The trouble with mercury

Dangerous Mercury Spills Still Trouble Schoolchildren: Scientific American

Interesting article here about the big problems caused by people playing with mercury. This bit was news to me:

Some Caribbean religions and folk healers use mercury because they believe its supernatural powers bring good luck and drive away evil spirits. Practitioners apply mercury to the skin, add it to candles or sprinkle it around the home.

About 38 percent of 900 people mostly with Latino or Caribbean backgrounds reported that they used or knew someone who used mercury for religious, spiritual, or health purposes, according to a survey by John Snow, Inc., a Boston health consulting company. The ATSDR report warns that "such use may lead to chronic mercury exposure among those who use it in this manner and for subsequent occupants of the contaminated homes."

"Imagine if you suspected that your apartment might have had a prior occupant that sprinkled mercury on the carpet a decade ago," said Arnold Wendroff, founder of the Mercury Poisoning Project, a website dedicated to the issue. "That's not something you want to live with."

Wendroff has tracked religious mercury use since 1989 after a young boy in a class he was teaching told him his mother sprinkled mercury on the floor of their home to keep away witches. These liquid good luck charms, which can be purchased at medicine shops called botanicas, are often found in 10-gram bottles. Mercury fever thermometers, in comparison, contain only a few grams (.5 to 3.0 g) of mercury.

Shuttle sightings at last

It seems to have been a long time since there was a shuttle mission with a good run of possible early evening sightings over Brisbane (and fine weather to go with them.) But this one seems to be it. See the NASA link here to find your Australian location sighting times over the next week.

This is especially noteworthy for South East Queensland, with its (usually) clear winter evening skies. (The moon won't be around either.) Here's the schedule for Brisbane:

[Apart from the date and time, the columns are: Duration in minutes, maximum elevation above horizon (in degrees), where it will approach from (in degrees and direction) and where it depart.]

Sun May 17/06:42 PM	3	24	10 above NNW	24 above NNE
Mon May 18/06:40 PM	4	33	10 above NW	33 above NNE
Tue May 19/06:38 PM	4	45	15 above NW	44 above NE
Wed May 20/06:06 PM	5	44	20 above NW	24 above ENE
Wed May 20/07:43 PM	<>	15	11 above W	15 above W
Thu May 21/05:25 PM	2	27	27 above ENE	10 above E
Thu May 21/06:59 PM	2	59	21 above W	59 above WNW
Fri May 22/06:15 PM	4	81	30 above WNW	37 above E
Fri May 22/07:52 PM	<>	11	11 above W	11 above W
Sat May 23/05:30 PM	6	74	38 above WNW	11 above E
Sat May 23/07:08 PM	2	41	16 above W	41 above WSW
Sun May 24/06:24 PM	3	77	26 above W	50 above ESE
Mon May 25/05:39 PM	6	78	32 above W	13 above E
Mon May 25/07:16 PM	2	30	13 above W	30 above W

UPDATE: For a nice video of the launch, and comments of a first time launch viewer, go to this Cosmic Variance post.

Hugo makes a trunk call

Chavez launches $15 mobile phone with a name to make his mother blush

It is perhaps the world's cheapest mobile phone. It is the latest offering from Hugo Chavez's socialist revolution. And its name is derived from a slang word for penis. Behold the Vergatorio.

Venezuela's president launched the handset on his TV show with a Mother's Day call to his mum and predicted it would conquer all rivals.....

Verga is slang for penis and vergatario is a newly minted word which signifies excellent but retains connotations from its root.

That smarts

An unusual cause for headache following massive alcohol intake

From the Abstract:

Massive alcohol intake usually resolves in a banal headache. We report a case of a patient presenting with acute alcohol intoxication in which the ensuing “hangover” was due to a knife blade deeply retained in the brain parenchyma.

(Found via Mindhacks, pun unintended.)

Question repeated

Group sex 'ingrained' in rugby league culture | The Australian

As noted here recently, what exactly is it about sport that gave it a reputation for being "character building"?

Update: A story about Australian cricketing hero Keith Miller, as noted by his biographer in Australian Story a couple of weeks ago:

Bill [Miller's son] I think suffered more than the other three. He arrived in England at age 18 to stay with his father, it was a big moment for him. And here was Keith playing around with girls younger than him. This caused a bit of confusion in him because he was the oldest boy and very close to his mother and that would have on reflection probably have been a bit damaging for Bill.

BILL MILLER, SON: He told me that Peg said, 'whenever you're overseas you can fool around but just don’t do it at home'. And of course, he’s my father, I believed him. And it wasn’t until years later I asked Peg that and she said 'do you really think that I would have said that'. And I said 'no you wouldn’t of'. She said 'exactly right'. So that sort of gutted me a bit, that he’d lied to me about that. But I still loved the guy. I used to have some great times with my father.

Update: I saw some of the Four Corners program about the NRL and sex last night. Was it really necessary to show the picture on the mobile phone instead of just saying "yeah, the guys will email me photos of their erection all the time"? The blond woman talking about this seemed to quite happy to run a free service via which women wanting sex with a footballer could have an arranged meeting.

While I guess it's useful to have football clubs running classes on how it's not right to trick your mate's drunk girlfriend into having sex with you, it's kind of disturbing to think that any young bloke needs telling. (I also wonder whether, if the camera is not there, the sessions are received with such gravity.)

Looks cool

Boeing aims sky-high with 'Phantom Ray'

A culinary note

I first mentioned this here a year ago, but it is worth repeating: try adding a splash of Cointreau to slightly sweetened whipped cream.

(The try that with raspberry jam on warm pancakes for breakfast.)

European rat owning readers take note

From Rats To Humans: Around Thirty Europeans Infected With Cowpox Virus By Their Pet Rats

Praising Scrubs

The only sitcom still worth watching in the last few years, the screening of the (likely) last episode of Scrubs has attracted a lot of comment in the States this week.

Slate had an article praising it, not for its comedic value, but for being "the most accurate portrayal of the medical profession on TV." (Bet you didn't see that coming.) Allegedly:

...if you talk to doctors, they'll often sing the praises of one medical show in particular, which they say captures the training process, the profession, and the dynamics of a hospital with remarkable accuracy. No, it's not House, the tale of a misanthrope who happens to be a doctor. It's not Grey's Anatomy, a torrid romance novel disguised as a medical show. It's not even the recently departed ER, which broke television ground with its realistic gore. It's Scrubs.

The article makes out its case reasonably credibly.

But of course, no one watches it for that reason. The show apparently is made by people with sufficient generosity that they allow a huge number of segments to remain posted on Youtube. It seems that with a little effort, you can find nearly any clip from the 8 seasons which you found particularly funny.

In Australia, the show has never has a decent chance to build a following on commercial TV due to the hopeless way (common to nearly every sitcom shown in the last 5 years) that the programmers have chopped and changed the schedule. Currently, I have been watching Season 6 which has had a rare continuous run on Comedy Channel (but even that has a hopeless way of jumbling seasons and episodes, so that still the only way to get a complete story cycle here is to rent the DVDs.)

Anyhoo, I recently saw the popular all-singing episode ("My Musical") from 2007. (It was probably shown here starting at 10.42pm one night of the summer holidays on Channel 7 in 2008.) The highlight was surely "Guy Love", which is good enough to embed:



(A clarification: the women in bed is featured because she has an aneurysm causing her to have musical hallucinations, a storyline evidently based on this true life report.)

I can't help it, I want to embed two other short clips that are particular favourites:

Janitor, the greatest comedic deadpan evil character ever created:



And Dr Kelso has his greatest moment here (although, bizarrely, the person who posted this clip gives away the joke in the heading - don't read it!):



Brilliant. When will there be another sitcom that makes me laugh out loud?

British Muslims are a worry

The Associated Press: Study: Poverty fueling Muslim tension with West

Lots of interesting stuff from this detailed survey:

Despite their desire to belong, only a small number of Muslims questioned in Britain, for example — 10 percent — consider themselves integrated into British society. That compares to 46 percent of Muslims in France and 35 percent in Germany....

Researchers found 38 percent of British Muslims said they had a job, much lower than the figure for the British general public — 62 percent — and lower than Muslims in Germany or France, where 53 percent and 45 percent respectively said they were employed. No figures were compiled for the United States....

...71 percent of Britain's Muslims considered themselves to be struggling to get by, as did 56 percent of Muslims questioned in the United States. Research for the study was conducted in mid-2008, before the full impact of the current financial crisis hit.

Yet, oddly, in another part of the report it says:

The study found that 77 percent of British Muslims feel a strong sense of British identity, compared to 50 percent of the country's non-Muslims. In France, around half of Muslims and non-Muslims say they feel a strong sense of patriotism.

Isn't that inconsistent with the preceding figures?

Jews and birds

On Colbert Report last night, there was an interview with Laurie Garrett, a woman who seems to know a fair bit about swine flu. (It was fairly amusing, and you can watch it here.)

One of the things she said, though, I didn't recall hearing before. It was that Indonesia, which has strains of the very worrisome bird flu, does not share information with the WHO because its Health minister believes that there is a US/Western/Jewish conspiracy to find new flus, make vaccines and force poor countries to buy them. (Colbert's response to this was pretty funny.)

This situation is perhaps even worse than that summary, as noted here:

Falling short of elaboration, Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said on Tuesday that the deadly swine flu virus could have been genetically engineered. She had earlier accused Western governments of making and spreading viruses in developing countries to boost pharmaceutical companies' profits.

Since 2006, Indonesia has refused to share all of its bird flu virus samples with WHO researchers, citing fears that the system is being abused by rich countries to produce profitable vaccines, which impoverished nations have to buy.

A more detailed account of the Health Minister's views can be found here. It does not mention Jewish conspiracy as a possible part of her reasoning, as did Colbert's guest, but it does say that "she is a member of the moderate Islamic mass movement Muhammadiyah, but has also reportedly cosied up to radicals such as the Islamist Hizbut Tahrir group, which believes in replacing Indonesia's secular government with a Muslim caliphate."

I see that in the Middle East, back in 2006, the Jewish - bird flu conspiracy appeared there:

... the Syrian state-controlled paper al-Tawhra asserted that Israel was responsible for the expanding bird flu phenomenon. It said Israel had spread the virus in the Far East to mislead the world while aiming to attack the Arabs.[2]

Damn those Jews are clever.

But seriously, it would be a disaster if belief in Jewish conspiracy contributes to the death of millions of people (including Muslims) due to delays in getting out a vaccine to combat a future mutated bird flu.

Maybe this needs covert operations: blacked up CIA agents who roam Indonesian farms at night, taking blood from chickens and ducks.

Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia...

Here she comes: Saudi Arabia's Miss Beautiful Morals

Extracts from the story:

...at Saudi Arabia's only beauty pageant, the judges don't care about a perfect figure or face.

What they're looking for in the quest for "Miss Beautiful Morals" is the contestant who shows the most devotion and respect for her parents. ...

So after the pageant opens Saturday, the nearly 200 contestants will spend the next 10 weeks attending classes and being quizzed on themes on inner strength and leadership.

Pageant hopefuls will also spend a day at a country house with their mothers, where they will be observed by female judges and graded on how they interact with their mothers, Al Mubarak said.

All that work for what? A new car? (Oh, wait a minute, we're talking women in Saudi Arabia.) No, the first prize is a glorious $2,600. Hardly worth sucking up to Mum for the day for that.

But even the Gulf News must recognise that this bit sounds funny:

There are few beauty pageants in the largely conservative Arab world. The most dazzling is in Lebanon, the region's most liberal country, where contestants appear on TV in one-piece swimsuits and glamorous evening gowns and answer questions that test their confidence and general knowledge.

There are no such displays in ultra-strict Saudi Arabia, where until Miss Beautiful Morals was inaugurated last year, the only pageants were for goats, sheep, camels and other animals, aimed at encouraging livestock breeding.

I hope next year they allow contestants from Australia. Kevin Rudd in an abaya would be a shoo-in.

Enough said

Fury at exhibit of corpses having sex

(It's taken a long time for Europe to start objecting to the use of corpses as entertainment, but there finally seem to be people who agree with me who are prepared to take action.)

American food

Thought Experiments : The Blog: Not Breakfast in America

Bryan Appleyard has a funny grumble here about American breakfasts, but I think his comments could be extended generally to all American food.

It's been many years since I have been there, but one of the lasting impressions of the place is that all of the food seems to have a heightened artificiality to it, and as Bryan notes, it even extends to fruit and supposedly "natural" products. (I remember an Australian I was visiting commenting that she had no idea what they put in their bread, but it just never went mouldy like old Australian bread. Then again, she was slightly mad in some other ways, so I shouldn't take her word I suppose.)

It remains a deep mystery how this fakeness in all food is achieved.

All about iron

Ocean carbon: A dent in the iron hypothesis

Quite a lengthy explanation here of recent research into what happened in a couple of experiments on iron fertilization, and why it may not be such a great way to sequester carbon. (Still seems worth looking into further though, is my impression.)

Podcast recommendation

John Mattick - ABC Brisbane (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Richard Fidler does pretty good interviews, and I caught most of this one on the radio earlier this week. The interviewee is Queensland molecular biologist John Mattick, and the talk is about DNA, "junk DNA", and Mattick's upbringing and views on education.

All very interesting, but you do need a spare hour to listen to it.

Putting the knife into the Rudd ETS

I noted below how John Quiggin thinks the amended Rudd Emissions Trading Scheme should be supported by the Greens.

The very Green David Spratt (at his Climate Code Red blog, which I found via some comment at Quiggin's blog) really puts the knife to the scheme, and then twists it.

One of the key points I liked was to do with the proposition (which we are bound to hear again and again) that the Liberals have to support passage of the legislation so that it is in place before the Copenhagen conference. The suggestion never made sense to me, and Spratt agrees:

ISSUE 1. Passing the CPRS is necessary for Australia to be credible at Copenhagen.

No, quite the opposite. If there were no legislation, Australia's position would not be tied by law to Rudd's poor target and pressure would be maintained to catch up with the leading bunch. The targets in the proposed CPRS legislation are out of whack with the major players such as the UK, US and EU, who have agreed to unconditional cut emissions of 34-46%, 20% and 20-30% from 1990 levels respectively. Let's be honest, what happens at Copenhagen depends more than any other factor on what the G2 – the USA and China — strike by way of a climate deal, and what Australia puts in the table has little relevance to that. They are used to Australia behaving badly.

Self inflicted harm

Kabul Journal - In Afghanistan, Drugs Hollow Out Lives in Shell of Cultural Center - NYTimes.com

Now that I think of it, there never seems to have been much attention paid to the issue of whether heroin production was causing addiction within Afghanistan itself. (Maybe everyone thought that good Muslims were able to avoid the temptation of a product they were happy to export to the evil West.)

But, it seems they are suffering after all. The article paints a pretty ugly picture of a massive drugs den in Kabul.

What is up at The Australian?

Until recently, I was never keen on the Tim Lambert (or whoever coined it) term "The Australian's War on Science" (referring to their frequent columns given over in that paper to global warming sceptics.) They are probably just courting controversy for readership, I thought.

But in the last few weeks, at least as far as I can tell from from the volume of skeptic columns on their website, there's absolutely no denying that the powers that be in that paper are heavily promoting climate change skepticism. As far as I can see, they devote very little effort to putting the opposing side in response.

Now look: regular readers know I argue that ocean acidification is enough of a worry to limit CO2, and while it seems to me that the "warmenists" are also very likely correct, I do worry that the exact role of the sun is not properly understood. (It does seem odd, doesn't it, that an unusually quiet period of sunspots is immediately coinciding with a very cold northern winter, and a very early start to winter in parts of Australia?)

But really: isn't it plain to all objective people that a great many of the skeptic's arguments running in The Australian are not science at all? I mean all this stuff that Ian Plimer and others go on about how it is "hubris" to think that mankind can influence climate, or that it is all a UN inspired conspiracy, or is driven by completely corrupted grant seeking by scientists, etc. What the hell has that got to do with the actual science? (Yes, even complaining that scientists have "an interest" in providing results that confirm global warming does not show how their actual results are wrong.)

Of course, a lot of non-scientist environmentalists have carried a lot of ideological baggage around with them, and they can be criticised for that (I've done it myself.)

But when about half (well, that's my guess) of the response to climate scientists work is clearly non-scientific in nature, they are not really seriously engaging in the argument.

I strongly suggest people read Skeptical Science, which has been updated recently, to view the complete list of responses to the warming skeptics arguments. If your only source of information on the topic is The Australian, Andrew Bolt, Marohasy (God forbid), or even Watts Up With That, you are not really seriously following the issue.

Science notes from all over

* Back in 2006, I posted about some doubts about the effectiveness of widespread flu vaccination. Now, Norman Swan on the Health Report has a guest explaining why the benefits are actually so small they are hard to measure. My mum continues to be vindicated, it seems.

* My other favourite Radio National broadcaster, Alan Saunders, talks about philosophy and quantum mechanics. It's a pretty good discussion and summary of the topic, I reckon, and well worth reading. (Retro-causation gets a mention too, but not enough discussion.)

* This post at Cosmic Variance has embedded a recent Daily Show clip dealing with the Large Hadron Collider but (to my mind) with only slight comic effect. However, there is no doubt that Walter Wagner, who is also interviewed in the clip, does his credibility a lot of harm when he describes how it is that he believes the chance of a micro black hole being created is 50/50. (He's the guy who sued in Hawaii to try to stop the LHC, but I hasten to point out that I have never given him any direct support.) I note that the show does not mention Plaga, who appears to be a much more credible figure with concerns about micro black holes.

* As for psychology, The Economist reports that how well you smile in your college appears to have some predictive power as to whether you will divorce in future. Say "cheese" for future happiness...:)

Innovation from the country you can always trust

Birth control for men in one injection - Science, News - The Independent

From the report:

Researchers at the National Research for Family Planning in Beijing injected 1,000 healthy, fertile male patients with a testosterone-based jab over a two-year period and found only 1 per cent went on to father a child....

For the testing in China, a country which has invested heavily in reproductive technology because of its overpopulation problems, the men were given 500mg of testosterone undecanoate (TU) in tea seed oil. ...

The scientists claim that there were none of the usual side-effects and say the process is reversible. Six months after coming off the injections, the men's sperm count had returned to healthy levels.

Tea seed oil? Make mine Earl Grey with milk, but hold the melamine, thanks.

Hollywood woes noted, and corrected

Film - Memos to Hollywood - NYTimes.com

A few days ago, the New York Times movie critics (AO Scott and Manohola Dargis) had an article which listed via mock memos all of the problems they could see with current Hollywood movies.

Many of them are pretty obvious, but it's good to have such high profile critics take a "meta" view of the industry.

One complaint that did strike me as odd, though, was this one by Dargis:

Enough with the gay slurs, the gay baiting, imitating, limp-wristing, so-not-funny lisping — in other words, enough with the hating. Yeah, some gay men are hilarious (Oscar Wilde). But people are funny, their identities are not. Try this simple test: Every time you feel the need to mock or denigrate gay men or lesbians, replace that joke with an equally vicious dig about African-Americans or Jews. Doesn’t sound so funny anymore, does it?

Not that I see many movies rated more than PG these days, but I wasn't aware of any controversy about Hollywood producing many "gay slurs" recently. (The comedies based on straight men having to pretend they are gay were not, I thought, regarded as good comedies, but not because they were particularly offensive to gays.)

But Dargis does hit the spot with this complaint "To: Filmmakers, especially under 40":

The tripod is your friend. Few filmmakers can pull off florid handheld camerawork because most aren’t saying all that much through their visuals, handheld or not. (Also: Shaking the camera does not create realism.)

The last memo lists all of the genres Scott and Dargis are sick of, but it's a little long to copy here.

Here's a few Opinion Dominion suggestions for improving Hollywood product:

1. Get a new bunch of 20's-ish lead actors with charisma and charm. These are qualities sorely lacking for the last decade or two. If they have it, we'll get a good few decades enjoyment out of following their career.

2. Having found a bunch of new actors, consider signing them up to "morality clauses". OK, maybe just call them "don't do anything to draw too much attention to your private life" clauses. Maybe this means a re-invigoration of the old studio system, but that's not a bad thing is it? Sure, the old stars had private lives that were a complete mess, but at the least the public had the pretence that there were fine real-life examples to follow amongst the famous. And you could watch a fictional heterosexual couple on screen without thinking "hmm, I wonder if she'll ever go back to being straight again in real life".

3. Here's a new genre to try: some optimistic science fiction. Ones that show good technology leading to a (basically) happy, expansive role for humanity in the universe. For example, we've never seen science fiction films showing space elevators, extensive lunar or L5 style space colonies where people like to live, asteroid mining, solar sails used to propel spacecraft, or plenty of cheap energy from fusion or other new sources (I don't count the "Mr Fusion" from "Back to the Future".) Yet these are all concepts that have been around in science fiction writing for decades and are a lot closer to possible realisation than interstellar travel.

4. How about another new theme to revive: movies that show some traditional Christians as basically good and decent people; not simple minded right wing hypocrites. (Australian film makers please take special note.)

5. Stop half-inadvertently glamorising drug use and murderous criminals (and someone find Quentin Tarintino a new hobby, quickly. I have seen a bit of From Dusk to Dawn - he wrote and starred in it - on some cable channel recently. It's appalling.) Try to encourage good behaviour in your audience for a change, in at least half of your product anyway.

6. Go back to 1950's standards when writing stories involving sex. Adults can understand that couples are lovers in hundreds of different ways other than by seeing them in bed. It's more creative too.

7. Yes, Nazis stories probably need a rest for a few years, but there are other WWII true life incidents in other theatres that have never been dealt with. Go looking for rarely heard real life stories and base movies around them.

8. If you can't find a new real-life story, then the fictional "secret story" behind a famous real life event is often a pleasing genre. It is certainly much better than movies which purport to be historical yet at crucial points completely lie about the actual history ("Braveheart", that second Elizabeth movie, "Australia.")

9. Make more movies cheaper (except in Australia, where it is impossible for many to look less populated.) A shot gun approach at least helps get over the fact that 90% of everything is crap, and DVDs help cheap sleeper hits become profitable anyway.

Welcome back, Annabel

Annabel Crabb

Annabel Crabb makes a welcome return to Fairfax today with the above witty column on Rudd delaying the ETS. I liked this section in particular:

What was surprising was the bold attempt to portray the inevitable backdown as some sort of toughening.

"These changes today are all about strengthening the carbon pollution reduction scheme," insisted Penny Wong.

Mercilessly, the Prime Minister spelled out the details of the tough new measures.

First, there would be a year's delay. Ouch!

As if that alone weren't brutal enough, big polluters would be forced to accept more money from the Government.

And they would be obliged to pay a carbon price that has been remorselessly lowered to $10 a tonne by rapacious Rudd.

"Bring on … the comfy chair!" you almost expected the PM to pronounce, as he detailed his fluffy instruments of torture. Rudd hates to be wrong.

Yet the changes are enough to convince John Quiggin. He's pretty easily swayed, if you ask me. For example, I am not at all sure how Rudd's new idea that (as quoted by Quiggin):

Households would be able to calculate their energy use and then make donations to fund which would then buy and cancel carbon permits

is actually different from what householders could have voluntarily done under the first version of the scheme.

A dream of Greeneland

Last night's dreams included this great jumble (sources are noted): I was in Malaysia (talk yesterday of a relative living there) on a really dark night in a bar, warning some bloke that I had overheard that his girlfriend was working for the CIA and had a large role in the recent overthrow of the government (Graham Greene). One of the other characters in the dream, of uncertain role, was Elliot from Scrubs (I've been enjoying a recent series run on Comedy Channel - where JD got his new girlfriend pregnant). After issuing my warning, I caught a taxi which I had to share with a woman who wanted to be driven to Calcutta (that ABC series "The Story of India", of which I keep only seeing snippets, but it makes India look very pretty.)

Anyhow, back to Graham Greene, there is yet another book out about him, reviewed here at Weekly Standard, about his correspondence. The review sums up Greene's thoughts about fiction, which probably explain why he is of interest to me:

After the death of Henry James, according to Greene, "the religious sense was lost to the English novel, and with the religious sense went the sense of the importance of the human act." Consequently, Greene's own work--especially the major books of what one might call his middle period: Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair--sought to reinvest contemporary fiction with moral seriousness, to depict solid and real people trapped in life-or-death ethical dilemmas and racked by guilt and despair.

The disappearing eels

Eels in crisis after 95% decline in last 25 years | Environment | The Guardian

I wonder if Australian eels are still abundant: I know I saw a good number of them in the pond in the old botanic gardens in Brisbane a couple of weeks ago.

Anyhow, I suppose most people know about the remarkable life cycle of eels? Just in case you don't, here's the Guardian's summary:

The eel remains one of the world's most mysterious creatures. It is generally accepted that European eels - Anguilla anguilla - are born in the Sargasso Sea near Bermuda.

As leaf-like larvae, they are swept by the Gulf Stream towards Europe, a journey that may take a year. When the larvae reach the continental shelf they change into "glass eels" and in the spring begin to move through estuaries and into freshwater.

The animals develop pigmentation, at which point they are known as elvers and are similar in shape to the adult eel. Elvers continue to move upstream and again change colour to become brown or yellow eels.

When the fish reach full maturity - some can live to 40 and grow to 1m long - they migrate back to the ocean. Females are reported to carry as many as 10m eggs. They return to the Sargasso Sea, spawn and die.

Australian eels apparently spawn in the Coral Sea near New Caledonia. It seems odd that there still seems some uncertainty about this.

Addiction in Saudi Arabia

Gulfnews: Young Saudi men go wild over notorious blue pill

Riyadh: The kingdom has been gripped with a craze for erectile-dysfunction medications by young men - an occurrence which has many worried.

A large number of married Saudi youths are flocking to pharmacies to take hold of Viagra - "the little blue pill" - or any other stimulants that will give them more satisfaction.

The catchy words and obscene images that appear on online advertisements of these medications are another factor luring youth into buying packets of these stimulants.

What, are they just available over the counter there? I like this tragic story:

Mohammad Nassir Al Qah'tani, said: "I started taking stimulant during the very first week after my marriage at the instance of one of my friends. This was an impressive experience for me and my wife."

He added that he stopped using the stimulants at the advice of a doctor but added that his sudden stoppage resulted in some mental disturbance.

And this:

Another young man, called M.A., said that he became addicted to the stimulant and could not make love to his wife without using the pill. He said he was now considering seeking psychiatric help.

Poor boy.

Bad news day

The global warming sites will be busy over the next few days digesting a couple of new papers in Nature talking about the huge reduction in fossil fuel use believed to be needed just to keep warming within 2 degrees:

Both papers come to the same broad conclusion, summarized in our figure, that unless humankind puts on the brakes very quickly and aggressively (i.e. global reductions of 80% by 2050), we face a high probability of driving climate beyond a 2°C threshold taken by both studies as a “danger limit”....

We feel compelled to note that even a "moderate" warming of 2°C stands a strong chance of provoking drought and storm responses that could challenge civilized society, leading potentially to the conflict and suffering that go with failed states and mass migrations. Global warming of 2°C would leave the Earth warmer than it has been in millions of years, a disruption of climate conditions that have been stable for longer than the history of human agriculture.

Well, I was hoping to buy an apartment on the moon by 2050 to avoid all that trouble, but NASA may be spoiling my contingency plans:

NASA will probably not build an outpost on the moon as originally planned, the agency's acting administrator, Chris Scolese, told lawmakers on Wednesday. His comments also hinted that the agency is open to putting more emphasis on human missions to destinations like Mars or a near-Earth asteroid.

This is just goofy if you ask me. Look at all the trouble with just piecing together a modestly sized space station, coming up with a new rocket to get there, and the unresolved issue of protection from deep space radiation. If you can't even work out to have a base on a place only a couple of days away from the earth, you may as well give up on Mars planning for now too.

And what will astronauts do on an asteroid that a space probe couldn't do as well?

Oh well, at least I'll be able to live in a cyberworld from my underground bunker (while the backyard bakes over summer) when Kevin Rudd's high speed internet comes on line.

Oh, wait a minute. Not even that?

Searching this blog

Ack! I did a post today at LP suggesting people could search my blog for my ocean acidification posts. Now that I've tried that myself, I see the Search Blog function is worse than it ever was, and clearly does not list all of my posts for "ocean acidification".

To add insult to injury, I just went and added a label to each post that I could find (39 all up), but still, in Blogger, clicking on the label does not bring up all of the past posts! This is very unhelpful.

In fact, the only way I can see to find all of the posts is to do a Google Blog advanced search, asking it to find "ocean acidification" just in my blog.

This is not good. Why is the Blogger "Search blog" function so unhelpful, even with labels?

Weekend hobbies for evil tech nerds

Think twice before you go wireless - Digital Life - smh.com.au

I never use free wireless networks, but those netbooks look terribly cute, and I suspect I'll eventually own one. (Their origin was recently discussed at LP.)

Anyhow, the Sydney Morning Herald points out the security risks in using them that way:

...anyone who knows how to use Google can find step-by- step instructions on how to set up a wireless trap.

All one needs to do is find a place where tourists congregate, like a McBurger joint, and set up a wireless networking relay station on a laptop. When the tourist goes to log on to the free wireless, they can be easily duped into logging on to a bogus network.

This could be as simple as calling the fake network "McBurger Free Network". It looks and sounds legit and because the repeater computer is close by, it will likely have the strongest signal of all available networks.

It doesn't help that many networks don't use descriptive names, making the fakes seem even more authentic. Once connected, everything the tourist's computer transmits can be captured and recorded. While you sit digging the free wireless, bad guys are cleaning out your bank account.

This con also works if the bogus "hotspot" is not free because all the crooks have to do then is set up a phony payment page that captures credit card numbers. Yikes!

Well, I guess I know now how to be careful when using these, but I bet this takes a while to become common knowledge.

The dangerous piano

Krystian Zimerman's shocking Disney Hall debut

A Polish pianist gets all political before his concert in the USA:

Before playing the final work on his recital... Zimerman sat silently at the piano for a moment, almost began to play, but then turned to the audience. In a quiet but angry voice that did not project well, he indicated that he could no longer play in a country whose military wants to control the whole world.

“Get your hands off of my country,” he said. He also made reference to the U.S. military detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

One reason he is a little tetchy with the USA is kind of funny, though:

Zimerman has had problems in the United States in recent years. He travels with his own Steinway piano, which he has altered himself. But shortly after 9/11, the instrument was confiscated at JFK Airport when he landed in New York to give a recital at Carnegie Hall. Thinking the glue smelled funny, the TSA decided to take no chances and destroyed the instrument.

Conspiracy nutters get the flu

Little Green Footballs - Bad Craziness Watch: Glenn Beck Fans and Swine Flu Conspiracies

Oh dear. I don't read LGF regularly enough to understand why he has become such a controversial figure in the right wing blogosphere (being against creationists can't be enough, can it?) but he does a useful service here by pointing to the conspiracy theories that Glenn Beck followers have devised about swine flu.

I also haven't watched enough Glenn Beck to decide whether or not he is a cynical actor, a nut, or (probably most likely) some undecipherable combination of both. Slate's take on him seems pretty accurate. (Looking on the bright side, even for those who can't stand Bill O'Reilly, Beck makes him look like a paradigm of cool reason.)

The main question may be: is he smart enough to worry about the nutters he attracts?

Douglas Adams was wrong

Cosmic numbers: Pauli and Jung's love of numerology - New Scientist

Hey, some interesting stuff here about a famous quantum scientist and his dealings with Jung:

Pauli was troubled by the number 137. As physicists pored over the equations that determine the spectra of the chemical elements, a particular combination of physical constants kept cropping up. Referred to as the "fine structure constant", it combined the speed of light (crucial in Einstein's relativity) and Planck's constant (the heart of quantum theory), along with the magnitude of the charge of an electron. By themselves, each of these has to be expressed in some particular units (say, metres per second for the speed of light), but combined, the result is a unitless "pure number". Arnold Somerfeld first worked out its value as 0.00729, equivalent to (roughly) 1/137.

Why 137? Pauli obsessed over it, and he wasn't the only great physicist to do so: Arthur Eddington, Enrico Fermi and Richard Feynman all took stabs at it over the years. Meanwhile Jung, with his knowledge of Kabbalah, also found enormous significance in 137. Every letter in the Hebrew alphabet has a number associated with it, and - lo and behold - the letters in the word "Kabbalah" add up to 137. Remarkable - or a meaningless coincidence.

Clearly, the answer to life, the universe and everything is not 42.

O'Rourke talks Smith

Philosophers Zone - Philosophy and The Wealth of Nations - P.J. O'Rourke

I heard most of this on the radio yesterday, and PJ was both interesting and witty. You can listen to it, or read the transcript, via the link above.

Bizarrely creative

Found via Japundit, here's a Japanese ad that is both remarkably silly and gives new meaning to "in questionable taste".

Yowie defamation

'Yowie not to blame for death' - Northern Territory News

"Cryptonaturalist": what a great job description.

On tidying the book shelves

This weekend I attacked the bookshelves which were dusty and untidy: they had never been properly re-sorted into subject areas since we moved into the current house 6 years ago. (I said to friends that now that it is done, there will probably be some reason we have to move again within 6 months and the whole 6 year cycle will start again.)

Here's the broad categories I use:

* science fiction (mostly old, since there is little written now that appeals to me. I had forgotten how complete my Robert Heinlein collection was; I have even kept his crappy later novels. But I did re-read one of his "juveniles" recently, and his style stands the test of time, I reckon.)

* other fiction (a lot of Evelyn Waugh, and a smattering of other authors, none of them very recent)

* religion (CS Lewis features prominently, but quite a few books on modern theology and religion generally, including by arch non-realist Don Cuppitt.)

* the paranormal and UFO's (are J Allen Hyneks' books still in print? They were the best of their type, but I also have Allen Hendry's great UFO Handbook.) To balance that out, I also have read Phillip Klass's skeptical books.

* philosophy and psychology (not much in the way of original works by philosophers, although I have had a stab at a little bit of Kant. Clarity of expression clearly did not count for much for philosophical fame in his day.)

* general science, including quite a few autobiographical accounts of the moon astronauts.

I guess if you've read the blog for some time, you would have worked out that these are key areas of interest.

Books I threw out in this round (if clean, they will be donated to Lifeline):

* a battered copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: this deserves an award for the most over-praised book of the 20th Century. It is a book that simply made no impression on me at all, even to the extent that some years later I had to skim read it again to even be able to remember what it was about. It strikes me to this day as a slight work masquerading as a deep one. But happily, due to the wonders of the internet, I can read detailed criticism of it in support of my intuitive reaction 20 years ago. Yay.

* Shirley Hazzard's "The Great Fire": I dealt with this in detail in an earlier post, and it is never worth keeping a novel that you stronly dislike. That Bryan Appleyard thinks highly of her style is another of life's unfathomables.

* "Blindsight" by Peter Watts: yet another current science fiction writer who is essentially pessimistic and can't hold my interest.

On the upside, and further to my complaint about no current fiction writers interesting me, I have nearly finished my second Graham Greene, and there is a lot to like about his pared back style. I suspect that I may find his tortured Catholic themes a little repetitive though, but it's good to another author to work my way through.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the category of "history", which contains mostly Paul Johnson books (not all of his work is immediately engaging, but he's a fine writer when at his best), assorted ones on World War 2, and a history of the bathroom.

I also forgot to note that I am giving away the first Lord of the Rings book. If you find even the movies tedious, not much point in keeping the novels, is there.

Reasons to doubt Plimer

Plimer unbloodied and certainly unbowed | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Andrew Bolt thought that last Friday's debate on Radio National didn't hurt Plimer at all. I must admit, I didn't think that Veron was very effective, but then again, as he only had the book for an hour before the exchange, you couldn't expect him to be well informed on its contents.

But the main problem was that (as I understand it) Veron is an expert on reefs, which gives him an interest in global warming, but doesn't really make him a direct expert on climate science.

One thing of note did come out, however, and that is that it appears (as I suspected) that Plimer leaves ocean acidification pretty much out of the debate. (Veron said he had trouble finding any references to it, but eventually did find a brief mention.)

Anyway, a much better refutation of Plimer's book, at least in one specific field, was on Radio National this morning. You can listen to it here.

Tim Lambert already has his list of obvious faults or omissions, and a more recent post indicating a sarcasm misfire that appears in the book.

While we are still waiting to see a more detailed review from some experienced climate scientists, I don't see any reason as to why skeptics should think that this book represents any form of breakthrough.

UPDATE: Andrew Bolt hasn't commented on this story from last week, as far as I know, but it's one that seems worthy of the attention of any AGW skeptic who wants to be taken seriously.

How Britain is entertaining itself, etc

Go west! Gay storylines are drawing crowds to theatres in London's West End and fringe - The Independent

This lists 10 plays which are currently running in England to reasonable box office.

It seems to me that when it comes to gay themed musicals/comedy, they are usually much better reviewed (and more widely viewed) than the inherent quality deserves. It's like how Margaret and David (At the Movies) can't but help give an Australian movie an extra 1/2 to 1 star just for being Australian. I cite the movie versions of "Priscilla" and "La Cage" as examples.

The only gay drama that I can recall seeing much of was the TV version of Angels in America. The whole thing was terribly overwrought, I thought, but I seem to recall quite a few reviews pretty much agreeing with that.

Going back to gay comedy in Australia, I had the misfortune to see some of the Pam Ann Show on the Comedy Channel last week. This is very odd: a woman comedian who dresses up like a drag queen and seemingly aims for an audience mostly of gay male flight attendants. She is spectacularly unfunny, and if you look at the comments here, I am not alone in so thinking. (Best summary: "Feeble attempt to be a female (!) Bob Downe, the twist being no panache, poor scripting and no apparent talent.")

At least she goes to prove that no matter how much more sensitive people might feel gay men are, they don't as a class necessarily have any better refined taste in humour.

Determined

Drug-Sub Culture - The Latest Way to Get Cocaine Out of Colombia? Underwater. - NYTimes.com

Interesting article on (large) semi-submersibles being used to smuggle drugs.

Unexpected

BBC NEWS | Health | Statins link to healthy prostate

Statins are currently used to lower cholesterol and help prevent heart attacks and strokes.

However, there is growing evidence that the drugs also prevent cancer cells from dividing, and may even cause some cancer cells to die.

Worldwide, prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death.

The US Mayo Clinic followed 2,447 men aged 40 to 79 for nearly two decades.

They found men who took statins were three times less likely to develop prostate cancer than men who did not take the drugs.

They also found statin users were 57% less likely to develop an enlarge prostate.

A statin is included in the mooted "polypill", which (I think) was designed only with heart disease and strokes in mind. If it also has a substantial protective effect on very common prostate problems, it would be a very attractive bonus.

A late Anzac post

Here's my late father, probably in the North Atlantic, during (or shortly after) World War II. I'm not sure who the scowling figure in the background is. (A Chief Petty Officer, perhaps?)



He was never one to speak much about his war time experiences, and as far as I know, was lucky enough to avoid major action. But it's hard to imagine from the comfortable perspective of the last 40 years the social upheaval of a World War, and our thoughts and gratitude are, naturally, richly deserved.

A severe attack of the cutes

Gather the kiddies around, don't let them read the previous post, and just watch this:

Pope support

How can we change 'macho' attitudes to sex? | Society | guardian.co.uk

It's hard to read this article in The Guardian without thinking that it basically supports what the Pope and George Pell were attacked for saying a few weeks back.

On the issue of use of condoms within marriage: I would be concerned if the Pope's view was commonly taken by African women as meaning that they should still have unprotected sex with their husband even if they know he is HIV positive. But in fact, as one article I referred to in the previous post indicated, Catholic moralists would probably argue that it would be wrong for a HIV positive husband to insist on sex at all. (I don't know about most of my readers, but if I were in such a wife's situation, there's no way I would want to keep a sex life going with the husband - condom or not.)

For a situation where it is only suspected (through a belief that he is being unfaithful, say) that the husband is HIV positive, it seems to me doubtful in the extreme that unprotected sex within the marriage would be due to the Catholic teaching. After all, condoms don't exactly enhance the experience: a fact which condom promoters don't seem to ever want to acknowledge.

A wife's insistence on use of one when she only suspects the husband may be HIV positive is likely to be resented by him, and seen as taking away his perceived right to maximum enjoyment. And besides, she may want a child.

I strongly suspect that in the vast majority of cases, while a wife's decision to not insist (or her inability to insist) that her husband use a condom is consistent with Catholic teaching, but her position is far from primarily motivated by such teaching. On the husband's side, adherence to the Papal view on condoms would almost never be the reason that he does not use one with another partner or a prostitute.

(Update: is it possibly a partial reason a husband tells his wife that she should not make him use one? Maybe, in some cases, but again its doubtful from the Catholic point of view that he should be having sex at all if there are doubts about his sexual health. But again, isn't it far more likely that in most cases it is husband's selfishness that is the main reason he doesn't want to use one?)

Another way of looking at it is to say this: if the Catholic Church changed its teaching on condoms in Africa tomorrow, would it make a substantial difference to the HIV transmission rate? I think it's extremely doubtful that it would.

At heart, the problems are much more likely to cultural ones as the article suggests.

Update 2: having said all of that, I would be more than happy for the Catholic Church to revise its view on contraception and the idea that all sex has to be capable of procreation. What I am reacting against is the oft-repeated claim that Catholicism that is killing millions by virtue of its current teaching.

Spin your way out of this one, Kevin

Rudd's policies encourage would-be asylum seeker - ABC News

One man said he plans to attempt the boat journey even though his refugee status is already confirmed, because he has heard he is more likely to be accepted by Kevin Rudd's Government than its predecessor...

"Kevin Rudd - he's changed everything about refugee. If I go to Australia now, different, different," a second asylum seeker told the ABC.

"Maybe accepted but when John Howard, president, Australia, he said come back to Indonesia."

Heh heh heh.

Folk crisis averted

Online dating service for Austrias folk musicians | Austria News

Austrias folk musicians have problems to find the right partner. To guarantee enough of offspring from relationships between folk musicians, the governing body of that certain musical direction opened an online dating service for such kind of people.

I think I have found a new favourite nation to regularly ridicule.

Ex-smokers cautioned

'Cancer risk of nicotine gum and lozenges higher than thought' - Times Online

Dr Mickey?

How nosy mice sniff out sickness - health - 22 April 2009 - New Scientist

I didn't know that mice and rats had been shown to have some disease sniffing ability, like dogs have with cancer.

(There was a documentary on SBS recently about trials in England with cancer sniffing dogs. I was only able to half watch it, but the point of the story seemed to be that there was much professional scepticism about how useful this ability could be in real life, because dogs can have good days and bad days in smelling trials. My experience at the airport with a sniffer beagle that got very excited over a bottle of gin would appear to confirm that.)

Anyway, I hope one day to find a cage of rat assistants in my GP's surgery.

Nice Katz

Just me, you, the waiter, chef, and diners | theage.com.au

A sweet column by Danny Katz today.

Cities not to work in

Is Jakarta a bad place to work? Say it ain’t so | The Jakarta Post

Businessweek has ranked the world's worst cities for expats to work in:

The report ranked Jakarta second, just below Lagos in Nigeria and above Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, saying the threat of violence from extremists, in particular, was a serious drawback to living in Jakarta.

But the Jakarta Post notes this quasi-positive spin:

The report said despite problems common to many developing cities such as the risk of disease, poor sanitation and excessive pollution, “Indonesia can be an enticing location”.

Many people in comments are disputing that it should be at such a high ranking. I like this one though:

This is a bum rap. I have worked as a frequent visitor in Jakarta and I have found it to be a pleasant city in many respects. Of course, the traffic can be nightmarish and the air pollution can injure one's respiratory tract.

If you don't have to travel far each day, speak Bahasa and have a modicum of patience, one can thrive there.

Interestingly, more than one commenter cites Malayasia as being the most racist country in the region.

More on that baby

Gulfnews: Mother of 'illegal' infant arrested

A mother whose infant daughter was declared an illegal resident in Sharjah was arrested on Monday by the Sharjah Naturalisation and Residency Department (SNRD) on a charge of submitting forged documents. She was released hours later on condition she would return to the department on Tuesday with a guarantor's passport.

Her infant daughter Nayana, 18 months, had to spend the day at baby care awaiting the release of her mother who was still in SNRD custody.

The babysitter told Gulf News that she didn't know what to do with the baby who cried all the time.

I like the personal detail at the end.

It's not clear from the rest of the story as to whether there was anything improper at all in the documents she produced.

It's a great way for a nation to attract foreign workers.

The remarkable hair visits LA

Chantal Biya: the first lady of Cameroon - Telegraph

A long term reason for optimism?

Findings - Use Energy, Get Rich and Save the Planet - NYTimes.com

John Tierney will cop a lot of flack for running these predictions:

1. There will be no green revolution in energy or anything else. No leader or law or treaty will radically change the energy sources for people and industries in the United States or other countries. No recession or depression will make a lasting change in consumers’ passions to use energy, make money and buy new technology — and that, believe it or not, is good news, because...

2. The richer everyone gets, the greener the planet will be in the long run.

I don't doubt the point about the rich being greener than the poor. (It's also the assured way of containing population growth.)

But the problem is, will the attainment of average global wealth of sufficient size to "green" the planet take place fast enough to prevent a disastrous accumulation of CO2?

It has occurred to me before that it might just be possible that, regardless of (probably unsuccessful) attempts at effective CO2 limiting treaties, foreseeable (or even unforeseen) changes to energy technology might just mean that CO2 production is rapidly contained over the next 50 years anyway.

Of course, if James Hanson is right, that's far too late. But, if God is really smiling upon the planet, a milder version of the Maunder minimum might buy the nations enough time to prepare for a return to higher than normal temperatures. Of course, that's assuming that people could be persuaded during a mini ice age that global warming was still a threat - which is probably a big ask!

Also, a really severe mini-ice age is not likely to help, I guess, as it would be reason to not cut back on coal fired power generation in those countries undergoing bad winters.

Anyway, there's always ocean acidification to worry about regardless of temperatures.

The appeal of fighting witches

Two books about witches. - By Johann Hari - Slate Magazine

Interesting article here about why belief in witchcraft is still common in significant parts of the world.

The problem with India

India: the next climate obstacle? - Short Sharp Science - New Scientist

A New Scientist blog opines:

I would look to India for the next wall of resistance from developing nations. At negotiations, it is a forceful opponent to limiting emissions in developing nations. (Understandably so: the average Indian emits 1.2 metric tons of carbon each year, compared to 20.4 for the average US citizen.)

Indian negotiators have been known to flatly refuse to even discuss the matter of limiting emissions in developing nations during some negotiations because it was not explicitly on the agenda.

What Mahmoud left out

Ahmadinejad receives 'warm welcome' home after UN summit speech | World news | guardian.co.uk

Ahmadinejad omitted some remarks from the prepared text issued by Iranian diplomats in Geneva which described the Holocaust as "ambiguous and dubious".

The eventual response from Israel might be far from that description.

On trial for writing an opinion?

Obama remarks on torture memos leave open possibility of prosecution - Los Angeles Times

Like this makes sense:

Although President Obama opposes the prosecution of CIA operatives who carried out the most controversial interrogations of suspected terrorists during the Bush administration, Obama suggested today that he had not ruled out action against Justice Department officials who authorized the tactics....

Obama said that "with respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws, and I don't want to prejudge that. I think that there are a host of very complicated issues involved there."

Update: further interesting details on this in The Guardian version of the story:

The White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said only three days ago that the administration did not favour prosecutions of those who had devised the policy, and Gibbs echoed that on Monday.

Obama's about-turn may reflect the sense of outrage, at least among US liberals, over further details of CIA interrogations that have emerged during the last few days, including the use of waterboarding against one detainee 183 times. Or it could be purely political, a retaliation for sniping against him by Cheney.

In an interview with Fox News on Monday night, Cheney said he was disturbed by the release of the previously classified memos. He called for the declassification of other memos that he said would illustrate the value of intelligence gained from the interrogations.

"I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw, that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country," he said.

Cheney has a point. Surely most people are surprised by the number of times some detainees were waterboarded. Unless you believe that individual CIA operatives just started doing it for fun (a wildly improbably assumption, given the amount of paperwork that appears to surround these cases), they clearly must have been under the impression that something was to be gained (or was being gained) in the process.

Of course, one of the common arguments against torture is that it does not produce reliable information in any event. But is that necessarily true? The CIA and intelligence services of all countries have a lot of experience in the field: do they like people to know how successful it can be?

There is probably a lot of information out there on the issue, but I don't have time to go looking for it now.

One other point I find curious about this whole matter is that, if the one of the interrogation "benefits" of waterboarding is that the victim thinks they are about to die, surely that aspect of it decreases over time if you've been subjected to it a dozen times and you still haven't died? Or does the psychological impact of it still increase over time, just out of fear of undergoing yet another round of an extremely unpleasant procedure?

Going back to Obama's flying the kite on Justice Department prosecutions, Powerline has this to say (and of course I agree):

The idea of prosecuting a lawyer because a wrote a legal analysis with which the current Attorney General disagrees is so outrageous that I can't believe it would be seriously considered.

UPDATE: some commentary on the issue of whether torture works.

I also tend to agree with Tigerhawk's take on this: if you have caught a terrorist who is prepared to kill thousands of civilians, it is surely helpful for him to at least believe that he is about to be tortured. Obama has effectively removed that fear, and that is not a good thing for the future security of his nation.

UPDATE 2: The New York Times reports that Obama's own intelligence director, Admiral Blair, supports the Dick Cheney position that important information was disclosed from waterboarding (or other techniques authorised by the Bush administration). I think we can assume Cheney was telling the truth.

Cats kill cute sea creatures

New research reveals extraordinary habits of rare Australian Snubfin dolphin

According to this article, research on the funny looking snub nosed dolphin (that lives off Queensland) shows that they can be killed by toxoplasma containing cat poop:

The concern for the snubfin dolphin follows the death of three Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins recovered around Townsville in the period 2000-2001 that were infected by Toxoplasma gondii - a parasite usually found in cat faeces that appears to have come from contaminated run-off.

In California, they have long believed that cat poo is killing sea otters.

Cat owners have a lot to answer for.

Oceans and Plimer

Most Australian readers would probably know already of the global warming skeptics excitement about a new hefty book by geologist Ian Plimer that (apparently) sets out with lots of footnotes his opinion as to why the great majority of climate scientists are wrong.

While we are waiting for some climate scientist types to review it in detail, I am curious as to whether he makes any attempt at addressing ocean acidification. As remarked here many times, this is an issue skeptics just like to wave away with a few dismissive snorts, and that's about the extent of their analysis. (Yes, I am aware of Plimer's previous short contributions to the issue, such as this one noted last year at Marohasy's blog. Anyone who has bothered to read about the issue can readily spot that this was a disingenuous attempt at dismissing it, and does not address the reasons why it is believed to be a serious problem regardless of the oceans surviving past periods of high atmospheric CO2.)

In fact, I haven't posted anything new about ocean acidification for a few weeks, but there have been quite a few papers of note, such as:

* some new calculations indicate that ocean "dead zones" will increase:

increases in carbon dioxide can make marine animals more susceptible to low concentrations of oxygen, and thus exacerbate the effects of low-oxygen "dead zones" in the ocean.

Brewer and Peltzer's calculations also show that the partial pressure of dissolved carbon dioxide gas (pCO2) in low-oxygen zones will rise much higher than previously thought. This could have significant consequences for marine life in these zones.

* (if I am reading this right) some lab tests indicate that phytoplankton in nutrient poor ocean areas (such as the Southern Oceans, which will be affected first by lower .pH) don't do well with increased CO2.

* A paper notes the wildly conflicting results of different lab tests on whether a certain type of phytoplankton will get heavier or lighter with more ocean acidification. However, even if they do in nature get heavier, they will not make a significant reduction in CO2 levels in the atmosphere:

...it should be recognized that the direct impact of calcification changes on atmospheric CO2 through the remainder of this century is relatively small compared to anticipated annual emissions as well as to other carbon cycle feedbacks.

(Hence, if AGW is true, you can't expect the carbon incorporating phytoplankton to save you.)

* more research indicating pteropods (which feed a lot of fish) don't do well with increased acidfication. The researchers note:

A decline of their populations would likely cause dramatic changes to the structure, function and services of polar ecosystems.

Not exactly cheery news.

Quantum fun

Avoid a future cataclysm: Forget the past - New Scientist

A quite bizarre but entertaining idea suggested by a physicist who has been thinking about "many worlds". The idea is hard to summarise here, and the article is short, but the ultimate point is this:

"If we could find a way to reset our knowledge of an impending disaster, we too could avoid it."

Would large amounts of alcohol do the trick? (Maybe it explains the remarkable ability of some drunks to take a tumble and get back up again.)

4WD heresy

Bligh backs drop in Fraser Island speed limit - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

On the weekend, there was yet another four wheel drive accident on the beach at Fraser Island. This has prompted the government to finally say that letting people drive on a beach at 100 km might just be a little too dangerous. Well, duh, as they say.

But: why the hell do we let the great sandy islands of South East Queensland have their beach serenity spoilt by 4WD's at all? I don't particularly care if inland sand roads are used to access beach-side camp sites, but to my mind Moreton Island and Fraser Island beaches have a large amount of their wilderness value spoilt by the never-ending flow of 4WD up and down their beaches. If you are camping with young children, there is always the worry that it is not particularly safe for them to be going between campsite and the water's edge, because they are literally wandering on a "road".

To my mind, this has been an incremental problem. In the early 1970's, when I first went to Moreton Island, not that many people had 4WD's, and it really did feel a pretty isolated spot. Now that every man and his dog has been able to buy one (mainly for the wife's school run and supermarket shopping, mind you) they spoil quite a lot of the pleasure of being there.

No one says this, of course, and tourism operators on Fraser would be up in arms at the suggestion. But if I ruled the country, there would be a ban on beach driving for nearly everyone; and for non rural areas, 4WDs would be taxed within an inch of their saleability anyway.

System failure

Mentally ill man raped, murdered daughter after warnings ignored | The Courier-Mail

A spectacularly tragic failure of the system to do any effective in the light of clear danger is detailed today:

THE state's largest hospital was warned, so were police and a doctor, but no one stopped a mentally ill man from taking a family holiday which ended with him raping and killing his 10-year-old daughter.

The man headed off on the fateful Bribie Island holiday with his four children after he was allowed to postpone a check-up with health authorities....

The Courier-Mail revealed in the days after the killing that the man had been released from the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital's mental health unit, where he had been under an involuntary treatment order, on December 21, 2007.

He had been admitted on December 8 after a manic episode in a shopping centre.

The man was allowed to postponea check-up with mental health workers scheduled for December 31. Late that night he ritualistically killed his daughter but spared her three younger siblings...

On December 30, the man's parents were so concerned about their son's behaviour, including a threat that "someone close to me is going to die tonight", that they contacted his GP...

On December 31, the RBWH was contacted by a former girlfriend of the man after he had gone to her home. The documents did not say whether the hospital took any action.

The man - who was found by the Mental Health Court to have been of unsound mind at the time of the murder - did not abide by the terms of his discharge. The judgment revealed he had stopped taking the antipsychotic drug, Risperidone, and resumed smoking large quantities of cannabis.

Um, just how many patients who are supposed to be taking anti-psychotics are allowed by anyone to supervise their children alone? I would have thought that this fact alone would have been reason for action.

Peter Kennedy has left the building

With a bit of TLC, priest's exile begins | The Australian

While I was down the coast, Peter Kennedy and his followers took the short walk down the road from Saint Mary's church to their new (temporary?) HQ at the Trades and Labor Council. Yes, it's like organised labor having it's very own church now. How cute.

Although Kennedy was looking all chipper on the TV news, I don't know that this reported comment should really give his congregation much encouragement:

"Our story, as it unfolds, will not change the church, nor will it change the world," Father Kennedy said. "But it is a political act which may give hope to those who feel excluded by the rules and regulations, the doctrines and dogmas, of the institutional church."

For a quite sarcastic take on events, have a read of this post at Coo-ee's Priory, (and this one) which note that Peter Kennedy may be over-estimating media interest in his private church now that the expected physical confrontation is (presumably) not going to happen:

"We are liberated now to speak out about the church. The media will come to us for our opinion from now on."

Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts.

Weekend away

We went down to the Gold Coast on the weekend, where I took this typical photo:



The weather was pretty good, and autumn (or spring) are the best times to be on the beach in South East Queensland: you don't have quite the same worry about frying your skin within 10 minutes, and once your feet get used to it, the water is warm.

It seems that the Gold Coast is suffering from the GFC to some degree: there were a few noticeable closed restaurants and such around. Price-wise, it's also probably a good time to be looking at buying a holiday unit there, as I suspect that is the type of real estate that investors are currently having to sell in a hurry. (Yes, have a look at this search at realestate.com to see what you can buy at Broadbeach for under $300,000. Someone send me $250,000 in Paypal and I'll let you stay in my apartment for 4 weeks a year in perpetuity!)

Hold this space

Missing me? No, I thought not. In any case, there's stuff to post about, but no time 'til tonight.

Cheap real estate soon in Japan?

Japan birthrate fall world's No. 1 | The Japan Times Online

The productive population, or those aged 15 to 64, is expected to decline from 81.64 million in 2009 to 45.95 million in 2055.

A science fiction image

This video of a pair of lungs being kept "breathing" while awaiting transplant reminded me of one of Larry Niven's novels, "A Gift from Earth". More details of the point of the exercise are at Next Big Future.

Doesn't work for Madonna

Can We Reverse Aging By Changing How We Think?