Ha!

Microsoft asks court to hold off on Word ban

Microsoft Corp. is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to allow it to keep selling Word software as it fights an unfavorable patent ruling.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas found Microsoft infringed on a patent held by a Canadian company, i4i LLP. Last week, the judge ordered Microsoft to pay $290 million and to stop selling copies of its word processing program that use the patented technology within 60 days.

The patent relates to the way Word 2003 and 2007 let users customize document encoding.

I still get the horrors when I have to work in Word, compared to using my beloved Wordperfect.

You know what really annoys me? I sometimes have young people in my office who have only ever used Word, and think it bizarre that I am a holdout for Wordperfect. (Mind you, every Word user who tries Wordperfect picks it up with no training and find it quite intuitive.) But when I have a formatting problem with Word that I can't work out, and go to these university graduates who have used Word all of their lives, 9 times out of 10 they can't work out the problem either. They can't identify why Word is doing it, and either give up or (at most) suggest a complicated and arcane work around.

The big defenders of the product rarely know how to get around a problem when using it.

There's no way in the world anyone is going to convince me that Word is a better program than Wordperfect.

Just for the record

State of the Climate | Global Analysis | July 2009

The global ocean SST for July 2009 was the warmest on record for the second consecutive month, 0.59°C (1.06°F) above the 20^th century average of 16.4°C (61.5°F). This broke the previous July record set in 1998. Sea surface temperatures during July 2009 were warmer than average across much of the world's oceans, with the exception of cooler-than-average conditions across parts of the North Atlantic Ocean and the southern oceans. Sea surface temperature anomalies in all Niño regions continued to warm during July 2009, where the monthly temperatures were more than 0.5°C (0.9°F) above average. If El Niño conditions continue to mature as projected by NOAA, global temperatures are likely to continue to threaten previous record highs. Please see the July 2009 ENSO discussion for additional information.

Mind you, there has been discussion in at least one skeptical blog about a new paper arguing that the net flow of heat in and out of the oceans switches around quickly, which (they say) is inconsistent with the proposition that the oceans contain heat that is "in the pipeline".

I don't think I have seen any commentary about this from the AGW side of the street, but I assume it is coming.

When physics and philosophy collide

0901.4255v2.pdf (application/pdf Object)

The arXiv essay above is given the following abstract:

The claim that the observation of a violation of a Bell inequality leads to an alleged alternative between nonlocality and non-realism is annoying because of the vagueness of the second term.

Yes, this is one of the fun things about modern physics: they can't even decide what "real" means. Talk about going back to your basics.

For those with a spare $8 million

Third Most Complete T-Rex to Be Auctioned in Vegas

Of course, it could end up being bought by a museum, but not necessarily:

At least 20 institutions have shown interest, “but then there’s always the elite that have a lot of money and like unique and unusual items, especially the Hollywood types,” he said. “There are a couple of major actors that are collectors of dinosauria.”

The anaesthetisation of good taste continues

Inglourious Basterds Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes

Hey, what's this? Initial reviews from Cannes were very mixed, with quite a high degree of negativity in many. But now that more critics have seen it, the positive reviews are far outnumbering the negative. Yes, once again the director who is so easy to dislike both personally (have you seen him in interviews?) and aesthetically is still selling glossy trash and violence to the critics and they are still (by and large) lapping it up. (I'm not so sure it will be a huge hit at the box office, though.)

For me, the effect of his oeuvre is like a cultural anaesthetisation of good taste and decency in cinema. A movie can have tension, wit and excitement without being graphically violent and morally vacuous, but Quentin doesn't seem to know that.

Of course, there are some critics who have come to dislike him, and the best negative review so far is from David Denby in the New Yorker:

Like all the director’s work after “Jackie Brown,” the movie is pure sensation. It’s disconnected from feeling, and an eerie blankness—it’s too shallow to be called nihilism—undermines even the best scenes....

Moral callousness has been part of Tarantino’s style in the past. In “Pulp Fiction,” his merry roundelay set among Los Angeles lowlifes, the aggressive acts that the characters commit against one another are so abrupt and extreme that they become funny. The movie’s outrageous panache gave the audience license to enjoy the violence as lawless entertainment. But, in “Basterds,” Tarantino is mucking about with a tragic moment of history....

Tarantino’s hyper-violent narrative reveals merely that he still daydreams like a teen-ager....

The film is skillfully made, but it’s too silly to be enjoyed, even as a joke. Tarantino may think that he is doing Jews a favor by launching this revenge fantasy (in the burning theatre, working-class Jewish boys get to pump Hitler and Göring full of lead), but somehow I doubt that the gesture will be appreciated. Tarantino has become an embarrassment: his virtuosity as a maker of images has been overwhelmed by his inanity as an idiot de la cinémathèque.

I have never quite understood why the media gives such a juvenile director so much attention. For example, he gets a big spread by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic this month. (It's worth reading merely to confirm how immature Tarantino sounds.)

Goldberg seemingly enjoys the movie as showing Nazi revenge that he used to fantasise about, but later has reservations:

When I came out of the screening room the night before our interview, I was so hopped up on righteous Jewish violence that I was almost ready to settle the West Bank—and possibly the East Bank. But when my blood cooled, I began to think about the morality of kosher porn in the context of current Middle East politics. Some of this was informed by my own experience in the Israeli army, in which I saw my fellow Jewish soldiers do moral things—such as risking their lives to prevent the murder of innocent Jews—as well as immoral things, like beating the hell out of Palestinians because they could.

When Tarantino asked me how I thought his film would be received in Israel—he’s visiting for the first time this summer, to promote the film—I told him that Israelis, who have actual experience with physical power (in a way that most Jews over the course of the past 2,000 years did not), might not take to the film in the way that many of their American cousins might. Some Israeli liberals, including the country’s many filmmakers, might not like his movie very much at all.

Well, revenge movies have never appealed to me. The only movie that I really liked that had a degree of a personal revenge as a theme was probably The Untouchables. (But even then, it was more a matter of spontaneous taking-justice-into-his-own-hands type of thing.) The whole vigilante/avenger thing with Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood never appealed.

So I am sure there will be no need for me to reconsider the value of this latest movie. As for the rest of the world: I feel confident that the intrinsic low value of Tarantino's work will be fully appreciated in retrospect.

UPDATE: a Salon blog goes at length into the Goldberg article and the question of whether this movie is "good for Jews". Certainly the comments that follow indicate that a large number of the public hate Tarantino and see through him better than your average critic. It also links to an amusingly vicious take on Tarantino and Inglorious Basterds in particular.

Power to the Moon

Technology Review: A Lunar Nuclear Reactor

Thank you for not suggesting that

I like this bit from the MSNBC story on some more recently released British Defence UFO files:

The head of the ministry's UFO desk wrote briefing notes in 1993 reporting a spate of sightings in southwest England and speculating whether they might be connected to Aurora, a secret U.S. spy plane whose existence has never been officially admitted.

Atop one of his letters, someone scrawled: "Thank you. I suggest you now drop this subject."

G&T considered

Gin and tonic: the drink that puts the fizz into Britain - Telegraph

Yes, here at Opinion Dominion we have long considered the gin and tonic the perfect pre-dinner drink.

As someone in this article notes, lime is the better citrus to use, which basically means that, unless you are in a very upmarket bar, you will make a better one at home. (Unlike beer, where the quality runs in the opposite direction.)

In fact, it was just last weekend that I was using home grown lime in my G&T, and commented to my wife how good it was instead of lemon. Cheers.

Mixed up man

Richard O’Brien: Rocky Horror? It was all about my mother - Times Online

The success of Rocky Horror, and its continual revival on stage, has always been a major puzzle to me. It has one catchy song, and is not very funny. Its point, or aim, is distinctly fuzzy. Why dedicated heterosexuals with no inclination to cross dress flock to it makes very little sense.

Last year (I think) it's writer, Englishman Richard O'Brien, appeared on ABC's amusing quiz show Spicks and Specks, and was as camp as could be. Well, I was hardly surprised.

Yet, as this interview in The Times above shows, he is even more confused and confounding than expected. (Has a son, even.)

I still don't forgive him for Rocky Horror, though, no matter how unpleasant his mother was.

Bad methane news

As Arctic Ocean warms, megatonnes of methane bubble up - Environment - New Scientist

Over 250 plumes of gas have been discovered bubbling up from the sea floor to the west of the Svalbard archipelago, which lies north of Norway. The bubbles are mostly methane, which is a greenhouse gas much more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Interestingly, though, the methane in this particular area is not making to the top of the ocean. Instead, it dissolves and partly contributes to ocean acidification:

None of the plumes the team saw reached the surface, so the methane was not escaping into the atmosphere and thus contributing to climate change – not in that area, at least. "Bigger bubbles of methane make it all the way to the top, but smaller ones dissolve," says Minshull.

Just because it fails to reach the surface doesn't mean the methane is harmless, though, as some of it gets converted to carbon dioxide. The CO₂ then dissolves in seawater and makes the oceans more acidic.

And it is possible that other, more vigorous plumes are releasing methane into the atmosphere. The team studied only one group of plumes, which were in a small area and were erratic.

"Almost none of the Arctic has been surveyed in a way that might detect a gas release like this," Minshull says.

I wonder, though, whether this is something that might have been going on before the waters increased in temperature by 1 degree. Maybe just no one was looking before.

Continuing the bird theme

Man v bird: the brush turkey battle

Brush turkeys are headed south, apparently. This article talks about how they live:

...with female brush turkeys laying 20 to 30 eggs a year, the population is sure to continue thriving, even though mysteriously, no-one looks after the chicks.

"These are very unusual animals. Basically, the eggs get laid into the bottom of a combust heap, they dig their way to the surface and simply no-one looks after them - absolutely no parental care," he said.

"There's no parents to teach them what a cat looks like or what food is, or anything.

We had a chick turn up in our yard earlier this year. Unfortunately, it became a victim of our dog, right in front of the kids too.

Reviewing fun

The Time Traveler's Wife. - By Dana Stevens - Slate Magazine

Eric Bana's latest movie is receiving some pretty bad reviews in the States. This is not an entirely bad thing, as it allows critics to be pretty witty. This opening paragraph from Dana Stevens, for example:

Physicist Dave Goldberg has a fascinating Slate piece this week on how The Time Traveler's Wife stacks up against other movies with a time-travel theme. In a survey of physicists' speculations on the possibility of time travel, he mentions one theory involving "gargantuan cosmic strings […] of matter of almost unimaginable density and length." That about sums up The Time Traveler's Wife, adapted from Audrey Niffenegger's best-selling novel by Bruce Joel Rubin (who also wrote Ghost, another metaphysically inflected love story). I'll take Goldberg's word that the movie obeys the laws of Einsteinian physics (no alternate universes, you can't change history, etc.), but it's in flagrant violation of the rules of narrative logic, character development, or the most basic audience satisfaction.

Surprising bird news

BBC - Earth News - Blue tits embrace 'aromatherapy'

No, it's not from the files of Benny Hill, Naturalist; it's the story of research into why blue tits like to put nice smelling herbs in their nest:

They found that aromatic plants, including lavender (Lavandula stoechas), apple mint (Mentha suaveolens), the curry plant (Helichrysum itlaicum) and Achillea ligustica significantly change the composition of bacterial communities living on blue tit nestlings.

"They reduce the number of different bacterial species, and the total number of bacteria, especially on chicks that are most vulnerable because they are both highly infested by blow fly larvae and carry great amounts of bacteria on their skin," says Mennarat.

In more local bird news, the Courier Mail last week ran this photo, apparently showing three pigeons co-operating to each get a drink and a bath.

I'm impressed.

We've had a bird bath in our back yard for about 6 months now; it's visible from the kitchen and dining room. Watching birds bathe is pleasing.

The coming disaster in Japan

Shaken and stirred in Tokyo's quakes

Here's an ABC journalist's first hand account of the recent, relatively mild, Japanese earthquakes. He notes:

But thankfully it was not the much-dreaded Great Tokai Earthquake. That is the big one, the terrible tremor which hits central Japan about every 130 years.

The problem is, it is overdue.

The last Great Tokai Earthquake was in 1854 when a massive magnitude 8.4 quake struck.

More about the coming Tokai Earthquake can be found here.

It is, of course, a typically Japanese thing that when you go to the website of the Japanese Meteorological Agency page about the Earthquake Early Warning system, they have a cute little graphic for it:

If I am not mistaken, that would be based on the underground catfish that the Japanese folklore says causes earthquakes. Cute but deadly.

UPDATE: lots of information about the history of Japanese giant-earthquake-causing-catfish lore can be found in this essay.

The ugly tourist

In Philippine town, the U.S. airmen are long gone, but the tawdry streets remain

The LA Times has a story about the prostitution that continues near the former Clark Air Force base, even though the Americans left there in 1992.

The picture painted by this article is very ugly - quite literally in the sense that it seems most of the clientele are greying sex tourists from all over the world chasing extremely young girls.

There is also mention of an Australian buying some Viagra from a street vendor. Travelling to another country for exploitative sex, but even then having to use Viagra to achieve it with girls about whom he also says:

"You can get a young girl here to do anything if you promise to marry her"

strikes me as a very special form of depravity.

Science fiction fodder

Here's a fun paper on arXiv: Are Black Hole Starships Possible? (Tentative answer: yes. However, the means of creating a useful sized black hole are somewhat far off into the future.)

Interestingly, the paper also notes that alien spaceships using such technology might be detectable by gamma ray telescope. (The suggestion is not new in regard to possible anti-matter powered ships.)

Flying books

Eerie occurrences at naval museum attract ghost hunters - Enquirer.com

A brief report on poltergeist type phenomena going on in a US Museum.

Ghosts and hauntings interest me, but I have no interest whatseover in the "ghosthunter" style TV shows with their ridiculous bunch of mediums and "sensitives" walking around with night vision cameras following them.

Which reminds me - I think I saw an ad on ABC TV a few weeks ago for a one off show that (as far as I could make out) may have been about a stone throwing poltergeist story in outback Australia. I missed it, and now am having trouble googling any details about it.

I know there have been one or two real life stories in Australia, so I would have liked to have seen it.

Does any reader know anything about it?

Strange photo from Saturn

Like the fist of an angry god | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Worth a look.

Mayhem in space planning

NASA should avoid a straight shot to Mars, panel says

There is plenty of speculation about how NASA should proceed from here: scrap Ares as a flawed design, not enough money to go to the Moon again, certainly not enough for Mars. Even "let's do other deep space stuff instead - how about an asteroid?"

But - I didn't realise this:

The budget would delay the first Ares I flight until December 2018. That is almost three years after NASA currently plans to send the International Space Station careening towards Earth to burn up in the atmosphere and plunge into the ocean. The current budget projections have also not set aside money for the space station's end-of-life plans.

Bloody hell. The thing seems barely to have been finished (in fact, is it really finished now, it's hard to keep track) and it is only supposed to last another 5 years?

The only thing it seems to have achieved is giving astronauts experience at piecing together big things in space. I guess that's something of value in itself, but all those astronauts doing it are probably at the peak of their career anyway and won't be on the next wave of exploration.

NASA had better start publicising some science done on board if it wants to maintain some credibility for its planning.

And finally - readers know I am strongly of the view that going back to the Moon is a practical, achievable thing that is relatively low risk to astronauts (compared to all the radiation exposure they will have on a trip to Mars). It's rarely spoken about, but isn't there a partial science justification in terms of good astronomy to be done from there? Perhaps radio astronomy from the dark side, or your usual astronomy from anywhere.

Would be easier to do the type of sky surveys required to spot deadly (but relatively small) asteroids that were mentioned here recently from the Moon? You at least are assured of long, clear nights!

Update: a NASA page, containing some links, that talks about lunar astronomy as a possibility. People seem to like Hubble photographs so much, I suspect they would be impressed by similar quality photos from the Moon.

If it is a good place to search for earth approaching asteroids, even better: you can sell a return to the Moon as an insurance policy for the future of civilisation.

Warning

Bird specimens stolen from national collection - Crime, UK - The Independent

Thieves have stolen a priceless collection of tropical birds from the Natural History Museum.

Curators said almost 300 brightly-coloured specimens were taken from a collection in Tring, Hertfordshire.

They said the birds, some of which are more than a century old, are a priceless part of the world's ornithological heritage.

Well, I suppose this means that the next time a stranger approaches you in the car park and offers a really cheap price on a rare 19th century stuffed spangled drongo from the back of his van, you should immediately call the police.

It's also interesting to note this bit at the end about the extent of the collection:

The Natural History Museum holds 70 million specimens brought together over 350 years. The majority are held at its South Kensington headquarters.

The ornithological collection in Tring is one of the world's largest and holds 750,000 birds representing 95% of known species.

750,000 stuffed birds?! Maybe a few more live ones would be around today if the collectors of the past were a little less enthusiastic.

Mocking chicken

Today's lunch comprised a fried egg, tomato and cheese sandwich.

It's a curious thing, isn't it, how the combination of egg and tomato seems to result in a completely new, distinctive, taste.

It put me in mind of a party dip from my childhood, "mock chicken", eaten on Jatz crackers, which I haven't seen for a very long time. Recipes for it are on the internet, although there are variations, and I am not sure which most accurately represents what was once common in 1960's Brisbane. I'm sure the essential components were egg and tomato, but whether it also had cheese and onion, I don't know.

Incidentally, I am drawn to any recipe with "mock" in the title. I recall years ago, when visiting somewhere historic in Australia, looking at a reproduction of an old, simple Australia cookbook, maybe dating from early last century or perhaps even colonial times. It had a recipe for mock duck, which, I swear, went like this: "Take large piece of beef steak. Tie in the shape of a duck. Bake." That was it.

While on the topic of food pretending to be something it isn't, I have a confession to make: I don't mind many of the vegetarian sausage products made by health food companies. They could fairly be called mock sausages, although the marketing departments prevent truth in advertising. We serve them to kids sometimes as a healthier version of a hot dog. With tomato sauce, they don't really seem to know if it is meatless or not, and I am happy to eat them too.

I even had a period in my life when I used to buy TVP, textured vegetable protein, and make a chilli con carne recipe which was on the side of the box. Buried in a chilli tomato sauce, I thought the cubed version of TVP did have a resemblance to meat. But the digestive consequences of beans, chilli tomato sauce and TVP in the once dish were, shall we say, nothing short of explosive. I didn't even like being around myself the next day, so, kind husband that I am, I haven't cooked it since I got married. I don't think you can even get the cubed version of TVP now, anyway.

I'm tempted to try making some mock chicken soon, but anyone who can remember their mother's version of it is welcome to comment.

Spotting the influence of aliens

Newfound planet orbits backward - Space.com- msnbc.com

This story reminds me of something I have been meaning to post about for a while.

Astronomers keep finding signs of planets around other stars. Yet they all seem to be pretty weird in one way or another, and don't resemble our solar system at all.

My question: has anyone seriously put their mind to the question of how odd a planetary orbit or solar system would have to look to be indicative of alien mega-engineering?

Presumably, thought has been given to what a Dyson sphere or "swarm" would look like (or a Niven "ringworld"), but isn't it possible for there to be other planetary engineering, on a less grand scale, that may be visible from Earth?

Would a weird enough orbit of something assumed to be a planet be enough?

Update: another "backwards planet" found.

By the way, just to be clear, I am not suggesting that a retrograde orbit alone is anything to be very suspicious of. Seeing we have a retrograde moon in our own solar system, it can just happen. Still, what would it take to assume alien engineering?

Credibility own goal

Plimer resorts to attack as the best form of defence | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Ian Plimer agreed to be asked, in writing, a series of questions by George Monbiot about apparent errors and uncited claims in his book. Plimer has not yet responded, except to provide a list of convoluted questions back to Monbiot.

If Plimer merely does this, and does not answer Monbiot's direct questions, it will be pretty much impossible to read it other than having the subtext "hey, I am a Professor, I know so much more than you, mere journalist, that I don't have to provide citations for any claim, or explain any apparent error."

I hope Andrew Bolt is reading this exchange.

Update: this comment in the thread following Monbiot's post provides a good "translation" of what Plimer's questions mean.

A peculiar case

Piracy fears off UK coast after cargo ship disappears in English Channel - Times Online

I have no comment: it's just a very strange case of a missing ship, possibly hijacked by somewhat mysterious parties.

Why acupuncture seems to work

Chinese Acupuncture Affects Brain's Ability To Regulate Pain, UM Study Shows

I find it remarkable that sticking fine needles into skin seems to genuinely help with various aches and pains. This study suggests the brain mechanism behind it, but I guess it still doesn't explain why the fine needles (which you can barely feel, from the one time I had some in me) in skin cause that reaction in the brain. (To be more specific, maybe it's not surprising they cause some reaction in the brain, but that it should be big enough to have effect of other aches and pain still seems very odd to me.)

Discouraging news

Earth could be blindsided by asteroids, panel warns - space - 12 August 2009 - New Scientist

Existing sky surveys miss many asteroids smaller than 1 kilometre across, leaving the door open to damaging impacts on Earth with little or no warning, a panel of scientists reports. Doing better will require devoting more powerful telescopes to asteroid hunting, but no one has committed the funds needed to do so, it says.

Waiting for the return of a spouse

Modern Love - Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear

I found this via the Catholic blog "First Things". Although the writer's response to being told by her husband:

“I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy”

was not apparently motivated by faith, the idea of not immediately abandoning a relationship for that reason has obvious appeal to those who believe marriage is truly "til death do us part".

It is an interesting column, and has many comments following it, the great majority of which praise the writer for her simple "I'm not buying it" response. I am surprised that there has not been more of a liberal backlash against it.

What a country

Christians burned to death in Pakistan - Catholic Herald Online

Eight Pakistani Christians were killed, 50 homes destroyed and two churches burned when a rampaging mob of up to 3,000 Muslims tore through the town of Gojra, in eastern Pakistan, last Saturday.

The victims, who included two young children, were either burned alive or shot. ...

The mob gathered after rumours had spread that children had cut up a schoolbook which included verses from the Koran. The children had supposedly been making confetti for a local wedding.

As well as those killed, more than 20 people were injured in the attack as the mob, carrying sticks, clubs and a small number of firearms, took to the streets last weekend.

The attacks came two days after a related incident in the nearby village of Korian where gangs set fire to more than 70 Christian homes and two small Protestant churches.

I missed a lot of media over the weekend, but I don't know that this got widely reported.

Make your own lunar air

Scientists Make Oxygen Out of Moon Rock

Based on experiments with a simulated lunar rock developed by NASA, the researchers calculate that three one-meter-tall reactors could generate one tonne of oxygen per year on the Moon. Each tonne of oxygen would require three tonnes of rock to produce. Fray noted that three reactors would require about 4.5 kilowatts of power, which could be supplied by solar panels or possibly a small nuclear reactor on the Moon.

I wonder, how long does a tonne of oxygen last for, say, a dozen people?

Presumably, find frozen water on the Moon would make oxygen production easier.

There was a lengthier version of this story on Nature News, but I think their stories still disappear behind a paywall after a short time.

The perpetual teenager

Pew, that was a lucky escape | theage.com.au

Catherine Deveny writes about Catholicism, her childhood religion, with all the subtly and wit of a 15 year old know-it-all flaunting a new-found sexuality and atheism to annoy her parents. (That is, with none at all.) Trouble is, she's 40.

I also wonder about this section:

The priest, obviously drawn by the unusual sight of new people, approached us to welcome us to his flock. I shot out my hand. "Hi, I'm Catherine."

All the blood drained from his face. "You're that writer?" "Yes," I replied. I happily introduced my sons, who, in an uncharacteristic display of manners, shook the priest's hand and said, "Nice to meet you." The priest wandered off in a daze. Or was it a trance? Maybe it was religious melancholy.

Why would the priest even recognise her? Unless she gave warning of her attendance (and why would she bother doing that?) I would be quite surprised that she would otherwise be known to him.

She's seems profoundly proud of her kids being brought up as free thinking libertines:

After surveying the ''good news'' of carnage and damnation on the wall, the 11-year-old asked what a virgin was. I explained. Then he said, "Is there something wrong with sex?"

We know what her answer would be. One gets the impression from previous columns that she intends to be terribly non-judgemental and open-minded to the point of quasi-encouragement to experiment, probably as a continuation of her resentment of her parents trying to set some boundaries for her. (Just a guess, there, but she does write in her column today how a comment made in the car by her father, about another family, made her want "to jump over the front seat and ram my father's head into the windscreen".)

If there is any justice, at least one of her kids will have a conservative rebellion and end up very religious. It will, hopefully, annoy Deveny no end.

The real Big Day Out

Time for a report on the trip to the Brisbane Exhibition last Sunday.

If it was up to me, I would arrive at 9am and leave at 9.30pm, but my wife is not from these parts, and considers that to be just a ridiculously long day. (You have to be born and raised in Brisbane to have the inordinate fondness for the place that quite a few of us here share.) I think she actually threatened last year to just leave me to take the kids this time, but somewhere in the intervening 12 months she changed her mind, and ended up a relatively happy participant. She missed my daughter - now 6 - telling me in the afternoon, without prompting, that it was "the best day ever". I passed the message on to my wife with a small degree of smug satisfaction.

[Later in the day, I observed to my wife that it is pleasing to see a lot of Asian and other immigrants at the show. She claimed it was because Brisbane was short of entertainment anyway, and people just go to whatever is on. As you can see, the brainwashing has some way to go yet.]

Before I leave the topic of the marital dispute over the exact degree of enjoyment an adult can appropriately extract from the Ekka, I should also mention that I took my aged mother along this year too. (She resisted getting in the car at first, but after a bit of shoving she accepted her fate.)

We arrived at about 11am, and left after the fireworks at 8.45.

So this year's highlights:

* new lambs in the sheep birthing place were cute (but we didn't actually see one being born)

* I get happiness from the fact that my kids chose relatively cheap buys in the show bags, yet were very satisfied. The boy takes the show as an opportunity to weaponise himself for the following 12 months, and this year he was happy with one $10 machine gun that, I must admit, I would have liked as a boy too. The girl went for a cutesy pet bag with lots of stationary in it.

* the "jet truck" was new and kind of slow and pointless, except it did make a very big flame that is pretty spectacular.

* we all decided that the latest rides look downright dangerous, and potentially not just to the riders. The current new types seem to involve variations on a theme of long arms which spin people sitting at the end around in a vertical circle. Why anyone thinks this is fun is beyond me; I can barely stand the roller coaster type rides at Disneyland, where one feels Uncle Walt surely wouldn't scare you to death. (Space Mountain is probably the strongest ride I have ever been on.) Not being a fan of the falling sensation, this looks particularly horrendous to me:




It's also clear that if there is a catastrophic failure, then, depending on the exact point of the circle it happens, the passengers could end up some distance away and take out many passers-by. I certainly did not like to stand in the plane of the ride, just in case.

Anyhoo, a pleasant day was had by all, even though my mother elected to stay the night but by the end decided she really was too old to spend that much time there. I pointed out that she was giving up to easily: there is always the wheelchair option when she's 90. (She's only got 5 years to reach that milestone.)

Finally, I note that big re-development of the site is finally going to get underway, which means that residential units and some all year round commercial use will be allowed on parts of the land. (As I recall, it is all owned by the Royal National Association, and the Council and State government have been lusting after the re-development potential of the place for decades.) This report gives an idea of some of the changes. I am not sure how it affect the Ekka itself; it's hard to imagine some of the old buildings gone. But the upside is: maybe I can retire there, as one of the blessed 10,000 residents. Not quite like living in Disneyland, but still...

Talking about solar

I see someone in the Economist talks about his options for domestic solar power in the US, and how it has become significantly more affordable in recent years.

I know that everyone says that solar power does not make economic sense at the moment, but there is one thing I think people don't factor in: the strong appeal of semi-independence from the grid.

On the weekend, I made my annual pilgrimage to the Brisbane Ekka (a longer post will follow), and I did notice a lot of people asking at this company's display about its domestic solar cells. I think the price was something like $2,995 for a 1.5 KW system. (After rebates I presume?)

I've never looked into it much, but from what I can gather, anything less than 2 KW is hardly worth the effort. Still, I think people just like the idea of not being so reliant on the grid, even if the cost is no where near going to be recovered in electricity savings.

If (as seems certain) an ETS is going to send up electricity costs pretty quickly, the appeal of solar is surely going to increase, although again it may not actually make economic sense. If an ETS encourages more people to install solar, and thereby reduce the drain on coal fired plants, that appears to be a good thing. The issue, I suppose, is at what cost to the government, as I presume that solar will still only succeed (in the sense that many people will buy it) with heavy government rebates.

If the money the government spends on supporting solar could be spent in other ways that are more effective at reducing CO2 from coal fired plants, then it's not such a good idea.

All I am saying is that experts should not overlook the inherent appeal of free electricity from the roof.

Appleyard takes on the Godless (again)

Bryan Appleyard reviewed a book "The Evolution of God" in The Times on the weekend, and now has followed up with an entertaining and interesting post on his blog.

Rich on US woes

Op-Ed Columnist - Is Obama Punking Us? - NYTimes.com

Frank Rich has an interesting column on Obama and the increasing perception that the US system of government is more-or-less corrupted wholesale by lobbyists. He ends with this:

The best political news for the president remains the Republicans. It’s a measure of how out of touch G.O.P. leaders like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are that they keep trying to scare voters by calling Obama a socialist. They have it backward. The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy. If anything, the most unexpected — and challenging — event that could rock the White House this August would be if the opposition actually woke up.

This'll be interesting

Let battle commence! Climate change denialist ready for the fight | George Monbiot

Monbiot tells us that Ian Plimer has accepted his challenge to a debate, first in writing, and then in person.

George has posted at the link above his list of questions to Plimer.

The response shall be very, very interesting.

Hardly worth the effort

Does wind power reduce carbon emissions? - BraveNewClimate.com

Barry Brook quotes at length from some work indicating that wind power in Australia in practice will save little in carbon.

Sunday scandal

Sex scandal behind Brideshead Revisited - Times Online

Quite a detailed re-telling here of the English aristocratic sex scandal which gave the inspiration for Brideshead Revisited.

This part shows a somewhat relaxed attitude to what was permissible in staff interviews those days:

Boom — as Beauchamp was known, ostensibly because of his foghorn voice — was said to have “exquisite taste in footmen”. His interviewing style was unique. He would pass his hands over their buttocks, making a similar hissing noise to the one made by stable lads when rubbing their horses down. If the young man was handsome and pleasant, the earl would remark: “He’ll do well. Very nice indeed!”

The true life story was much more scandalous than what goes on in Brideshead, though.

That's useful

Israel to blame for Arafat death: Fatah | The Australian

THE ruling faction of the Palestinian Authority has formally blamed Israel for the "assassination" of Yasser Arafat, one of the founders of the Fatah party.

At the party's conference in Bethlehem yesterday, delegates unanimously passed a resolution blaming Israel for Arafat's death and setting up a committee to investigate the death.

Well, that'll help things move forward. Maybe they are just annoyed that a significant part of the world believe the rumours that it was AIDS.

But the Saudi King makes some blunt comments that (except the "criminal enemy" quip) are useful:

Saudi King Abdullah said: "Even if the whole world agreed to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with all the needed support and backing, it will not be established as long as the Palestinian house is divided."

And referring to Israel as "the criminal enemy", King Abdullah wrote: "I'll be honest, brothers. The criminal enemy could not over long years of continued aggression have inflicted as much damage to the Palestinian cause as did the Palestinians themselves in a matter of a few months."

Over at Gulf News, there was an opinion column earlier this week (I can no longer see it) which urged Palestinians to make alternative plans for what happens if a two state solution is never achieved. The writer did not give any clue as to what the alternative for the Palestinians might be.

Sad Hollywood news

John Hughes, director of Ferris Bueller's Day Off and writer of Home Alone, dies - Times Online

I mentioned him here last year, and he was only 59. I can't think of anyone from Hollywood who has replaced him as a source of witty entertainment that (nearly always) could be enjoyed by adults, teenagers and younger children together. (It's better to put it that way than to use what has become a semi-derogatory phrase: "family entertainment".)

It's a miracle!

Opinion: Do you believe in miracles? - opinion - New Scientist

I'm still pretty busy, but in the meantime, readers of a philosophical bent can go read the above article about the issue of miracles.

I've only read it quickly, and while it's not as clear as it could be, it seems to make some decent points.

Comet or volcano?

Was there a comet impact in AD 536? Maybe.

Doodling discussion

Playing with a graphics tablet is a lot of fun, but I have some trouble finding the best software to use when wanting to do my somewhat pathetic and rushed attempts at cartoons.

My natural inclination is to go for freeware, but I can't say I have found anything I like much. I've tried Dogwaffle, and it is OK, but sometimes hard to find things easily. (One point I want to make is that, when you are using a stylus to move around the screen, the "left click" or "right click" functions are no where near as natural feeling as when you use a mouse. I therefore find software that requires those to bring down menu options quite annoying. (Although you can just tap the screen sometimes in lieu of a left click.)

I have also tried the free version of Art Rage, but for simple pen or pencil functions, I don't care for it.

The best software I have found is actually Art Dabbler, which came bundled with an old tablet before my current one. I find its interface very natural and easy to use. (You open a "drawer" to find your different tools.)

I also find it makes reproduces very smooth lines - something which Dogwaffle, Painter and and free programs do not always achieve.

Sadly, Art Dabbler was sold to Corel and is no longer available. I do have Corel's Painter Essentials (came with current tablet), but there is a bit of a learning curve involved, and it is just not as easy as I would like. (All I want to do is draw nice lines with a "pen" or "pencil" and be able to colour it easily.)

I am sure this is all very boring for people who have never used a tablet to draw, but if anyone has used freeware with their tablet which they are happy with, please let me know.

Lots of steam

World's Largest Solar Cooking System Installed in India

If poorer countries are going to reduce their CO2, while still cooking food, then systems like this will presumably have a role to play:

India already had the previous world's largest solar-powered cooking system, serving 15,000 pilgrims daily at the Tirumala temple in Andhra Pradesh. But now that one has been been one-upped, Taragana reports. The new system has been installed at the shrine of 19th century saint Sai Baba in Shridi and can feed up to 20,000 people per day:

The system generates some 3,500 kg of steam daily, which replaces on a yearly basis 100,000 kg of cooking gas.

3,500 kg of steam? That's how you measure steam?

Anyhow, it would be interesting to know whether the cost is worthwhile in terms of gas savings.

Turnbull and the amazing, all-knowing Rundle

Turnbull's solid case may fail to rescue credibility

Michelle Grattan in The Age is pretty forgiving in her assessment of Turnbull and the "utegate" affair. As she says:

...most honest journalists would have to admit that, presented with Grech and his document, they would have thought they had a pretty watertight story. Especially given that the evidence points to a long relationship with the Opposition.

The worst commentary on this is from Guy Rundle in Crikey (which is the subject of a LP post here), yet because it is a silly exercise in psychoanalysing all the major players and condemns Turnbull and everyone around him, the people at Larvatus Prodeo think it's great.

I don't begrudge that the leftie readers of LP think that Turnbull has shot himself in the foot in a major way. But what really annoys is that they (and in particular, Mark Bahnisch, who reproduced the article) do not call out the obvious flaws in the Rundle article as a piece of analysis. I mean, really, it starts:

It should have been obvious to anyone who came into contact with him that Godwin Grech was not a man whose robustness could be assumed. Apparently frail and ill from childhood, a solitary type who joined the CPS directly from university, he clearly found in public service a framework for his existence, and a meaning for a life he reasonably assumed would be foreshortened.

He can also tell how meetings he never saw must have gone:

Most people would have spotted instantly that someone like Grech was out of his element, in crisis, that there was a point at which to stop.

And Turnbull's decision to run with the issue:

...contributed to the ruination of a man whose one hope for a meaningful and rounded life, for a life that made sense, was to have been, and been remembered as, a dutiful and effective public servant. Turnbull was the stronger man. It was his fault.

As for Turnbull and Abbott:

Like many of a certain type of Roman Catholic, and Turnbull is the same, Abbott is a man without a soul who outsources its provisioning to the most dependable outfit around — and one that, unlike protestantism or Islam, doesn’t demand that you make much of an effort to change your nature.

You can bet your bottom dollar that Bahnisch, if reading some equivalent armchair psychoanalysis of Labor figures would be calling it as overheated rubbish and pathetic as an exercise of alleged serious political analysis.

The point is, Mark likes to get annoyed about the quality of political journalistic analysis, but only when it is against his side of politics.

Small black holes delayed

Large Hadron Collider Struggles, Adding to the Mysteries of Life - NYTimes.com

The LHC is currently planned to be turned again in November, but its major, major teething problems mean it won't be working at its intended full strength for some time (maybe never):

.....scientists say it could be years, if ever, before the collider runs at full strength, stretching out the time it should take to achieve the collider’s main goals, like producing a particle known as the Higgs boson thought to be responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass, or identifying the dark matter that astronomers say makes up 25 percent of the cosmos.

The report goes on to explain the technical nature of the problem, for those interested.

Still can't buy in Australia, though

Sony Cuts Prices on E-Books and Unveils Readers

Bah.

Yes, but at what price

LEDs Are As Energy Efficient as Compact Fluorescents

Yet doesn't this mean that that are hardly worthwhile investing in over compact fluorescents until they become closer in cost?

Report explained - news not good

Station ALOHA data reveal ocean acidification

A few posts back, I had a post updating some recent stuff on ocean acidification, and ended noting a study on waters near Hawaii that examined the 20 year history of pH levels. I said it was kind of hard to understand clearly, as at that time I only had a link to the paper itself, and scientists aren't all that good at writing clear summaries.

Anyhow, my guess as to what it meant was correct, as shown in this easier to understand summary linked above:

.....over the two decades of observation, the surface ocean grew more acidic at exactly the rate expected from chemical equilibration with the atmosphere. However, that rate of change varied considerably on seasonal and inter-annual timescales, and even reversed for one period of nearly five years. The year-to-year changes appear to be driven by climate-induced changes in ocean mixing and attendant biological responses to mixing events.

The authors also found distinct layers at depth in which pH declines were actually faster than at the surface. Dore and colleagues attribute these strata of elevated acidification rates to increases in biological activity and to the intrusion at Station ALOHA of remotely formed water masses with different chemical histories.

This seems to me to be a pretty important study, as it is confirmation from long term measurements that the predicted rate of ocean acidification is correct. (The fact that there are bumps along the way is, I suppose, like the difference between weather and climate.)

To the extent that they note that at depth, acidification at times seems to be happening faster than expected, is not good news.

Britain needs nuclear

Nuclear power ‘needed to fill energy gap’ - Times Online

With North Sea oil and gas production in steep decline, Mr Wicks is expected to call for the UK to boost the share of electricity generated from nuclear stations to as much as 30-40 per cent of the total, up from only 13 per cent last year.

He will also propose that the Government should adopt a more interventionist approach to ensure new reactors are built — and in greater numbers — than currently planned.

If a private company treated its employees this way..

...you'd have Sharon Burrows and/or Julia Gillard complaining about the corporation's heartless and incompetent personnel management.

But because it is happening under the Rudd government...

I'm talking about the following extracts from Godwin Grech's response to the Auditor General's report out today. He's a man who did a very stupid thing, but look what he says he was putting up with:

page 101: ...when I returned to Treasury in September 2008 it soon became clear that the 'normal’ rules of direction, reporting and accountability had changed significantly and were oftentimes confused and chaotic.

page 102: My essential point is that the environment I found myself in from late 2008, involved confused lines of accountability, poor overall management and frankly an almost anything goes attitude as long as the relevant policy initiative was delivered on time and the Prime Minister kept satisfied....

page 103: The normal policy development disciplines had broken down, with many policy options, certainly those that I had exposure to, being developed without any real opportunity by the Department of Finance and Deregulation to undertake proper costings, if at all. Relevant portfolio departments were either not involved in the policy development process or were given very limited information or opportunity to contribute.

page 111: I did raise resourcing issues with Treasury Deputy Secretary, Mr Jim Murphy on a number of occasions – both in mid to late December 2008 and again in early January 2009. I was told that options would be explored – but nothing happened. Indeed, the overall resource effort diminished especially after the 5 December 2008 public launch of OzCar by the Prime Minister and Treasurer in Sydney.

And here's the section which indicates how completely thoughtless Treasury was in failing to provide significant assistance to Grech:

page 111 - 112: In addition to the very significant work load pressures that were placed on me, it was well known to senior Treasury management, including Dr Ken Henry, the relevant Deputy Secretary, Mr Jim Murphy, and the relevant immediate supervisor, Mr David Martine, that I was physically impaired and suffered from a complex array of serious medical conditions. This included the loss of my colon, advanced dysmotility and malrotation of my small bowel that resulted in 7 small bowel obstructions since March 2005.

Treasury management were aware that I had a near fatal episode in late 2006 when a blockage resulted in an intestinal haemorrhage which led to septicaemia and acute renal failure. I never fully recovered from this episode having since developed stage 3 chronic kidney disease and metabolic bone disease including osteoporosis. I have suffered a further 3 small bowel obstructions since the near fatal 2006 episode – the most recent in February 2009. Treasury is aware of all of this and was at the time.

Unbeknown to Treasury management – or to me – I was also suffering from chronic clinical depression which doctors believe has been present and untreated for some years.

Given this complex medical condition, and the stark reminder of my vulnerability following my hospitalisation in both February and March 2009, senior Treasury management could – and I say should‐ have taken action to ensure that I got the support that I needed. This did not happen.

Not an Obama fan

Ayman- al Zawahri: Israel must be wiped off map

Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaida's second-in-command, said on Monday that Israel should be wiped off the map and described the Jewish state as a crime against Muslims.

Zawahri also accused US President Barack Obama of conducting a policy on Israeli-Palestinian issues that was bound to end in failure for the Palestinians, Reuters reported, saying that Obama wanted a Palestinian state that would serve as "an extension of the CIA."

"Israel is a crime that should be removed," the news agency quoted Zawahri as saying in an interview with al Qaida's media arm As-Sahab, posted on an Islamist website on Monday.

Someone already done this?

Sneaky asteroids

Lunar Crater Stats Indicate Hidden Population of Asteroids

A new study of the distribution of lunar craters has led to this suggestion (although it is far from the only possible explanation):

...the most exciting and potentially worrying possibility is that there exists a previously unseen population of near Earth asteroids that orbit the Sun at approximately the same distance as the Earth. These have gone unnoticed because they are smaller or darker than other asteroids, say Ito and Malhotra.

A fishy problem

Global Warming's Fish-Sex Effect - TIME

"We found that in fish that do have temperature-dependent sex determination [TSD], a rise in water temperature of just 1.5 degrees Celsius can change the male-to-female ratio from 1:1 to 3:1," says Piferrer, the study's co-author. In especially sensitive fish, a greater increase can throw the balance even more out of whack. Ospina-Alvarez and Piferrer have found that in the South American pejerrey, for example, an increase of 4 degrees Celsius can result in a population that is 98% male.

What makes these findings especially troubling, of course, is that the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that ocean-water temperatures are likely to rise by 1.5 degrees over the course of this century — and they may even go up a few degrees more. "If climate change really does result in a rise of 4 degrees, which is the maximum the IPCC predicts, and if species can't adapt in time or migrate, then in the most sensitive cases of TSD, we're looking at extinction," says Piferrer.

The natural history of the guinea pig

Could the guinea pigs from G-Force survive in the wild?

A kid's movie has prompted Slate to explain how the modern version of the guinea pig came to exist. This part caught my attention:

The domestication of guinea pigs dates back to around 5000 B.C., when the native people of Peru and Bolivia started breeding the beasts for food or religious ceremonies. (Or both: One famous Peruvian painting from 1753 shows Jesus Christ and his disciples dining on guinea pig at the Last Supper.)

The link will take you to the painting in question.

It's just as well that Dan Brown hasn't written a book about this. "The Guinea Pig Code" doesn't have quite the same ring.

A leader with too much time on his hands

BBC NEWS | Business | Venezuela's revolutionary reading

Hugo Chavez has come up with the Revolutionary Reading Plan, which involves giving away free books. The list includes some classic literature (Don Quijote and Les Miserable) but also " The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, Selected Speeches of Hugo Chavez and State Terrorism in Colombia." Of course.

This is the part that is truly odd:

...another key part of the Reading Plan are thousands of "book squadrons".

These are basically roving book clubs that are intended to encourage reading on the metro, in public squares and in parks.

Each squadron wears a different colour to identify their type of book. For example, the red team promotes autobiographies while the black team discusses books on "militant resistance".

The government say they will spread the word of the benefits of reading to the rest of the community. The opposition say they are the thought police.

What a fun job title that could be: "Commander of No.103 Brown Book Squadron". If it comes with a good uniform, I'd be in that, as long as I am allowed to smack people on the head with (soft cover) publications until they like them.

Experience doesn't help

Second marriages a rocky road for many

I knew the figure for failed second marriages was high, but not this high:

AUSTRALIANS are willing to take a second chance at love, with almost one-fifth of weddings involving a partner who has been married before. However, while only a third of first marriages end in divorce, the figure rises to 60 per cent for second marriages.

A very late review - Super

Well, now that no one is interested at all in my opinion about the moderately-successful-but- already-culturally-insignificant-after-only-3-years movie, Superman Returns, I'll give it anyway. (The reason being it was on commercial TV last night, and for once I was able to sit down and watch a movie from beginning to end.)

Back in June 2006, I posted a bit of Anthony Lane's review, as his generally cool attitude to the comic book superhero genre seemed to match mine.

But I must say, Superman Returns had more pleasures than I expected: it looked great with an obvious big budget; Kevin Spacey proved to be the best Lex Luthor I can recall; and the lead actor (whose name I can't even recall) did a very good job as Christopher Reeve - I mean, Superman. It was just good to hear John William's theme again too.

As nearly every reviewer noted at the time, the Christ analogy was impossible to miss, although I thought there were other allusions to Superman as mythical figure. His pushing the newly created island-continent thing off the Earth reminded me of Atlas, and the subsequent fall through the sky was a bit like a falling angel.

Yet, this same quasi-divinity had apparently shot off for 5 years without realising he had got Lois Lane pregnant.

Talk about your movie mythology trying to have it both ways: all knowing son and saviour hovering in the sky and rescuing people, but not clever enough to use a condom when he bedded Lois in that Super bed that really needed a firmer mattress. Not only that, he leaves for 5 years to check out if Krypton really had exploded (answer: yes) without apparently giving any prior explanation to his girlfriend. Maybe he left a note she didn't get? I don't think his lack of explanation was ever addressed.

Really, this Superman has trouble with priorities, it seems.

Lois in the meantime had settled for a "safe" boyfriend to help raise her son, while evidently still holding a flame for the absent Super boyfriend.

I thought the movie could have played this troubled modern on/off relationship thing more creatively. We were meant to be sympathetic to the boyfriend, who really doesn't know what's going on, but wouldn't it have been good if Superman discovered he was cheating on Lois? He could then be in some jeopardy and Superman has the opportunity to rescue him. Does Superman rescue the schmuck? Maybe he does, but only on the promise that he (the boyfriend) will be faithful to Lois in the future (but wait a minute - that would prevent or delay Superman's own desired re-union with Lois.)

Maybe Superman could rescue him only if he promises weekend custody of the boy with his real Dad. That would be very Supermodern. Oh, I just thought of another variation - the boyfriend could be having a gay affair - how does the modern superhero movie directed by a gay jewish man deal with that? At the very least, the movie could have been turned into a precautionary tale against unprotected sex - with a tie-in range of branded Super condoms ( advertising by-line "Don't make a Super mistake".)

Ah, I'm just being silly. Even with its somewhat unfortunate modern love triangle and lack of backstory to justify our hero's actions 5 years ago, I had a good enough time with it. I rate it MHSE (mostly harmless, somewhat enjoyable.)

French oyster mystery

Plague strikes French oysters - Telegraph

Something is killing the oysters of France.

Here's something I didn't know:

Last year, France's oyster industry – Europe's largest – was hit by its worst crisis since the native European or "Portuguese" oyster was all but wiped out 30 years ago. Since then almost all oyster farms in Europe have been restocked with the Pacific "creuse" oyster from Japan and British Columbia.

So the oysters I can get from France are exactly the same species as those farmed in much of Australia. (However, I generally go for Sydney Rock oysters over Pacific, as I don't really like the larger size of the latter.)

Foreigners be warned

Pocket knife lands tourist, 74, in lockup | The Japan Times Online

As I love to point out injustice in Dubai, perhaps it's only fair that I also link to a story of the problematic application of justice in Japan:

On July 2 in Shinjuku, a 74-year-old American tourist walked into a police box to ask directions. Inside the koban were an older (senior) officer and his younger (rookie?) colleague.

The American asked where Kinokuniya bookstore was, and the older police officer responded by asking the tourist if he had a pocket knife. The American, being the law-abiding citizen that he is, said "yes" and handed it to the senior officer. After a quick measurement of the blade, the officer arrested the 74-year-old for having a pocket knife 1 cm over the legal limit.

The most shocking part to the story is that a new revision of a law regarding pocket knives was subject to a moratorium until July 5, meaning those possessing knives that violate the new rules had until July 4 to dispose of them! Moreover, two other American tourists were arrested that same day at the same koban.

The conclusion to this man's story was nine days in a holding cell. Welcome to Japan!

It is strange, but in a law abiding and supremely polite place like Japan, it is still generally a good rule of thumb that foreigners should avoid approaching the police (in their neighbourhood bases known as "koban") for assistance unless absolutely necessary.

Eco notes from the Guardian

* Some novelist I haven't heard of goes for a drive in a new model Prius and makes some funny comments. Such as:

The car gently forces you to drive in an environmentally responsible way, and that means you don't have to feel so guilty about the fact you are transporting yourself to buy a pack of decaf tea from Tesco's in three tonnes of hi-tech metal.

* There's an anti-wind power column that makes a good start:

How would you imagine an environmentalist would react when presented with the following proposition? A power company plans to build a new development on a stretch of wild moorland. It will be nearly seven miles long, and consist of 150 structures, each made of steel and mounted on hundreds of tons of concrete. They will be almost 500 feet high, and will be accompanied by 73 miles of road. The development will require the quarrying of 1.5m cubic metres of rock and the cutting out and dumping of up to a million cubic metres of peat.

The answer is that if you are like many modern environmentalists you will support this project without question. You will dismiss anyone who opposes it as a nimby who is probably in the pay of the coal or nuclear lobby, and you will campaign for thousands more like it to be built all over the country.

The project is, of course, a wind farm – or, if we want to be less Orwellian in our terminology, a wind power station.

but then goes off the rails by arguing that technology is never, ever the real answer. Just how far back towards the campfire he wants us to live is not made clear.

* Roger A Pielke Jr has a good column on how CO2 response is still all in the realm of symbolism politics, so realistic goals are subject to somewhat silly criticisms:

Evidence for this claim can be found in the global reaction to the commitment made by the Japanese government last month to reduce emissions by 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. The announcement was met with derision. For instance, Yvo de Boer, head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, expressed shock at Japan's lack of ambition, stating, "I think for the first time in two-and-a-half years in this job, I don't know what to say."

Yet, Pielke notes, it is not as if the Japanese targets will be easy to reach:

To meet its 2020 target, Japan expects to do the following: construct nine new nuclear power plant plants and improve utilized capacity to 80 percent (from 60 percent); build about 34 new wind-power plants producing around 5 million kilowatts; install solar panels on 2.9 million homes (an increase of 2,000 percent over current levels); increase the share of newly built houses satisfying stringent insulation standards from 40 percent today to 80 percent; and increase sales of next-generation vehicles from 4 percent (2005) to 50 percent (2020).

And furthermore, the British target is virtually impossible:

The U.K. targets are a perfect example of what happens when symbols become disconnected from reality. To achieve a 34 percent reduction from 1990 emissions by 2022 while maintaining modest economic growth would require that the U.K. decarbonize its economy to the level of France by about 2016. In more concrete terms, Britain would have to achieve the equivalent of deploying about 30 new nuclear power plants in the next six years, just to get part way to its target. One does not need a degree in nuclear physics to conclude that is just not going to happen.

Towards the end, Pielke makes this point, which I find quite convincing:

...policies focused on targets and timetables for emissions reductions avoid questions about the realism and costs of the steps actually needed to reduce emissions. As Stanford's David Victor explains, "setting binding emission targets through treaties is wrongheaded because it 'forces' governments to do things they don't know how to do. And that puts them in a box, from which they escape using accounting tricks (e.g., offsets) rather than real effort." Until policies focus more directly on improving efficiency and decarbonizing supply, accounting tricks will dominate the policy response, just as occurred in budget policy.

Takeaway innovation

Gulfnews: Food outlets in Dubai safeguard themselves

The Gulf News has been following the story of a couple of kids who died soon after they ate takeaway food from a Chinese restaurant in Dubai.

Yes, those deaths are sad, but it's hard not be a little amused at the innovation this has led to. Yes, it's a case of parachuting in the lawyers, who no doubt helped the disclaimers that some outlets are forcing customers to sign:

"Please note that the Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates takes no responsibility whatsoever for any food or beverage bought from the hotel or any outlets of the hotel for personal consumption.

---

---

"This is due to the fact that the Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates has no more control or any way of ascertaining the safety and hygienic condition of this food and beverage once outside the premises. Please sign the waiver below to indicate your acceptance of the terms stipulated.

"Otherwise the hotel is unable to permit any food or beverage to be purchased," the disclaimer reads.

In another story noted in Gulf News, a Sudanese female journalist is challenging her arrest for wearing trousers in public. Several women were arrested by the "public order police", and "all but three of the women were flogged at a police station two days later."

Mind you, some women turned up in trousers at the court in support of the journalist, so it would appear that there is indeed a Great Trouser Showdown currently taking place in Khartoum.

It's a different world out there.

The problem with Tamiflu

Tamiflu causes sickness and nightmares in children, study finds - Times Online

A total of 103 children took part in the London study, of which 85 were given the drug as a precaution after a classmate received a diagnosis of swine flu. Of those, 45 experienced one or more side-effects. The most common was nausea (29 per cent), followed by stomach pain or cramps (20 per cent) and problems sleeping (12 per cent). Almost one in five had a “neuropsychiatric side-effect”, such as inability to think clearly, nightmares and “behaving strangely”, according to the research, published in Eurosurveillance, a journal of disease....

Health officials in Japan have recommended against prescribing Tamiflu to teenagers over fears it causes a rise in “neuropsychiatric events”. The researchers said that clinical trials had shown that about 20 per cent of adults reported side-effects of either nausea or vomiting after taking Tamiflu.

Something I don't understand ...(part of a never-ending series)

As far as I can make out, the English system of nationalised health services is too "socialist", with too little choice for the average punter. The US system is far too private/profit orientated, and is ridiculously inefficient when you compare money spent with actual health outcomes.

For all of its faults (and you have to assume that there is always going to be someone within every country that is not happy with some aspect of their own system,) the Australian system seems to be in a relatively happy position in the middle of those two extremes.

Does anyone in America recognize this? I certainly haven't heard anyone there going around pointing to us an example of a successful mixed system, with adequate universal cover but a system that allows those on moderate income to chose the level of additional private benefits they want. But it's true, isn't it?

Latest gay accessories

Three cats, two men — and now two babies

....the two dads — who outlaid $40,000 to collect eggs from one woman and rent a womb from another to gestate their babies in a Mumbai fertility clinic, are determined to bring another vexed issue into the public domain.

If they can pay taxes and raise children (one of them is the biological father and on the birth certificate, but they will not identify him publicly), why can’t they be lawfully wed, they argue. Tomorrow, in a bid to focus more attention on the issue of the gay marriage, Mr Elwell and Mr West will dress the little girls in symbolic rainbow coloured woollen hats (their neighbour’s mother knitted the garments for them), and take part in a mass mock wedding ceremony at the top of Collins Street.

Wrong in too many ways to count.

Surprising news items

* Archaeologists in Israel find a first century cup with a clear inscription on it, but it'll be weeks before they understand what it means. Somehow, I expected first century Aramaic would be more easily read.

* A horrifying crime has one less victim than you would expect. (Baby cut from mother is found alive, with the presumably crazy women who decided this was a quick way to experience parenthood.)

* China gives birth to almost enough people for another Australia every year. And has 13 million abortions per year (perhaps more if unregistered clinics were counted.) As far as the top in the rate of abortion, however, Russia still easily holds onto that dubious title. What exactly holds back that country from effective use of contraception?

Colbert interview of the week

OK, so the week's not up yet, but Colbert's interview with Arianna Huffington allowed him to be pretty funny:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Arianna Huffington
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Tasers

Amusing review

The Bleat, Monday, July 27

James Lileks has seen Watchmen at home and didn't like it. A pretty amusing list of reasons why is at the link.

Let's see, maybe the best section is this:

Reminded me of the Dark Knight comics: Reagan was President, which somehow explained why the cities were such horrid dystopias. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? Some how? Same here: the reign of Nixon (Jeezum crow, Nixon) ties in with urban decay, filth, moral calumny, and all those incidents of debauched decline Rorschack decried as he walked the mean streets. If there’s one thing we know for sure about hated iconic Republican presidents, they prefer a society full of prostitutes, child killers, drug addiction, and other sundry pleasures of modern life.

Uh huh. Imagine someone setting a comic like this in the 90s, with Dr. Bronx and the Jokester heading off to Bosnia to kill Serbs at the request of President Clinton - who’s in his third term, because he suspended the Constitution to prepare for Y2K - and later the Jokester, fresh from killing Vince Foster and Ron Brown, argues with InkBlot over who killed the American Dream, with InkBlot insisting it was supply-side economics. Meanwhile, ominous newspaper headlines note that North Korea has activated a plutonium factory, and the League of Solemn Scientists move the hands on a prop clock.

De-romancing the shaman

Do shamans have more sex? Why New Age spirituality is no more pure than old-time religion. Slate Magazine

Good article here on shamans not exactly being pure, spiritual purveyors of ancient wisdom.

The breakthrough mankind has been waiting for*

Long Duration Space Underwear

As Japan's first astronaut to spend long duration missions on board the International Space Station, Koichi Wakata has had the opportunity to do all sorts of interesting experiments the past few months. For example, he conducted several different cellular growth and crystal growth experiments, and has even flown a magic carpet in space. One other experiment has been – shall we say – kept under wraps. Wakata has been wearing the same underwear on board the ISS for two months.

"(For) two months I was wearing these underwear and there was no smell and nobody complained,” Wakata, speaking in Japanese, said through an interpreter during a press conference this weekend from the ISS. “I think that new J-ware underwear is very good for myself and my colleagues."

* Alternative title: "The breakthrough mankind has been holding its breath for"

Odd

Homicide By Mentally Ill Has Risen In England And Wales

There was also a rise in the number of homicides by people with schizophrenia – from 25 in 1997 to 46 in 2004 and an estimated 40 in 2005.

Professor Louis Appleby, Director of the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness, said: "There has been an unexplained rise in the number of homicides by people with mental illness and we now have to try to understand why this has happened.

"It is important to emphasise that the increase has not occurred in mental health patients. It is also important to keep these findings in perspective. The risk of being a victim of homicide in England and Wales is around 1 in 1,000 and the risk of being killed by someone with schizophrenia is around 1 in 20,000."

If I lived in England, I would not find those figures particularly comforting.

Solar thermal progress

Technology Review: Cheaper Solar Thermal Power

It seems from the article above that the company Stirling Engine Systems may be doing better than my preferred stirling engine company - Infinia Corp. (I still say that Infinia's solar power dish has a much cleaner, cooler looking design, though.)

Sadly, Infinia say they are not aiming to get into the small scale residential market. If you need a Megawatt, they are interested, but unless you are planning on setting up a small scale aluminium smelter in your backyard, that is a little excessive for most houses.

Ah what a pity. I was hoping that if the neighbours annoyed me (and believe me, they do), I could use a roof mounted Infinia dish to set fire to their washing on the clothes line.

Big drop

No. of foreign tourists visiting Japan plunges 29% in Jan-June

Wow, that is a big drop off in tourist numbers for Japan.

Big

Kingston Unveils the World’s First 256GB USB Flash Drive

Mind you, it says it will only be "built to order", so it's not likely to be cheap. Maybe it comes with leather upholstery in a selection of colours?

But really, this is remarkable, isn't it? The last desktop I bought for home (about 5 years ago; it's on its last legs - I found the motherboard had a burnt bit on it last weekend!) had a hard drive of 40GB. I know that's tiny by hard drive standards, but flash drives with hundreds of GB capacity still surprise me.