More ETS criticism

Money and Lobbyists Hurt European Efforts to Curb Gases - Series - NYTimes.com

Anyone else noticed how much criticism of the European effort at an emissions trading scheme there is at the moment?

Now the New York Times joins in.

The Chinese, food and cruelty

SBS is currently showing a 4 part documentary on Wednesday evenings called "The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World". Last night was episode 2.

I missed part of the first episode, so I'm not sure where in China it is, but the place is truly gigantic. (It can seat 5,000 customers.)

The show is by turns fascinating and (when it comes to treatment of animals) pretty horrifying to Western eyes.

First, the fascinating part. The show seems to give a pretty good insight into the psychology of many Chinese, and if last night's episode was anything to go by, it paints a pretty bleak picture of a materialistic society very obsessed with money. Sure, much of the population was grindingly poor until very recently, so a concern with money is understandable from that point of view. But still, it's not a good a look.

It also indicates that it will be a very unhappy society if lots of people stop making money in the economic downturn. My scepticism as to the successful future of China remains.

The animal cruelty issue was on display in both episodes. Last week, it was the dish where the live fish has its body cooked in boiling oil with its head held out, so it can be served on the plate with its mouth moving. OK, so it's cold blooded; it looks gross to me, but I won't get too worked up about seafood eaten while half alive.

But last night there was a brief scene of a chicken being scolded in boiling water while still alive. The dish was served with the head on, but still I can't see why the scalding and feather removal has to start while it is alive.

I do not understand why the Chinese seem immune to Western ideas of animal cruelty. In Congo Journey, a book I am currently reading, an America watching the way some pygmies kill an antelope makes the observation that it is only with the farming of animals, which involves caring for their welfare, that people start to worry about animal cruelty.

Nice theory, but it doesn't seem to have worked with the Chinese!

Harry Clarke had a post about this topic earlier this year, but none of the comments really enlightened as to why the Chinese don't seem to feel for animals in quite the same way much of the West does.

Still, a lot goes on in Western farming without being noticed. Chickens have a pretty miserable life here too, but at least a quick death.

Same with pigs. The cages they use to stop pregnant sows moving for months at a time while pregnant are (I reckon) just indefensible from a cruelty point of view, and it's only lack of knowledge in the community that hasn't led to the practice being rejected earlier. (The sow can stand, and sort of lie down, but not turn around. It is stuck in that position for up to 4 months. Can you imagine the uproar if dogs were allowed to be confined in that way?)

I see that a website (presumably industry funded) that defends the practice is careful to avoid any photos. A stop to the practice was one of the propositions successfully passed in California recently.

So it's not as if the West is completely cruelty free. Still, it seems hard to imagine the Chinese even getting interested in such issues, and I don't know why.

New technology and evil

Mumbai Terrorists Relied on New Technology for Attacks - NYTimes.com

Satellite phone, GPS, Google maps and VOIP appear to all be believed to have been used by the Mumbai terrorists.

The article also notes that the terrorists were in contact with Pakistan during the siege, and could get updates as to where the Indian military from their bosses who were watching TV coverage.

I must admit, I thought it was foolish of the Australia guy holed up in the hotel to keep ringing and talking to Australian media for this very reason. (Not that his calls would have made Pakistani TV, I guess, but you never know who's watching Australian TV too.)

Sabotage from the future

Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

See the link for an on-the-spot report on the repairs to the Large Hadron Collider, which blew up (well, a section of it at least) not long after it was turned on.

Current expectations are that it may start operating again in mid 2009, although I have read elsewhere it won't be turned up to 11 (so to speak) until 2010.

This is good news for those who worry about micro black holes or other things it may create. (And yeah, I am still curious to know if Plaga is wrong in his latest assertion, and whether absolutely all possible events have been considered. I have said before, the cosmic ray/neutron star argument may suggest there is no danger for stars; planets might be a different matter.)

Anyhow, the post at Cosmic Variance points out that it is still not clear what caused the initial fault which was "...a resistive zone developed in the electrical bus in the region between dipole C24 and quadrupole Q24." As the thing was vaporised, it's not that easy to find the cause of the "resistive zone" problem.

This is good, because it still allows for my pet science fiction-y theory as to what happened. The LHC has been suggested as possibly creating the right conditions for time travel, as well as mini black holes. If it is actually dangerous to the planet, then time travellers from the future (or another branch of the future?) may well have been taking a big interest in it from the start, and are actively sabotaging it. It may not require actual visitors from the future; maybe just sufficient ability to hack information into the computers. Maybe the time travel is allowed by the LHC itself at low power; maybe there is a different mechanism. (I know that it is an example of the grandfather paradox to argue that the LHC works as a time machine that then allows to future to prevent it from being turned on.)

I expect someone else has probably already thought of this, but if not I claim "dibs" on it!

If only X files was still being made...

Keeping it quiet

The gospel truth? | Jerusalem Post

Interesting article here that talks about the academic work on the origins of the Koran, which (as with similar work on the Bible starting more than a century ago) challenges the fundamentalist belief that the books are literally the word of God.

The writer points out that these academics like to keep a low profile, but if we really want Islamic fundamentalism to change, then it should be the subject of popular discussion.

Second post of the week with difficult to find tasteful title

Britain's Tongue, Kidney and Brains Boom - TIME

From the above article:

Lancashire, an industrial area in northwest England, is famous for its offal dishes, including liver, kidney, tripe (the lining of a cow's stomach), cow's heel, sheep's trotters and elder (cow's udder). There were more than 260 tripe shops in regional capital Manchester a century ago, many of which sold faggots, a traditional English dish made from a mixture of pork liver, fatty pork and herbs wrapped in an intestinal membrane.

I trust they have been re-branded by now.

Room for mischief here

First Muslim-friendly virtual world goes online

A trial version of the world's first Muslim-friendly virtual world was launched Tuesday, where users can create an online persona, design their own rooms, buy virtual items and interact with others.

Called Muxlim Pal and created by the Finnish-based company Muxlim.com, the English-language site caters primarily to Muslims living in western countries who long to reconnect with other Muslims and Muslim culture. ...

On Muxlim Pal, which is free of charge to join, users can shop for clothes for their avatar at the mall, hang out at the beach cafe, pray at the mosque or go to concerts.

What makes Muxlim Pal different from other popular websites such as Second Life is that content portraying violence, drugs, sexual references or profanity is not allowed.

I wonder if it is OK for avatar women to show their face there?

Offset disarray

UN suspends leading carbon-offset firm : Nature News

As international climate talks began last week in Poland, the United Nations (UN) suspended the work of the main company that validates carbon-offset projects in developing countries, sending shockwaves through the emissions-trading business....

At its meeting on 28 November in Poznań, the CDM's executive board temporarily withdrew Det Norske Veritas's accreditation after a spot check carried out in early November at the firm's headquarters revealed serious flaws in project management.

The board did not specify which projects are affected, but cites problems with the company's internal auditing processes, and says that one of its staff members was verifying CDM projects without proper qualifications. As a result, "validation activities could not be demonstrated to be based on appropriate sectoral expertise", the board reports.

Det Norske Veritas is a risk-assessment and consulting company with about 8,000 employees in more than 100 countries. Its 2007 revenue was 8 billion Norwegian krone (US$1.1 billion)

More Kyoto criticism

Kyoto is worthless (and you don't have to be a sceptic to believe that now) - Dominic Lawson, - The Independent

Lawson makes some good sounding points about the EU faith in Kyoto, and none of them are encouraging. Here's a key section:

This fabricated market in carbon has at its heart the UN's Clean Development Mechanism. This is how the EU, which had an obligation under Kyoto to reduce its emissions by two per cent by 2012, has managed to claim success while actually increasing its emissions by 13 per cent. By purchasing so called "offsets" from countries such as China, Britain, for example, proclaims itself a "leader in the fight against climate change".

Most of this is entirely fraudulent, in the sense that the Chinese have been paid billions to destroy particular atmospheric pollutants, such as CFC-23, which have actually been manufactured in order to be destroyed – and for no other purpose. This is hardly surprising: if something is accorded a price (especially a fixed one) then companies will queue up to produce it.

The EU is inordinately proud of its Emissions Trading Scheme – which it calls "the world's first carbon market" – and it is this scheme which has created the creative accounting scam known as "offsets". Even mortgage-backed securities, the financial instrument at the heart of the credit crunch, at least had something useful – houses – at the bottom of the pile of junk. Some people have described offsets as the carbon market equivalent of the mediaeval sale of Indulgences by the Catholic Church; but as Prof Prins points out, the Church sold them only as a means of atoning for the sins of the past – "carbon offsets" are sold to absolve us from sins in the future, an even more preposterous transaction.

I wonder why it never went into production

CAR WITH PROP

Science, ghosts and ESP

Ghost Stories: Visits from the Deceased: Scientific American

This is an interesting article (and series of comments following) about the quite commonly reported phenomena of people having an experience of the presence of their deceased partner (or even beloved, dead animal.)

According to the post, over 80% of elderly people experience "hallucinations" associated with their dead partner one month after bereavement "as if their perception had yet to catch up with the knowledge of their beloved's passing." These can be visual, auditory or other experiences.

I did not know that they were so common, but it is a topic of personal interest because my mother reported her own (not very dramatic) experience of this. She told me and her other children, quite some weeks after my father's death, that she had unexpectedly heard his breathing beside her in bed at night. She said it was distinct and clear, and actually a comforting experience. As is typical for these experiences, they did not recur all that often, but felt very "real", and stopped in time.

Many of the people commenting on the above article question (some based on their own experiences) how science can know that these are really hallucinations.

Perhaps the best evidence on the paranormal side is that of crisis apparitions: the well known stories where a person sees someone (usually, but not always, someone close to them) who appears unexpectedly and disappears, with the later discovery that at the time of the experience the person viewed had just died.

These type of apparition greatly interested the early scientists who set up the Society for Physical Research in England in the 19th century, and from the start the question was whether they represented proof of an afterlife, or "only" suggested ESP.

To the mind of nearly all present day scientists, ESP is just as ridiculous idea as belief in the afterlife, so it is still a topic of considerable interest, even if it is one that by its nature is never likely to be open to much in the way of definitive study.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if strong evidence of a repeatable form of ESP was produced. It should, by rights, shake up the scientific establishment to its core; but at the same time, you can imagine the majority of the public shrugging their shoulders and just taking it as confirmation of long held hunches and beliefs based on anecdote and personal experience.

Still, it would be remarkable if it ever occurs.

More advocacy for carbon tax (as opposed to ETS)

Yes you can change the climate, Mr Obama - science-in-society - 06 December 2008 - New Scientist

A post incapable of witty yet tasteful title

NHS funds 'used to import horse sperm' - The Independent

Police are investigating allegations that horse sperm was imported into Britain disguised as human semen for IVF treatment. They are looking at claims that a senior manager in the UK's largest NHS trust diverted NHS funds to buy the horse sperm that was then used to breed mares.

And how was this detected? Pretty easily, since I bet it doesn't take hundreds of thousands of pounds to buy overseas human semen, regardless of the IQ of the donors:

NHS trust sources said police were alerted after internal audits revealed an unusual series of large purchases of human semen from overseas suppliers. Invoices said to be worth several hundred thousand pounds had allegedly been created to account for the transactions.

I can imagine women who have undergone recent IVF in England feeling just a little queasy at reading the news, but apparently they have nothing to worry about:

They stressed there has been no suggestion of any horse sperm being improperly or inadvertently used in the trust's IVF treatments. Imperial College Healthcare has some of the UK's leading IVF treatment facilities.

And, maybe, some of the best criminals too.

UPDATE: a quick cartoon of questionable quality by your blogger (you'll have to click to enlarge):

Today's odd Japanese story

Pink thrills: Japanese sex movies go global | The Japan Times Online

It's not X rated stuff that is being talked about here. Apparently, Japan is one of the few places in the world where soft core porn made on 35 mm film still has a market.

The article is worth reading to see the titles of some of the "pink" features. My favourite would have to be "A Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn".

"Australia" death watch

So, Australia took $7 million in its second weekend in the US, for a total take of $30 million. (It looks like in Australia it might have taken around $8 million?) Still, hard to see it recouping its budget of $130 million, even though it essentially hasn't opened in other markets. (I suspect that there might be some bad but enjoyable reviews yet to come from England.)

Surprisingly, Frank Devine liked it, but is his article's title a pun based on something about Luhrmann that is common knowledge? Actually, Devine seems to like it because it at least looks like a movie, unlike most Australian films. (I think I have posted somewhere here before - although I can't quickly find where - that Australian films often look "empty", in that they just don't have many people on the screen, even in street scenes. Someone wrote at Unleashed recently that most Aussie films look more like television, which I think is pretty much another way of saying the same thing.)

Tim Train has yet to provide a review. Hurry up Tim.

Meanwhile, Martin Ferguson of the strangely untouchable Rudd government is looking increasingly like he blew $40 million on a movie related campaign that is going to get "less bang for our dollar". Talk about understatement. (Actually, was this campaign decided on only after the last Federal election? I would have guessed it would have been a deal worked out earlier than that.)

The optimistic Obama

President elect Obama has apparently given an interview in which he talks of encouraging an optimistic view of the future by having science talked about in lectures at the White House:

The president-elect said his administration is interested in “elevating science once again, and having lectures in the White House where people are talking about traveling to the stars or breaking down atoms, inspiring our youth to get a sense of what discovery is all about.”

“Thinking about the diversity of our culture and inviting jazz musicians and classical musicians and poetry readings in the White House so that once again we appreciate this incredible tapestry that’s America,” he said.

“Historically, what has always brought us through hard times is that national character, that sense of optimism, that willingness to look forward, that sense that better days are ahead,”

Sounds very much like emulating the JFK period, and in principle I'm all for encouraging optimism too. But there are a few key differences between the early 1960's and now.

The main one is that, apart from the fact that the world had just invented the means to destroy itself, and scientists had enabled that, I suspect that in early 60's it was still the scientists as a class who were genuinely optimistic about the future. The possibilities of technology still seemed endless, and environmental catastrophe (apart from the nuclear type) was not a popular concern.

Move ahead only a decade, and scientists became the source of much of the pessimism in the modern world. It's a position I think you can argue they still hold.

Even worse, even if many of the scientists of 60's privately thought that religion was something humanity would soon grow out of, it was not a position they frequently espoused. Of course now they are often active players in a culture war with religion. And it's not just a theoretical matter, as the fight over stem cell research has shown. (Yes, the Islamic inspired aggression is partly to blame for this, but I think issues like stem cell use would have made atheist scientists more aggressive anyway.)

Furthermore, I find it somewhat ironic that Obama should be mentioning talk of "travelling to the stars" when, despite the Apollo project being kicked by Kennedy, it's been Democrats ever since who have cut back on NASA spending. (And it's certainly those on the left who always go on about "what good has the space program ever done for us?")

Getting a sense of optimism from lecturing scientists, and a sense of respect for the religion Obama says he subscribes to, is going to take some very careful selection of visiting lecturers at the White House.

He may also well find that a scientist may be "optimistic" on an issue (such as greenhouse gas emission) in the sense that he or she thinks a problem can be overcome, but only at such a huge cost that Obama will find he just cannot follow the advice politically.

The hypno-chooks of Los Angeles

Can keeping backyard chickens really be as entrancing as this Los Anglese Times article reports? (I'm vaguely interested in getting some myself, but being terrorised in the backyard by a rooster when I was a toddler means I'm probably biased when it comes to chicken admiration.)

Here are some extracts:

"I used to think it would be so great to bring the laptop outside and just watch the chickens and work," Knutzen said. "But I can't get anything done when I'm out here because I can't take my eyes off the chickens. They are hypnotic."....

"Bottom line, chickens are a lot of fun," said Dave Belanger, publisher of Backyard Poultry magazine, who has seen subscriptions more than triple since he launched in 2006....

Diehl has been keeping an elaborate blog on her chickens' development and socialization at greenfrieda.blogspot.com.

"I'm kind of obsessed with them," she said. "Chicken people always talk about how chickens are better than TV. You could watch them all day and never get tired of it."

UPDATE: this morning while in bed, at about 6 am, I thought I could hear the sound of a chook coming from some neighbour's yard. Mind you, as it is crows, lorikeets and assorted other birds that often wake us up at 4.45 am at this time of year, I can't complain too much about this suspected chicken's timing.

In the New York Times today...

...two op-ed pieces that are worth reading.

One is about the tricky position that white liberals who support gay marriage find themselves in with regard to black Americans, who generally don't accept homosexuality with open arms. This section sounds right to me, even if it is written by a gay marriage supporter:

“At some point in our lifetime,” said George Clooney, “gay marriage won’t be an issue, and everyone who stood against this civil right will look as outdated as George Wallace standing on the school steps keeping James Hood from entering the University of Alabama because he was black.”

To the opponents of Proposition 8, this kind of analogy is a rallying cry; but as white Hollywood has recently discovered, to the blacks who voted for the measure, it’s galling. Comparing the infringement on civil rights that gays are experiencing to that suffered by black Americans is to begin a game of “top my oppression” that you’re not going to win. The struggle for equality — beginning with freedom from human bondage (see: references to the book of Exodus at the Gospel Brunch) — has been so central to African-American identity that many blacks find homosexual claims of a commensurate level of injustice frivolous, and even offensive.

The other article is about Republicans and abortion, and goes against the line pushed by more libertarian conservative commentators that abortion as an issue hurt the GOP this last election. Many good points are made, and it is well worth reading.

Hope it's true

Body art now a big turn off despite celebrity ink, UMR Research shows

Lately, I have been noticing an increasing number of horrendous tattoos in the shopping centres, particularly on women.

God knows I would never defend tattooing on men either, but there are ways in which I can at least semi-rationalise male interest in them. (Men can be dumb, as well as immature and capable of only thinking as far ahead as next weekend; some feel a need to have a quasi-tribal identity, and to "prove" they can handle a degree of pain. But it's also probably a subconscious, artificial extension of the types of male sexual display found throughout nature.)

One would like to think that women are above those considerations, but the female tattoos increasingly on display show I am wrong. Congratulations young women: as with the abuse of alcohol, your feminist emancipation has dragged you down to the level of silly young men, not pulled them up to your level of smarts!

At first, decades ago now, the trend for women's tattoos seemed to be for ones that would be only seen by a lover. I guess that at least had some novelty factor about it, and gave a woman a secret with which to tease a drunk potential lover. (Although, of course, it's not as if said drunk needed that as an excuse to see her undressed anyway.)

But tattooing now appears anywhere on a woman, frequently on the forearms or neck, and is often as inane as anything a male may display. I recently spotted a woman in her late 50's with a blurry mess of ink on her shoulder with "Mum" in the middle. I'm sure her aged mother must have been chuffed.

Chinese characters that mean nothing to anyone viewing them is surely a fashion statement with a very limited life, and again one would have thought that women could think far enough ahead to realise that. Yet that is being spotted increasingly around town too.

Anyhow, the survey linked at the top apparently indicates that 56% of Australian men do not like tattoos on women. The figure rises to 63% for very sensible types (otherwise known as Coalition voters). Half of women feel the same about men's tattoos, which is consistent with my theory about allowances being made for men being men. On average, it seems only 7% actually find them attractive on the opposite sex, with (to some surprise) higher income earners liking them slightly more than those on lower income.

With figures like these you have to wonder why people bother. (Assuming of course that this survey was properly done and has valid results. I note that it did survey people up to the age of 70: it would be more interesting to know the figures just for those under, say, 35.) Here's one way of looking at it: maybe tattooed people are much more likely to only reproduce with a tattooed partner, and then in 15 years time teenage rebellion will mean they fall out of fashion again. Here's hoping.

Your weekly ocean acidification news

Comment on "Phytoplankton Calcification in a High-CO2 World" -- Riebesell et al. 322 (5907): 1466b -- Science

Readers interested in my ocean acidification posts* will recall that there was a big surprise earlier this year when one study suggested that one species of calcifying phytoplankton actually got substantially heavier with more CO2 in the water.

The suggestion was that this may work as an important new CO2 sink, and was quite contrary to previous studies which showed the coccolithophore shells getting smaller with increased ocean acidity.

There was some muttering at the time by other scientists that this study could have been flawed, and now, see the link for a detailed comment by a group of scientists who think they have the problems with the experiment.

The comment is worth reading as setting out the basic issues with acidification and calcification.

Basically, this group still sounds very pessimistic about the "winners" outweighing the "losers" in ocean acidification.

* and who knows if there are any? - no one ever comments on those posts, which just encourages me to continue grinding my teeth about how most of the world is ignoring this issue.

The big questions

Why it's not as simple as God vs the multiverse - New Scientist

How could you resist having a look at an article that covers God, the multiverse, and morality?

(You could? What are you doing here then?)

A novel idea

Seawater holds key to future food

Farm plants that grow in salt water (and not just seaweed.)

Plants such as sea kale and asparagus-like samphire, which grow along the coast in many countries have been eaten for thousands of years, but it is only recently that their potential has been seen as a substitute for more traditional commercial crops.

In The Netherlands sea kale is now farmed commercially and finds a ready market says Professor Rozema.

Miyazaki talks

An audience with Miyazaki, Japan's animation king | The Japan Times Online

For those who have seen any of Miyazaki's films, this interview is of interest.

(I'm not sure which of his films I would recommend to a new comer to his work. Spirited Away was good, but as with many of his later films, it does become a bit of a narrative jumble as it goes on. I think the simpler story lines of Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service make for a better introduction.)

The problems of cap and trade

Carbon Trading: Environmental Godsend or Giant Shell Game? DISCOVER Magazine

A very easy to follow article here on the problems with emissions trading schemes.

Something Islamic and cool

Dezeen - Museum of Islamic Art by I.M. Pei

Mark it on your calendar: this blog today has a post about something Islamic that is also impressive and cool. (Well, at least it's something in an Islamic country, whether or not anyone Islamic can claim that much credit for it is debatable, but let's stop quibbling and get on with it.)

Qatar has a new Museum of Islamic Art, and the architecture, on display in the photos at the above link, looks very impressive.

And yes, I see the architect is I.M. Pei, a Chinese born American. Ha.

Bad news for Indonesia

Megathrust earthquake could hit Asia 'at any time' - environment - New Scientist

A devastating "megathrust" earthquake could occur at any time off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, according to new research. Previous quakes have failed to release all of the energy that has built up over hundreds of years, leaving the fault zone vulnerable to another large earthquake.

An unlikely prospect

12 years to halve UK CO2 - The Independent

Britain should adopt the world's toughest climate change target and slash nearly half of its greenhouse gas emissions in the next 12 years, the Government's new climate advisory committee said yesterday in its first report.

Emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases causing global warming should be cut by 42 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020, as long as there is a new global climate deal in a UN meeting in Copenhagen a year from now, said the Committee on Climate Change.

The recommendation for what is a massively ambitious and world-beating target – and a costly one for electricity consumers, who will face higher bills, perhaps of up to £500 a year

An active retirement

Two elderly men arrested for robbing supermarket in Sapporo

Akinori Kawamura, 55, a used goods recycler, and Masanori Hanakawa, 66, unemployed, are suspected of forcing their way into the supermarket after it closed, shooting the manager with a gun and fleeing in a car.

Police said the pair admit to the charge. They were quoted as saying they wanted money to get by and to enjoy a few other things. Police found a modified handgun, four iron bullets, and a large number of fireworks in Kawamura’s home. According to police, Kawamura said he put the gun together and made the bullets himself.

Nothing like taking personal responsibility

So, Andrew Sullivan says of George W Bush: "because he cannot address homophobia and cannot even say the word 'gay' in public or address this issue directly, his legacy in America is actually an increase in HIV transmission".

This is all a bit rich, isn't it, coming for a HIV positive man who, 7 years ago, was actively seeking "bareback" sex?

(Yes, I know, he claims he was only going to have unprotected sex with another HIV positive person, but even that is behaviour not entirely without sexual health consequences.)

What upsets Sullivan is that he (Bush) didn't use the word "gay" in a conversation about HIV. He then goes on about how homophobia amongst blacks being the biggest HIV problem in America.

Funny, I thought the issue was that black men do not identify readily as "gay," and wouldn't assume George was even talking about them if he used the word. How does Sullivan think using the word "gay" is going to work magic within the black community?

By the way, that story from The Nation about Sullivan's dating strategies notes that Sullivan's ad indicated he was also into "bi-scenes" (as well as orgies generally.) I will take this as adding credibility to my personal theory of why Sullivan hates Sarah Palin!

UPDATE: just stumbled across a recent, very detailed, and very explicit, article in Huffington Post which argues that "barebacking" between the HIV positive is almost certainly encouraging mutated, drug resistant strains of HIV. It is very critical of the way the gay community is, to a large extent, taking the view that HIV infection is not such a serious matter now.

Embed problem?

I'm told that this blog is sending off anti virus warnings for some, and it appears to be related to embedded Youtube. (I actually got a virus warning from a science blog that appears to have no videos on it.)

I use AVG (paid version) and am not having any problems, and it seems not entirely clear whether it is a "real" problem or not.

Still, in the interests of safety, and not annoying people, I'll delete the embeds in the last couple of posts. Maybe they can be re-instated later.

More anti-Dubai

Why I'd rather die than visit Dubai | Sathnam Sanghera - Times Online

Most remarkable from the above opinion piece:

According to the Lonely Planet guide to the city, one British tourist was arrested at Dubai airport and sentenced to four years in prison after 0.03g of cannabis - an amount “smaller than a grain of sugar and invisible to the human eye” - was found on the stub of a cigarette stuck to the sole of his shoe. Meanwhile, a Swiss man was reportedly imprisoned after customs officers found three poppy seeds on his clothes (they had fallen off a bread roll he had eaten at Heathrow), and a British woman was held in custody for two months before customs officers conceded that the codeine that she was using for her back problems had been prescribed by a doctor.

A novel way of looking for aliens

No Dyson Spheres Found Yet | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

Only now he realises this?

Jon Stewart: MSNBC Is The New Fox News (VIDEO)

Clever bike

Sanyo to launch new electric hybrid bicycle

Equipped with a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, the "eneloop bike" takes the crossover between a normal bicycle and a moped one step further, aiming to tap growing interest in tackling global warming.

The system harnesses energy from braking when the bike goes downhill, and can add extra power equivalent to double the rider's pedal force for going uphill, in line with relaxed government restrictions on such systems.

The eneloop bike can travel 1.8 times faster than conventional bicycles thanks to the motor powering its front wheel, the company said.

They need to get rid of the Japanese style shopping basket on the front, though, for it to look cool enough in the West.

Doctors behaving badly

Arrogant, abusive and disruptive — and a doctor - International Herald Tribune

"About 3 to 4 percent of doctors are disruptive, but that's a big number, and they really gum up the works." Experts say the leading offenders are specialists in high-pressure fields like neurosurgery, orthopedics and cardiology.

...every nurse has a story about obnoxious doctors. A few say they have ducked scalpels thrown across the operating room by angry surgeons. More frequently, though, they are belittled, insulted or yelled at — often in front of patients and other staff members — and made to feel like the bottom of the food chain.

Interestingly, one researcher blames the way surgeons teach themselves:

Norcross blamed "the brutal training surgeons get, the long hours, being belittled and 'pimped' " — a term for being bombarded with questions to the point of looking stupid. "That whole structure teaches a disruptive behavior," he said.

Vast international readership: you can post anonymously here your true life experience with a "disruptive doctor". Everyone likes those stories, don't they?

Tracking down CO2

Carbon Detectives Are Tracking Gases in Colorado - NYTimes.com

Good article explaining the research underway to get a better understanding of where CO2 comes from and goes (otherwise known as the carbon budget):

...researchers think about half of the CO₂ emitted into the atmosphere gets absorbed by oceans and land, but they do not know precisely where the gases come from and where they end up. This knowledge gap has serious policy implications; until it becomes clear where emissions are going, it will remain difficult to have verifiable credits for sequestering carbon.

“We need to make sure that carbon markets are affecting climate change, not just putting money in the hands of some companies and people,” said Lisa Dilling, an assistant professor of environmental science at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

A vexing challenge is that surface inventory assessments — based on measuring forests, agricultural fields and smokestack emissions, for instance — generally do not agree with atmospheric measurements.

This sounds like it may help a lot:

In January, the next frontier of atmospheric CO₂ measuring instruments will begin when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration launches the first carbon-scanning satellite, called the Orbiting Carbon Observatory.

Each day, the satellite will orbit Earth 15 times, taking nearly 500,000 measurements of the “fingerprint” that CO₂ leaves in the air between the satellite and Earth’s surface. The data will be used to create a map of CO₂ concentrations that will help scientists determine precisely where the sources and sinks are — showing differences in trace gases down to a 1 part per million precision against a background of 380 parts per million CO₂ equivalent.

Surprising they haven't had a satellite to do that before now.

Australia revisited

History in the Making: The Current Cinema: The New Yorker

Damn. The New Yorker had David Denby review "Australia" instead of Anthony Lane. Still, Denby took quite a strong and witty dislike to it, so the result is not too bad.

The previous post here said it was a "spoiler" for the movie, yet it didn't actually deal with how the movie ends. (Oddly enough, over the weekend many people were coming to the post via searches for the movie spoiler.)

For those still interested, the real movie ending appears to be explained here, but David Denby also appears to give it away to a significant degree (and with a killer final line):

At the end, King George summons Nullah to a rite of passage, a walkabout. Nullah’s disappearance into the desert, leaving the whites behind, is framed as a triumphant anti-colonial moment, but Luhrmann confuses the issue by accompanying the scene with, of all things, the stirring “Nimrod” passage from “Enigma Variations,” by Edward Elgar, the composer perhaps most closely associated with the glories of empire. With the same degree of appropriateness, Luhrmann might celebrate Barack Obama’s Inauguration with a thundering rendition of “Dixie.”

If it weren't 3 hours long, I would be tempted to see to confirm my suspicion as to how bad I would find it. But life is too short for that. And in any event, it can almost certainly be written off as a box office flop, and will be making an appearance in the DVD rental shop sooner than they expected.

Always their fault

Egypt's Jew Haters Deserve Ostracism in the West - WSJ.com

Good article here about how even the supposedly liberal part of Egyptian media runs stories blaming the Jews for everything.

The Independent should expect letters

The kindest cut: How circumcision is the secret weapon in the battle against HIV/Aids - The Independent

Here's a long article about the success of circumcision in Africa as a preventive step to dramatically reduce HIV transmission:

Flooding Africa with condoms and trying to change sexual behaviour has had little demonstrable impact. Research on an Aids vaccine has foundered and an effective microbicide is still not in sight.

The toll from the disease is staggering – an estimated 33 million people infected with HIV, and 25 million dead. Even more alarming, however, is that new infections are growing by 2.7 million a year, outnumbering the annual two million deaths. For every two people put on drug treatment, five more become infected.

Against this litany of despair there is now, for once, a message of hope – a chance of curbing, and even reversing, the epidemic. Circumcision, if rolled out across the continent, offers the first real prospect of saving lives by preventing infection on a significant scale. Estimates suggest that if universal circumcision were introduced across sub-Saharan Africa, it could prevent 300,000 deaths in the next 10 years and three million deaths over the next 20 years. It is sometimes described as a "surgical vaccine" – with good reason.

What's the bet that this will still not satisfy the very strange anti-circumcision movement, the believers in which will no doubt be writing letters to The Independent this very minute.

Overexposed

Jamie Oliver to launch own magazine | Media | guardian.co.uk

I suppose I didn't mind watching a bit of Jamie Oliver's shows when he was new, but they became increasingly irritating over time. Although I don't watch him deliberately anymore, I still see enough from time to time to know what he's up to.

First it was all those happy music end scenes of the "mates over for lunch" in his London pad that grated (a feature of Nigella Lawson's shows too,) then the soap opera of his wife not liking the press making up stories, and the saintly fights to improve British school food. Recently, he did a series in which he showed Italian monks how to enjoy life again (while swearing and going on about some domestic drama about whether his wife was really going to turn up or not), and the latest seemed mainly to be about how good he was at growing his own vegetables.

Now, believe it or not, he is going to publish his own bi-monthly magazine.

I am just waiting for his new movie to be announced.

A failed suppression continues

Speaking of climate change, I am not the first to note this, but there continues to be a hell of lot of articles in the Australian press lately by warming skeptics complaining that their dissent is being suppressed.

It's starting to remind me of lefties complaining of suppression of dissent under the Howard government's sedition laws. It all has a bit of a Monty Python air about it, claiming suppression when everyone with ears in fact can hear what they are saying.

If their complaint is that they can't get published in peer reviewed journals, a large number of the vocal skeptics simply don't work directly in the field of climate research anyway. (Geologists are unduly represented, and while part of their knowledge is relevant to the big picture, I still wouldn't expect that they would be particularly knowledgable about studying what is happening in the atmosphere and oceans right now.)

The people at Real Climate have noticed this upswing in skeptic confidence too, and refer people to their Wiki as a resourse for information addressing the skeptic's arguments.

While my argument is that it is not even necessary to have a position on warming in order to believe that strong action on CO2 is warranted (due to ocean acidification,) I must say that I increasingly find the warming skeptics position irritating, in that they just ignore the reasonably put rebuttals by the climate scientists. (Real Climate has nearly always taken a moderate tone, in my opinion, although this latest post indicates that they are really just getting tired of being nice to skeptics.)

I'll give the skeptics the point that media reporting greatly favours any "alarmist" news, but this is not really something that affects the actual science. I am even happy enough to see a wildly inaccurate claim by Tim Flannery, for example, to be held up for ridicule by Tim Blair, but people shouldn't forget that he is just like the geologist skeptics in that there was never any reason to take his opinion particularly seriously anyway.

It is also true, as John Quiggin has noted, that being a conservative blogger who wants to see action on greenhouse gases is a very lonely position in Australia. It is actually very annoying to agree with Andrew Bolt's reading of federal politics about 90% per cent of the time, but then to find that he just runs with any skeptical argument on greenhouse gases and shows no sign of independently looking at the counterarguments.

It increasingly seems to me that many skeptics are now taking just as "religious" view of the issue as the Greens, with(for example), their belief that there is a vast quasi-conspiracy of climate scientists keeping quiet about the "truth" in order to keep their funding going.

Unfortunately though, it is the skeptic faith that seems likely to the one which is going to cause real problems for future generations.

Complicated oceans

North Atlantic cold-water sink returns to life : Nature News

Here's the opening paragraph from the above report:

Scientists have found evidence that convective mixing in the North Atlantic, a mechanism that fuels ocean circulation and affects Earth's climate, has returned after a decade of near stagnation – thanks, perhaps, to a dramatic loss of sea-ice in the Arctic during the summer of 2007.

From a global warming/greenhouse gas point of view, this appears to be good news. Certainly, the oceans are proving remarkably complicated to understand, probably because they are huge and hence hard to study:

Reduced convection should in theory weaken the entire Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC) — responsible for carrying warm tropical water northwards — with far-reaching consequences for Earth's climate. But so far at least, scientists have not observed any significant changes to that large-scale circulation. Findings published in 2005 that seemed to indicate a big slowing of the MOC were later found to be in the range of natural fluctuations (see 'Ocean circulation noisy, not stalling').

One reason, says Fischer, is that the observational basis is still thin. The Argo programme, a global array of 3,000 robots that measure temperature, salinity and water pressure, has only last year become fully operational, for example.

But already it's clear that the response of the Atlantic Ocean circulation to high-latitude changes is much more complex than has been assumed.

(And by the way, I don't know that this has much influence on the issue of ocean acidification as a concern.)

Innovative team building activities

The art of the toilet in Japan

Yeah, I've gone on enough about the wonderful clever toilets of Japan. That's not why I've linked to the article, it's this part:

Japanese people do not see cleaning as a demeaning or shameful job....

Recently, I visited a small technology company in Osaka. The president, Mr Sugimoto, is trying to inspire his staff to work harder as recession takes hold.

He is noted for his drive and enthusiasm and that came across in a punchy presentation which he showed me on his laptop.

It included photographs of his staff on their knees scrubbing the urinals.

His point was that in preparation for a new project, the whole team had mucked in to clean up the workplace and this was clearly a source of pride to be included in the company's publicity.

Sad to say that in Australia you would have the newly invigorated ACTU interfering with such innovative team building exercises.*

* Just trying to be silly: no one should take it as sarcasm indicating any particularly sympathetic attitude to unions in Australia.

Modern policing

How to calm binge drinkers: get them all blowing bubbles

In England, a novel idea in babysitting. (Sorry, make that policing):

Drinkers will be encouraged to play with children's bubble blowers instead of picking fights, in a scheme to start next month in Bolton. Police will hand out the free toys as young people pour out of pubs and clubs in typically boisterous mood.

But the initiative has been condemned as a 'nursery school gimmick' and a waste of taxpayers' money. The blue and orange bubble blowers, which double as pens, will be handed out by police community support officers and town centre ambassadors on Saturday nights. Elaine Sherrington, a Bolton councillor, said: 'They are a great idea to keep things light-hearted. Revellers will have something fun to focus on as they leave pubs and clubs.

I don't get it. Will these bubble blowers come with a little bottle of detergent too? If so, how many fights will be started by some drunk bumping another and causing detergent to get in the eyes?

Are the Japanese noticing?

Faroe islanders told to stop eating 'toxic' whales - New Scientist

The Faroe Islands got a mention here earlier this year, when Foreign Correspondent ran a story about them. (The direct link is here.)

Their whale eating habits will have to change, though:

Chief medical officers of the Faroe Islands have recommended that pilot whales no longer be considered fit for human consumption, because they are toxic - as revealed by research on the Faroes themselves.

The remote Atlantic islands, situated between Scotland and Iceland, have been one of the last strongholds of traditional whaling, with thousands of small pilot whales killed every year, and eaten by most Faroese....

But today in a statement to the islanders, chief medical officers Pál Weihe and Høgni Debes Joensen announced that pilot whale meat and blubber contains too much mercury, PCBs and DDT derivatives to be safe for human consumption.

"It is with great sadness that this recommendation is provided," they said. "The pilot whale has kept many Faroese alive through the centuries."

The curse of Saturday night TV, and songs of previous decades

Saturday night from 10pm has been the dead zone of Australian television since about, I don't know, the invention of television.

Having children of a certain age means few outings at that time currently, and once again I am facing the problem that television assumes that its potential audience is either oldies who are already in bed by 9.30pm, or youngsters who are out on the town or already having sex. (I say "once again" because, while single in the 1990's, it was not all that uncommon to find me sponging a Saturday night dinner from married friends, which would end with us channel surfing and noting how there was absolutely nothing worth viewing - even with cable.)

About the only times I can remember Saturday night TV being something to look forward to was when the ABC ran (I think) D Generation in a fairly late night timeslot (or was it another show from the same Working Dog group?) It would appear that this was in 1986 and 1987. Mark those years down as possibly the only ones this nation will ever see for fresh comedy on a Saturday night. (Well, Mick Molloy made his disastrous forays with his own show on a Saturday too, I think, but the less said about them the better.)

Still, I must admit that I am now quite taken with Rockwiz on SBS. (It provides 40 minutes of entertainment til 10pm at least.) You probably have to be in your 40's to enjoy it, being mainly based on nostalgia for music from the 80's and 90's, but it is terribly good natured, and it's hard not to like Julia Zemiro's as host.

Speaking of songs of previous decades, I was surprised to see an article on Lisa Loeb in The Japan Times today. As far as I knew she was a one hit wonder, and while it appears that she's had nothing approaching the huge success of her first single ("Stay"), she has managed to make a career out of music after all. Oddly, she's had some success with songs for children, although it would appear from her Wikipedia entry (and this), that she may be an example of the modern young woman who dawdles in semi-committed relationships so long that they never get around to having children. (I could be wrong here, but it sounds as if she has no kids.)

Anyhow, like millions of others, I really liked "Stay," and how can any male resist her cute, vulnerable, librarian vibe in the video clip? (Well, maybe rugby league players can, with their more lurid sexual fantasies and realities than mine, but we can't all be into toilet trysts.)

Loeb looks like the Anti-Winehouse, or Anti-Madonna if you like. (By the way, I wouldn't even recognise a Winehouse song if I heard one on the radio; I only know of her due to the appalling tatts and druggie look.) It's been ages since I've seen Loeb's cheap but charming video, but here we go. Enjoy:

Deleted due to virus warning - may be back later

At last...

IR reforms asking for trouble | The Australian

Finally, Paul Kelly finds something about which to actually criticise the Rudd government. (It's the new, union-enhancing IR laws.)

Maybe these laws signal the end of many in industry cuddling up to this Labor government. (My pet theory is that so many of them have become used to not dealing with unions that have forgotten how intrusive they can be.) The laws are also coming at exactly the wrong time in the economic cycle.

Let's see what happens.

Well, it made me laugh

Embed deleted for now due to virus warning - maybe back soon

Of little interest soon

Can't we hold torturers accountable and still find out the truth? - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine

By the sounds of this article, an Obama administration is not going to try to prosecute Bush administration figures over their involvement in counterterrorism policies. (Assuming that they even can if the expected presidential pardons are made.)

They will instead hold a 9/11 style commission.

This prospect annoys many liberals as being too soft on Bush and co, but surely they should see that if indeed Obama is "tested" by more terrorism against Americans (and the Indian attacks are giving us a taste of this), public interest in how many people might have faced a waterboard under a Bush administration is going to be very, very low. (There is also going to be the distraction of a very severe recession.)

In other terrorism related stuff, John Quiggin takes the opportunity to make a statement of the obvious about a phrase which I thought had long gone out of use by all but the most stupid anyway:

As the cycle of war and terror has gone on, it’s become increasingly clear that the kind of easy evasion involved in slogans like “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” is no more tenable than the bogus arguments for war put forward by Bush and his followers.

Spoiler warning: Australia

Being allergic as I am to all Australian movies, it seems a fair assumption that "Australia" would cause a breakout of hives even if I walk past the cinema door while it's playing.

There is no doubt at all that many Australian critics are giving it an extra star or so just for being a large scale film by Baz Luhrmann; a director who, although married, has always seemed to display a "gay sensibility" in his movies. (He works in "operatic style" is how they put it on At the Movies last night, where both critics spent a lot of time on the faults but still ended up giving it 3 1/2 stars each.)*

Anyhow, apart from every review, whether good or bad, agreeing that the film is riddled with cliche, there is no doubt that the way the film deals with aborigines is going to attract a lot of derision from some quarters. This will be well deserved if these comments by Roger Ebert (who liked the film overall, but his judgment is wildly erractic) are anything to go by:

Luhrmann is rightly contemptuous of Australia's "re-education" policies; he shows Nullah taking pride in his heritage and paints the white enforcers as the demented racists they were. But "Australia" also accepts aboriginal mystical powers lock, stock and barrel, and that I think may be condescending.

Well, what do you believe? Can the aboriginal people materialize wherever they desire? Become invisible? Are they telepaths? Can they receive direct guidance from the dead? Yes, certainly, in a spiritual or symbolic sense. But in a literal sense? Many of the plot points in "Australia" depend on the dead King George's ability to survey events from mountaintops and appear to Nullah to point the way. The Australians, having for decades treated their native people as subhuman, now politely endow them with godlike qualities. I am not sure that is a compliment. What they suffered, how they survived, how they prevailed and what they have accomplished, they have done as human beings, just as we all must.

The film is filled with problems caused by its acceptance of mystical powers. If Nullah is all-seeing and prescient at times, then why does he turn into a scared little boy who needs rescuing?

Amongst the bad reviews that are out there (it scores a 51% on Rottentomatoes), I like the start to the one by Dana Stevens in Slate:

It's a mystery to me how Baz Luhrmann continues to be regarded as a director worth following. A long time has passed since I've regarded his lush, loud, defiantly unsubtle output with anything but dread.

As for the aboriginal content, she writes:

I guess I don't know enough about Australian racial politics to opine at length on this movie's vision of its aboriginal characters, but I will say that if my people were subjected to this simultaneously idealizing and condescending "magical Negro" treatment, I would seriously consider aiming a boomerang at Baz Luhrmann's head.

I certainly hope Anthony Lane writes the New Yorker review: I can imagine him being very witty about this.

* well it took a couple of attempts with different search terms, but it would appear that Luhrmann has not only admitted to a gay sensibility, but to active bisexuality.

UPDATE: Andrew Bolt points out Luhrmann's blatant dishonestly in one key plot point in the film. I wonder if this was co-writer Richard Flanagan's idea? Here he is, going on in great seriousness about the film.

The Indian attacks

Analysis: a new tactic by Islamist militants - Times Online

Some early analysis here, which also discusses more broadly the range of terrorist groups and issues within India.

Too much information: the Dutch method

Sex education: why the British should go Dutch - Times Online

Well, if all of this article is correct, the famous Dutch openness in sex education is enough to make every Australian parent I know squirm:

Next year, 12-year-old Sasha explains to me, they will learn how to put a condom on a broomstick (she says this without a trace of embarrassment, just a polite smile). Across the city, nine-year-old Marcus, who lives in a beautiful 18th-century house on a canal, has been watching a cartoon showing him how to masturbate. His sister, 11, has been writing an essay on reproduction and knows that it is legal for two consenting 12-year-olds to make love. Her favourite magazine, Girls, gives advice on techniques in bed, and her parents sometimes allow her to stay up to see a baby being born on the birthing channel.

Then there is Yuri, 16, who explains to me in perfect English that “anal sex hurts at the beginning but if you persevere it can be very pleasurable”. When I ask whether he is gay, he says “no” but he has watched a documentary on the subject with his parents.

Such mind-boggling openness is what is often credited for the remarkably low teen pregnancy and abortion rate in the country. And it's not that they are having "safe sex" early either: they actually start much later on average too.

The article becomes less salacious when it starts discussing the other social reasons why teen pregnancy is not so common there, and oddly enough, these are consistent with a more conservative ideology:

Another reason why the teenage pregnancy rate is so low may be that in the Netherlands there is still a stigma attached to having a child before the age of 20. In Britain, a baby who can offer unconditional love, a free home away from parents and a cheque every month is not considered a disaster for a teenage girl. The Dutch Government still penalises single mothers under 18, who are expected to live with their parents if they become pregnant. Until six years ago the Government gave them no financial support. ...

Braeker was shocked when she first came to Britain. “Young girls here seem to have babies to prove that they are adults. In the Netherlands it would just prove how uneducated and naive you are,” she says. “There you can have a boy as a friend, here it's almost always about sex.”

The other reason given is that families are closer because they are somewhat similar to the much derided ideal of a 1950's Australian nuclear family:

Dutch children are five times less likely to be living in a family headed by a lone parent, divorce rates are far lower and fewer mothers are in full-time employment.

“I think my eight-year-old son has probably learnt more about sex from David Attenborough than from school,” she says. “It is the family that makes the difference. Parents leave the office by 5pm in Holland and eat dinner with their children at 6pm. They then watch TV or play sport together, so they tend to be closer to their children and can guide them to do the right thing.”

Mind you, we then veer into the hard-to-believe openness again:

Trudie, a fashion stylist, has always talked about sex with her daughter. When, at 16, her daughter asked her what sperm looked like, Trudie asked her husband to provide a sample.

Bloody hell, whatever happened to having a couple of mice in a cage to teach the kids about reproduction?

Well, here's hoping that its possible to have the social change of kids believing that it's dumb to have sex too early, but without the addition of masturbation videos for 9 year olds.

Obama and FOCA

Obama's threat to Catholic hospitals and their very serious counterthreat. - Slate Magazine

Here's a good article on the issue of Obama, the highly contentious Freedom of Choice Act, and the Catholic Church's threat to close hospitals if it goes through.

I reckon Obama will secretly be hoping that there are enough Democrats in Congress with reservations to prevent it getting through, so that he doesn't have to sign it after all.

Janet & Ziggy today

Janet Albrechtsen has been to Israel (as a guest of the government and a Jewish group), and writes on a topic mentioned here many times before: the near impossibility of a long term solution if the Palestinians keep educating their kids to hate the Jews and not think seriously about accommodating Israel. She writes:

Look at the geography books for Palestinian children that encourage children to see no Israel, books that feature maps of Israel in the colours of the Palestinian flag, and described as Palestine. Learn about the May 2008 soccer championships for young boys in honour of terrorists such as Samir Quntar and Muhammad al-Mabhuh. Or the July 2008 summer camp held for young girls named in honour of female suicide bomber Dalal al-Mughrabi, who hijacked a holiday bus in 1978, murdering 12 children and 25 adults. Listen to Fatah-funded children’s television where children are taught to continue the way of the shahids (the suicide bombers) and quizzed about Mughrabi. She is presented as “the beloved bride, child of Jaffa, jasmine flower”. Or quizzes where children routinely identify Israeli landmarks, towns and ports such as Haifa, Ashdod and Eilat as Palestinian.

This was something I hadn't heard before:

According to the PMW, more than half of the Palestinian educators in the teachers’ union are affiliated with Hamas.

In other opinion in The Australian, Ziggy Switkoski continues his lonely promotion of nuclear power as a serious option for Australia. He never mentions pebble bed reactors, or other new technology, though.

The dark continent

It's amazing the extent of bad news that Africa is generating at the moment. The current "highlights" include:

1. Zimbabwe is on "the brink of collapse" (so they say; unfortunately, the government has hovering on the brink for an awfully long time). Cholera is the latest misery being added to the appalling government generated problems:

About 6,000 people have contracted cholera in recent weeks, according to the UN, and almost 300 have died. A chronic shortage of medicine has sent hundreds of people south to seek treatment in South Africa....

In the meantime, the economy has disintegrated and the health system is close to breakdown. Four big hospitals, including two in Harare, have effectively closed their doors to new patients owing to a shortage of basic supplies and running water

2. Ethiopia. Foreign Correspondent tonight had a story on famine in Ethiopia. (The video is not up on the website yet, but should be by the end of the week.)

It was odd to see that the countryside looked incredibly green and lush after recent rains, but apparently the failure of last year's crops still means there is not enough food now. The population was said to be about 80 million, which was much higher than I would have guessed.

The story was also noteworthy for showing up the questionable reliability of World Vision. The journalist visited a 14 year old girl that he had been sponsoring for years. It appeared that she had been barely aware that she was being sponsored until recently, when she was given a jacket and a pen. Certainly, the feedback that World Vision supplies as to what the sponsored child is doing (learning english, for example) does not appear reliable.

World Vision apparently said that the sponsorship money goes to community projects that benefit the children, but it was not clear in this story what they may have done for this child's community. It was not a good look, and World Vision will certainly be hoping that this does not get much coverage.

While watching undernourished people living in the lush green countryside, it was hard to avoid the thought that this was a country that really needed help with developing modern, efficient farming. According to Wikipedia, the problems range from the small farm size, to some of the farm practices:

Since the land holdings are so small, farmers cannot allow the land to lie fallow, which reduces soil fertility.^[114] This land degradation reduces the production of fodder for livestock, which causes low amounts of milk production.^[115] Since the community burns livestock manure as fuel, rather than plowing the nutrients back into the land, the crop production is reduced.^[116] The low productivity of agriculture leads to inadequate incomes for farmers, hunger, malnutrition and disease. These unhealthy farmers have a hard time working the land and the productivity drops further.

These are problems that are in principle solvable, but it would seem none of the necessary reform is happening.

3. Somalia continues to be pirate capital. The Economist paints this grim picture:

With no proper government since 1991, it has been a bloody kaleidoscope of competing clans and fiefs. More than 1m, in a population once around 10m, have fled abroad; this year alone, the UN reckons, some 160,000 have been uprooted from Mogadishu, the capital, which has lost about two-thirds of its inhabitants over the years. The country is too dangerous for foreign charities, diplomats or journalists to function there permanently. Thousands of angry, rootless, young Somalis are proving vulnerable to the attractions of fundamentalist Islam in the guise of al-Qaeda and similar jihadist brands. The cash from piracy is probably fuelling the violence.

4. The Congo. I am currently reading "Congo Journey" by Redmond O'Hanlon, about his mid 1990's trip into the Congo. (Currently this is available as a $10 "Popular Penguin" edition in Australia.)

The corrupt, dangerous place that O'Hanlon writes about is in an even worse state now. In May this year, The Economist wrote about widespread use of rape as a weapon of war, and now the 17,000 strong UN peace keeping force needs re-enforcements that it is unlikely to get, and there is talk the place looks primed for a Rwandan style genocide.

What a depressing continent.

UPDATE: In an effort to be more upbeat, people could do worse, I suspect, than to donate to Catholic Relief Services, which appears to do a lot of work in Africa. It may just be my bias, of course, but I suspect that Catholic agencies would be pretty credible in the efficiency with which donations are used.

Out of curiosity, I just did a search for Islamic charities, and turned up Islamic Relief Worldwide, which currently features on its front page a graphic headed "donate now" that points out that "The practice of sacrificing an animal at Eid ul Adha acts as a reminder of the Prophet Ibrahim's obedience to Allah". Hmm.

UPDATE II: the BBC has this recent feature on the problem with foreign aid for Africa.

Your next weekly dose of bad ocean news

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Marine life faces 'acid threat'

Man-made pollution is raising ocean acidity at least 10 times faster than previously thought, a study says.

Researchers say carbon dioxide levels are having a marked effect on the health of shellfish such as mussels.

They sampled coastal waters off the north-west Pacific coast of the US every half-hour for eight years.

The results, published in the journal PNAS, suggest that earlier climate change models may have underestimated the rate of ocean acidification.

To be fair, some reported comments of one of the researchers involved are misleadingly expressed:

"Many sea creatures have shells or skeletons made of calcium carbonate, which the acid can dissolve," said Catherine Pfister, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and a co-author of the study.

That could easily be taken to mean the ocean is actually turning into an acidic pH, but ocean acidification at its worst will still leave the ocean alkaline (just significantly less alkaline than it used to be.)

Anyhow, it's still bad news, by any interpretation.

The eternal critic

Robert Fisk: Once more fear stalks the streets of Kandahar

So, Robert Fisk is reporting from Afghanistan at the moment, noting the misery suffered by the population caught between the Taliban and Western forces. (Acid throwing on girls attending school has made a recent re-appearance.)

Fisk ends the above account by the spurious advice:

Barack Obama wants to send 7,000 more American troops to this disaster zone. Does he have the slightest idea what is going on in Afghanistan? For if he did, he would send 7,000 doctors.

A letter writer to the Independent responds appropriately:

....in the absence of western forces, what is not explained is how medics and civilian contractors might operate in a region ruled by well-armed fanatics who don't want redevelopment, and who don't want schoolgirls they've maimed with acid to be treated. Even worse is the suggestion that we leave fellow members of the human race to such an appalling fate, when it is within our powers to try to help them.

But a comment made after the original article sums up Fisk perfectly, even if the spelling is lacking:

What you do Mr Fisk with your baby shaking naarratives that tunnell in on the details to obscure the big picture truth is preach a counsel of despair so the truly uncaring people of the world can continue to walk by on the other side of the road.

Exactly.

About Hillary

The last thing we need is a Clinton in charge of foreign policy. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

Actually, given his intense dislike of all things Clinton, I think Hitchens sounds slightly restrained in this criticism of Hillary as Secretary of State.

A bunch of stuff to keep you going

Here's a quick post of links to this and that:

* Bryan Appleyard is back, and posting in amusing fashion about the rich and travel, the BBC and "risk taking", his ailments, and John Lennon's "Imagine" (he dislikes the song; so do I).

In fact, I seem to be in basic agreement with him about everything since his return. If only he didn't have that strange aberration of enjoying Olbermann!

* I have no idea whether the author of this article is a reliable pundit on China, but the picture he paints of the dramatic consequences of a serious economic slow down in China sounds plausible enough. (Basically, it's of social disruption on a pretty massive scale, as former factory workers return to the countryside to eke out a living in agriculture, or whatever.) I do get the impression that the West is overly optimistic on China being able to spend its way out of trouble.

* Victor Davis Hansen makes a list of ten politically incorrect complaints about America. Points 3 (about Hollywood being in a terrible creative slump at the moment) and 6 (about the American male accent not being what it used to be) are the most interesting. Here's a sample:

.....increasingly to meet a young American male about 25 is to hear a particular nasal stress, a much higher tone than one heard 40 years ago, and, to be frank, to listen to a precious voice often nearly indistinguishable from the female. How indeed could one make Westerns these days, when there simply is not anyone left who sounds like John Wayne, Richard Boone, Robert Duvall, or Gary Cooper much less a Struther Martin, Jack Palance, L.Q. Jones, or Ben Johnson? I watched the movie Twelve O’clock High the other day, and Gregory Peck and Dean Jagger sounded liked they were from another planet.

Certainly, having read this, I could not think of one convincing, male action hero who is currently in his prime and particularly "manly" in the way Hansen complains. Matt Damon? I don't think so.

* A lot of his commentors to this post by John Quiggin think that a carbon emissions trading scheme is too open to the abuses of a trading market, and argue a carbon tax avoids this problem. JQ does not answer them. (He may have elsewhere, but he - and nearly every other economist - just seem to be taking an ETS instead of a tax as a "given".)

* Finally: did you know that Japan has an all woman musical theatre troupe, owned by a train company (!) that has been doing large scale shows for nearly 100 years? The women play the male roles, and about 90% of the audience is women (causing much speculation as to what it is the audience is responding to.)

Anyhow, I had never heard of the Takarazuka Revue before, but there is a detailed Wikipedia entry. The shows they have put on have included such oddities (remember, it's women playing men) as adaptions of The Great Gatesby, Tom Jones, and (from "normal" theatre) The Sound of Music and West Side Story.

Very strange if you ask me.

Otherwise occupied...

For a day or two, is my guess.

Impressive storm video

Brisbane's been getting international attention for its storms this week. Fortunately, my side of town has missed the worst of it, although there is still tonight to worry about. If you want to see how bad it was in the worst hit part of town, have a look at this video. (Don't be misled by the first 90 seconds. Things really get going after that.)

Embed deleted for now.

The robot director

As I type this, SBS is showing Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange."

Not having seen it before, I have watched about 45 minutes now. It is one seriously strange movie. That great movie critic Pauline Kael hated it. Even without seeing it all, I can tell that much of her assessment seems correct.

But the main comment that I wanted to make here is this: did Stanley Kubrick ever make a movie in which the actors seemed like real humans? (I haven't seen Barry Lyndon: maybe he made a breakthrough there.)

From his work that I have seen, their most distinctive characteristic is that he always seemed to be able to get the actors to make their character appear not quite human, rather as if they were robots acting as humans. In 2001, I thought that this was perhaps deliberate, since a certain blurring of the line between human and artificial intelligence played well into the subplot about HAL . Maybe Dr Strangelove, as a black satire, didn't need good acting either. As far as I can recall, Nicholson was pretty good at acting mad in The Shining , although I caught a little of it again the other night, and some of the supporting actors had the Kubrick "not quite there"-ness about them.

The same artifice was in Eyes Wide Shut and Full Metal Jacket, when they certainly could have benefited with more naturalist acting. (The former was eccentrically memorable, if far from realistic. The latter I thought a complete failure.)

It's actually a bit puzzling as to how he achieved the robotisation of his actors. Was it because of his famous willingness to shoot the same scene tens of times over, trying to achieve some kind of perfection in detail that only he could see? One can imagine that this would drain the actors ability to appear human.

Or was it just a certain clumsiness in his scripts?

Of course, the issue of artificial intelligence was again dealt with in the Spielberg collaboration "AI". It's another peculiar movie in many respects, but A Clockwork Orange certainly removes any doubt that its strangeness sprang from Kubrick, not Spielberg. But you can see from AI that Spielberg is like the reverse Kubrick: he can get actors playing robots appear very human!

Spielberg has said in interviews that Kubrick told him the project needed his (Spielberg's) touch, and if his goal was to have the audience sympathetic to the plight of robot intelligences, this was certainly true.

Kubrick was an interesting film maker, and for all of his deficiencies, 2001 was a remarkable achievement. It's just a pity that in his other films, he showed so little sign of being able to replicate convincing human behaviour on screen.

But the Olympics looked good

ABC News: Mom in China Freed Without Forced Abortion

A six-month pregnant mother of two who faced a forced abortion by Chinese authorities has been freed and allowed to continue her pregnancy, according to Radio Free Asia. The case had attracted international attention and outrage.

The case was reported in The Age some days ago, but I had missed it.

Last year, NPR reported on a spate of forced abortions in at least one part of China, some very late term. The report notes a possible reason for such draconian action:

...the Baise government missed its family planning targets last year. The recorded birth rate was 13.61 percent, slightly higher than the goal of 13.5 percent. This is significant because the career prospects of local officials depend upon meeting these goals.

And people wonder why the Olympics left me cold.

Confusion and the Quran

A new translation of the Quran. - By Reza Aslan - Slate Magazine

I've noted before that the Quran is difficult to read as it is not a narrative, or laid out in any other logical or consistent style. This article in Slate goes into more detail about its confusing and highly uncertain nature.

I hadn't heard this before:

....Sura 4:34, which has long been interpreted as allowing husbands to beat their wives: "As for those women who might rebel against you, admonish them, abandon them in their beds, and strike them (adribuhunna)." The problem, as a number of female Quranic scholars have noted, is that adribuhunna can also mean "turn away from them." It can even mean "have sexual intercourse with them."

Well, to say the least, that's a rather wide range of possible interpretations. (Rather like the issue as to whether the martyrs are to expect virgins or grapes in Heaven.)

The article notes that an author of a new translation tries to paint this confusing and mystifying nature of the book in a positive light:

It is through the attempt to make sense of our confusions, to work through them with reason and with faith, that the Quran's dramatic monologue transforms into an eternal dialogue between humanity and God. Indeed, of all the sacred texts of the world, Khalidi argues that the Quran is perhaps the one that most self-consciously invites the reader to engage with it, to challenge it, to ponder and to debate it. After all, as the Quran itself states, only God knows what it truly means.

Well, if true, this would suggest that it's a religion primed for liberalising interpretations. But the situation in the real world is quite to the contrary.

It also seems a bit mean-spirited of God to deliver his word via a language which is (apparently) especially capable of misinterpretation.

Next action: suring for the right to leg space

Obese have right to two airline seats | Oddly Enough | Reuters

From the report:

The high court declined to hear an appeal by Canadian airlines of a decision by the Canadian Transportation Agency that people who are "functionally disabled by obesity" deserve to have two seats for one fare.

Anything in the decision preventing an airline charging a premium for the extra weight, though? Extra weight means extra fuel costs, and they already offer discounted fares for those who limit the weight of their luggage.