopes there is at least one open minded reader of skeptical blogs who I might have influenced.) The blog in question: Jennifer Marohasy. The main target there: Dr Steven Short, who argues against ocean acidification being a cause for concern, but on grounds I have repeatedly challenged in light of reported experiments. He's far from convinced me of the error of my ways, and his labelling of me as a postmodern, Nazi loving imbecile makes me suspect he's not exactly a shining light of reasoned debate.

On the ocean acidification front, there have been a couple of reports of interest recently. One is about a study of some East Pacific coral reefs which are already in low carbonate saturated waters, and how these may be a model for future reefs as saturations levels fall in future. As the "alarmists" would have guessed, these reefs appear to not be well cemented together, and if repeated elsewhere we will presumably have reefs which are more rapidly eroded, and (in likelihood) only able to build fresh coral at a slower rate than before.

As to other effects of acidification, a study on the fertilisation success rates for sea urchins indicates that they are going to find it significantly harder to reproduce in future due to lower ocean pH. The worry is, of course, that no one really knows what other species of sea creatures are going to have reproduction rates affected. There's a hell of a lot of species to test. The implications of a possible widespread effect on reproductive rates has scientists rightly worried:

..Havenhand said. ‘I really hope I’m wrong about the broader implications of our work. However, the available evidence points to the conclusion that at present acidification is the biggest threat to the long-term viability of our ocean ecosystems and especially to key invertebrate species that maintain many of the marine ecosystems on which we rely for food, protection, and recreation.’

I didn't see much of the Four Corners story last night on melting Arctic ice, but I could imagine Andrew Bolt's blood pressure rising as he watched it. I did have a look at one of the extended interviews on the Four Corner's website (the one with Ted Scambos), and he looked very calm, cool and reasonable while expressing the reasons for his great concern. (But, I can hear a skeptic cry, he thought the 2008 melt would be worse than it is. It seems to me that the 2008 ice cover is no where near a recovery of such an extent to dismiss the overal trend to melting.)

I find it hard to imagine how climate skeptics can watch such interviews and maintain their conspiratorial view against the whole of greenhouse warming science.

And anyway, as I say, if ocean acidification alone is a big enough worry (and I reckon it is) then you don't have to worry about temperatures and ice melts at all as being justification for action.

Link to previous articles: any new reader via John Quiggin's is welcome to look back over my previous posts on ocean acidification here.

When escalators go bad

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Tokyo escalator accident probe

No one seriously injured in this video, but you can see how ugly things can turn when escalators don't do what you expect.

Woops

TV chef Worrall Thompson recommends deadly weed as salad ingredient | Life and style | guardian.co.uk

From the story:

In an interview in the latest issue of Healthy and Organic Living magazine, the TV cook suggested that the weed, called henbane, would make a tasty addition to salads.

Speaking from Spain, where he is on holiday, Worrall Thompson said he had confused it with the fat hen weed, which has edible leaves that can be used in salads or cooked like spinach....

Experts said anyone who had followed his advice and created a salad with henbane should seek medical help and may have their stomach pumped.

Puppet romance

Odd what can be held in the DVD section of Brisbane's Council libraries. My wife found this with the kids on Friday (no input from me at all): two DVDs of the Gerry Anderson puppet show Stingray.

I have a very vague memory of seeing some of this show as a child, but could recall no detail at all except for the fact that it was set underwater. It's remarkable watching it now with hindsight.

Thunderbirds, made after Stingray, is much better known, but it's silliness is nothing compared to that in Stingray.

For example, if you thought that some of the intrigue of Thunderbirds was the question of just which of the Tracy boys might be Tin-Tin's boyfriend, that has nothing on the romantic intrigue of Stingray. It has as a continuing theme the jealousy between lead character Troy Tempest's old girlfriend Atlanta, and the mysterious mute Marina who turns up from beneath the sea in episode one. Poor Atlanta keeps being left behind at HQ while Troy has to be away with Marina on board the confined space of Stingray, as she (obviously) has to help him out on his underwater missions. Even that doesn't explain why in one episode Troy is enjoying an evening meal with Marina while on shore leave in Casablanca.

Incidentally, Atlanta is Stingray's "Moneypenny" role, and is voiced by (and I think physically modelled on) Lois Maxwell, the "real" Moneypenny.

That children should be particularly interested in a puppet version of sexual jealousy strikes me an interesting idea. Clearly, modern children's television has become much less adventurous since the 60's, when puppets smoked, got drunk and complained about women a lot. (These are all features of the few episodes I watched this weekend, while I was feeling unwell.)

Especially ludicrous is the end title sequence, which can be seen on Youtube:



My children, despite being well within the target age for the show, find this sequence hilarious. Did those in the 1960's take romantic puppet love ballads in their stride? Sadly, I can't remember my own reaction from that time.

Worst drink flavour ever...

'Energy boosting' eel drink latest attempt to beat the heat | The Japan Times Online

From the report:

The fizzy, yellow-colored drink contains extracts from the head and bones of eel and five vitamins — A, B1, B2, D and E — contained in the fish.

But, does it taste like eel? Apparently:

The eel involved in recent scandals was prepared in a popular "kaba-yaki" style, in which it is broiled and covered with a sweet sauce. The ¥140 drink costs about one-tenth as much as broiled eel but has a similar flavor.

I feel queasy just thinking about tasting it.

Unexpected science story of the year..

Brian May, guitarist for rock band Queen, completes Ph.D. thesis following 30-year hiatus

It's on astronomy too. Here I was expecting something more in the humanities, involving either dwarves, cocaine, sex, or all three. In science, "thunderbolts of lightning" would have been more apt.

The Middle East via The Times

The Times has a couple of good travel stories relating to the Middle East. First, here's an amusing story on new, quite silly, gargantuan themed resort in Dubai, called Atlantis.

Actually, this part sounds pretty cool (if you are rich enough to afford it):

For more drama, you can always go for the Lost Chambers suites: the bedrooms look out through huge underwater picture windows into the resort’s 11m-litre lagoon, stocked with sharks, rays,angel-fish, trevallies and more, in dense, multicoloured shoals.

Fine for romantics, as long as you don’t mind a fishy audience – though the sight of the rays gliding past is so mesmerising, you might not get round to anything energetic.

But the silly part is the imaginary theme:

It takes a certain damn-the-torpedoes guts to spend £750m on a premise this self-evidently daft: the “discovery” of a 10,000-year-old civilisation that never existed, on an island that’s still being finished...

The keynote attraction...is the Lost Chambers. In a dimly lit stone labyrinth full of startled fish are great bits of fallen masonry covered with mysterious runes (though, presumably, they’re not that mysterious to the guy who made them up). You wouldn’t think you’re supposed to take all this stuff seriously, but they do, they really do.

From the top down, Atlantis’s staff treat their newly constructed ruins with po-faced reverence. Their eyes take on a spooky, glazed look when they talk about it, like freshly indoctrinated members of a Californian UFO cult.

“This is the Abyss,” my guide says. “It was here the Atlanteans mined their minerals – they lowered their miners down this well. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

“But... it’s not real, is it?” I mumble. My words simply don’t register. “We expect a lot of school parties,” he says. “Education is a big part of our work.”

The funny thing is, I quite like fake environments. I love Disney World, for example. But Dubai 's attempt to create man-made excitement out of a bit of desert by the sea leaves me cold. It just seems to be trying too hard, somehow, and too much of it is designed for decadent tastes.

Which brings us to Emirates, the airline which intends first class to be literally a travelling spa:

Although the launch of the A380 initially prompted wild speculation that the aircraft would feature shopping malls and cinemas, Emirates has come up with a genuine wheeze – showers.

You have to have deep pockets of course – the shower spa room is only for the lucky 14 passengers who will occupy the First Class suites, but the favoured few will be allowed to spend 25 minutes in the spa itself – beauty treatments available – and five minutes in the shower which is regulated by a five-minute timer that glows green, amber and red as the allowance runs down.

And you thought getting out of the toilet to get back to your seat in a hurry during sudden turbulence was a worry.

Actually, the most interesting feature of the story is this: the apparent great fuel economy of the A380:

“Emirates will have the lowest fuel economy of any aircraft in the world,” said chairman and chief executive Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al-Maktoum in Hamburg. “We will use just three litres of fuel per passenger per 100km (60miles) – the A380 unites sensible business with social responsibility.”

If only one of them would fit in my garage.

Even more architecture porn (and this time I mean it)

Have a look at item 2, and just try and not laugh.

More architecture porn

This time in the New York Times: a slideshow of houses by John Lautner. Very 60's feel, but in a very good way.

Edit mess

Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan, and the rise of the choppy fight scene. - By Dennis Lim - Slate Magazine

I couldn't agree more with this article's suggestion that current editing of action movies makes a real mess of fight scenes.

All hail Steven Spielberg, whose direction (and whoever does his editting) is like a beacon of clarity.

Jerry, Jerry

Jerry Lewis detained for carrying gun at airport

Comedian Jerry Lewis was detained by police in Las Vegas late last week when airport screeners found an unloaded gun in his baggage, authorities said on Tuesday. Lewis, 82, had a small .22-caliber handgun when he arrived at the security screening area on Friday at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport

But get this, he was on his way to do a one man show! He's still working? I hope he's arranged for some sight gag at his funeral.

Big news?

'Bigfoot' sighted in remote Canadian forest - Telegraph

There's been a lot of stuff about Bigfoot appearing at The Anomalist in the last month, mainly because of a claim, mysteriously unverified, of a group finding a dead body!

But a couple of people who sight a hairy walking thing in the woods of Canada, that's a bit more interesting.

Gloria Jeans survives

Gloria Jean Speaking Requests

Starbucks decline in Australia has come as a bit of a shock. I think I have said here before, I always thought Gloria Jeans was a better product anyway.

I didn't know anything about where that franchise started, but it would appear (see link above) to have been from Gloria Jean, a hairdresser, in Chicago. But wealth can't stop stuff like this:

Just when she thought life would be really good and she could sit back and enjoy life after selling Gloria Jean's, her husband asked for a divorce by fax and a couple years later she finds breast cancer.

Not quite the Rocketeer

Inventor plans to unveil jetpack at air show

Well, it's not really a jet, has only flown to a height of 6 feet, is very noisy and has a 30 minute range.

I'm underwhelmed.

The shame of seeing a lawyer

In rural Japan, a shortage of lawyers - International Herald Tribune

The most interesting part of this story is about the vastly different cultural attitude the Japanese have towards lawyers:

Here in Yakumo, four clients came to see Hirai on a recent day: an older woman worried about leaving an inheritance to an adopted son; a middle-aged salaryman who had hit a female employee; two clients involved in land disputes, one dating from the 1930s.

Like many Japanese who consult lawyers, the four seemed embarrassed about doing so.

"Japanese by nature don't want to publicize their problems," Hirai explained. "And coming to see a lawyer is to admit that there are problems inside your home or workplace."

It was precisely to dispel the shame of consulting a lawyer that Hirai chose to open his office in the town's most prominent square.

Red State/Blue State

This clip from tonight's Daily Show is quite funny, and it has the added benefit of not featuring much of Jon Stewart:

Kevin and Penny don't spread the word

Magnetic Island News - Magnetic Island, North Queensland, Australia

Late last week on the TV news we saw Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong going for a look at a bit of a look at the Great Barrier Reef, and afterwards talking about how global warming will harm it.

I see from that famous newspaper, The Magnetic Times, that Rudd was told about more than global warming. It would appear that ocean acidification got a detailed mention too. From the above link:

Katharina Fabricius, a Principal Research Scientist from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), who, along with fellow Magnetic Islanders, Dr Glenn De'ath and spatial analyst Stuart Kininmonth, is involved in a soon-to-be released web-based atlas of the reef, told Magnetic Times, "Sheriden had three hours to brief the Prime Minister who then gave a twenty minute speech in the Council Chamber that showed he really got the message. It went really well.” ....

Dr Fabricius described the serious effects of climate change on the reef which has prompted the making of the Atlas. “Climate change is already evident on the reef in two forms. One is water temperature which, from records which go back to the 1870s, shows that the ocean's water temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees C in the last hundred years. Corals have a low tolerance to only minor increases in water temperature, and hot water has led to the mass bleachings that have begun to happen in the last twenty years.”

“Of even greater concern is ocean acidification. The world's oceans absorb about half of the atmosphere's CO2. With increased CO2 in the sea water it becomes more acidic. Models predict that the pH (the measure of acidity and alkalinity) has already declined by 0.1 units which means that shellfish, crustaceans, corals and other marine creatures which utilise the carbonate in the water are less able to calcify.”

Well, why on earth in the evening TV news grabs don't we hear the PM, Penny Wong and others talking specifically about ocean acidification as a vital issue if Australia wants to preserve its extensive coral reefs? They clearly know about it, yet for some reason it still gets little media attention.

It also remains the issue that Andrew Bolt never mentions, I suspect because he can't find any credible ocean scientist type who can rebut the dire concerns other than by saying "it's all a conspiracy, everything will be alright, you just wait and see."

Sony does the right thing - sort of

Sony opens up e-book Reader to other booksellers

As far as I know Sony have never released the Reader in Australia. God knows why; we're not exactly the end of the earth anymore.

But now with this opening it up to be able to buy books other than from Sony, it might be on its way. I hope.

Some updates

* Discover magazine answered my email and said that the mistake in the ocean acidification article was noted shortly after publication, and the error will be noted in the September magazine. Oddly, though, they just leave the web version of the article un-amended. Seems a peculiar way to run things.

* Brideshead Revisited has opened to (surprise!) generally good reviews in the States. There are some, though, who call it a travesty, and that's good enough for me. AO Scott gets amusingly personal with this comment on the lead actor:

Charles is a complicated character, who causes a lot of trouble in the Flyte-Marchmain family even as he pretends to be a detached observer of its internal drama. The role calls for a mix of diffidence and magnetism — Charles is a shy, stoical seducer — but Mr. Goode shows all the charisma of a stalk of boiled asparagus molded into the likeness of Jeremy Irons. The film can’t explain why Julia or Sebastian would conceive a risky, tempestuous passion for Charles other than that Waugh seemed to think they might.

* Anthony Lane reviews Mamma Mia! and has a good line or two:

The legal definition of torture has been much aired in recent years, and I take “Mamma Mia!” to be a useful contribution to that debate.

Sounds fun

Time Lord opens the Tardis to a new generation of Prom-goers - Times Online

Caitlin Moran reports on the Dr Who prom held at Albert Hall.

Dr Who continues to be silly fun, marred only occasionally by Russell T Davies slipping in his hints to impressionable youth that being a sexual libertine, across both gender and species borders, is oh-so-cool.

Has anyone else noticed how important the music is to each episode of the re-invented show? It's loud, often annoyingly so, but there is no doubt that it sells excitement. It's really like Star Wars, where so much its emotional hold came from the score.

Long investigations

While the Qantas incident is all very interesting, it would appear to be an accident that will be explained quickly.

The same can't be said for the British Airways crash in London in January. Since the Air Accident Investigations Branch issued its special bulletin in May, we have heard no more from them. The Wikipedia article notes that the investigators have found:

...cavitation damage to the high pressure fuel pumps of both engines, indicative of abnormally low pressure at the pump inlets. After ruling out fuel freezing or contamination, the investigation now focuses on what caused the low pressure at the pump inlets. "Restrictions in the fuel system between the aircraft fuel tanks and each of the engine HP pumps, resulting in reduced fuel flows, is suspected."

This seems a very peculiar scenario, given that it affected both engines at the same time. I am very curious to see the final explanation.

A question of qualifications

Sceptical global warming bloggers tend to rush to take encouragement when anyone with some scientific sounding qualification agrees with them. For example, Dr David Evans' recent article in The Australian made a big splash in sceptic circles, yet it seemed clear from the opening of his article that he was not even claiming to be a scientist with expertise in atmospheric modelling. (His own biography gives his qualifications as being in electrical engineering.) As Deltoid (far from a favourite blog of mine, but he has his moments) pointed out quickly, Evan's "killer" point about troposphere temperatures had been dealt with over at Real Climate half a year ago, and as far as I can tell, is not actually shaking the foundations of the IPCC to the ground in the way software writer David claims.

In a similar vein, Wikipedia notes that of the "30,000 scientists" who have signed the anti global warming Oregon Petition, those in the most relevant category of "atmospheric, environment and earth sciences" apparently number 3,697. There seems to be no easy way of assessing how many of them have actually worked on issues directly relevant to global warming or CO2. Also, as the Wikipedia article explains, it's hard to tell how many signatures are genuine, and indeed many who first signed in 1998 may well have changed their mind since then. The petition certainly has a murky past.

I don't see why I should be convinced by the opinions of your average physicist, doctor and engineer when it comes to questions of assessing global warming issues. After all, just because Edgar Mitchell has a Ph.D and been to the moon does not mean I give any particular credence to his claim that aliens have been here and the US government is hiding the fact. Perhaps a less extreme example to make the same point is the line up of 9/11 conspiracy believers that includes engineers, architects and physicists.

I am aware that there are warming sceptics that have all the specific qualifications and work experience to mean that they are very familiar with the topic. Fine, their opinion is definitely not to be dismissed without examination. However, I still say that the sceptics make their argument much weaker by cheering whenever anyone who can call themselves a scientist says they agree.

Break needed

No more posting for a week. Tax doom approaches.

A question

The answer to this is probably out there somewhere on the internet, but quick googling hasn't revealed it to me yet.

A few posts back, I mentioned a Nature opinion piece which argued strongly that America could not afford to wait to have an effective emissions trading scheme up and running in 10 or so years time. It argued that the urgency of action needed to limit CO2 to even 550 ppm meant that the US should concentrate on immediate deployment of current clean technology. R&D should be on the technology that needs to be deployed in 20 or 30 years time.

Assuming that the same argument applies equally well to Australia, a valid criticism of Labor's emission trading plans is that they do not place significant emphasis on immediate deployment of clean technology. (The Liberals can be criticised likewise, of course.)

But, my question is: what detailed schemes have been proposed by academics or others in Australia that concentrate on immediate large reductions of CO2. I read or heard about some paper a year or two ago, from which university I forget, which I think set out a rapid plan for significant reduction to CO2 emissions in Australia, and I seem to recall they placed a large emphasis on natural gas for electricity, at least as an intermediate step.

The Greens, of course, are running the argument that current technology can power Australia, but I don't know whether they are working to specific and detailed plans, or if they are just expressing the ideal. Their website seems light on details, so I suspect the latter.

Anyway, if anyone can point me to such detailed proposals, I would be interested.

Breaking rank

Miranda Sawyer wonders why female-friendly films are so bad

I like the way this starts:

We went to the theatre the other night, a desperate evening enlivened only by imagining just how much more fun we could have had with the hundred quid it cost us. The play was The Year of Magical Thinking, a monologue about death performed by Vanessa Redgrave (I know: what did we expect? Custard pies?).

Rampaging beavers

Beaver 'blight' is a warning to UK | Environment | The Observer

Last week, I noted that The Independent was full of praise for the beaver. This week, The Guardian (see above) has a cautionary tale of beavers causing havoc in South America:

'I have seen the impact of all sorts of animals introduced to new habitats, but I have never seen anything like the damage inflicted by these beavers,' said Josh Donlan, of the ACS. 'They move along rivers and lay waste to their banks. It looks as if bulldozers have been let loose. Millions of acres have been wrecked.'

Fifty North American beavers, Castor canadensis, were introduced to Tierra del Fuego, in southern South America, in the 1940s in order to establish a fur trade. It was a catastrophic mistake. Numbers multiplied dramatically and beavers spread across the archipelago, crossed the Magellan Strait and are now spreading through the mainland.

Damn. My plans for introducing them to Australia may have its opponents.

Told you

Malaria resistance gene ups HIV risk (ABC News in Science)

This story reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend in the late 1980's, in which I said maybe HIV had taken hold strongly in parts of Africa because of a genetic susceptibility in the black population. I could not remember for sure at the time when or where I might have read the suggestion, but in any event, it seemed plausible.

My friend dismissed the idea, thinking it was too close to racist.

Years later, we fell out in circumstances in which I do have to take some blame. Now I feel potentially vindicated.

The moral of the story is: you should try hard to keep friends, if you want to be able to laughingly claim vindication 20 years later. Or something like that, anyway...

Homeless, but with internet

Temporary arrangements | The Japan Times Online

Here's a good read about the working poor who are living in internet cafes:

Cyber@Cafe in Warabi, Saitama Prefecture, is home to around 25 people who "live" there. The cafe, located outside JR Warabi Station, occupies three floors of an office building and has a shower room, a washing machine and high-tech toilets for the convenience of its guests. Blankets can be borrowed for free. Guests paying ¥200 can spend 30 minutes in the cafe's comfortable 130 cm × 190 cm cubicles, which each have soft pads on the floor, a pair of black and red cushions, and a personal computer with a high-speed Internet connection.

The biggest attraction, however, is that guests who pay for a month's stay (¥57,600) in advance can register the cafe as their home and have mail sent there for an additional ¥3,000. At least four people have registered the cafe as their home with the local city government, according to Cyber@Cafe owner Akihiro Sato.

At current exchange rates, that's about $600 a month for your own little, tiny room with internet access. There are worse ways to live.

Discover magazine does ocean acidification in depth

There's a detailed article on ocean acidification just up at Discover magazine. (If you have read this article at Online Opinion, you may be surprised at how similar they are, but I have it on very strong authority that the Online Opinion piece was written without knowledge of the coming Discover article). Here's a lengthy section from Discover worth extracting:

Over the history of the planet, there have been many sudden peaks in CO2 related to volcanic eruptions, releases from hydrothermal vents, and other natural events. When the pH of the ocean dips as a result of absorbing this excess gas, bottom sediments rich in calcium carbonate begin to dissolve, countering the increase in acidity. This buffering process occurs over 20,000 years, roughly the time it takes for water to circulate along the bottom from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back up to the surface several times. Currently, however, we are pouring man-made CO2 into the atmosphere at 50 times the natural rate. “That overwhelms the natural buffering system for maintaining balance in ocean chemistry,” the Carnegie Institution’s Caldeira says. “To find any parallel in the earth’s history you would have to look to a sudden violent shock to the system far in the geologic past.”

One such event occurred 55 million years ago at the so-called Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when 4.5 million tons of greenhouse gases were released into the atmosphere. Just what triggered this enormous emission is not known, but scientists suspect volcanic activity may have begun the process. That may in turn have caused the planet to heat up enough to melt deposits of methane frozen in sediments on the ocean floor (something, incidentally, that could happen again), discharging even more potent greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and further heating the planet in an escalating feedback loop.

Whatever the exact cause of the CO2 release at the PETM, the earth warmed faster than at almost any other time in its history. The average temperature soared 9 degrees Fahrenheit, entire ecosystems shifted to higher latitudes, and massive extinctions occurred on land and, most telling, at sea. The abrupt rise of CO2 acidified the oceans. James Zachos, a paleo-oceanographer from the University of California at Santa Cruz, analyzed sediment cores obtained from deep drilling in the ocean and discovered that bottom-dwelling creatures with shells disappeared from the fossil record for a period of more than 40,000 years corresponding to the PETM. And once the oceans turned more acidic, Zachos says, they did not recover quickly: It took another 60,000 years before sediments again began to show a thick white streak indicative of fossilized shells.

Drastic as the PETM was, the event is tame compared with acidification today. “Back then,” Zachos says, “4.5 million tons of CO2 were released over a period of 1,000 to 10,000 years. Industrial activities will release the same amount in a mere 300 years—so quickly that the ocean’s buffering system doesn’t even come into play.”

I wonder when any global warming sceptic is going to come up with convincing reasons why ocean acidification is not something to worry about. In fact, when are they going to give it any attention at all.

UPDATE: I've noticed that the figure of 4.5 million tons of CO2 being released during PETM must be an error. If you follow the link in the article (about PETM,) it indicates it should be 4.5 Gt. Disappointing to see an error like that turn up at Discover, but I'll email them now!

Current movies

Once again, join me for some bagging of movies I do not intend to see.

Mamma Mia has already been mentioned here, and while the music of Abba alone is enough to ensure its avoidance, I thought this snippet from a negative review was pretty funny:

A scene in which the groom’s shirtless beach blanket buddies, who are throwing him a bachelor party, peel him away from his bride in order to force him to join their merry band as they goose-step along the dock, while wearing flippers, with maximal flapping of arms, suggests a re-enactment of the invasion of the Sudetenland conducted by the Village People during a weekend on Fire Island.

On to The Dark Knight. Ever since Heath Ledger died, and there were stories of how playing this role messed with his mind, I have wondered whether this would put audiences off, as it may seem too much like watching someone self destruct on screen. (OK, so the death may well have been an accident, but still he wasn't the happiest chap at the time.)

I haven't read too many reviews, but I get the impression that the question hasn't troubled critics as much as I thought it might. A notable exception is David Denby in The New Yorker, who writes:

....as you’re watching him, you can’t help wondering—in a response that admittedly lies outside film criticism—how badly he messed himself up in order to play the role this way.

This article notes that it was pretty daring of the studio to continue promoting the film by concentrating the attention on Hedger's ghoulish Joker appearance; I actually agree more with the line that it was in rather poor taste to do so and semi-exploitive.

In any event, the movie is being highly praised, with one of the notable exceptions (David Edelstein) being attacked by fanboys for failing to agree with them.

I just can't raise enthusiasm. Of all the superhero franchises, Batman has simply never held appeal. Maybe the childhood exposure to the camp television version (towards which I was also rather cool) means I can't take dark, brooding versions of the character seriously either. I really don't care how good the acting is in any version; the costume, the theatrical style of the villains, the whole concept just leaves me cold.

It seems particularly odd that the latest movie is being described as terribly bleak; a superhero concept that was surely never intended to be taken all that seriously by adults now finds that making any concessions to a child audience completely unnecessary.

I am not a fan of superhero stuff overall, but have found the Spiderman franchise enjoyable enough. Maybe it's the charm of Tobey Maguire that gets me past the costume in that case.

North Korean follies

In From the Cold: Resurrecting the “Hotel of Doom”

Somehow, the fact that Pyongyang has an unfinished 105 story pyramid-shaped hotel had escaped my attention, until now. Interesting.