The toughest job

Readers will recall that I am making my way through the surprisingly enjoyable book "Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome". This weekend, it was the chapter about slavery, and I have to say that I did not realise that things could be as tough as this:

"They were bound to promote their master's welfare at every turn, because there was no limit to the punishment which he could inflict on them if he was dissatisfied; and they were encouraged to preserve his life by the strongest of all imaginable deterrents; if he was murdered, the whole of his slave-household were put to death without even the formality of a trial, on the grounds that, since they had not prevented the murder as they should have done, they were all accessories after the crime. ...

In AD 61, stung by a personal grievance, a slave of the City Prefect Pedanius Secundus killed his master; the whole vast slave household of four hundred slaves was executed..."

The book points out that this prompted a riot in Rome (people were by this time starting to think the law was - literally, I suppose - a bit of an overkill), and that:

"...despite C. Cassius' eloquent protest that society would collapse if the slaves were not killed, a number of senators had doubts and troops had to be fetched in before the executions could take place."

Talk about your hard nosed conservatives!

Things did improve later for slaves, with Hadrian restricting those who could be killed to those slaves near their murdered master at the time of his death.

But the book also makes the point that well treated slaves were often very loyal to their master.

By the time of Christianity, despite the church institutionally accepting slavery, individual Christians often, at the moment of their conversion, freed their slaves. A good way to mark a conversion, I think.

Look to the skies

Consulting with clouds: A clear role in climate change

Interesting story on new research on clouds and their likely future role in global warming. The news doesn't sound great:

Using observational data collected over the last 50 years and complex climate models, the team has established that low-level stratiform clouds appear to dissipate as the ocean warms, indicating that changes in these clouds may enhance the warming of the planet.

Furthermore, this is something that a lot of current models don't show this, apparently:

...most of the state-of-the-art climate models from modeling centers around the world do not reproduce this cloud behavior. Only one, the Hadley Centre model from the U.K. Met Office, was able to reproduce the observations. "We have a long way to go in getting the models right, but the Hadley Centre model results can help point us in the right direction," said co-author Burgman, a research scientist at the University of Miami.

Together, the observations and the Hadley Centre model results provide evidence that low-level stratiform clouds, which currently shield the earth from the sun's radiation, may dissipate in warming climates, allowing the oceans to further heat up, which would then cause more cloud dissipation.

Presumably, poor modelling of cloud behaviour could have something to do with the recently reported study that CO2 alone did not account for anywhere near enough warming at PETM, 55 million years ago. Skeptics took the uncertainty from that study as encouragement. People like me took as more of a sign that we should be uneasy that warming from CO2 could be at the high end of the current estimates due to poorly unstood feedbacks.

Really necessary?

BBC NEWS | Technology | Wireless power system shown off

This wireless electricity technology that's been talked about from time to time looks ready to actually take off.

I don't quite understand why it has appeal: sure, you can do with a few less electricity cables around the house, but get to have many more magnetic fields too.

They are saying magnetic fields are not dangerous to humans. I don't know enough about biology to know, but I would have thought most people would take a cautious attitude towards it.

Besides, I thought magnetised iron had been found not only in bird brains, but human too? (Yep, my memory is correct.) Maybe people who use this system will become completely hopeless at sensing direction (since magnetite in birds was believed to be related to their navigation skills.)

Wasn't there was a Heinlein short story (or novella?) in which the health of the human species was being weakened gradually by wireless power system?

You heard this caution here first, or last, or somewhere in between.

Research for the future

Experiments Show 'Artificial Gravity' Can Prevent Muscle Loss In Space

....researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have conducted the first human experiments using a device intended to counteract this effect — a NASA centrifuge that spins a test subject with his or her feet outward 30 times a minute, creating an effect similar to standing against a force two and half times that of gravity. Working with volunteers kept in bed for three weeks to simulate zero-gravity conditions, they found that just one hour a day on the centrifuge was sufficient to restore muscle synthesis.

One of the interesting things about long term colonies on the Moon or Mars would be whether the people (or especially, a baby conceived in low gravity) would weaken sufficiently so as to find it impossible to return to Earth.

Maybe just low gravity is enough to provide sufficient muscle tone, but no one will know until we can go there. I imagine mouse or rat breeding on the Moon would be a very interesting experiment.

There was a made-for-TV movie I half watched a few years ago about a Helium 3 mining colony on the moon. In it, a woman fell pregnant, but was spending some time each day in a centrifuge type device to make sure the foetus was used to higher gravity. (I think she was returning to earth to actually give birth.)

It may turn out to have been quite accurate.

Reality fat, and comedy woes

Next on TV: A family of 300-plus folks, heavy girlfriends and, yes, Ruby

Disturbing news of new American reality TV concept:

TLC has ordered six episodes of a show titled, "One Big Happy Family," chronicling the life of an obese North Carolina family: dad, 340 pounds; mom, nearly 400 pounds; and two teenagers, 330 and 340 pounds each.

There's also a overweight dating show on Fox.

Will this trend soon be on Australian TV? Was "The Biggest Loser" an imported concept?

It's all academic to me, I guess, since I don't think there has ever been a reality TV show that I have been able to watch for more than 10 minutes.

The only problem is that surely "reality TV" draws resources away from worthwhile drama, comedy, and other creativity in TV. I mean, with the demise of Scrubs, there is not a sitcom worth watching. (Maybe 30 Rock, which I have never seen due to its odd scheduling here.)

As for the current alleged successes in TV comedy:

Two and a Half Men: a half-clever concept (playing on Charlie Sheen's real life playboy image,) but humour based on wildly promiscuous lifestyles wear thin after a very short time if that is the only joke that exists about a major character. (Having it as a raison d'etre of a more minor character is fine - the whole show doesn't revolve around them.) So I can't warm to this show, and always feel a little queasy when young actors are partaking in double entendre and other low brow humour.

How I Met your Mother: can't get into it. Seems weak and convoluted.

State of the Union: not a sitcom, but Tracey Ullman's latest sketch show. I've always thought she is very talented, with shows that feature a pretty appealing eccentricity. But - she's got too much control now, it seems, and the language and some of the skits are in very poor taste. (We don't really need jokes about ejaculate in a woman passenger's hair, do we?)

The Chaser's War on Everything: haven't cared much for it for a long time, due to its inability to know where to draw the lines between clever, stupid and tasteless. Should have ended about midway last season.

Wind problem for Great Britain

Wind power plan blown off course

The Government was facing a growing credibility gap over green jobs last night as environmental campaigners and trade unionists united to fight the closure of Britain's sole major wind turbine plant.

Only last week, ministers proclaimed a green employment future for the UK involving 400,000 jobs in environmental industries such as renewable energy – yet this week they are declining to intervene over the forthcoming closure of the Vestas Wind Systems plant on the Isle of Wight, with nearly 600 redundancies.

Mars within reach (eventually)

Ion engine could one day power 39-day trips to Mars - New Scientist

Ahem. If people want an idea of what it's like to have been a space enthusiast for the last 43 years, I can tell you that I remember in primary school I once gave a short "topic talk" on the promise of ion engines. This was based on a very detailed book at the local library (in the kid's section, mind you) about the future of space technology. I can still kind of remember the look of the book.

I also remember coming up with a detail about ion rockets which was a bit of a guess, but years later I read something that indicated it was correct.

Mind you, I don't remember anyone in the class room being particularly impressed. I think the teacher's reaction was one of half interested approval, but for all I know she may have thought it was all science fiction.

So, 40 years later the idea is still being talked about as a possibility, and work on them continues at a very slow pace.

Maybe my grandchildren will take a cruise to Mars on a ion rocket, and on the way read this digital evidence of my foresight (and high self regard.)

Travel warning for all male Goth readers

Gulfnews: Sharjah police enforce old law against men wearing accessories

Thirteen-year-old Mohammad was with a group of friends in Al Qasba area when he was reportedly approached by a police officer and taken to the police headquarters. His silver necklace had to go.

Another resident, Jeril Jaison Varghese, says he was in front of the Multiplex in Mega Mall to watch a movie when a CID officer asked him for his identification.

"I was taken to the Sharjah Police office inside the mall by a security guy from the mall. My silver bracelet was confiscated by the CID," he said.

When Varghese asked why his bracelet was being taken away, he says, police said men are not allowed to wear bracelets or any fashion accessories in Sharjah malls even if it is silver and not gold.

Mohammad from Sudan said his 18-year old nephew who came from Abu Dhabi to visit his grandmother in Sharjah was taken last week to the headquarters for wearing a silver necklace.

"The boy was afraid. He was standing in front of his grandmother's house when police took him to the CID. After three hours he contacted us," said Mohammad. Residents said Sharjah authorities should inform people who wish to come here that men must not wear fashion accessories.

Diamond earrings, silver bracelets and necklaces are all verboten for men by law in this corner of the Middle East. Pity that most teenagers don't read the newspaper and don't know about an 8 year old law that they have suddenly decided to enforce. (Pity about tourists too.)

How nice can you make a box?

House in Nagoya by Suppose Design Office

This small house in Nagoya looks almost like an oversized shipping container on the outside, but inside it's really very nice.

One obvious issue though: as many people in comments observe, is it really a good idea to have the toilet separated from the dining room only by glass? Talk about your shy bladders. Maybe when that internal plant grows bigger, you can literally go "behind the bushes" without ever leaving the house.

Someone in comments thinks they can see a curtain rail in the bathroom ceiling, so maybe there is a chance of privacy.

The other practical issues I can see with this design are:

* in summer, so many skylights present a real heat problem, surely.

* with so much internal glass, the owner's had better like having to wiping huge areas with Windex every week.

* it has a fairly typical designer's (and Japanese) disdain for safety about heights. No rails on the stairs, open windows on the upper level overlooking the internal garden. It's like a death trap for small children and drunks. (A very elegant one, but a death trap all the same.)

Fish up, red meat down

Large Study Points to the Brain Benefits of Eating Fish

The study, which included 15,000 people ages 65 and older in China, India, Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Peru and the Dominican Republic, found that those who ate fish nearly every day were almost 20 percent less likely to develop dementia than those who ate fish just a few days a week. Adults who ate fish a few days a week were almost 20 percent less likely to develop dementia than those who ate no fish at all.

“There is a gradient effect, so the more fish you eat, the less likely you are to get dementia,” said Dr. Emiliano Albanese, a clinical epidemiologist at King’s College London and the senior author of the study. “Exactly the opposite is true for meat,” he added. “The more meat you eat, the more likely you are to have dementia.” Other studies have shown that red meat in particular may be bad for the brain.

The story, however, notes that this was an observational study, not a randomized clinical trial, so maybe the figures are not as reliable as they could be.

If they believe it is the Omega 3 that is the protective element, is it so hard to do the proper randomized trial on that as a supplement? Or has it already been done?

Well, that just took a quick Google to find that some studies have been done with Omega 3 as a supplement, and the results are very mixed. (Although it looks to me like the studies were done on people who already have a problem. I guess it is very hard to randomly pick a bunch of 60 year olds, get them to take a supplement for years, and see what protective effect it has.)

Back to the drawing board

Death knell for NASA's Ares rockets? - New Scientist

Quite a detailed explanation here of a major safety issue for the planned Ares rocket. (It's very hard to work out how to get the crew safely away from an exploding first stage.)

Update: I see Zoe Brain had a good post about this before me, which included a very spectacular video of a solid rocket explosion that is well worth watching.

Good sense

PM Kevin Rudd told nuclear is best hope by Rio Tinto | The Australian

MINING giant Rio Tinto has urged Kevin Rudd to immediately begin work on a regulatory regime allowing use of nuclear energy in Australia, arguing the viability of energy alternatives has been dramatically overstated.

The company has advised the government to consider "every option" for power generation because its pledges on reducing carbon emissions and using renewable energy will expose industry and consumers to huge increases in their power bills.

And it says that overly optimistic assumptions on the viability of alternatives such as wind and geothermal power, as well as so-called clean coal technologies, have created a "false optimism" which the government must challenge by commissioning new research.

Of course, the first challenge is to get the Labor Party to change its anti nuclear policy:

....Resources Minister Martin Ferguson emphatically rejected the need for nuclear power generation in Australia, insisting that the nation had ample resources of cheap coal and gas to meet its energy needs.

Mr Ferguson told The Australian he saw no reason for next week's federal Labor Party conference to review the party's prohibition on nuclear energy.

I can't imagine Labor changing its policy any time soon, and even if it did, election predictions on Insiders last week were that the Greens will hold the balance of power in the Senate next time, whether or not there is a double dissolution.

The Greens will doom us if the Senate's co-operation is needed to ensure nuclear power. (I presume it is for the new "regulatory regime".)

Vote Coalition for sensible long term nuclear policy!

Liddle on Dubai

Sordid reality behind Dubai's gilded facade - Times Online

First it was The Independent, now the Times has run a lengthy, detailed article absolutely ripping into Dubai.

It's by Ron Liddle, so there is humour in there too, but he is clearly genuinely appalled at every aspect of the place.

Liddle makes it clear that the most offensive thing is that it is built by appalling treated immigrant labour, about which he writes:

The Indians rioted too last year, but were forced back to work by water cannon. In the year 2005 alone, the Indian consulate estimated that 971 of its nationals died in Dubai, from construction site accidents, heat exhaustion and — increasingly — suicide. The figure for suicides the next year alone was more than 100. The Emiratis were, to give them credit, appalled by this figure, so they asked the consulate to stop collating the statistics.

The whole article is worth reading.

Convenient memory lapse

Neighbour watches woman prepare syringes in front of children: inquest

The neighbour of a Sydney woman whose child died of a methadone overdose told police he watched her prepare syringes full of amphetamines in front of her children on several occasions, an inquest has heard....

In the statement, taken in May 2006, the man - who cannot be named for legal reasons - described being at the woman's home on five occasions sharing $100 worth of amphetamines with her partner and his own partner.

"I have seen [the woman] divide the powdered drugs up and melt her half in a spoon and then put it into two separate syringes. This all occurred in [her] home," the man said in his statement.

"I remember seeing both the two girls running around the house when we used to divide the drugs up."

The man said he often saw "lots" of syringes around the family's home.

But before the coroner today:

...the man could not recall much of what he said in his statement and said he did not know why he had said it.

"Compared to other kids, they were excellent ... always well dressed," he said.

"[The boy] was always smiling.

Drug users are such a likeable bunch.

More lunar comments, and why humanity should expand

* Last night I saw some of the 2007 doco (previously noted on this blog) "In the Shadow of the Moon" about the Apollo program. (It's currently showing on a Foxtel movie channel.) It is very, very good. I see that the DVD version has lots of worthwhile extras. Go on - some reader finally reward me, you cheap freeloaders. :-P

* How come it's now that everyone thinks it's all interesting and heroic? Is it because of a realisation that the manned space program being stuck in orbit for the last few decades is kind of dull by comparison? You fickle public - I've been wanting NASA to go back to the Moon for 30 years, so my retirement cave could be built by now. But no, you wanted to twiddle around on earth, waiting for the next asteroid to take out civilisation.

* Warning: religious speculation and sentiment follows: Actually, I do want to talk more about that last point. It seems to me that to a significant extent, some versions of Christian (and probably Islamic, or even Buddhist) faith act as something of a hindrance to the idea of humanity expanding beyond earth. I don't share the view, and want to explain why.

As far as general anti-science sentiment is concerned, I find it hard to understand why conservative Christians seem to be strongly associated with disbelief of Anthropogenic Global Warming (or ocean acidification): do they just have faith that the Second Coming will happen before people can really stuff up the planet?

Actually, a lot of them resist AGW because of their perception of the environmentalist movement as a replacement religion for the one true religion. I used to pretty much agree with that assessment, and it annoyed me that the Greenies were against space programs and tended to be anti-science and development generally. (The Deep Greens are just anti-people.) But now, I don't see how anyone can plausibly claim that climate scientists as a group are motivated by such quasi-religious views. There are too many who have come to the same opinion; some may have a prior philosophical bent towards being "treehuggers", but it's more plausible to believe that most are actually quite fond of technology, people, and high living standards. Even if they are recommending big changes to the way we use resources, I doubt that many are motivated by valuing nature more than humanity.

On the other hand, environmentalists have seemingly become a bit more sanguine about the practically implausible idea of ever being able to eradicate poverty in every corner of the Earth before you can justify doing something off it.

If anything, the threat of AGW is turning sensible environmentalists into technology fans - especially when it comes to nuclear power. Is it too much to hope that we might also see soon environmentalists warming to the idea of lunar colonies as a lifeboat for the survival of humanity and its knowledge? This function of space exploration is, in my view, actually quite a sound immediate justification. It's also why I think it is rather a waste to go to Mars in the short term, especially if you can find ice on the Moon. Nothing's ever going to be able to come back from the Red Planet in a hurry.

Christian religious ideas can intrude into other scientifically plausible plans for humanity's protection. Once, I was talking to someone about the merits of asteroid watch programs, so that plans could be made to push them out of the way before they can hit the earth. The response (from a not overly devote Catholic) was "But maybe it's God's plan that the earth be hit."

Of course, sensible people don't say that any more about a deadly disease that we can vaccinate against, but when it comes to space projects, I think the sentiment is not that uncommon. It just seems that when the scale of a project becomes very large, it's easy to slip into fatalist mode. If the person is religious, that may entail the idea of not resisting a divine plan.

As for some Christian views about the colonization of space, I suspect there is also skepticism that this is where the future lies due to a limited imagination for the Second Coming. This may be a particular issue for evangelical Protestants, but I also suspect conservative Catholics have this influence.

The thing is, some believers feel that it must only be a earth-bound event. It's been painted that way in popular fictional works in American Protestanism in particular. But even so, my sister made speculative comments to me years ago that maybe it would only involve the earth, and that the rest of the universe would continue. (Indeed, she said that maybe heaven was on another planet. The Mormons are inclined to think that way, but I was surprised to hear it from a Catholic.)

Well, for my part, I have always assumed that the Christian view of the end of the world involves the entire universe. The very fabric of reality would change entirely, not just a single planet. Maybe if you believe in a "steady state" universe, the idea of being able to live for eternity as a resurrected person within the universe we see is half-way plausible. But if you believe (as everyone virtually does now) in an evolving universe that will end in either fire or ice, I don't see how you can believe in just a local transformation.

(By the way, a change to the quantum vacuum energy state does to allow for a possible way for the entire universe to flip into something very different. I like to speculate that a resurrected body in a universe with very different physics may have a chance of avoiding the decay and calamities of normal matter in this universe. But really, I tend much more towards the idea of eternal heaven being extra-dimensional, or in a divine cyber realm, rather than involving any form of dumb matter at all.)

So - maybe it's because I have never believed in a purely planetary Second Coming that I have never had any religious motivation for doubting that God does not care if humanity moves off planet.

Furthermore, there is not a lot of evidence that God takes particular care to preserve humanity from death by natural disaster.

It's one of the odd aspects of faith that believers can realise that the idea of effective prayer raises all sort of philosophical conundrums, yet engage in it anyway as a fundamental part of their faith. (CS Lewis writes well about this.) Similarly, I don't see it as especially problematic that we should indeed hope that it is not within any divine countenance that humanity could be snuffed out by planetary catastrophe, but at the same time take our own collective steps to make sure it doesn't happen.

If you take the Old Testament as a guide, people used to believe that God was not necessarily adverse to instigating widespread destruction, albeit with the possibility of humanity starting afresh. While I would never promote that the idea of the Flood as fact, perhaps it's something of a pity that modern Christians have lost the belief that the entire world could be pretty much destroyed by nature, and instead view God as always being our foolproof protector.

If only all believers could accept that God helps those who help themselves, as the old saying goes, even on the planetary scale. It seems to me to be the sensible way to act, and I don't see the risk of any offence to God. Presumably, He's quite happy to see us out of caves and not being smitten by disease and disaster on as regular a basis as before. Yet He didn't build our cities, hospitals and houses for us, I don't see why it would worry Him if we did it off planet.

It also seems to me that, 60 years ago, at the dawn of the space age, religious figures did not express the type of expansionist skepticism that seems to be around now. CS Lewis, for example, while deeply conservative, read and wrote science fiction, and never to my knowledge expressed views that it would be wrong to explore or live off planet. A few priests in the 1960's might have had sermons about government priorities in spending, but it was not a big feature in my experience. I think there was just an assumption at that time that humans would move outward, and faith would follow. (Ray Bradbury had priests on Mars, and many other writers of the Golden Age of science fiction saw that religion would still be around in the future. I find it an annoying feature of a lot of recent science fiction that so many of its authors have cannot imagine our present religions playing such a role.)

So, it is unfortunate that religion, to some degree at least, can play into the hands of anti-expansionist sentiment that is still strong in some branches of environmentalism. It does not have to be that way.

Stupid fashion of the month

Bleached or shaved eyebrows are now all the rage

Mind you, you can't say that strange ideas as to what looks good with head hair is only a recent phenomena. I have long wondered how on earth the Japanese thought the male top knot with partially shaved pate was a good idea for so long. (And the Japanese certainly have never forgotten that the fashion existed: period dramas featuring it are a perennial feature on NHK TV in particular.)

Happy 40th

Here's some of the more unusual stories around about the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11:

* the Los Angeles Times has a great article on the engineering side of building the Saturn V rocket. It seems it was a remarkably close call that they sorted out all of the engine problems in time, and it's noted that the Russians failed in their competitive attempt due to their engineering failure in overcoming the same problems.

* Edgar Mitchell, a moonwalker from Apollo 14, gives a brief interview about his experience. He's of note because of his (some would say) esoteric interests in ESP, global consciousness, UFO's and such like.

* Those who worked at the NASA Australia radio dishes have been spreading the word that the movie "The Dish" gets the history wrong. The first images of Armstrong stepping out did not come through the radio dish at Parkes:

Some will know the story of the movie 'The Dish' which tells a 'Hollywood-view' of what happened. However, the radio telescope at Parkes was not the dish that provided those first images. In fact those views first came through the NASA station in Goldstone, California, but an incorrect switch setting and poor ground-links meant that their TV picture was upsidedown and poor contrast (although the sound was perfect).

With moments to spare before Armstrong was on the surface, NASA looked to the Parkes Radio Telescope, Tidbinbilla and the Honeysuckle Creek tracking stations. Parkes didn't have a strong signal at the time due to the low position of the Moon above their horizon. Tidbinbilla was supporting the Command Module. Honeysuckle Creek was prime on the Lunar Module with the astronauts on the surface. They had a TV image and this was being transmitted through ABC studios in Sydney to TVs around Australia. NASA saw the feed coming through Honeysuckle and switched over for the international broadcast to their picture - meanwhile the sound for the international broadcast was still coming through Goldstone.

The first 8 minutes of the broadcast including Armstrong's first steps on the Moon were seen through the transmissions received at Honeysuckle Creek. Once the Moon was higher in their sky, the TV picture at Parkes' larger dish were then relayed over to Houston and the remaining 2 hours of the Moonwalk were seen through that antenna.

* According to one report, Neil Armstrong thinks going back to the Moon first is the better choice than planning on going to Mars. I agree. See some of my previous posts here, here and here.

* The Daily Telegraph paints a picture of Armstrong as a recluse who doesn't want anyone knowing who he is. The article gets better, but at the start it makes it sound like he lives in a spooky looking house and the local kids throw stones at "Boo Armstrong". The Independent has a more flattering look at Armstrong and all of the Apollo astronauts.

As for my recollections of the day, I have to make an embarrassing admission. While an avid follower of all things NASA since I was a child, my memory of where exactly I watched Armstrong stepping out has become blurred. This is because some of the time, they set up a TV at school and we watched Apollo 11 stuff in the classroom, but I am also pretty sure that they allowed us home to watch the first footstep there. Certainly, I see other Australians have posted that their school let them go home, so I think I probably watched it in glorious black and white (the only TV that existed in Australia at the time, moon landing or not) at home. I was 8; I guess there isn't a whole lot I can remember specifically about that year.

One would think my memory of this would be clearer, but for years I have realised I do not have as good a recollection as I would have hoped.

Update: the NASA orbiter photos of the Apollo landing sites can all be seen here.

Der Spielgel goes undercover

Pubic Shaving Trend Baffles Experts - SPIEGEL ONLINE

The article notes the shaving industry's promotion of this fashion, with dubious surveys being done for PR purposes, as well as a new issue it is causing for females (dissatisfaction with the external appearance of the region that was formerly not so obvious.)

That second issue was the subject of a (what else) Channel 4 documentary shown on SBS sometime last year.

That cosmetic surgeons should be doing operations to change the appearance of perfectly normal bodies in a region hardly on regular display just reinforce my resolve that, come the revolution (ie, upon my ascension to the position of Benevolent Dictator) that is first profession I would be sending to the Gulag. (At least until they recant and open up as bulk billing General Practitioners in underserviced towns.)

More deep thoughts for a weekend

An interesting sounding paper has turned up on arXiv talking about physicist John Cramer's "Transactional Interpretation" of quantum theory.

Wikipedia has a short entry on the theory, which basically involves the idea of the quantum world being governed by "offer waves" that travel forward in time meeting up with "confirmation waves" that travel backward in time.

The paper talks about the "Quantum Liar Experiment", which has this consequence:

Elitzur and Dolev refer to this as the “quantum liar” experiment because, in their words: “The very fact that one atom is positioned in a place that seems to preclude its interaction with the other atom leads to its being affected by that other atom. This is logically equivalent to the statement: ‘This sentence has never been written.”’

An issue with the transactional interpretation is the nature of the waves. It seems Cramer says they are physical waves, but the author of this new paper has a different take:

Clearly, when we consider experiments like the QLE in the usual conceptual way, we encounter nothing but paradoxes and contradictions, which are always the hallmark of a constraining paradigm. We can break through the impasse by viewing offer and confirmation waves not as ordinary physical waves but rather as “waves of possibility” that have access to a larger physically real space of possibilities.

In the conclusion, it's said:

...TI continues to provide an elegant and natural account of quantum phenomena, provided that we consider offer and confirmation waves as residing in a “higher” physical space corresponding to the configuration space of all particles involved. This space can be considered as a physically real space of possibilities; thus “real” is not equivalent to “actual.” This is admittedly a bold new ontological picture in the context of quantum theory interpretations, but it should be seriously considered because it accomodates the formalism of quantum theory, including its implicit time-symmetric aspects, in a natural way. As a side-benefit, it also provides further insight into the origins of “quantum wholeness.” In this picture, actualized phenomena constitute just the “tip of the iceberg” of a space of physically real possibilities.

What does it all mean? I don't know, but I like the phrase "physically real space of possibilities", becuase I am sure there must be theological fodder in it! (Sounds to me like somewhere God would live.)

What's the hurry?

Doctors split over organ donation switch

DOCTORS are calling for tougher rules on organ donation after a new national protocol said surgeons could start removing organs just two minutes after someone's heart has stopped beating.

While most organ donations in Australia have, until now, involved brain-dead people, a new technique called "donation after cardiac death" has raised legal and ethical questions about what can be done to keep donors' organs viable and who can provide consent for such procedures....

Some doctors have told The Age that they have serious concerns about the protocol, including the minimum time of two minutes between a donor's heart stopping and surgery; the potential for donors to still have feeling during surgery; the risk of ante mortem interventions harming the donor, and what constitutes informed consent for such procedures.

Nine years of bombs

Gulfnews: Timeline of recent bomb attacks in Indonesia

Many of these from earlier in the decade I don't recall. Still, it's quite an appalling death and injury toll over the period.

Cranky man speaks

Jonathan Miller looks back in anger, and a few laughs - Times Online

Jonathan Miller is probably best known here for his old TV documentary series "The Body in Question," but I also remember him as being terribly funny in some Parkinson interviews in the 1980's. As he has spent most of his time since then doing opera, he hasn't cut a very high profile (outside of those rarified circles) for many years.

He's now 75, and looking his age (he smokes, silly man), but his sharp tongued political observations continue unabated. He was famous for saying Margaret Thatcher's voice was like "a perfumed fart", but here is his assessment of Tony Blair:

“Well, I have a deep disdain for them [Tony and Cherie]. I couldn’t bear that grinning, money-hungry, beaming, Cliff Richard-loving, Berlusconi-adoring, guitar-playing twat. I suppose I would say that, at the risk of being inoffensive. No, it’s that beaming Christianity and that frightful wife with a mouth on a zip-fastener right round to the back of her head. And both of them obsessed with being wealthy. And he got us into this disastrous war with Iraq because he had consulted with God. Like Bush. Well, anyone who claims to do something on the basis of a personal relationship to a non-existent deity . . .”

Top marks for invective, anyway.

Nature restored

Male penguin couple splits over widowed female

I also learned from Colbert last night that San Francisco's "gay" penguin couple had split up, with one of them taking up with a "widowed" female. (See story above.)

Funny, but when I search this, it seems to have attracted much less media attention than the original story of the male birds pairing up.

Anyway, I'll allow for humans to start taking their moral cues from animals when hamster mothers stop eating their babies.

Guns, guns, guns

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Difference Makers - Doug Jackson
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Jeff Goldblum

Colbert Report has a funny/amazing story on some gun law changes in the USA.

When it comes to guns, a substantial number of Americans are undoubtedly "different", but not in a good way.

Track the shuttle

A Google gadget for real time space shuttle tracking is now at the bottom of this page. (I may fiddle and put it somewhere more prominent later.)

Do people also realise that the "Clouds" gadget is updated every 3 hours to show global clouds. (I expect some people think that clouds are fixed.)

All very cool, if you ask me.

Green shellfish

How to pick out sustainable seafood. - By Nina Shen Rastogi - Slate Magazine

Interesting to note for the above article:

For an easy way to cut your seafood-related emissions, try to shift your diet toward farmed oysters, mussels, and clams—these shellfish don't require any processed feed. (They eat plankton instead.) Many experts also recommend that you make like a European and learn to love smaller, schooling fish like sardines, anchovies, and mackerel. They're easier to catch than big, bottom-dwelling carnivores like cod and haddock, meaning less fuel is expended to harvest them. (Plus, since they're lower on the food chain, they're naturally more energy efficient.)

For some reason, though, fish shops around Brisbane charge quite a high price for sardines.

Media trouble in Gaza

Why Palestinian leaders have banned Al Jazeera | csmonitor.com

The Palestinian Authority (PA) on Wednesday banned Al Jazeera television from operating in its territory and threatened to take legal action against the Qatar-based Arabic satellite channel because of allegations it made against President Mahmoud Abbas. Al Jazeera ran an interview a day earlier in which Farouk Kaddoumi, a senior leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), charged that Mr. Abbas conspired with Israel in 2003 to kill Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat....

Officials in Ramallah have complained in the past few years – particularly since Hamas ousted Fatah from Gaza amid intense fighting in 2007 – that the station has grown more sympathetic toward Hamas than Fatah.

Kind of hard for peace in the Middle East to be reached when one side is so incredibly fractured. (Yes, Jews are pretty divided on how to reach peace too, but their problems do not extend to internal kidnappings, murder and media bans.)

Bing off

Bing continues to climb. What’s Microsoft’s target? (Hint: It’s not Google.)

Apparently, Microsoft's Bing search engine is gaining ground at a good enough rate.

I am not convinced. Based on comparisons for the same search terms in Google, I reckon it's pretty hopeless. (Especially when I search for this blog!)

The half expected orphans

Oldest mother, Maria Carmen del Bousada, dies at 69, leaving baby orphans - Times Online

Some Japanese photos

Japan hasn't featured around here much lately, but I can recommend these links for the photos, all from Bouncing Red Ball:

* One of the great things about Japan is the apparent laissez faire attitude to town planning and building design, yet the cities still work. Can you imagine, for example, even the smallest cafe or bar in Australia being allowed to incorporate a toilet situated like this one?

* It's not just the corridors, there are entire buildings which are just incredibly narrow by Western standards. Such designs make me very curious as to how the interior is set out.

* I've already posted about the giant model Gundam robot that has been built in a Japanese park, but you should really look at this very impressive set of photos of it.

Pork your way to health

Eat more pork to fight type 2 diabetes

The funding for the study came (surprise!) from Australian Pork Limited and the Pork Co-operative Research Centre, not that there's anything wrong with that...

Odd behavioural problem of the day

Treatment for Hair-Pulling Shows Success - TIME

Quite a surprising report about how an over the counter antioxidant appears to help a majority of people who suffer from compulsive hair pulling.

The report also notes some interesting details about the condition:

We seem wired to attack our hair under traumatic conditions, possibly because forcibly extracting hair is painful; it can divert attention from stress to the more immediate matter of how to solve a pressing problem. For chronic hair pullers, that diversion turns into addictive psychological relief. Some people with trichotillomania pull out hairs not only from their heads but also from their pubic areas and armpits; as many as 20% eat their hair; a small minority pull other people's hairs.

Why does the antioxidant work?:

The compound is thought to work by reducing the synaptic release of a neurotransmitter called glutamate. As Grant told me, glutamate is the communication chemical that "tells the brain, 'Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!' And the rest of the brain can be overwhelmed by this drive state." Reduce glutamate and you may reduce the drive state. Previous studies have suggested the supplement may also reduce urges to use cocaine and to gamble.

Well, that sounds a useful first thing to try for other strange obsessions then, from wanting a perfectly normal limb removed to having a sex change operation (at least if you are not genetically inter-sexed). Cue Zoe Brain to explain why I should not be drawing equivalences between those two conditions.

Makes sense

If you care about climate change, stop talking and start taxing. - By Anne Applebaum - Slate Magazine

Applebaum argues that governments simply need to tax oil, gas and coal at sufficient levels so as to make alternative energy investment attractive to clean energy entrepreneurs.

A tax can do that tomorrow. A carbon trading scheme full of compensation, introductory periods and in need of further amendment down the track may take years to get that right.

(The only hesitation is that taxes are subject to revision too, I suppose, but still it removes so many of the complexities of carbon trading, I think it's a worthwhile risk.)

Krugman is down

Paul Krugman was on Colbert Report tonight, and seemed so depressed about the prospects for economic recovery that he simply ignored most attempts to engage in humour:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Paul Krugman
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Jeff Goldblum

Probably right

Bruno review: The Current Cinema: The New Yorker

My favourite movie reviewer Anthony Lane has written about Bruno. While I have no interest in seeing it, I strongly suspect Lane is on the money.

I note in particular that he now agrees completely with what Christopher Hitchens said about Borat, namely that Baron Cohen's humour actually misfires in that his American targets come out of it as showing remarkable good manners in the face of attempted humiliation. Here's Lane:

I realized, watching “Borat” again, that what it exposed was not a vacuity in American manners but, more often than not, a tolerance unimaginable elsewhere. Borat’s Southern hostess didn’t shriek when he appeared with a bag of feces; she sympathized, and gently showed him what to do, and the same thing happens in “Brüno,” when a martial-arts instructor, confronted by a foreigner with two dildos, doesn’t flinch. He teaches Brüno some defensive moves, then adds, “This is totally different from anything I’ve ever done.” Ditto the Hollywood psychic—another risky target, eh?—who watches Brüno mime an act of air-fellatio and says, after completion, “Well, good luck with your life.” In both cases, I feel that the patsy, though gulled, comes off better than the gag man; the joke is on Baron Cohen, for foisting indecency on the decent. The joker is trumped by the square.

Hence, I have no interest in Baron Cohen's style of comedy.

Also, I strongly suspect that Lane is correct on the question of whether the film hurts or harms gays as a group:

....I’m afraid that “Brüno” feels hopelessly complicit in the prejudices that it presumes to deride. You can’t honestly defend your principled lampooning of homophobia when nine out of every ten images that you project onscreen comply with the most threadbare cartoons of gay behavior. A schoolboy who watches a pirated DVD of this film will look at the prancing Austrian and find more, not fewer, reasons to beat up the kid on the playground who doesn’t like girls. There is, on the evidence of this movie, no such thing as gay love; there is only gay sex, a superheated substitute for love, with its own code of vulcanized calisthenics whose aim is not so much to sate the participants as to embarrass onlookers from the straight—and therefore straitlaced—society beyond.

Mind you, I also agree with the point made by Piers Akerman that it's a bit rich for gays who support the Sydney Mardi Gras and the image that it promotes to complain about Bruno showing a stereotype.

It's a pity the media sucks up Baron Cohen's "talent" for self promotion with such gusto. But then, I suppose reality TV has shown the public's current unfortunate appetite for humiliation as entertainment.

Right for the wrong reason , and how to be pro-nuclear

Even Gore thinks Rudd goes too far | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Andrew Bolt promotes skepticism of "clean coal" technology, and he's right to do so I reckon. (Have a look at the link to the letter from Professor Ivan Kennedy.)

It makes much more sense (to me) to use the money to help investment in ways to avoid producing the CO2 in the first place.

Climate change issues are very complicated: half the time the people who want to do something about it are wrong (misplaced trust in carbon trading schemes, clean coal & wind power; dragging their feet on new nuclear; not caring much about the coal sold to China and India;) and half the time the people who don't want to do anything about it are right by being dismissive of those same things, even if it is for the wrong reason.

Speaking of nuclear power, I see that Brave New Climate has become very fond of the idea lately. But, in the Australian political climate, the argument just doesn't get any serious consideration. Couldn't Malcolm Turnbull mark out a distinctive position for the Liberals by getting it to promote small scale nuclear for Australia? I am inclined to believe that thoughtful city dwellers would buy it.

Part of the problem is that most AGW proponents of nuclear go for new, big designs. (IFR, thorium, etc). My inclination is still to go for small, modular designs, about which Next Big Future recently ran a story promoting their cost benefits. (It also had a post listing the various types that are proposed.)

Apart from cost, I suspect that the roll-out time for small modular reactors would be a lot quicker than building giant individual ones. It also seems that many small designs do not have the problem of requiring siting next to the ocean for cooling water, hence solving the major issue of which bit of our prized coast line is going to scarificed to a power plant. (Queensland would claim the reefs mean it can't be there; Victorians will worry about their penguins, etc.)

Sadly, the South African plans for a test of a pebble bed reactor (small, modular and intrinsically incapable of meltdown) continue to recede further into the future, yet it seems to me to the ideal form of reactor research and development to be funded by government.

China continues to work on a similar design, but with that country's appalling product safety history, I am not sure that a Chinese design is an easy sell to the Australian public.

I would be much happier for our government, or the Americans, to buy into the South African development project to get their test reactor up and running, rather than spending billions on carbon sequestration.

Roman days

I'm currently slowly reading "Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome" by J Balsdon. It's actually a 1969 book, now sold in cheap paperback edition in discount book shops.

My knowledge of day to day life in those times is very limited. Watching "I Claudius," "Gladiator" and the recent Dr Who episode set in Pompeii is about it, really. I suppose I could get a better idea by ploughing through Colleen McCullough's Roman novels, but I am not convinced she is a good enough writer. [Update: I forgot, but I did quite like the British Museum's section on Rome too, where I became aware of the popularity of the phallic symbol as a sort of "good luck" charm, and household gods. I remain curious about how particular household gods were created in the first place. Somewhere in England, I think at Hadrian's Wall, I also learnt about how they used sponges on sticks instead of toilet paper.]

So far, the book is actually very enjoyable, and every few pages there is something odd and novel that I feel like sharing. Here are some examples:

* August 24, October 5 and November 8 were believed to be the days that the entrance to the underworld was open. There were another three days when the ghosts of the dead were out and about. While I know many cultures share the idea of a "ghost" day, what is the point of having another set of days in which the entrance to the underworld is open? In any event, they were unlucky days on which nothing important could be done. I like to imagine the exchanges in some toga-clad planning committee trying to set a good day for the equivalent of a school fete: "no, no, you can't do it on that Saturday, remember the gates of the underworld are open that day."
"Ah, oh yeah, yeah, sorry forgot about that one."

* On March 15, the festival of Anna Perenna was a holiday in which people went to a river bank north of the city and "lay about promiscuously in the open or in tents, drank heavily (one glass for every further year of life that was desired) and, in the evening, reeled back to the city in tipsy procession." All sounds like some festivals in present day England. I assume the alcohol content of the drinks was less than today (they drank wine with water, I think) otherwise those desiring a long life would have been at high risk of ending it early by alcohol poisoning.

* The low birth rate within Roman families is noted, although the reasons why are apparently not entirely clear. The widespread use of lead may well have had something to do with it. Certainly, contraception was often desired, but not effective, and abortion as well as "exposing infants" (leaving outside them to die - or, if lucky, be rescued by strangers) was common. God knows what the rate of death by botched abortion might have been - the author does not describe the methods. Abortion was made illegal in the second century, but it appears there was never a law against abandoning infants.

Interestingly, the reason for abandonment was often simply economic. The much maligned Emporer Constantine introduced immediate economic relief for the poor who were at risk of doing this. He also allowed them to sell their children (often to slave nurseries), but with the proviso that if things improved, they could buy them back. A big improvement on being left on a rock for the night, at least, but whether that makes up for his having his son and wife killed is debatable. (He's a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, but as far as I know, Roman Catholics don't spend a lot of time celebrating him. Evelyn Waugh wrote a novel about his mother Helena, and told a friend how Constantine figured in it as - if I recall correctly - "a bit of a sh*t.")

It's interesting to think that State welfare to encourage the raising of children started 2,000 years ago.

Anyhow, it's a good read, and well worth a look.

The past stinks

From a TLS review of a new book on the Palace of Versailles:

Water was in great demand and caused enormous problems. The fountains used up half a million litres in three hours. In the eighteenth century they were rarely switched on, and in summer the basins emitted pestilential odours. A great reservoir at the end of the North Wing provided water for washing and for the kitchens and stables, usually in an insanitary way. A brisk washing of hands and faces was often sufficient for most courtiers, and perfumes seldom counteracted the remaining body odours. A bath was a sex aid rather than an act of personal hygiene. Before the water closet became a royal privilege, the chaise percée was the norm. There were 274 of them in Louis XIV’s time. The king and leading courtiers habitually gave audience while seated on theirs. The ambitious Parmesan diplomat Alberoni paid a compliment to the homosexual duc de Vendôme as the latter rose from his chaise percée by exclaiming ecstatically “O culo d’angelo”, as the duke wiped his backside. The gist of Newton’s findings is that Versailles stank, as courtiers and their servants urinated in corners and on staircases. Drains were inadequate, refuse and dead animals were simply thrown out in the public way, and vidangeurs had the unenviable task of cleaning out stinking cesspools.

What a great word: "pestilential".

Tesla remembered

Happy birthday, Nikola Tesla: thanks for the electricity

Good to see Nikola Tesla remembered in The Guardian. It's well worth reading up on him, if you never have before.

He certainly was a character well suited to science fiction speculations, yet I don't recall him appearing in any famous movie.

Precision

Apollo special: Mirrors on the moon - New Scientist

A good article about the measurements done by laser on the Earth-Moon distance.

Did you know that they can measure the distance to within a few millimetres? And at this scale, you have to take into account the solar radiation pressure that can push the moon about 4 mm?

No, nor did I. It's hard to imagine how precisely some scientific measurements can now be made.

Funny the way things turn out...

It's been an odd feature of the last 20 years of politics here how Labor's view of itself as the "natural" party for better Australian foreign policy has gone all askew. On the face of it, one would think that they have a point: it sees itself as less subservient to the US, emphasizes independence of foreign policy development and the importance of regional engagement, and academic foreign policy experts all appear broadly to be aligned with such sentiments.

Yet, I don't think anyone seriously denies that Keating was about as far off the mark as he possibly could have been when he said Asia would not take a Howard government "seriously".

Now, we have the counter-intuitive situation of aPrime Minister with apparent superb credentials to impress the Chinese getting slapped around the face by said country.

Go on Kevin, we're waiting to be impressed with your resolution of this problem.

Long life in a pill?

If red wine's good, are resveratrol pills even better? - Los Angeles Times

Interesting article on how resveratrol (a potentially health promoting compound in red wine) is being sold to the public well before anyone knows if it works on humans, or at what dosage.

Impatience of this type is often unwise.

Baby power

How to ensure lost wallets are returned - Telegraph

A weekend in July

Some highlights:

* Saturday night ox tail stew. This is a dish for which a pressure cooker is indispensable. A better winter meal (served on mashed potatoes, with some green beans and couple of glasses of red) is hard to imagine.

* A visit to the Queensland Maritime Museum. It's been maybe 20 years since I had been there, and I was really impressed. Years ago, it was a bit of an amateur enthusiasts' jumble, but now the new-ish main exhibit hall is set out with high quality exhibits full of interesting detail. (Queensland Museum, go have a look.) The centrepiece of the museum remains, however, the HMAS Diamantina, a former Navy ship that saw some service in WWII, now sitting in a permanent dry dock originally built in the 1880's. The ship has been fitted out well (better than the last time I saw it), and all levels are open for people to wander around. Here's a photo (not the clearest, but still):



One of the exhibits in the main hall is an extract from an 1864 migrant ship on-board newspaper, written to entertain the passengers. Oddly, the then idea of entertainment included a serialisation of a real life shipwreck story. (This appearing after the introductory bit about how rough the weather has been lately, preventing the passengers from entertaining themselves "on the poop" as before.) There is also a birth on board recorded, indicating that migrants were made of sturdy stuff in those days. You can have a read of some of it if you click the image:


I think the story was that this was re-printed in Brisbane when the ship arrived: it did not appear in neat newsprint like this on board the ship.

There is a small admission price to this museum, but it is well worth it for half a day.

* Some extremely tender "wagyu" style rump steak on Sunday night. More red wine, this time the $1.99 a bottle cab sav from Dan Murphy's!. (Quite drinkable, but unremarkable. The steak was excellent, though.)

Embarrassing? Let me count the ways...

ADF man robbed of laptop by ladyboy | The Australian

THE Australian Defence Force is investigating a potential breach of national security after a naval officer in Bangkok was robbed of his Defence Department computer by a ladyboy he had brought back to his hotel room late at night.

Defence last night played down the security implications of the theft, saying the data in the laptop was of a low classification and it was password-protected.

The officer -- named in a Thai police report as Lieutenant Commander ....................., a qualified helicopter pilot who received the Order of Australia Medal in January -- was in Bangkok on official business and had gone out for the night to the city's Nana Plaza, an entertainment zone in the city full of go-go bars and where ladyboys also solicit in the streets.

An observation...

Has there ever been an uglier internet ad than the one for "The Gabriel Method". No, I'm not going to link to it, but you know, the weight loss whatever-it-is with the photo of the porker guy before (with shirt) and after (sans shirt)?

I've always found it deeply unappealing, yet it seems to be popping up more than ever. (I think it used to haunt conservative blogs in particular, but its reach now seems more widespread.)

Can someone design a Firefox tool that hides it from my sight?

Sure, like we need ones that are easier to lose

Buffalo jams 16GB in really tiny USB key

'ello?

Seems remarkably quiet, comment-wise, around here lately. I do my best to cover the best topics: sex, religion, politics, giant robots, but for nought...

UPDATE: blog re-designed somewhat. I'm quite pleased with the result. (But still some fiddling to be done to make it perfect.) Any novel Gadget/Widget suggestions are welcome.

UPDATE 2: that's odd. I just noticed that the upgrade to the "layouts" template made my links revert to a previous version, before I fixed them up a few weeks ago. I've got to go sort them out again (as well as insert headings.) Oh well...

Good news, kind of...

Low-end house prices 'to fall 10pc' | Property | News.com.au

The odd thing is, I guess for the first time buyer, government grants to encourage you to buy a house shouldn't really make much difference. I mean, while the grants are available, they artificially inflate the price, as everyone knows the government is funding a percentage of your buying power.

When the grants finish, the price should drop and the net cost to the first time buyer who has waited should be about the same.

The drop in price should also encourage investment buyers, which may have the effect of reducing rent (slightly) for those who can't buy.

The only losers are those who buy with a grant and who then need to sell soon after the grants cease. (Oh, and the rest of us who have had their taxes spent on a grant which may not really have helped first home buyers at all.)

On thin ice

Arctic sea ice has thinned by more than 40% in five years, Nasa satellites show

Of note in Slate

There are two fairly amusing articles of note in Slate.

The first: about the Segway and its image problem. Apparently, guided city tours on them are now "ubiquitous", and "help fulfill one of the iron laws of tourism: Thou shalt do things one would never do at home (eat tripe, smoke a water pipe, listen to French pop)." I am curious to try them at least once.

The second: William Saletan has a go at finding a loophole in the Catholic Church's official negative position on masturbation. Was there ever a teaching that was less followed in the history of the church? A much more realistic Christian approach to the topic - at least in the context of teenagers - can be found at this site, which appears to be written by an Australian youth worker associated with the Assemblies of God. However, the number of photos of boys plastered through the site (even though it is just their faces) works against it: it gives the feeling that the author has just a little too much interest in boys, even though his advice is pretty reasonable (if you're Christian, at least.)

Do as the giant robot commands!

Gundam promotes Tokyo 2016’s Olympic bid
(Go to the link to see a photo of said giant robot in Tokyo)

Iraqi veteran fabulist

The story of the Marine who wasn't - Los Angeles Times

As it happens, I am pretty certain I currently have a client who is a big-time fabulist.

My suspicions are likely to be confirmed soon if promised large amounts of money (not for my benefit) do not arrive.

Miyazaki news of the day

Hayao Miyazaki, Anime’s Master, to Visit San Diego Comic-Con - NYTimes.com

(The article talks about him generally, and his lack of commercial success in the US.)

Big dill hits Big Apple?

It's usually Tim Blair's job to track all things "Hicks", but here we go.

The New Yorker ran an article noting that it finally appears confirmed (in a new book by his ex-wife) that Osama Bin Laden made a short trip with her to the United States in 1979. According to the wife, it seemed most Americans were nice enough towards them.

In the comments that follow, there is one by someone calling him (or her?) self "davidhicks1" who is from "downunder". I'll just put it here in full:

"I came to believe that Americans were gentle and nice." Well of course 'most' Americans are thus. The only 'problematic' ones are those that have been supporting the Racist State of Israel these many decades past. There is a feeling around -and some hope in the world these days- that these unfortunate policies may be about to be minimised( Stay on course President Obama!),and maybe even reversed. How many Americans could list the THREE 'demands' of Osama bin Laden post 9/11. I'll give you a clue from 'downunder.' One had the word PALESTINE in it!

To my ear, this does indeed sound like something the real David Hicks would say, but who knows. Certainly, it seems odd that the writer finds "most" Americans are nice, but then finds the (very large) proportion who support Israel "problematic". Are they overlapping sets, with some Americans being both nice and "problematic"?

Whoever the writer is, he (or she) should not plan on visiting the States any time soon.

Julia, Julia

Annabel Crabb today has a pretty witty column about how right wingers have become infatuated with Julia Gillard, in much the same Margaret Thatcher was seen to have sex appeal by her male opponents of a certain age.

Well, it may have something to do with the mysterious allure of her fleshy ears, since I can report again that barely a day goes past without a few people landing at this blog via a Google search of "Julia Gillard earlobes" or some variation thereof. (For those fans, Julia's sometimes coyly hiding lobes were on very open display last night in a 7.30 Report interview. Knock yourselves out.)

As for me, I think I have mentioned here before that my response to her softened when she showed a surprising graciousness on election night by declining Kerry O'Brien's offer to put the boot into John Howard for not making way for Peter Costello. (When asked whether this had been Howard's big mistake, she replied that, while such simple analysis would be easy to make, in reality all the Labor polling indicated that the Coalition would have done worse under Costello.)

Of course, her policies will still lead to rack and ruin in industrial relations, but she does seem a more genuine person than K Rudd by a few country miles.

The dubious god of Silence

Review: The Case for God by Karen Armstrong | Books | The Guardian

Here's a review of a new book by Karen Armstrong, in which she makes her response to the views of the modern militant atheists.

If the review is accurate, I have an immediate problem with her version of the history of religion (in much the same way many have had a problem with her history of Islam):

Karen Armstrong takes the reader through a history of religious practice in many different cultures, arguing that in the good old days and purest forms they all come to much the same thing. They use devices of ritual, mystery, drama, dance and meditation in order to enable us better to cope with the vale of tears in which we find ourselves. Religion is therefore properly a matter of a practice, and may be compared with art or music....

This is religion as it should be, and, according to Armstrong, as it once was in all the world's best traditions. However, there is a serpent in this paradise, as in others. Or rather, several serpents, but the worst is the folly of intellectualising the practice. This makes it into a matter of belief, argument, and ultimately dogma. It debases religion into a matter of belief in a certain number of propositions, so that if you can recite those sincerely you are an adept, and if you can't you fail. This is Armstrong's principal target. With the scientific triumphs of the 17th century, religion stopped being a practice and started to become a theory - in particular the theory of the divine architect. This is a perversion of anything valuable in religious practice, Armstrong writes, and it is only this perverted view that arouses the scorn of modern "militant" atheists. So Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris have chosen a straw man as a target. Real religion is serenely immune to their discovery that it is silly to talk of a divine architect.

That sentence in bold, if it reflects Armstrong's arguments, sounds hard to justify. I mean, you don't have to read much of the history of early Christianity to be struck by the seriousness of the intellectual battles over how Jesus was to be properly understood. Wikipedia gives a list of pre-reformation "controversial movements", and Paul Johnson in his enjoyable "History of Christianity" made the point that many of the early Christian theological controversies were beset with language difficulties: he writes that Greek lent itself to complexity in theological discussion, but finding equivalent words in Latin proved difficult:

The upshot was that it proved comparatively easy to devise a definition in the Latin West; much more difficult to produce one for the Greek East, and almost impossible to create a translatable formula which both East and West could accept in good faith.

My point is: intellectual understanding of itself has always been important in Christianity, not just since the 17 th century. Maybe she argues that to the average participant in Christianity, such debates had little practical impact. That might be plausible, but isn't the exact nature of (say) a 5th century congregation's personal understanding of their religion at least a little hard to judge that from this point in time?

According to the review, Armstrong thinks this:

So what should the religious adept actually say by way of expressing his or her faith? Nothing. This is the "apophatic" tradition, in which nothing about God can be put into words. Armstrong firmly recommends silence, having written at least 15 books on the topic. Words such as "God" have to be seen as symbols, not names, but any word falls short of describing what it symbolises, and will always be inadequate, contradictory, metaphorical or allegorical. The mystery at the heart of religious practice is ineffable, unapproachable by reason and by language. Silence is its truest expression.

Well, this immersion in mystery is certainly what the likes of Peter Kennedy and his St Mary's in Exile crowd are now promoting.

The author of the review is skeptical, as am I.

This is a tricky area: from a Catholic perspective, mystical or meditative experience is certainly not dismissed as invalid; but I think it would be fair to say that the mystically inclined saints of the Church never doubted the concrete reality of the God that they believed the human mind was inadequate to perceive. The Cloud of Unknowing hid a mountain. The problem with the pop-mysticism of today, with all of it's "everything we can say about God is just a metaphor for the great mystery" approach is that it has converted God into a cloudbank with nothing solid in the centre at all.

Simon Blackburn says this at the end of his review of Armstrong:

Silence is just that. It is a kind of lowest common denominator of the human mind. The machine is idling. Which direction it then goes after a period of idling is a highly unpredictable matter. As David Hume put it, in human nature there is "some particle of the dove, mixed in with the wolf and the serpent". So we can expect that some directions will be better and others worse. And that is what, alas, we always find, with or without the song and dance.

Sounds about right. How can anyone be sure that the meditative practice, or "song and dance" does have a significant effect on the ethical or moral behaviour of the participant in their dealings with others? If you want to address behaviour that is wrong, you need to be able to articulate why it is wrong, not just take the transgressor by the hand and share a quiet moment together. In fact, couldn't it be argued that indigenous cultures had plenty of time for ritual, yet some treated people (women, children and rivals) in pretty appalling ways. The abundance of ritual did not obviously make them more "moral" societies.

Blackburn makes the point that the "proof in the pudding is not my beatific smile but how I behave." For the religious at least, how you behave should surely be significantly influenced by your intellectual understanding of what your religion is about, not just your emotional experience of participating in ritual or worshipping mystery for the sake of mystery.

Bored? Sorry.

UPDATE: Jesus, Mo (& Moses) explain why Armstrong's approach is unappealing.

What art students do for fun

Dezeen - Tantalus Dinner by Ioli Sifakaki

Royal College of Art graduate Iola Kalliopi Sifakaki designed a dinner service cast from her own body and then invited a dozen of her male friends to feast from the tableware.

The dinner service, and the dining furniture Sifikaki designed, are based on the Greek myth of Tantalus, in which Tantalus boils his son Pelops and offers him up as food to the gods to appease them.

OK, but was there any particular need for the male friends to turn it into what looks like a food fight? It has way too much of Peter Greenaway art wankery about it, if you ask me.

Scrapping cap and trade

BBC NEWS | 'Time to ditch climate policies'

An international group of academics is urging world leaders to abandon their current policies on climate change.

The authors of How to Get Climate Policy Back on Course say the strategy based on overall emissions cuts has failed and will continue to fail....

LSE Mackinder programme director Gwyn Prins said the current system of attempting to cap carbon emissions then allow trading in emissions permits had led to emissions continuing to rise.

He said world proposals to expand carbon trading schemes and channel billions of dollars into clean energy technologies would not work.

"The world has been recarbonising, not decarbonising," Professor Prins said.

"The evidence is that the Kyoto Protocol and its underlying approach have had and are having no meaningful effect whatsoever.

Dot Earth has more about this. It appears that these particular critics think Japan can teach us a thing or two about worthwhile policy. They are quoted as follows:

....the last thing one would do is invent layers of regulatory bodies requiring international accord and transparency in arenas like energy policy, where countries traditionally go it alone. As Professor Prins put it in a statement, “Worthwhile policy builds upon what we know works and upon what is feasible rather than trying to deploy never-before implemented policies through complex institutions requiring a hitherto unprecedented and never achieved degree of global political alignment.”

Hear hear.

Sort of a win for Israel?

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Gaza conflict: Views on Hamas

OK, who knows how representative the views of three people in Gaza really are, but the the comments of 2 of them indicate that many don't exactly feel that Hamas did them a favour by provoking Israel's last attack. The first guy in particular:

"Hamas and the Jews both did this. Hamas don't have the power for war - so why did they launch rockets at Israel? Israel needed war here, but who gave Israel the key to come here? Hamas.

Thank you George W

Obama to Russia: stop Iranian nuclear weapon and US will scrap missile defence - Times Online

I think I have made the point before, but if this strategy works, shouldn't someone be thanking the last president for providing this one with an effective bargaining chip?

Oh the irony...

World needs to be saved from spending spree: PM | The Australian

Market saturated?

Tough times hit scooter sales

Well, I wouldn't have guessed this:

TWO years ago they were the darlings of the roads: sales were up 400 per cent in three years, and hip new riders were taking to the streets every day.

But in the first six months of 2009 scooter sales collapsed, as economic times got tougher and petrol prices eased.

..... scooter sales slumped 29.3 per cent, recording sales of 5592, compared with 7915 over the same six months in 2008.

Guessing the future strength of markets is evidently tricky. I mean, I still wouldn't mind one, so what's wrong with the rest of you?

Explorer Royale

A new journey of exploration for Michael Palin - The Independent

Palin is the new head of the Royal Geographical Society.

It is entirely appropriate that the man who first went Across the Andes by Frog should receive this honour.

Nuts

Husband and wife share home with pythons that roam freely - Telegraph

Fortunately, they have no children.

Reasons to become a priest

The Sci Fi Catholic: Deej to Seminary, Part 2

Sci Fi Catholic, who is currently a young archaeologist, has decided to train for the priesthood. He has quite a funny explanation as to why, at the above link.

Odd weather

Drought alert as El Nino works up double whammy | The Australian

Brisbane is having its wettest winter for ages (I heard that rain of up to 50 to 100mm may be expected over the next couple of days,) and its dams are up to 77% full, yet all the warnings are that an El Nino is forming, with drought on the way.

Not that I wish it for this reason, but a repeat of a 1998 El Nino hot spike would at least stop the current wave of triumphal-ism amongst the AGW skeptics.

Under the kilt problems in Scotland

Gay minister inducted at service

The background:

Mr Rennie, 37, a divorced father-of-one, was minister at Brechin Cathedral but was appointed to Queen's Cross earlier this year, where he is expected to preach his first sermon a week on Sunday.

He has been open about his relationship with his partner and plans to live with him in the manse in Aberdeen.

Some sections of the Church of Scotland feared Mr Rennie's appointment could cause the greatest divide since the Disruption of 1843, when part of the Kirk broke away to form the Free Kirk.

Just noting the story...

UPDATE: If a minister is divorced and was wanting to live with (as opposed to marrying) his new girlfriend in the manse, I would have thought that would be a major problem. (You really want your ministers just shacking up with their girlfriends?) If you say "well, the problem for this guy is that he can't "regularise" this relationship by marrying, even if he wants to, so we shouldn't penalise him," then isn't the issue to do with the Church's understanding of marriage? In other words, if the Church does not permit marriage as a sacrament for gay couples, how can it say this Minister's relationship is not a problem?