Where's the truth on soil carbon?

Abbott carbon plan 'unworkable'

From the report:

TONY ABBOTT'S ''direct action'' climate strategy would reduce emissions by only half as much as the Coalition claims because it made over-optimistic assumptions about the amount of carbon that could be stored in soil, a study suggests.

Soil carbon accounted for 60 per cent of the proposed emission reductions in Mr Abbott's climate policy, or about 85 million tonnes of carbon a year by 2020.

But according to the analysis, only 27 million tonnes a year is possible and only 18 million tonnes at the low price the Coalition has budgeted to pay for soil carbon from its multibillion-dollar ''direct action'' emissions reduction fund.

Last month the Coalition said its scheme would match the government's promise to cut emissions by at least 5 per cent by 2020, but would do this by buying abatement directly from farmers and industry - not by putting any price on carbon.

But the analysis, by ClimateWorks - a partnership between the Myer Foundation and Monash University - and McKinsey management consultants, suggests the scheme would either deliver far smaller emission cuts than the Coalition claims or would cost far more than the $3.2 billion budgeted over the first four years.

It seems to me that there are dubious claims being made by some scientists about the potential for soil carbon in Australia. I don't have time to search it out now, but a few weeks ago there was a woman talking on Phillip Adam's Late Night Live about soil carbon having a huge potential, even greater than what the Opposition seemed to allow for it. I thought her claims sounded far fetched, and this report indicates I might be right.

Gossip time

Memo to Tony and Kevin: no sex please, we're voters | The Australian

There's a bit of new gossip about our political leaders and their attitudes towards sex and women in this article.  I think its take on both the uptight PM and the too-loose lips of the Opposition Leader seems about right.

It notes that in Abbott's case, Glenn Milne indicated on Insiders that Abbott's use of "feeling threatened"by homosexuality arose out of a specific incident during his time at the seminary.  In last night's Four Corners, someone mentioned that the seminary not having a "virile" enough environment for him.   With these hints, I'm now curious as to what did happen: was it a one off incident that offended him, or was the problem more of a general quiet tolerance of homosexual activity by one of more priests or seminarians?   If it is the former, I guess most people would think it's a minor matter in the past; if the latter, it does actually involve big questions about sexuality, the priesthood and how the church deals with it.

I see that Abbott finally took the line in Four Corners that he had had "many" gay friends.  It sure took him a long time to realise that this is one way for a politician to try to defuse the issue about personal feelings about homosexuality. 

But, as virtually every commentator in the land agrees, he mainly just has to find a way to gracefully stop answering questions he doesn't want to.

Not a good look

Liberal MP Michael Johnson defends 'unorthodox' fundraising practices | The Australian

Sources have told The Australian that part of the investigation centres
on the activities of the Australia-China Development Association, a
not-for-profit company he set up five years ago that has helped sponsor
his extensive overseas travel.

Mr Johnson said yesterday he had sought and received payments -- made
to the association -- for introducing business leaders.

"I have made introductions to Australian business people, for them to negotiate
deals, and some have shown their appreciation by making donations to the
association," he said. "I have asked in the past and I would ask
again."

Mr Johnson said he had previously made introductions between Asian and Australian mining executives and, although a deal did not eventuate, he would have "asked for a percentage" to go to the association.

"I don't think it is illegal," a defiant Mr Johnson told The Australian yesterday.

"Because no one has done this before the first impression is that it is wrong, but that is wrong."

Mr Johnson said the association was run at arms' length by three independent directors and he applied to them for money to fund his travel.

Surely he can see it's a very bad look, regardless of legalities? Michael was happy to feature prominently in the ousting of Malcolm Turnbull, despite still presenting terribly in media interviews. It would be quite pleasingly ironic for him to lose preselection.

So that's why I've been putting on weight

Obesity and climate top agenda (Science Alert)

A letter signed by more than 350 Australian health scientists has today
been sent to the Medical Journal of Australia, urging Australian
politicians and the public to recognise the link between obesity and
global climate change....

The two greatest health threats the human population now faces are
global climate change and the rise of obesity, and its life-threatening
disease consequences, Professor Egger said.

Citing the letter, he said: “Big health gains have been made since the
onset of industrialisation. However, we are now seeing the emergence of
health risks caused by excesses in market-driven consumerism (including
energy-dense processed foods), energy-subsidised exertion-free living,
an over-arching Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fetishism, and, for climate
change in particular, population growth.

Talk about a link too far...

Viral within viral

Earlier today, I first saw the viral video that has now been inserted into this video, to great effect:



It was on Lileks; maybe everyone has already seen it. No matter, it brings tears to my eyes.

Neat

SPACE.com -- Secret Military Space Plane Primed For Test Launch

A secretive military spacecraft resembling a small space shuttle orbiter is
undergoing final processing in Florida for launch on April 19.

The Air Force confirmed the critical preflight milestone in a response to written questions on Thursday.

The 29-foot-long, 15-foot-wide Orbital TestVehicle arrived in Cape Canaveral, Fla., last month according to the Air Force. The OTV spaceplane was built at a Boeing Phantom Works
facility in Southern California.

You can never have enough secret military space planes, I say. They make life more interesting.

Shinto considered

In the land of the kami | The Japan Times Online

There's quite a decent essay here on Shinto, making it sound even vaguer than I already thought it was. There are lots of interesting observations, such as this:

"God" or "deity" seems the best the English language can do with "kami," but this misleads by suggesting a level of exaltation foreign to Japanese worship. The Emperor's former status as a "living god" was not what many horrified Westerners took it to be. In fact, he was a "manifest kami" — hardly the same thing and much less shocking.

Anything, or anyone, can become a kami by being striking or, in some undefined way, "superior" — the literal meaning of the word. The classic definition comes from the 18th-century nativist thinker Motoori Norinaga, who dedicated his life to exalting suprarational Japanese purity over Buddhism's and Confucianism's corrupt enslavement to human reason.

"I do not yet understand the meaning of the term kami," wrote Norinaga (in "The Spirit of the Gods," 1771). "It is hardly necessary to say that it includes human beings. It also includes such objects as birds, beasts, trees, plants, seas, mountains and so forth. In ancient usage, anything whatsoever which was outside the ordinary, which possessed superior power or which was awe-inspiring, was called kami. . . . Evil and mysterious things, if they are extraordinary and dreadful, are called kami . . . "

Rooted in the spontaneous nature- worship of deep prehistory, Shinto is probably the most archaic living religion anywhere in the developed world.

Pretty in pink

Straight from the home garden, taken 15 minutes ago:

Minor, but somewhat intriguing, mystery of the week

BBC News - Mystery of 75 starlings falling from the sky

What an odd sounding event:

The deaths of 75 starlings which appeared to fall from the sky and crash land on to a driveway in Somerset has mystified the RSPCA animal charity.The birds were spotted falling onto the entrance of a house in Coxley in Somerset on Sunday 7 March.

Ms Sparkes said: "Onlookers said they heard a whooshing sound and then the birds just hit the ground. They had fallen on to the ground in quite a small area, about 12ft (3.6m) in diameter.

They appeared to be in good condition other than injuries that they appear to have suffered when they hit they ground. "Our best guess is that this happened because the starlings were trying to escape a predator such as a sparrow hawk and ended up crash landing."

That sounds a rather unlikely explanation, doesn't it? But then, I suppose being swatted by a passing invisible flying object (is there a military base near there?) may sound to some as implausible too.

Lane amuses again

I have to admit I have never seen a Paul Greengrass film, even though the Bourne movies have proved popular and United 23 got good reviews. I'll catch up with some of his work eventually.

But I do know from David Stratton's reviews in particular that Greengrass is one of the worst offenders of overuse of "shakey-cam" style of fast, jiggly hand-held cinematography. Stratton often complains it makes him feel physically queasy. (I pretty much hate the style too, which is part of the reason I haven't rushed to see Greengrass in the cinema.)

Anthony Lane's New Yorker review of his latest movie "The Green Zone" indicates that he is probably sick of the director's style too, and I like the way he puts it:

He made two of the “Bourne” films and “United 93,” and his attitude to the average viewer remains that of a salad spinner toward a lettuce leaf. You don’t so much watch a Greengrass film as cling on tight and pray....

...most of Greengrass’s audience will be neither scholars of Iraqi politics nor conspiracy theorists with damp palms and narrowed eyes; they will be natural Bourne lovers, who want the camera to start shaking and grooving in the first minute and never stop.

They have their wish. From the echoing factory that Miller scours in his first scene to the climactic wasteland through which he, his interpreter (Khalid Abdalla), and the bullish Briggs (Jason Isaacs), from Special Forces, prowl after dark—all, for different reasons, in pursuit of al Rawi—“Green Zone” approaches every human activity as if preparing to defibrillate.

Stating the obvious

Cardinal Schonborn says celibacy partly to blame for clerical sex abuse -Times Online

Worse than I thought

I haven't spent a lot of time worrying about Scientology. Sure, it's a nutty, science fiction religion invented cynically by a fraudulent and unappealing character that seems to function mainly as a feel-good social club for a clique of celebrities (as well as others rich enough to pay their way through its oddball version of enlightenment.) But, I have to admit, it is probably because the likes of John Travolta and Tom Cruise (and in Australia, Kate Ceberano) don't come across in interviews as unpleasant people* that I had kind of assumed it was, well, a more or less harmless way to separate rich people from their cash.

But, in light of recent publicity in the New York Times, and this week's Four Corner's program, it is clear I was being too generous. The possibility that Travolta's son did not get appropriate medical treatment during his life also indicates one of the awful aspects of belonging to such an all encompassing cult.

* (OK, Cruise is a little strange acting, but he's worked with Spielberg a lot so he can't be all bad)

Keeps the floor cleaner too

NoMix toilets get thumbs-up in seven European countries

Nearly 4 years ago here, I had a post about how some countries were trying out new sewerage collection systems to keep urine out of the waterways.

Well, Europe is still at it, and at the link above you can see one of the special urine collecting toilets that you need for such a system. As my earlier post noted, and the photo appears to confirm, these toilets require men to sit down to urinate*. Yet, apparently, they are well accepted in the half dozen European countries where they have been trialled.

*This aspect would, of course, mean that the toilets would be rejected by the vast majority of commenters at Catallaxy, for just not being manly enough.**

** Sorry for the in joke, but I've been fighting in comments at that blog with men who debate with all the wit and tactics of 15 year school boys (from a boys only school) for the last couple of days. (Jason, not you.) I'll be giving that up soon.

Recommended viewing

Dubai - Quicksand - Foreign Correspondent - ABC

The Foreign Correspondent show this week on Dubai was great viewing. I remain puzzled as to why any Westerner would want to work there.

Bits and pieces

Yet again, I spent too much time today arguing on Catallaxy. Bad, bad.

Meanwhile, on the internet more generally, I note:

* I didn't catch all of the Oscars on Monday, but what I did see seem very strangely directed and not terribly funny. Steve Martin, I thought for the first time, actually is starting to look old. (That white hair has made him look the same age for close to four decades.) Still, at least it wasn't very overtly political this year, and James Cameron lost (yay!). The funniest commentary I have read about the show is here.

* Slate has a somewhat interesting review of a book about why gay rights have advanced quickly in America. It mainly talks about the idea that conservatives are motivated by a combination of disproportionate disgust at the messy details of gay sex and overactive imaginations. It's an argument that has some explanatory power for some of the reaction towards homosexuals by teenage boys (and Tony Abbott), but it hardly explains why, in various societies where homosexual/bisexual behaviour was unremarkable, no one until now has ever thought it made sense for gay relationships to be given the status of marriage.

* It's a jet pack, yes, but it's terribly loud and made in New Zealand, which given its reputation for flightless birds, does not inspire much confidence. The big question: how do you stop a disaster from one of the fans breaking? Video available at the link.

* SBS has been showing a documentary series about a couple of Australian guys who wrote an ambitious musical (Angels, mostly to be performed by a cast flying around on trapezes, it seemed) and went to Broadway to try to stage it. I've only seen one episode, and it was a little like watching a slow moving train wreck. I felt sorry for the one who wrote the music; he looked so stressed and lonely the whole time while his buddy was out wheeling and dealing to try to get finance. The story of what happened can be read here and here, if you don't want to watch.

Blood post

I'm not doing bad at not posting here during the day, except for the fact that I've been making comments all day at Catallaxy instead. (It's a strange blog at the moment, that one, about which I am tempted to post here one day. But not yet.) Tomorrow, I have to stop even that.

Anyhow, tonight's little post is about the fact that I finally finished Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood". What a fine book it turned out to be. I'm not one for crime fiction or true life crime accounts generally speaking, but Capote's book is so intelligent and well written I couldn't help but be impressed.

In many respects (apart from the complete lack of swearing) I felt that the book does not feel dated at all, even in its succinct but (I believe) accurate discussion about psychiatry and criminal responsibility. It was also interesting to note how capital punishment was a controversial topic in the heartland of America even 50 years ago. I don't particularly care if some scenes are not accurate; there appears to be enough "first hand" content in the book (such as letters and other material) to feel pretty confident that the psychological account of the life of the murderers is more or less correct.

For a somewhat flamboyant, eccentric, gay socialite, Capote certainly seems to show a surprising degree of empathy with conservative middle America, and perhaps in that respect it does feel a little dated. (It's easy to imagine that any modern writer from New York on a similar project today would be more condescending towards the religious townfolk.) But the main point about Capote is his fine writing style, and it's a pity that his literary output was so limited.

I see that the Wikipedia article on the book has a link to site containing photos which are of interest if you know the story.

Now it's time for me to read the last Michael Crichton novel, about pirates. A bit of a change of pace.

Four more than I had heard of

Knowing the mind of God: Seven theories of everything - physics-math

That's a bit embarrassing. I thought I read enough about physics on the 'net, but I can only recall reading about 3 out of this list of seven.

Oh well. The real TOE has probably not even been thought of yet.

Self control issue

Every Sunday, after (usually) fairly light browsing and posting because of domestic activities, I get the feeling that it would be easy for me to just stop posting for a few weeks to catch up on work.

Then on Monday I get to work, and if no one rings in the first hour, I look around my usual haunts on the internet, find something worth a post, and then the cycle of continuing to look for stuff that I want to post about recommences, to the detriment of getting more work done.

This post itself is evidence of my poor self control.

By posting about it here, maybe it will be like my mini Internet Anonymous first meeting "Hi, I'm Steve, and I spend far too much time on the internet."

So, that's that then. Now I'm on the path to recovery, I really do have a pretty intense period of work coming up. I'm going to try to only post on evenings, if at all. In a couple of weeks, I should give it up totally, as I expect to have a particularly stressful couple of weeks at work. But maybe if I can become a night blogger only, I can cope. Or is that like an alcoholic promising to only have 2 drinks a night with dinner?

We'll see.

Hard to believe

Catalyst could power homes on a bottle of water, produce hydrogen on-site (w/ Video)

With one bottle of drinking water and four hours of sunlight, MIT chemist Dan Nocera claims that he can produce 30 KWh of electricity, which is enough to power an entire household in the developing world. With about three gallons of river water, he could satisfy the daily energy needs of a large American home. The key to these claims is a new, affordable catalyst that uses solar electricity to split water and generate hydrogen.

The Swiss tackle the serious issues

BBC News - Swiss ask whether animals need lawyers

Swiss voters will go to the polls on Sunday to decide on a proposal to appoint state-funded lawyers across the country to represent animals in court.

Supporters of the initiative say such lawyers would help deter cases of animal cruelty and neglect, by making sure that those who did abuse or neglect animals would be properly punished.

It's the obvious place for a sequel movie "Ace Ventura: Pet Attorney".

Monbiot on feed in tariffs again

There is no 'green treachery' in questioning this solar panel rip-off | George Monbiot | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Monbiot continues to make some sense about feed in tariffs and solar. 

Next time, ask if their hearing aid is on

What do you mean you 'had sex'? | Booster Shots | Los Angeles Times

A telephone survey in Indiana on what people think constitutes "having sex". Some results are not surprising, as by all accounts Bill Clinton's definition has been widely adopted, especially by the young.

But this?:

Among older men (age 65 and older), 23% did not consider penile-vaginal intercourse to be sex.

One suspects either a failure to have the hearing aid on, or a lack of familiarity with terminology, or both. "Pea Nile vege Nile what?"

The Economist comes out swinging on "genderside"

The war on baby girls: Gendercide | The Economist

It's ironic, I suppose, that while feminism is traditionally a left wing concern, it is this far-from-left-wing periodical which is making one of the strongest call to action against abortion of girls.

Hamas deals with the serious problems

BBC News - Male hairdressers banned from women's salons in Gaza

Save the oyster

Ocean acidity and its effects examined

The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting article here on local research into ocean acidification.

The Sydney rock oyster has shown adverse sensitivity to acidification, but research is being done to see if they can breed strains that are more resistant to it.

While not getting my favourite oyster would be a worry, the far bigger concern is the effect on phytoplankton and small shelled fishfood like the pteropods.

The Arctic methane worry

Methane bubbling out of Arctic Ocean – but is it new? - environment - 04 March 2010 - New Scientist

A wide expanse of Arctic Ocean seabed is bubbling methane into the atmosphere. This is the first time that the ocean has been found to be releasing this powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere on this scale.

The discovery will rekindle fears that global warming might be on the verge of unlocking billions of tonnes of methane from beneath the oceans, which could trigger runaway climate change. The trouble is, nobody knows if the Arctic emissions are new, or indeed anything to do with global warming.

The PhysOrg version of the story has more detail, including this somewhat worrying conclusion:

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf, in addition to holding large stores of frozen methane, is more of a concern because it is so shallow. In deep water, methane gas oxidizes into carbon dioxide before it reaches the surface. In the shallows of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, methane simply doesn’t have enough time to oxidize, which means more of it escapes into the atmosphere. That, combined with the sheer amount of methane in the region, could add a previously uncalculated variable to climate models.

"The release to the atmosphere of only one percent of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits might alter the current atmospheric burden of methane up to 3 to 4 times,” Shakhova said. “The climatic consequences of this are hard to predict.”

Update: On the other hand, the Christian Science Monitor's take on the story indicates that the current level of emissions is not so large on the global scale:

They are estimated at nearly 8 million metric tons a year, making them roughly equal to the amount that, until now, scientists had attributed to emissions from all the world's oceans combined, the researchers calculate. Still, the emissions represent no more than about 1 percent of total global emissions.

I guess the worry is whether it is currently coming from thawing shallow hydrate deposits or not, and if it is, whether that will increase dramatically.

Fake cigarettes for health

Be Healthy And Smoke Your Vitamin C

I like the cut-away diagram at the post: it looks like a missile interior. Watch out for the Nosemint too..

There's a country that knows how to name space stations

The Great Beyond: ‘Heavenly Palace’ in space to launch next year

China has announced it will launch the first module of its space station next year.

The unmanned ‘Heavenly Palace’ module will be transformed into a permanent taikonaut residence and space lab within two years of the launch, says Qi Faren, a member of the influential National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

How very Chinese.

This and that

I've been busy today, and will probably be posting less frequently for a little while. But tonight, here are a few fun things that have caught my eye:

* It's all an illusion: This is a pretty amazing video that demonstrates the remarkable degree to which television can now fake the background scenery via green screen. I had no idea that this technology was so ubiquitous on TV, and so seamlessly used in so many different ways:



The company which put this together has a website here.

* Jesus told me so (just yesterday, in fact): I think I have mentioned viXra before. Its purpose is to provide an outlet for papers (mainly on science) which arXiv will not run for being just a bit too "out there", even though some pretty odd things have ended up on arXiv.

Of course, everyone assumed that this would mean an unreadable mess of papers explaining every crank theory under the sun. Yet, my impression from reading some of the abstracts on the physics sections is that it may not be all rubbish; certainly some of titles just as impenetrable as some of those on arXiv, and are not obviously nutty.

But the best feature of viXra is the section "religion and spirituality", as it features several papers written by (wait for it) Jesus Christ Himself. Yay.

As the layout of viXra is identical to arXiv, the mere appearance of the list of articles by "Author: Jesus Christ" is amusing. Here's a screenshot (click to enlarge):


Sadly, I think Jesus needs a good editor to review his message writing style. He seems fond of ending this way:

This article is written by Me, Jesus Christ, and Me allow you to read this article in order you can read and repent and receive Me, Jesus Christ. Me allow My messenger, that is this writer, to type this article in order you can repent and do your repentance properly. That is My message: be hurry, be hurry to repent and receive Me, Jesus Christ, all corners of the world. Tweet this message quickly to all over the world including all your friends quickly today.

I guess it's a case of "my tweet Lord". (Rolling in the aisles, are we?)

* Working at the office from home: this last bit is not funny, just a recommendation for some software.

I had long been vaguely aware that software was available that would let you operate a computer remotely, but I didn't feel a big enough need for that to actually pay for such software. I didn't know until recently that there were also freeware solutions for this.

A couple of months ago, a computer magazine disc had the free version of LogMeIn, but it didn't work well. (Screen resolution of the window showing the remote computer was pretty poor, and it would not work with my beloved Wordperfect documents at all.)

But now I have tried Teamviewer in the free version (for private and non-commercial use, of course.) It works extremely well, although the slight time lag when you're at home editing a document on your work computer (did I say "work"? I meant, the computer in my other home) takes a little bit of getting used to.

It's worth a try if that sort of thing might be useful for you too.

Lots of ice found?

Radar Finds Ice Deposits at Moon's North Pole

This sounds impressive:

Numerous craters near the poles of the Moon have interiors that are in permanent sun shadow. These areas are very cold and water ice is stable there essentially indefinitely. Fresh craters show high degrees of surface roughness (high CPR) both inside and outside the crater rim, caused by sharp rocks and block fields that are distributed over the entire crater area. However, Mini-SAR has found craters near the north pole that have high CPR inside, but not outside their rims. This relation suggests that the high CPR is not caused by roughness, but by some material that is restricted within the interiors of these craters. We interpret this relation as consistent with water ice present in these craters. The ice must be relatively pure and at least a couple of meters thick to give this signature.

Of course, the poles should have been a priority for human exploration on the return to the Moon. When that's going to happen now, though, is anyone's guess.

Monbiot's back, making some sense this time

Are we really going to let ourselves be duped into this solar panel rip-off? | George Monbiot |

There you go. If like me you always had a hunch that Germany and England going mad with installing solar cells on buildings made no sense at all because, well, it's hard to imagine the sun giving you a sunburn in England, let alone contributing power to your house, it turns out George Monbiot agrees completely.

He does note, though, that PV on the roof makes more sense in areas where peak power demand does tend to occur in summer on sunny days (for airconditioning). In England (and I assume Germany) however:

"..peak demand takes place between 5pm and 7pm on winter evenings. Do I need to spell out the implications?"

George is going off about the UK just setting high feed in tariffs, just at the time Germany is realising they can't be sustained. He writes about the UK:

It expects this scheme to save 7m tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2020. Assuming – generously – that the rate of installation keeps accelerating, this suggests a saving of about 20m tonnes of CO₂ by 2030. The estimated price by then is £8.6bn. This means it will cost about £430 to save one tonne of CO₂.

Last year the consultancy company McKinsey published a table of cost comparisons. It found that you could save a tonne of CO₂ for £3 by investing in geothermal energy, or for £8 by building a nuclear power plant.

On Germany:

By 2006 its generous feed-in tariffs had stimulated 230,000 solar roofs, at a cost of ¤1.2bn. Their total contribution to the country's electricity supply was 0.4%. Their total contribution to carbon savings, as a paper in the journal Energy Policy points out, is zero. This is because Germany, like the UK, belongs to the European emissions trading scheme. Any savings made by feed-in tariffs permit other industries to raise their emissions.

Good reading.

A bit of an oversight

Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found that patients admitted to hospice care who have an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) are rarely having their ICDs deactivated and are receiving electrical shocks from these devices near the end of life....

ICD shocks may cause physical and psychological distress for patients and their caregivers. Patients report that receiving shocks from an ICD is comparable to being "kicked or punched" in the chest. Receiving ICD shocks has been associated with the development of adjustment disorders, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and panic disorder. Family caregivers who observe patients being shocked report feelings of fear, worry, and helplessness, and have been shown to have increased rates of depression and anxiety. For patients with advanced disease, an ICD may no longer prolong a life of acceptable quality, and cause needless discomfort.

Read about it here.

Why the LHC may blow again

'Subtle defect' worry at LHC (Blog) - physicsworld.com

Here's a short article on the issues that are causing the LHC to run at lower power for a couple of years, until they close the whole thing down to check every part of it for a defect in the electronics.

Seeing I was talking about spinning superconductors and anti-gravity effects a couple of posts back, it would be a nice result if the LHC at full power causes the whole thing to levitate off the ground and drift off into space. (I know, it's not the superconductors themselves moving, but it's a nice image, isn't it?)

Fodder for skeptics

Climate Feedback: The climate machine

The Hadley Centre is working on a more complicated model of the Earth for the next round of future climate predictions.

The only problem is, climate skeptics/deniers are bound to leap onto this:

The scientists – such as Jones – who have developed HADGEM2-ES hope that by representing the earth system in greater complexity they will be to simulate the present-day climate with greater realism. This should, in theory, lead to more realistic projections for the future, but many of the climate modellers I spoke to were keen to point out that simulating the climate with more complex models may well lead to greater uncertainty about what the future holds. That’s because including sources of large feedbacks – such as forests that can expand or die or tundra that can release vast amounts of methane – adds a whole new suite of factors to which the climate can respond.

So, it’s quite likely that the next IPCC report will have much larger error bars on its estimates of future temperature or precipitation, compared with AR4. Climatologist Jim Hurrell of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, who is heading up development of the NCAR Earth-system model, had this to say:

“It's very likely that the generation of models that will be assessed for the next IPCC report will have a wider spread of possible climate outcomes as we move into the future".

No one ever said climate science was easy...

Dark news

Dark matter could meet its nemesis on Earth - New Scientist

That's interesting. They may be able to test Modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) via an experiment on earth.

Actually, that puts in mind of the claims in the 1990's of some Russian scientist's experiments with a spinning superconducting disc that seemed to produce a slight anti-gravity effect. Here's a Slate article about it from 2002.

Haven't heard any more about that for a long time. I guess the secret, alien-run Earth Quarantine Force that kills off potential technology that could get us to the stars saw to that. (Hey, it's a working hypothesis, OK?)

And I am also reminded of an interesting recent article on dark energy on arXiv. As you may recall, Einstein added a deliberate fudge (the cosmological constant) to general relativity to make sure the universe wasn't expanding. (Expansion was not an idea in vogue at the time Einstein was doodling in the Patent Office.) Now that observation shows it's currently not only expanding, but accelerating, the talk is all of the mystery of dark energy.

Well, a couple of European physicists argue that there is no need to call it dark energy at all: it's just what happens with relativity. They argue that people are misunderstanding the cosmological constant totally, and (I think) people just have to get used to the idea that general relativity implies expansion.

I don't fully understand the argument: I'll have to re-read it again. But it does seem to me to be an argument that the answer to dark energy is fundamentally staring us in the face.

It's not that other scientists haven't thought of this; it's just that most seem to say "that's too easy, it can't be right." They write:

There is probably nothing very original in this note. The points we make here can be heard in discussions among physicists. However, for some reason they do not have much space in the dark-energy literature.

And towards the end of the article, they summarise it like this:

..to claim that dark energy represents a profound mystery, is, in our opinion, nonsense. \Dark energy" is just a catch name for the observed acceleration of the universe, which is a phenomenon well described by currently accepted theories, and predicted by these theories, whose intensity is determined by a fundamental constant, now being measured. The measure of the acceleration only determines the value of a constant that was not previously measured. We have only discovered that a constant that so far (strangely) appeared to be vanishing, in fact is not vanishing.

Our universe is full of mystery, but there is no mystery here. To claim that the greatest mystery of humanity today is the prospect that 75% of the universe is made up of a substance known as `dark energy' about which we have almost no knowledge at all" is indefensible.

Why then all the hype about the mystery of the dark energy? Maybe because great mysteries help getting attention and funding. But o ering a sober and scienti cally sound account of what we understand and what we do not understand is preferable for science, on the long run.

Pretty interesting, hey?

More crazy killers than you thought

Scale of mental health homicides 'is being played down' - Crime, UK - The Independent

The film-maker Julian Hendy began studying mental health homicides in Britain following the murder of his 75-year-old father, Philip Hendy, in Bristol in 2007. He investigated more than 600 cases, in a documentary, of homicide by people with mental health problems, dating back to 1993, and concluded there were more than 100 incidents a year, compared with the 50 stated officially...

Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of SANE, said :"This brave film reveals the reality of under-treated mental illness while raising urgent questions about the way we treat such homicides.

"Unfortunately, to reduce stigma there is a trend to underplay the scale of these tragedies, but this prevents lessons from being learned," she added.

I wonder if there are slippery figures quoted in this area in Australia too.

An Anthony Lane moment...

Reviewing "Shutter Island", Lane complains:

The final twist is a fizzle; not because we see it coming (though we do) but because Scorsese, with a great weight of exposition dumped in his lap, struggles to keep it snappy. He even has a character stand beside a whiteboard and point out written clues. It’s like having “I Walked with a Zombie” interrupted by “Sesame Street.”

Run away! Run away!

Yang Guoxiang | Military Aviation | Air & Space Magazine

A good interview here with a Chinese pilot who, in 1971, couldn't get a test H Bomb to leave his aircraft, and decided to return to base with the dangerous load still attached. The reaction at the base was slightly comic, in retrospect:

There were 10,000 people on the airbase, although only a few knew about
the mission I was on. If anything went wrong, thousands would lose their
lives. The bomb under the fuselage would be hanging just ten
centimeters (four inches) above the ground as I landed....

No one could be sure whether or not the bomb would explode if it
touched the runway, but I was confident that I could set the airplane
down gently. So I landed with the H-bomb hanging under me. It was a
perfect landing. When I shut down the engine, there was total silence; I
was completely alone. The airfield was deserted. All 10,000 personnel
were sitting in tunnels under the ground. I could not leave the cockpit:
there was no ladder for me to climb down from the fuselage that was
high above the ground.

I called the tower and asked for help. The tower told me to work my
way back to the tail and jump. The people in the control tower were
angry; in their eyes I had put 10,000 lives at risk.

And I had caused a big mess. When I notified the tower that I was
returning with the bomb, the evacuation siren went off. It was lunchtime
at the airbase; everyone was sitting down and eating. They had to rush
out, put on gas masks and scramble into the tunnels. A big rice cooker
caught fire because there was no one left to take care of the kitchen.
Everyone there then still remembers my name: I could have brought them
their Judgment Day.

It took a long time for anyone to come near my aircraft. Our
procedures for dealing with the H-bomb meant we had to wear rubber shoes
and clothing that would not create static electricity. No metal was
allowed in the area of the bomb. In the nuclear weapons storage bunker,
all steel columns were wrapped in copper. Now that I had unexpectedly
brought the H-bomb back, there were no service vehicles equipped with
the required shielding. I sat out on the field for a long while.

Australians behaving badly overseas - 1945 to 1952 edition

I don't recall reading any Australian reviews of this 2008 book about the role of Australians in post WW II Japan, but it sounds pretty interesting:

Some 20,000 Aussies served for over six years in Hiroshima and environs, doing their part in the demilitarization, democratization and rebuilding of Japan. The British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF), as the Australian contingent was formally known, made its presence felt, and not always for the good. ...

Predatory male sexual behavior? Yes, lots of that, often involving rape, assault and sometimes murder. Combing historical records and firsthand accounts, the author paints a sordid picture, explaining why local Japanese referred to the Australians as yabanjin (barbarian). Gerster writes: "Quite apart from the assaults and rapes was the ruinous cultural violence of men misbehaving because they could." More often than not, their antics were fueled by excessive drinking, which helps explain why so many Japanese pedestrians were victims of hti-and-run accidents. ...

Local women were discouraged from taking up with the soldiers by authorities who "warned that if they consorted with the Australians, they would give birth to kangaroos." Many apparently took their chances due to destitute circumstances and the shortage of Japanese men.

However, there is one line which makes me wonder about the author:

The Pacific War left a bitter legacy in Australia as many soldiers had suffered horribly as POWs. Even today, the author asserts, "anti-Japanese sentiment is endemic in the general community."

If there is any, I thinks it's fed by the whaling issue more than any other.

But still, the book apparently makes the point that:

It is all the more striking then to discover that many Australians developed respect for and intimacy with the former enemy, overcoming their prejudices in a way that left them out of sync with popular attitudes when they returned home.

Worth being reminded

This is not a new conclusion, but it would appear to be based on new modelling, and is worth bearing in mind:

The sun goes through an 11-year solar cycle during which its luminosity varies according to the number of sunspots appearing on its face. The normal cycle has a small effect on Earth's weather. But sometimes lulls in sunspot activity can last several decades, driving down the sun's luminosity to a "grand minimum". The Maunder minimum lasted from 1645 to 1715 and may have contributed to the little ice age.

Stefan Rahmstorf and Georg Feulner of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany modelled what would happen to temperatures on Earth if a grand minimum started now and lasted until 2100. They found that while temperatures would go down by as much as 0.3 °C, global warming would push up temperatures by 3.7 to 4.5 °C - more than negating any effect of a global minimum

Hadn't heard that one before

Jesus’s trip to Stonehenge and other bizarre notions - Catholic Herald Online

This is a pretty amusingly savage review of a book that promotes the idea that Jesus visited England (and specifically, Stonehenge!) during the "missing years" between his childhood and adult ministry.

I had heard of purported visits to India and/or Tibet before, and of post-crucifixion tourism to Japan. But Stonehenge: that's a new one for me.

Just wait 'til he works out what airplanes do...

Proof that engineering and magic do not mix

Found via Scienceblogs:

Yes, but bad news for Australia's gas emissions

According to the ABC:

The lentil is commonly associated with the Indian dish dhal, flatulence and Neil the Hippy from the BBC comedy The Young Ones almost 30 years ago.

More recently though, the relatively cheap pulse has also emerged as one of the most lucrative crops to grow in Australia.

Last weekend, my wife tried a new recipe for braised lamb shanks, which featured mostly Indian curry-ish spices and lentils. The effects the next day were pretty dire.

Solar stuff up

At least in Victoria, putting solar on your roof top has not been going smoothly:

The Victorian Energy and Water Ombudsman, Fiona McLeod, said that six months ago there were 17 complaints a month but they had now reached 141 a month....

There are issues with the safety of some of the installations, but apart from that, there is the economic issue:

In November the state government lifted the rate Victorian households are paid for power they put back into the grid to 66 cents a kilowatt. But in switching to solar, many households have lost the discount rates they had for using off-peak power to run hot-water systems, reverse-cycle air-conditioners and in-floor heating.

The loss of those discounts has resulted in thousands of Victorian households being hit with higher power bills after switching to solar.

Yes, I would be mighty annoyed too if spending $5000 or more on solar resulted in higher electricity bills.

Apart from the link above, here's a longer article detailing the practical problems with installing solar. It includes this bit concerning the size of solar systems, about which I had been curious, because it seems that many companies lately have been advertising smaller systems, many just barely over one kilowatt:

Consumer Affairs Victoria and Energy Safe Victoria have been made aware of supposedly dodgy private operators who are either bringing in inferior panels from countries such as China, or installing the panels without adhering to the AS3000 standard for wiring.

These systems are not capable of generating the claimed one-kilowatt output.

A source at one power distributor told The Age homes with a standard one-kilowatt solar system, as recommended under Canberra's scheme, would ''very rarely'' contribute any power back to the grid and earn money for a household.

''Unless it's a sunny day, and a good quality panel, and not one of the cheap imports, a one-kilowatt system can barely power the fridge and hot water system, let alone feed any meaningful power back.''

Lots of problems yet to be sorted out.

Nuclear debate

Nuclear Power Plants Cost Too Much To Build

This article, and the comments that follow in rebuttal, makes for an interesting read on the issue of the economic cost of developing nuclear power.

Of course, it is only dealing with large power plants. It seems that virtually no one has looked at the costs of rolling out small scale nuclear (of the Hyperion type) on a large scale. (Yes I know, it seems only to be an option just starting to be available, although it also seems to me that small scale pebble bed may be a future option as well, if anyone will work on developing it.)

A long explanation

BBC News - Why is the car giant Toyota not Toyoda?

It takes a long time for them to explain, but it comes down to this:

"In 1936, the company held a competition for a new name. Toyota was a popular choice among many. "

According to the company, it received some 27,000 entries.

It says the winning design led to a change in the name of the automobiles and plants from "Toyoda" to "Toyota."

The name was chosen "because the number of strokes to write Toyota in Japanese (eight) was thought to bring luck and prosperity," it goes on.

The past remembered

Greeks mention the war in bitter German attack

Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos said Germany had no right to reproach Greece for anything after it devastated the country under the Nazi occupation, which left 300,000 dead.

''They took away the gold that was in the Bank of Greece, and they never gave it back,'' he said. ''They shouldn't complain so much about stealing and not being very specific about economic dealings.''

Heh.

Yet another coming disaster

Disaster Awaits Cities in Earthquake Zones - NYTimes.com

Andrew Revkin is writing on more than just climate change now, it seems, with a long and interesting article here on what a disaster a major earthquake in Istanbul will be.

He notes, for example:

Some of Turkey’s biggest builders have readily admitted to using shoddy materials and bad practices in the urban construction boom. In an interview last year with the Turkish publication Referans, Ali Agaoglu, a Turkish developer ranked 468th last year on the Forbes list of billionaires, described how in the 1970s, salty sea sand and scrap iron were routinely used in buildings made of reinforced concrete.

“At that time, this was the best material,” he said, according to a translation of the interview. “Not just us, but all companies were doing the same thing. If an earthquake occurs in Istanbul, not even the army will be able to get in.”

And this:

One prediction about a potent quake concluded that 30,000 natural gas lines were likely to rupture. “If just 10 percent catch fire, that’s 3,000 fires,” he said, adding that the city’s fire stations are able to handle at most 30 to 40 fires in one day.

As for the status of engineers there:

Dr. Bilham at the University of Colorado has estimated that an engineer is involved in just 3 percent of the construction under way around the world.

Peter Yanev, who has advised the World Bank and the insurance industry on earthquake engineering and is the author of “Peace of Mind in Earthquake Country,” noted that in Turkey and other developing countries, even when someone with an engineering degree was involved, that was no guarantee of safe construction because there was little specialized training or licensing.

I also didn't realise that Tehran was in such danger too:

In Tehran, Iran’s capital, Dr. Bilham has calculated that one million people could die in a predicted quake similar in intensity to the one in Haiti, which the Haitian government estimates killed 230,000. (Some Iranian geologists have pressed their government for decades to move the capital because of the nest of surrounding geologic faults.)

Pity God can't arrange for one just big and localised enough to take out some uranium centrifuges.

Agreed

Why Clint Eastwood Is Ridiculously Overrated - The Daily Beast

I feel the same about Eastwood as I do about Mel Gibson: nothing they have ever done (that I have seen) strikes me as especially good. In fact, most of it I positively dislike.

Even if you don't agree with my assessment, I think the article is well argued and perhaps more generous than me, despite its title.

Local research news

Rising carbon snuffs coral

In a large experiment on Australia’s Heron Island, the team simulated CO2 and temperature conditions predicted for the middle and end of this century, based on current forecasts of the world’s likely emission levels and warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The results of their analyses of the bleaching, growth and survival of a number of organisms including corals indicates that a number of very important reef builders may be completely lost in near future.

“We found that coralline algae, which glue the reef together and help coral larvae settle successfully, were highly sensitive to increased CO2. These may die on reefs such as those in the southern Great Barrier Reef (GBR) before year 2050,” says Dr Anthony.

As Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is one of the researchers involved, Andrew Bolt will no doubt dismiss this. And, I have to admit, I think Ove does tend to the most pessimistic interpretation of anything that affects coral.

However, I am still concerned that he is right on the long term prospects.

Just wondering

BBC News - Whale kills SeaWorld trainer during Orlando show

The first report of this I saw this morning said it wasn't during a show. This more detailed report seems to confirm it was, and will presumably affect some of the witnesses for some time:

Park guest Victoria Biniak told a local TV channel that the trainer had just finished explaining to the audience what they were about to see.

At that point, she said, the whale "took off really fast, and then he came back around to the glass, jumped up, grabbed the trainer by the waist and started shaking her violently. The last thing we saw was her shoe floating."

However, officials say the trainer apparently fell into the tank whilst addressing an audience of guests, and was killed accidentally by the killer whale.

I am curious as to how much money a killer whale trainer is paid. Surely it would be worth a hell of a lot in danger money.

And for that matter, will they finally give up on training these animals at all? Sound like they are too dangerous to bother with.

Update: go to the Orlando Sentinel for more confusion over exactly how it happened, as well as a line which I think they should change to avoid very black humour jokes:

Other eyewitnesses who were in the park for the Dining with Shamu told the Sentinel that a female trainer was petting a whale when it grabbed her and plunged back into the water. The whale reappeared on the other side of the tank.

There's also a photo of the deceased trainer, doing something you wouldn't get me to do for a million bucks.

An ever so slightly controversial teaching

A new religious opinion from Saudi Arabia:

Saudi religious figure Shaikh Abdul Rahman Al Barrak on Tuesday said that the mixing of genders at the workplace or in educational institutions was religiously prohibited on the grounds that it allowed seeing what must not be seen and engaging in forbidden conversations.

Those who refuse to abide by strict segregation between men and women should be put to death, he said.

This is, fortunately, not showing signs of being widely accepted:

However, Kuwaiti scholars said that such an edict could come only from "a senile person or someone who wants to sow sedition in the nation by allowing the killing of innocent people."

I didn't know that...(a long continuing series)

The mystery of the 100-tonne whale | Environment | The Guardian

From the above article talking about a stranded whale in England:

The carcasses can communicate zoonotic, or inter-species disease (as can live whales, a warning for anyone within spouting distance of a cetacean), or worse. The buildup of gases in an ­animal's stomach can cause a whale to expand to bursting point – in 1617, a sperm whale beached at Scheveningen in the Netherlands exploded, fatally infecting bystanders.

Brave new world indeed

Ministers admit failure over cutting ‘shameful’ teenage pregnancies - Times Online

Ministers accept that they cannot meet Tony Blair’s target, set in 1999, of halving pregnancies among under-18s by 2012. Figures today will show that Britain still has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Western Europe.

About 40,000 such girls, or 40 per 1,000, become pregnant each year — a modest fall from the 1998 tally of 46.6 per 1,000. Back then Mr Blair called Britain’s record shameful.

So what great new ideas does the government have to reduce teenage pregnancies?:

Among plans to be announced today will be more access to long-acting contraception, such as implants and injections, and phone texts to remind girls to use contraceptives.

I reckon if Huxley had put this in his novel Brave New World, people would have thought it an appropriate part of his satire.

Some people in Britain have a better idea:

But critics say far more needs to be done to deter young people from having sex, rather than providing them with ever more free condoms and access to the contraceptive pill. The average age at which young people first have sex is 16, compared with almost 18 in the Netherlands, which has the lowest rate of teenage pregnancy.

I am surprised that no one is looking at the entire culture, where TV popular with teenagers features sex regularly. According to this report a couple of years ago, Sex and the City can be linked to higher rates of teenage pregnancy. However, I reckon it is the Channel 4 shows like Shameless, and that teenage soap featuring a lot of sex (the name of which escapes me for the moment) have as much to do with it as any American sitcom marketed for adults.

The sad story of the pebble bed reactor

Pebble-bed nuclear reactor gets pulled : Nature News

South Africa has stopped funding for the development of its own pebble bed reactor. (Actually, I thought there was a recent announcement of some energy funding to SA from Obama, and that it might have been going to help with the pebble bed demonstration reactor. But maybe that was just my guess.)

Anyhow, Nature explains what went wrong with the project in South Africa:

Runaway costs and technical problems helped to doom the project, says Thomas. "In 1998, they were saying that they would have the demo plant online in 2003" at a cost of 2 billion rands, he says. "The final estimate was that the demo plant would be online in 2018 and it would cost 30 billion rands." Furthermore, he adds, the PBMR has never been held to account for why costs rose every year, why the completion date was continually pushed back or the nature of its design problems.

In a final twist, the PBMR announced last year that it was indefinitely shelving plans to build a demonstration plant. The programme's demise will not help South Africa's goal of doubling its 35,000-megawatt power-generating capacity by 2025.

One problem was that the design became too ambitious, says John Walmsley, past president of the South African branch of the Nuclear Institute, a professional society for nuclear engineers. The PBMR hoped to push the reactor's operating temperature as high as possible to enable not just electricity generation, but also 'process heat' applications such as turning coal into liquid fuels, he says. It also aimed to boost the power output to the very limits of the design to make the reactor more economical. "They tried to build a BMW when they maybe should have started with a Morris Minor," he says.

Even the passive safety feature of the design may have been overstated, it appears:

Although many scientists had hoped that the safety system of the pebble-bed design would win over opponents of nuclear power, a 2008 report from the Jülich Research Centre cast doubt on those claims, suggesting that core temperatures could rise even higher than the safe threshold.

Tsinghua University in Beijing now hosts the only operational prototype pebble-bed reactor, although similar reactors are being developed in the United States and the Netherlands. But the PBMR's problems are not unique, says Thomas. "Every nuclear nation in the world has had a programme to commercialize this type of reactor, and they all got nowhere."

Well, I'm not giving up yet, as long as some company somewhere is still looking at them.

Too good to be true?

Will Bloom box replace power grid? Details on Wednesday

A bit of a publicity splash is starting for a fuel cell that (allegedly) has already been used by some companies and works well.

It is said to run on natural gas, bio-gas and solar energy (?).

However, as I've noted before, Japan has been quietly deploying natural gas fuel cells for houses for a couple of years. I assume this American version is meant to be significantly better. This part sounds a bit optimistic:

Sridhar said the chemical reaction is efficient and clean, creating energy without burning or combustion. He said that two Bloom boxes - each the size of a grapefruit - could wirelessly power a US home, fully replacing the power grid; one box could power a European home, and two or three Asian homes could share a single box. Although currently a commercial unit costs $700,000-$800,000 each, Sridhar hopes to manufacture home units that cost less than $3,000 in five to 10 years.

Elsewhere, the article indicates that the amount of gas used by one of the commercially trialled one is half that which would be used if the gas was used in a normal power station. Interesting, but we will see.

Laptop, textbook, pistol

Colorado students fight for gun rights - Americas, World - The Independent

What seemed like common sense to some is nothing less than an assault on the US Constitution to others, which is why a governors meeting at Colorado State University today to approve a ban on students bearing concealed weapons on its main campus in Fort Collins is likely to be rowdy.

Preventing bloodshed is the first thing on the board's mind. It is three years since the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech that took the lives of 32 students and staff and just under two weeks since Amy Bishop, a professor at the University of Alabama, allegedly shot six of her colleagues, killing three of them.

Yet there has been such a push-back against the plan that the board may defer a decision today to await further public comment.

According to the article, "the student's governing body voted overwhelmingly to resist the gun ban." Sounds like student unionism in the US is a very different creature from student unionism here.

This part is also surprising:

Since the Virginia shootings, state legislatures across the US have debated a variety of laws concerning guns in lecture halls, but few have taken significant action. The most recent big change came in Utah in 2004, which voted to lift a decades-old gun ban for the 44,000-strong University of Utah.

Even if you allow any student with a gun licence to bring it to campus, just how many would do it as a precautionary measure for the next student/lecturer massacre? How many times have we ever read of individual with their own concealed weapon taking decisive action against a workplace/school/university shooting?

Dubious at best

Polluting pets: the devastating impact of man's best friend

According to the article, dogs have a very high "carbon footprint", but don't think your other pets get off lightly:

Cats have an eco-footprint of about 0.15 hectares, slightly less than driving a Volkswagen Golf for a year, while two hamsters equates to a plasma television and even the humble goldfish burns energy equivalent to two mobile telephones.

I can imagine someone somewhere telling the kids "it's the plasma, or the hamsters; one of them has to go." The trauma that could cause...

Cultural issues (cont.)

I didn't catch all of Four Corners last night about the tradition of "boy play" of Afghanistan, but it certainly was a remarkable show, painting a picture of pretty routine paedophilia between older men and young teenage boys in the north of the country. (My post yesterday mentioned the Pashtans and their routine homosexuality in the south. Seems there is little escaping it.)

There seems to be virtually none of the secrecy that men with such interests in the West keep. Who knew that Ancient Greece was alive and well just down the road and around the corner? I had thought that talk of Arab/Muslim countries where interest in boys was high had probably been exaggerated; now that generous view seems wrong.

The overall impression was not so much shock; more that this was a really weird culture. I mean, it would appear that the standard wedding feast entertainment for men is to sit in a room and watch a 15 year old boy dance; although fully clothed, this appears to hold much erotic interest for the men. (The younger boys watching just look rather puzzled.) Is this what happens as a result of centuries of the subjugation of, and separation from, women?

The height of modernity is apparently to ask your wife if you can have a boy to live in the house in the spare room. Of course, traditionalists couldn' t care less about the wife's views.

I also can't help feeling how good this must make the young, conservative Marines from mid-West America feel when they are trying to save the country from the bad guys. A greater cultural divide would be harder to imagine.

More on dealing with waste

Technology Review: GE Hitachi's Answer to Nuclear Waste

Rather than update my previous post on the topic, I'll just park this here. They are still talking reactors with sodium: an idea even I feel nervous about.

Burning the forests by proxy

Yet another depressing story about forests and palm oil noted in this blog post from the AAAS meeting:

Holly Gibbs, a researcher at Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment, also showed data that attempts to help clarify one aspect of the climate debate. Two papers published last year suggested that clearing tropical forests to plant biofuel crops might actually worsen climate change, but that planting biofuels crops on "degraded" land - such as abandoned agricultural land - offers a net benefit to climate. Gibbs analyzed satellite images taken from 1980 to 2000 to try to answer the question of whether tropical crops are largely being planted on deforested or degraded land. She found that the majority of new crops were planted on freshly deforested rather than degraded land.

Gibbs said she could not tell from her data whether the new crops were planted for food or fuel. But she added, "What we know is that biofuell use is definitely fueling deforestation." She said when biofuel prices increase, the amount of deforestation increases as well. She said she would personally estimate that between one-third to two-thirds of deforestation over the past couple of years has been due to the planting of biofuel crops.

I guess that in the argument about the role the market should play in plans to reduce CO2, this example would indicate that direct action is better in some cases.

Another depressing drugs story

The 10p cocaine by-product turning Argentina's slum children into the living dead

Here's the story of a drug that is causing mayhem in the poor neighbourhoods of Argentina:

A toxic and highly addictive mixture of raw cocaine base cut with chemicals, glue, crushed glass and rat poison, paco is the curse of Argentina's urban poor. And consumption of this bastardised, low-grade drug is eating away at the vitality and hope of the most deprived neighbourhood areas of the capital.

Essentially a chemical waste product, paco is what remains from the narco-kitchens producing cocaine bound for US and European markets. Since its appearance on the streets of Buenos Aires in the late 1990s, the drug has taken a deadly grip in slums such as Itatí. ­Levels of addiction rose by more than 200% in the first part of the decade and more than 400,000 doses are now being consumed daily.

Users are witheringly referred to as the muertos vivientes – the living dead – of Buenos Aires. Addictive after one or two hits, the drug systematically destroys the nervous system. Users quickly become skeletal and ravaged, resorting to crime, violence and prostitution to feed their habits. Enormous numbers die in short order.

If there's enough money to be made from selling this to the very poor, I imagine that the old "just legalise drugs" argument may not cut it with this one.

Had I read this before?

AAAS 2010 Annual Meeting News

Bisphenol A has been under investigation for all sort of possible endocrine interference, but I am not sure if I had heard this before (the link is to a discussion just held at the AAAS meeting in the States):

In an interview with Science Update, AAAS's 60-second radio show, neuroendocrinologist Heather Patisaul of North Carolina State University says bisphenol A exposure disrupts reproductive development in both rats and humans.

"What happens with our rats is they go through puberty too early," Patisaul said, "and this mirrors what we’re seeing in girls in the U.S., where the age of puberty is getting lower."

Her concern is also:

The experimental tools and approaches that have traditionally been used by toxicologists to screen compounds for estrogenic effects are not sensitive enough or appropriately geared to detect these subtle types of changes. Therefore, to adequately conduct human risk assessment, it is imperative that endocrine disruptor screening paradigms be updated to more comprehensively examine the impact of these types of compounds.

All a bit of a worry.

Only in Japan

Could 'Godzilla cherry blossom' save Japanese culture? | The Japan Times Online

Japan nuclear scientists have used cyclotron to irradiate the famous cherry blossom tree to see if they could turn up useful mutations.

It seems they have, making one which can bloom more than once a year.

Problem is, this could cause cultural mayhem, given the amount of partying that happens during cherry blossom season.

Interestingly, though, they are blooming earlier every year:

Last year the "blossom front" (constantly reported on television weather programs) reached Tokyo five days ahead of schedule at the start of April — the fourth year in a row that it has been early.

Cultural issues

A couple of weeks ago, Fox News carried a story which started:

An unclassified study from a military research unit in southern Afghanistan details how homosexual behavior is unusually common among men in the large ethnic group known as Pashtuns -- though they seem to be in complete denial about it.

The study, obtained by Fox News, found that Pashtun men commonly have sex with other men, admire other men physically, have sexual relationships with boys and shun women both socially and sexually -- yet they completely reject the label of "homosexual." The research was conducted as part of a longstanding effort to better understand Afghan culture and improve Western interaction with the local people.

The research unit, which was attached to a Marine battalion in southern Afghanistan, acknowledged that the behavior of some Afghan men has left Western forces "frequently confused."

Well that's all very interesting, I thought. What would they think of openly homosexual Western soldiers, then? Share some understanding, or hate them for being "gay"? In any event, it seemed odd that no other big news outlet talked about the study. And it is Fox News after all. Could their reporting be trusted?

Well, it would appear so. I see on Four Corners tonight they have a whole show on boy sex slaves of Afghanistan.

What an odd country.

Bye bye David

The last two Doctor Who episodes featuring David Tenant were distinctly underwhelming, I thought. I don't think it's good writing when, in about 130 minutes of television, you only have the plot explained at about the 80 minute mark.

In fact, it's pretty clear that Russell T Davies stayed on about a season too long. (I never took to Donna.)

It will be interesting to see where the series goes from here, though. I do hope we get an end to things like the Doctor playing cupid to gay guys, which was one weird little aspect of last night's show.

Imaginary eye witnesses to history

Doubts Raised on Book’s Tale of Atom Bomb - NYTimes.com

It appears certain that the late Joseph Fuoco, written up in a new book on Hiroshima as a witness to the dropping of the atomic bomb, was not on the bombing run at all. (He was on the recon trips before it, but there is very strong evidence that he was not on the actual bombing run.)

Apparently, the claim to have been on one of the planes involved is quite common:

Mr. Gackenbach, the flight’s navigator, said the misrepresentations of Mr. Fuoco were unusual only in that they showed up in a book. He said many former servicemen had falsely claimed to have flown over Hiroshima on the famous bombing run.

If all of them had actually been there, Mr. Gackenbach added, the aircraft “could never have taken off.”

How odd.

Burying your problems

Climate Feedback: Gut reactions to carbon storage

Annoying, this interesting post at the Nature Climate Feedback blog* has a couple of links to paywall protected articles in Nature about CO2 sequestration. (If I had any influence at all in the world of science, I would start a campaign to have all the major science journals make all climate change papers and article available for free as a public service on a vital issue.)

Anyhow, the post notes that residents in both Europe and the USA are protesting carbon sequestration near their homes; while other people want it to be buried on their land. (Why I don't know; can they make money from it?)

The post contains this observation:

At current rates of progress, asking about your gut reaction to practical carbon storage is a purely hypothetical question. But the schedule that the International Energy Agency have set the industry is staggering. By 2050, the volume of liquid carbon dioxide that must be injected underground for permanent storage each year would be three times the annual amount of petroleum we currently use (85 million barrels).

I remain very skeptical of the benefits of even attempting this.

*by the way, has anyone ever found a harder website to understand than the Nature.com site? I found this Feedback blog some weeks ago, didn't bookmark it, then took ages to re-locate it.

Problems with new nuclear

Scientific American talks about the problems with fast neutron reactors.

I haven't paid much attention to the issues with this type of reactor, which are supposed to help with reducing the disposal problem. But combining sodium and nuclear reactors not only sounds dangerous; it's been proved dangerous:

The most prevalent type of fast-neutron reactor, so-called because the neutrons used to initiate the fission chain reaction are traveling faster than neutrons moderated by water in conventional nuclear reactors, operate at temperatures as high as 550 degrees Celsius and use liquid sodium instead of water as a coolant. Sodium burns explosively when exposed to either air or water, necessitating elaborate safety controls. Nevertheless, as far back as 1951 at Idaho National Laboratory, such a sodium-cooled fast-neutron reactor produced electricity.

But attempts to make that technology commercial have largely failed, mostly because of difficulties with controlling sodium fires and the steam generators that transfer heat from the sodium to water. Japan's Monju sodium-cooled fast neutron reactor caught fire in 1995—and has just received permission to resume operation this month after years of technical difficulties in repairing it, along with legal challenges to its restart. The French Superphenix sodium-cooled fast-neutron reactor operated successfully for more than a decade—but only produced electricity 7 percent of the time, "one of the lowest load factors in nuclear history," said nuclear consultant Mycle Schneider, an IPFM member during the call. An accident at the plant cost one engineer his life and injured four other people when a leftover tank with roughly 100 kilograms of sodium residue exploded, according to Schneider.

It's not like they haven't tried to improve them:

As far back as 1956, Adm. Hyman Rickover, who oversaw both the Navy's nuclear-propulsion efforts as well as the dawn of the civilian nuclear power industry, cited such sodium-cooled fast-neutron reactors as "expensive to build, complex to operate, susceptible to prolonged shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time-consuming to repair." That judgment remains despite six decades and $100 billion of global effort, according to physicist Michael Dittmar of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich who wrote, "ideas about near-future commercial fission breeder reactors are nothing but wishful thinking" in a November 2009 analysis.

"For that $100 billion we did learn some things," remarked physicist Thomas Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, during the IPFM call. "We learned that fast reactors were going to cost substantially more than light-water reactors…[and]…that, relative to thermal reactors, they're not very reliable."

The article goes on to note that Bill Gates has been promoting a new type of reactor, the travelling wave reactor, which would have cores that contain fuel for 30 years. Trouble is, the materials needed for that aren't developed yet.

Thorium breeder reactors get a bit of a pessimistic hit too:

Wrapping highly fissile plutonium in a thorium blanket could produce enough nuclear fuel indefinitely, according to the vision laid out by the architect of India's nuclear program, physicist Homi J. Bhabha, in 1954. The Indian government is currently building such a prototype fast breeder reactor, despite limited success with a precursor, said Princeton physicist M. V. Ramana during the IPFM call. "The cost of electricity is 80 percent higher than from heavy-water reactors," he added. Uranium prices would need to increase 15-fold from current levels of roughly $80 per kilogram to make it economically attractive.

Nothing with nuclear is terribly easy, it seems.

It's also interesting to note that a French nuclear company has bought a major US solar thermal company. Maybe it pays to diversify.

How not to do tourism

Insensitivity makes waves with Japanese tourists

Most of the observations in this article about why Japanese tourism to Australia has dropped off seems true. Some of the points make are a bit amusing:

BEFORE Noriko Mochizuki travelled to Australia, she had heard about koalas, kangaroos, beaches, and strange men in cars who killed backpackers.

By the time she returns home to Tokyo, the 25-year-old will tell her friends that - the infamous Ivan Milat backpacker murders aside - Australians are relaxed, kind and sometimes very rude.

''Sometimes you go to buy something at a coffee shop and they don't want to understand or they just ignore you,'' she said during a surfing lesson with Surfs Up near Cronulla.

''The customer service is much, much better in Japan.''

Unfortunately, the customer service in Japan is probably the best in the world, so most Japanese travelling need to take that into account. (But I think most do to an extent.)

As for Australia's attempts to attract tourists again:

Professor Orito said Tourism Australia had done nothing to help itself with the disastrous 'So where the bloody hell are you?' advertising blitz, "whose meaning was lost on the Japanese".

"The campaign last year based on the movie Australia was an even bigger flop."

The problem has been compounded by a series of misguided tourism campaigns, which culminated last year in the ''Aussie Oji" competition, designed to lure Japanese women to Australia to look for their oji, or prince - a message a Japanese tourism expert described as "insensitive''.

One Japanese tourism operator in the Gold Coast said there was no point offering constructive criticism to the Australian tourism industry "because they ignore our complaints about the treatment of tourists. Nothing is going to change."

I think everyone would have to agree that the current New Zealand tourism campaign in Australia is really very good. Why can that little place manage it while we've been failing for more than a decade now?

You don't see that every day...

Have a look at this fascinating sky effect caused during a recent NASA rocket launch. (It happens around the 1.52 mark.):



It is apparently caused by acoustic shock wave travelling through a "sun dog". Looks cool whatever it was.

Drive by wire

Should we be worried that our cars are controlled by software? - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine

I didn't realise the extent to which cars had become "drive by wire" until the recent Toyota problems. This article explains all.

Can kitchen gadgets get any sillier?

Autonomous Saucier – auto-stir bot makes for perfect sauces

And here I thought that a cheese heater was about as over-specialised as a kitchen device could possibly be.