Heaven & Hell noted

Paul Johnson gives us a short but informative review of a book "After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory". Lonely Planet mustn't have gotten around to those regions yet.

Apart from telling us about the hellfire sermons of the Redemptorists (an order which specialised in that service), Johnson reminds us that:

Belief in hell began to decline in the eighteenth century. Boswell relates that when Dr Johnson dined with Dr Adams, head of Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1784, Johnson said, 'looking dismally', that he was afraid he would be damned. Dr Adams: 'What do you mean by damned?' Johnson, 'passionately and loudly': 'Sent to Hell, Sir, and punished everlastingly.' Dr Adams: 'I don't believe that doctrine.' A discussion followed, in which Johnson appeared to be in a minority of one, until he said, 'in gloomy agitation', 'I'll have no more on't.' The decline of hell was the reason why the Redemptorists were founded, and in Britain, why Parliament replaced fear of damnation by a huge increase in capital punishment.

Interesting. But was Dr Adam's problem with Hell the idea that it is permanent? The idea that purgatory is just Hell that any soul can leave (at least until the Final Judgement) is one that has more appeal to the modern mind, and if the idea of a permanent, immediate judgement leading to Hell leads people to disbelieve in it entirely, I would rather the Catholic church did go back to talking about other possible understandings of Hell, rather than just ignoring it.

Certainly, Hell is given very light weight in Catholic sermons these days compared to my youth, despite its prominent mentions in the New Testament. I don't care much for the idea of constant fear as being an incentive for moral behaviour; but on the other hand, never talking about it tends to downplay the reality of the supernatural and importance of personal responsibility, which are aspects of Catholic teaching which are now somewhat lacking.

Apart from Hell, the concept of Heaven, and the issue of what a resurrected body is meant to be like, gets covered in a book extract appearing recently in Newsweek.

Lisa Miller, the author of "Heaven", seems to suggest that the more commonly believed existence of a mere soul in an afterlife doesn't actually give us the idea of a solid Heavenly experience:

...a disembodied soul attaching itself to God in heaven offers no more comfort or inspiration than an escaped balloon. Consolation was not the goal of Plato's afterlife. Without sight or hearing, taste or touch, a soul in heaven can no more enjoy the "green, green pastures" of the Muslim paradise, or the God light of Dante's cantos, than it can play a Bach cello suite or hit a home run. Rationalistic visions of heaven fail to satisfy.

The post at First Things about Millar's book agrees.

I'm not sure that it really is a problem, especially with the advent of cyberspace as a concept that soon every adult who spent a childhood playing computer games will understand. And you also get scientists seriously speculating on the entire universe being a simulation. It's easier than ever to believe that a disembodied mind could be made to feel embodied, surely. I think this was the point made by Margaret Wertheim's book "The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace", and it sounds as if Millar may not have read it.

But if one expects that Heaven is just a simulated version of life with better ground rules, I guess you could also argue that a bodily resurrection of Jesus would not have been necessary to prove that type of reality. Yet it seems clear from the New Testament that the writers wanted to be sure that people understood the post resurrection experiences as something different from a ghostly presence. Who knows; maybe a bodily resurrection of Jesus was really necessary to prove his special status. A mere claimed appearance of a ghost a couple of times might be considered unremarkable.

Anyhow, this is all just speculation. The fact that Christianity is a kind of unexpected religion, with mystery at its heart, is one of the reasons it makes a fascinating life long study and interest, even if you don't fully have faith.

Finally, I have also been meaning to mention Daniel Dennett's small scale study of clergy who no longer believe in God, but still don't give up their positions. I think I have noted here before that this is not a new concern, as CS Lewis in one of his essays from (I think) the 1940's to a group of Anglican priests said that congregations often had a firmer belief in some fundamental Christian doctrines than the priests leading them. Still, the problem may be even worse now, for all I know.

Short notes

* Hot, hot, hot: Locally, Brisbane has been very unusually hot and humid the last week or so. (I heard somewhere that the maximum the other day was four degrees above average, and last night seemed particularly sticky.)

And in fact, although you wouldn't know it from the mainstream media, average global satellite temperatures for March were very hot; very nearly at the 1998 peak caused by that year's super El Nino. Normally, Andrew Bolt at least copies into his blog the chart for the UAH global average readings, but he didn't do it for March. (I'll be generous and assume it's because he's getting ready to start a radio career, not because the temperatures don't suit his warming scepticism.) Anyway, here it is, from Roy Spencer's blog:


If you ask me, there's been a distinct air of diversionary tactics about Roy Spencer's posts lately. He seems very keen to justify his scepticism against the evidence being produced by his very own satellite work.

Yet where is the mainstream media on all this? Yes, winter was cold in the populated parts of the northern hemisphere, but can't journalists read the internet and report that it was in fact a local phenomena, with parts of the far north very unusually hot, and now 2010 is on track to be the hottest year on record? Instead, they would rather report on parliamentary enquiries as to why scientists got irked about too many FOI requests over the last decade or so ago. Pretty pathetic, really.

* Scientists want you to have faith: I recently made a comment about how scientific materialists sometimes suggest that, although free will is an illusion, it's important to pretend it isn't. Well, there's a whole column about that attitude in Scientific American now. Interesting reading.

* Isn't there a law against it? Britain seems to have a nanny State law against every possible form of annoying behaviour, except for being a stupid media arrest tart. First it was Monbiot wanting a citizens arrest of Tony Blair; now its Dawkins, Hitchens and Geoffrey Robertson who are going to rugby tackle the Pope as soon as he lands in Britain. Twits. They are good candidates to remedy the problem in my next story:

* Help your local lesbian or lonely heart:

A leading IVF specialist is calling for men to start donating sperm because of growing demand from single women and lesbian couples.

I am slightly pleased if this shows a slightly conservative view towards the importance of fathers actually being present for their kids. But in fact, it's probably just men worried that somehow they'll be made financially liable in future.

Lowering the Tone

What I've been saying

Phillip Coorey's article from a few days ago about Tony Abbott basically says what I have been arguing at other blogs for the last few weeks: Tony Abbott strikes me as a policy flake.

"Flake"in this context: n. An unreliable person; someone who agrees to do something, but never follows through.

Tonight's appearance by Abbott on Q&A seemed terribly dull: I fell asleep for much of it, would come to briefly, then doze off again. Rudd's appearance a couple of months ago signalled he was in some trouble. In the sense that it seemed he was not openly ridiculed (much), Abbott's appearance might not hurt him, but may not advance his cause either.

Easter religion posts continue...

Hey, Easter is almost over, and so is the run of religious articles on death and resurrection.

Slate has re-run a 2008 short article on resurrection which is of interest. Chances are that I did read it back then but have forgotten. It seems to contradict the book I noted a couple of posts back which argues that Jesus would not have understood resurrection in a corporeal sense.

(By the way, I now see that the Vermes book came out in 2008. The Biblical Archaeology Review must be an Easter reprint.)

In other Christian themed articles, I see that Philip Pullman's novel on Jesus has this plot:

As he tells the Gospel story, Mary did not have one son but twins—a gifted but pious and humble one called Jesus and his more calculating and sophisticated brother, Christ. Observing his modest sibling, Christ concludes that the story needs to evolve in certain ways if the wandering faith-healer’s work is to become the basis of a world religion. In the end Christ colludes with his brother’s death and helps, directly and indirectly, to construct a new narrative about his resurrection. When the disciples meet their risen master, it is really Christ they are encountering, not his twin, Jesus.

There was an extract of Pullman's book in The Guardian recently, and the writing style certainly has no appeal to me. It is, as the reviews tell us, to be read as fable; not a realistic telling of what might have happened.

Unsurprisingly, Rowan Williams (an old admirer of Pullman) offers his review in The Guardian, and it is more or less positive. Of course, Williams seems to be a philosopher who ended up a Church's world leader by accident. He's a nice enough sounding man, but one suspects he has helped more people out of his Church than into it.

An unlikely proposition

Regular readers will know that I don’t like the hyperfast-edited action sequences that have taken hold of the movies over the last decade or two.  Director Paul Greengrass is a famous exponent of the style.

So, it is kind of funny to read that he is supposed to be making a 3 D version of Fantastic Voyage.  This has led to some funny comments following the article:

"Grainy Pallets"? That's an understatement! The "Green Zone" looked liked it was shot in PixelVision or 8mm. Hands down had to be one of the most grainy films in recent years. Can't wait for awful grain in 3D! I bet it will look awesome!

And this:

The PRINCIPAL RULE OF 3D EDITING: the main thing one needs to consider while editing in 3D is that no single shot can be shorter than 2 seconds (and Paul Greengrass hasn't seen a 2-second shot he ever liked).

Actually, the guy who wrote the second comment goes on to explain how Avatar understood this rule, and the new Clash of the Titans does not, making it hard to watch.  He says of the new 3 D process:

There is a real, honest to god reason people like Michael Bay are resistant to 3D – because it changes the way you are allowed to make movies. You have to frame them differently; color them differently; edit them differently.

Sounds about right.  I’ll be happy for this fad-ish phenomena to go away.

Remembering Mockingbird

The Age has a very lovely article today in which former child actress Mary Badham, who played Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, reminisces about the experience of filming it and the life long effects it has had on her.

She sounds like a thoroughly decent person, just as you would hope a real life “Scout” would turn out.

More Easter talk

Jason Koutsoukis in the Sydney Morning Herald points out that being in the River Jordan these days is not quite the purest of experiences:

For the fabled tributary that flows from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea … is now little more than an unholy brew of raw sewage, chemical run-off and brackish agricultural leftovers.

No matter, say the hordes of Christian pilgrims who have been flocking this week to Qasr al-Yahud, purported to be the exact site of Jesus' baptism.

Before stripping down to his underpants, John Ferraro, 30, a Romanian engineer, told the Herald of his firm belief that this was the cleanest water in the world. ''This is the water that Jesus was washed in,'' he said. ''This water belongs to God. Why would God want to make anyone sick with this holy water?''

Watching a euphoric Mr Ferraro splash around the River Jordan as if it was his bathtub, few could doubt his sincerity. But when he started gargling the muddy concoction, some might reasonably have questioned his mental health.

Further down we read:

After the diversion of 90 per cent of the 1.3 billion cubic metres of water that would normally flow down the river each year by the governments of Syria, Jordan and Israel, Ms Edelstein said all that is left is basically 100 million cubic metres of untreated sewage.

Oh dear. And here I thought Hindu Indians who jumped into the Ganges were unwise.

An Easter post

There are some interesting articles at Biblical Archaeology Review relevant to Easter. 

Let’s start with the Last Supper.  There’s a long article here by scholar Jonathan Klawans looking at all of the arguments for and against the meal being the actual Passover ritual meal (or Seder) as the synoptic Gospels seem to indicate. He concludes that it was probably wasn’t, arguing that in fact we don’t know how Jews in Jesus’ day would have actually celebrated Passover.  (That seems a pretty surprising suggestion.)   He thinks that the Gospel writers presented the Last Supper as a Passover meal for a few different possible reasons.

I don’t know.  I’m pretty suspicious of  exegesis that appears to end up being “too clever by half.”   Lots of comments follow the article too, giving other explanations as to why he might be wrong. 

Does this matter much theologically?  Maybe not; the connection between Jesus and the Paschal lamb is clear enough whether or not the meal itself was exactly a Seder. 

Moving on to the crucifixion, in a book review we find this comment:

Jesus, the Final Days begins with two chapters by Craig Evans that offer a thorough review of ancient sources describing Roman execution practice and Jewish burial practices. Taken together, these discussions suggest that the gospel accounts of Jesus’ trial, execution and burial represent remarkably authentic descriptions. A seeming omission from Professor Evans’s otherwise comprehensive catalogue is Dio Cassius’s account of the flogging and crucifixion of Antigonus, the last Maccabean king, who had attempted to overthrow Roman rule and reestablish an independent Jewish state two generations before Jesus.¹

Then, in the same article, they review  “The Resurrection” by an Oxford professor of Jewish Studies (so he ought to know his topic).  Here we get this potted history of Jewish thought regarding an afterlife:

He finds that, on the whole, Jews considered death to be a final state (cf. Job 14:10–12; Ecclesiastes 4:2–3). Nevertheless, perhaps in response to extreme adversity in life, some Jews began to imagine a reward beyond life, initially in a metaphorical sense (cf. Ezekiel 37:5–6) and subsequently, during the Maccabean era, in a more literal sense (cf. 2 Maccabees 7:1–41, esp. verses 7–11).

By the time of Jesus, the aristocratic Sadducees continued to maintain the finality of death and this, Vermes argues, was the mainstream Jewish belief. However, certain sectarians, notably the Pharisees, advanced the notion of bodily resurrection at the end of time. On this point, Vermes’s discussion becomes somewhat blurred, because none of the sources provide a satisfactory definition of resurrection. Also, his failure to consider the beliefs of John the Baptist is a puzzling omission. Clearly John the Baptist and probably Jesus himself were among those Jews who foresaw a new era in which the pure would be rewarded with eternal happiness and the sinful condemned to eternal suffering.a But the key point that Vermes makes is that, for Jesus, resurrection meant spiritual survival, while corporeal resurrection “played no significant part” in his thinking.

Thus, the perceived fact of Jesus’ bodily resurrection came as a huge surprise to his disciples and became, indeed, a transforming event in which his previously cowardly followers became bold and eloquent witnesses.

I am curious as to how Vermes makes the claim that Jesus understood resurrection to be spiritual survival only.  Would that mean the his Father gave him a big surprise?

And finally, for  less scholarly reflections, you can always read the somewhat rambling Easter thoughts of lapsed Catholic ABC journalist Chris Uhlmann.  He seems a very likeable fellow, even if his attitude towards global warming indicates that science is not his strong point.

From the garden today

Top marks if you know what the yellow flowers are.  (My wife is responsible for the arrangement.)

The mysterious death of British culture

I've touched on these issues before in many posts, but tonight, after watching some British TV, I have a strong urge to rant about the state of British culture.

Of course, it could just be me reaching a premature "things were so much better when I were a lad" stage of my life. But no, it's not me: it's you, formerly great Britain, I am sure. For example:

* Britain's "celebrity culture" is shallow, as it is in all countries, but for some reason the bar seems set especially low in England. I've seen a couple of episodes of "Hestons Feasts" recently. It's a mildly diverting, if over-produced, show in which you learn something interesting about the history of exotic feasts. But it also involves the chef serving his strange, tricky food to a room full of six alleged celebrities. Usually I know one of them who became famous in the 1960's: the rest just seem so, well, incredibly uninteresting. Mind you, their job is just to go "ooh, ahh, what's this I am supposed to eat?" But still...

And as a service to the community, I warn you: if ever a television near you is showing "I'm a celebrity...Get me out of here" run a mile, and don't look back. It's the most excruciating TV ever to blight the medium.

It's like a new definition for horror: "B Grade British celebrity".

* British sitcoms and British movies, with very rare exceptions, have both been in a death spiral for the last 20 years. (Mind you, Australia has never made a completely convincing sitcom, but that's a different story.)

* British TV isn't always like this. But strangely, it usually has to have someone who was popular in the 1970's or 80's for it to be worthwhile. I've thoroughly enjoyed Griff Rhys Jones paddling about the pretty (and sometimes not so pretty) Rivers of England, which finished this week on ABC. And who in their right mind hasn't liked Michael Palin's travel shows? Parkinson was still a decent enough interviewer 'til the end, but the level of interest one could muster in his guests did suffer a severe downturn in his last couple of series.

Can you imagine in 20 years time wanting to watch "Jonathan Ross goes Up the Khyber", or whatever twaddle he would think witty? Graham Norton making witty but interesting cultural comment about some far flung country? I don't think so.

* British public art seems to have become a huge, vacuous joke:

Only last year, exhibitionism was elevated to "art" when people got to do their "thing" on a plinth in Trafalgar Square.

The Turner Prize (which I see only started in 1984) sets international benchmarks for the trivial, stupid, and/or grotesque in the genre, and at the same time seems to suck any sense of fun from the enterprise.

Further evidence this week of the nation's aesthetic judgment having mysteriously evaporated: the gigantic Olympic rollercoaster-after-the-apocalypse tower was not an April Fool's Day after all. It was also the winner of a competition. The winner had previously won the Turner Prize. Maybe the Turner Prize is the black hole through which British artistic taste has been sucked and eviscerated. It's as good a theory as any...

* Is there any current widely recognized British playwright whose works are anticipated by the populace? Not as far as I am aware. All the great playwrights are dead or at the end of their careers, leaving in their wake those who are only interested in social commentary from the perspective of left wing world view.

And, of course, Britain also seems to be the home of the pop song medley masquerading as theatre, which has promptly been exported internationally.

That's a pretty convincing line up of evidence, don't you think?

Just in time for Easter

Eating chocolate 'can cut heart attack and stroke risk'

Eating just one square of chocolate a day can cut the risk of heart attack and stroke by 39%, researchers said today.

Eating 7.5g of chocolate daily also leads to lower blood pressure, a study found.

Researchers in Germany followed 19,357 people aged between 35 and 65 for at least a decade.

Those who ate the most amount of chocolate - an average of 7.5g a day - had lower chances of heart attacks and stroke than those who ate the least amount (1.7g a day on average).

The difference between the two groups amounted to 6g of chocolate - less than one square of a 100g bar.

The study, published in the European Heart Journal, concluded that if those people who ate the least chocolate increased their intake by 6g a day there would be fewer heart attacks and strokes.

That's a tiny amount of chocolate for an effect. Further down it notes:

Frank Ruschitzka, from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), said: "Basic science has demonstrated quite convincingly that dark chocolate particularly, with a cocoa content of at least 70%, reduces oxidative stress and improves vascular and platelet function.

70% cocoa chocolate is not that nice, in my experience, so I'll eat twice as much 40% chocolate instead.

No Kindle for me

Elizabeth Farrelly has a somewhat eccentric column in the Sydney Morning Herald today, with its main point being problems with getting books through an Australian Kindle.

I definitely think it is worth waiting for the new generation of e readers to start being available.

More religion talk. (Hey it is almost Easter)

Christian faith: Calvinism is back / The Christian Science Monitor

Here's a really good article on an alleged revival of Calvinism in the United States. In short, it's said to be a reaction against the "Jesus is your friend," mega-church style of Protestantism that's been the dominant model of late. Well, even if it takes a dose of depressing predestination to get those churches to stop being purely entertainment based worship, maybe that's not so bad?

The question of how one should react to the theological/philosophical issue of predestination is pretty similar to the question of whether we are really just meat robots who don't really have free will at all. Those materialists who say free will is an illusion argue that for society to really work, we still have to act as if we do. (So we don't, for example, let criminals run free because they don't really control their will.) I suppose Calvinists can argue the same - even though you may be pre-destined for Hell, you need to act as if you might get to Heaven. Maybe they argue that lack of knowledge of your predestination means you don't need to feel fatalistic about it. If everyone acted on the fatalistic reality that your eternal home is already determined, the whole damn system just doesn't work.

There, I've found a connection between Calvin and the likes of William James, Hume etc. Well, sort of, and even if I have, no doubt someone else has said this before.

At the end of the CSM article, we read this:

Bestselling religion writer Phyllis Tickle sees the interest in
Calvinism as the first phase of a backlash against the dominant
religious trend of today: the rise of "Emergence Christianity."

Emergence Christianity, which she identifies as a once-every-500-years
religious shift, is less a doctrine or a movement than a postmodern attitude toward religion itself. Loosely organized, it values experimentation over traditional rules and Christian practice. "When things go through this upheaval," Ms. Tickle says, "there's always those who absolutely need the assurance of rules and a foundation."

Or, as Ms. Hagopian puts it with uncompromising Calvinistic clarity: "The
dominant philosophy of American Christianity is so far removed from
biblical truth. Life is not hunky-dory."

Are the liberal Christian denominations which are happy with marrying same sex partners and who think (like priest Peter Kennedy of "St Mary's in Exile") that it doesn't really matter whether or not Jesus Christ even existed an example of "Emergence Christianity"? Possibly, I suppose, but I remain deeply convinced that any essentially non-realist way of thinking about a religion like Christianity is only a way to ultimately decrease its significance, influence and longevity. For that reason, I can't help but feel some empathy with a revival of a thoroughly realist strain of Christianity as in Calvinism.

All about modern nuns

How the health care bill made nuns rad. - By Noreen Malone - Slate Magazine

This is a pretty interesting article on the current state of nun-ship (sorry) in America. They just helped get the Obama health plan passed, against the wishes of the American bishops. (There is another version of that story here.)

As I suspected, it seems to be the more conservative orders (such as the contemplative ones) attracting newcomers at the moment, and "progressive" leadership is actually coming from the older nuns who have been around a while.

Update: for another unusual take on Catholicism, this article in the Guardian about the writer's experiences as an aide at Lourdes ten years ago is quiet interesting, and a little amusing. For example:

There was fierce, sometimes violent, competition between aides from different tour groups, which could make even the simplest tours treacherous. The candlelit procession and mass was notoriously difficult to get into, and hundreds of pilgrims lined up in the evening to be part of it. Instead of queuing, the Italians endeavoured to skip in front of us by burning our arms with their candles. Lining up for blessings in the Basilica of the Rosary, aides from other pilgrimages would kick our shins to get in there first.

It was, she says, quite the party town for the young aides after their hard day's work, but she doesn't paint experience with complete cynicism.

Update 2: for those who like to check out nun blogs (and who doesn't from time to time*) here's a list. And here's an order that looks very conservative, yet just held their first "nun run".

* What? Really?

A multi faith approach

BBC News - India holy man quits after sex claim

Well, as I like to point out how Islam can be, shall we say, overly legalistic about sexual scandal (especially when it concerns Dubai), it's only fair that I note that the Indians (of the other than Muslim variety) also get a bit carried away:

A Hindu holy man in India has quit as head of a religious organisation after police launched a probe into allegations of obscenity against him.

Nithyananda Swami's announcement came weeks after a video emerged apparently showing him engaging in sexual acts with two women.

The guru has said he had done nothing illegal and the video scandal was "a false campaign".

Nithyananda Swami has a huge following in southern India.

The video shocked his devotees and angered locals - his ashram near the southern city of Bangalore was vandalised after TV channels broadcast the video.

Police have launched an investigation into the incident - a senior detective told the BBC that they were investigating whether the guru had "outraged religious feelings" of his devotees.

Ocean acidification and poison seas

CO2 and phosphate availability control the toxicity of the harmful bloom dinoflagellate Karlodinium veneficum

I have commented here before that additional CO2 in the ocean may make some algae grow better, but my guess was that algal blooms are not necessarily something you want to encourage. The article above indicates that this is true, especially for toxin producing algae:

Growth rates or toxicity of K. veneficum could increase substantially in the future with high CO₂ levels in the ocean, depending on P availability, and so interactions between rising CO₂ and eutrophication could cause major shifts in present day patterns of harmful algal toxin production. These results suggest that over the coming decades, rising CO₂ could substantially increase karlotoxin damage to food webs in the often P-limited estuaries where Karlodinium blooms occur.

Eutrophication is additional nutrients in the water, typically from coastal run off. In other words, it would appear that coastal areas near cities that already have occasional toxic algal blooms can expect it to get worse with more CO2 in future.

Here's a good Australian article by a Tasmanian professor on the expected increase in harmful algal blooms. The conclusion:

We can expect: (1) Range expansion of warm-water species at the expense of coldwater species which are driven pole wards; (2) Changes in the abundance and seasonal window of growth of selected HAB species; (3) Earlier timing of peak production of some phytoplankton; (4) Knock-on effects for marine food webs, notably when individual zooplankton and fish grazers are differentially impacted by climate change (“match-mismatch” disturbances). Some harmful algal bloom phenomena (e.g. toxic dinoflagellates benefiting from land runoff and/or water column stratification, tropical benthic dinoflagellates responding to coral reef disturbance) may become worse, while others may diminish in areas currently impacted. The greatest problems for human society will be caused by being unprepared for significant range extensions or the increase of algal biotoxin problems in currently poorly monitored areas, thus calling for increased vigilance in seafood biotoxin monitoring programmes. Predicting the impact of climate change on algal blooms presents a formidable challenge!

Stem cells and snake oil

UK - Stem Cells & Miracles - Foreign Correspondent - ABC

There was an excellent BBC Panorama show on the ABC last night on the fetal stem cell therapy being promoted by shonky doctors and money making clinics in China and other countries.

The interview towards the end with the doctor who was secretly filmed during a high pressure consultation is especially worth watching. The only way he could have sold his therapy harder would be if he had said "you have to take the injection now, right now, as I have another patient outside who'll buy them if you don't."

Suburban failure

From bucolic bliss to 'gated ghetto' - latimes.com

In this story of a new estate near Los Angeles which has suffered badly from the recent financial woes comes this surprising claim:

There are dozens of places like Willowalk, and they are turning into America's newest slums, says Christopher Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. With home values at a fraction of their peak, he said, it no longer makes sense to live so far from the commercial centers where jobs are concentrated.

"We built too much of the wrong product in the wrong locations," Leinberger said.

Thanks to overbuilding, demographic changes and shifts in preferences, by 2030 there could be 25 million more suburban homes on large lots than are needed, said Arthur C. Nelson of the University of Utah. Nelson believes that as baby boomers age and as younger generations buy real estate, the population will abandon remote McMansions for smaller homes closer to shops, jobs and the other necessities of life.

A family that bought a house there in 2006 has seen its value drop dramatically:

The Lopez family plans to stick it out, knowing they can't sell their house for anywhere near the $440,000 they paid for it. Based on comparable prices in the neighborhood, the place is probably worth about $170,000 now, and maybe less. They're petitioning their bank for a loan modification.

There was someone on Radio National Breakfast this morning making the same point: a lot of America's housing crisis has been caused by building the wrong type of houses in the wrong locations.

I see his name was Jeb Brugmann, and he also noted that Australia seems to lack the wide range of urban housing that people find attractive in famous cities. I think he's right.

An unlikely solution

Bright water proposal to cut global warming

Harvard University scientist Russel Seitz’s proposal is to use ships to pump tiny “microbubbles,” about 0.05 mm in diameter, into the sea as they travel, in a strategy he terms “Bright Water”. Seitz said the bubbles would, in effect, act as tiny mirrors containing air, and could be created by mixing water supercharged with compressed air with swirling jets of water. This would emulate and amplify a naturally occurring phenomenon.

Using computer modeling, Seitz discovered that a concentration of only one part per million of microbubbles can double the reflectivity of water, and could cool Earth by up to 3°C if the system could be deployed. Adding microbubbles to a square kilometer of ocean is feasible, but Seitz admitted that scaling it to cover an entire ocean would be technically difficult, not because of the energy requirement, which he said would be equivalent to about 1000 windmills, but because of the fact that the bubbles may not last long enough to effectively spread over large areas.

I'm not even sure I should have blogged this, the idea sounds so silly.

Gypsy stories

Four Corners - 29/03/2010: Gypsy Child Thieves

Four Corners had an interesting BBC documentary tonight about the urban gypsies of Europe. It's amazing that their situation seems to change so slowly over time.

The first section was about a Gypsy camp near Madrid, and the conditions were extremely third world, especially for the children. The ineffectiveness of the Spanish government social services in dealing with child thieves the police bring to them was almost laughable.

The fact that fathers get good money for marrying off their 13 year old daughters got a mention too.

I didn't really get to watch the rest of the show carefully, although I did catch some of the segment in Italy, where some charity was making a difference, but a right wing Italian noted that they deserved to killed, and seemingly felt it was a pity that that would be illegal now!

Firefox issue

For those of you using Firefox on an XP computer, have you noticed it slowing down? Over the weekend, I checked and the amount of CPU it is taking up was just continually fluctuating, often up to the 90% range.

It appears to be a problem with the latest version (3.6.2), although I also had the same problem in the 3.6 version before I updated it. I see that people have been complaining about it since 3.5 too.

The specific thread on Mozilla on the problem with 3.6.2 has been marked as "solved", but the answer it refers to is no such thing.

This page talks about the problem generally, but I am bit puzzled why it has only come to light on my computer now.

UPDATE: I seem to have solved the problem by updating both Flash and Java, as some website suggested.

I am tempted to try Chrome now though, as I understand it is starting to provide extensions.

Rare medical condition noted

Schizophrenia in Children: Families Grapple With Costs, Emotional and Financial - ABC News

Tonight I happened to see the ABC news magazine show 20/20 featuring 3 American families with children with schizophrenia.

I knew schizophrenia most commonly was a young adult onset disease; it had never really occurred to me before that there would be some cases of young children suffering with it.

What a horrible disease for parents to face in a child. Oddly, all three featured in this show were girls. I would have expected it to be more common in boys. (Certainly, the average onset age for men is considerably younger than for women.)

It certainly makes for a strong reminder, if one is needed, of the blessings of a routine domestic life.

Racking up the deaths

BBC News - China flooding 'traps 152 miners'

This is a very brief report of yet another coal mining accident in China.

The number of Chinese miners killed every year is simply amazing. In Australia or the US, an accident killing a dozen people is huge news and is viewed as a great tragedy for virtually all of the nation. In China, with (as this article notes) thousands of deaths in the mines every year, it's hard to imagine any but the largest incidents getting much coverage. Some years in the last decade have had close to 7,000 deaths.

Strange how a communist nation manages to do the least to protect its workers.

Yay for John

A Physics Maven’s Take on Skeptical Science - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

I've been a fan of Skeptical Science for quiet a while, and have wondered about its creator John Cook.

Now that his fame has spread world wide, it takes Andrew Revkin of the New York Times to publicise him.

He is not quite what you would expect: studied physics and astrophysics at University, has serious concerns about the environment and AGW, yet is a serious enough Christian to mention it in this interview. This is not exactly a common combination, I'm sure.

He also appears to been born earless, if the crook photo (which I assume he supplied) is anything to go by. I take it as a sign he does not suffer from vanity.

That's big of him

Cleric: Don’t cut too much female genital to avoid sexuality loss | The Jakarta Post

A Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) cleric said on Friday that circumcision on women was not supposed to cause the loss of their sexuality.

“Don’t cut too much. Just cut the small skin on the tip of the clitoris. Otherwise, a woman would lose her sexuality, and you males don’t like that to happen, do you?” prominent cleric Mohammad Masyhuri told a press conference.

Masyhuri, also a member of NU Suriah (lawmaking body), said that a proper female circumcision should not cause any damage to woman genitals. “No bleeding, if you do it properly.”

He suggested that circumcision was conducted on a female baby at the age
of 7 days.

Sort of good news

NASA Study Finds Atlantic 'Conveyor Belt' Not Slowing

Another study finds that the Atlantic conveyor (the current that keeps Europe warmer than it would otherwise be) is not slowing down.  I suppose it's good for North Atlantic bordering countries that there's no imminent ice age; but then again it's not so good that global warming in those regions won't be moderated by cooler ocean water.

Please make the movie

"Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" from Aaron Paul

Promising

How to Train Your Dragon Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes

I see that How to Train Your Dragon is receiving very strong reviews. Good news for those of us who like good kids films.

Brave woman

BBC News - Saudi female poet whose verse inflames and inspires

An old debate

The Moral Equivalent of the Parallel Postulate | Cosmic Variance

It's an old topic, the question of the exact nature of morals. Cosmic Variance, which always takes an atheist/scientific take on things, nonetheless has an interesting post (and comments following) debating the issue of the subjectivity of morals and related topics.

Looks good, but a bit small?

Samsung Announces eReader Launch For The US Market

You can write notes on this one, and this feature sounds interesting:

Samsung eReader users will also be able to take advantage of breakthrough Barnes & Noble features, such as the industry-first LendMe technology which enables consumers to lend a wide selection of eBooks to friends free of charge for up to 14 days. Just choose the book you want to share and send it to your friend’s Samsung eReader or a host of other computer and mobile devices with free Barnes & Noble eReader software.

The boy Ellen

Constance McMillen case: proms as gay-rights battleground

So, the ACLU sued a school district to try to force it to re-instate a prom cancelled so as to avoid a lesbian bringing her girlfriend. Where exactly does the ACLU gets its funding for such crucial legal cases?

But the main point of the post is indicated in the title: I sometimes see bits of Ellen DeGeneres' show when channel surfing at night, and I had been meaning to note the fact that she has had a "makeover" which has moved her image unambiguously into the androgynous zone. (Yes, that's a pleasingly contradictory sentence, no?) You can see a photo of her interviewing the miffed Prom-less teenage lesbian at the link above.

I always used to think DeGeneres had a likeable sort of face, even though I pretty much can't stand her chat show for more than 5 minutes. As a figurehead for the gay and lesbian political movement, her image was at least non-confrontational, and her self-deprecating comedy routines perhaps helped too. She was bearable in small doses, unlike the other famous TV lesbian Rosie O'Donnell, who is (good Lord no) going to be back on TV soon.

But with this boyish haircut and even more manly dress than before, well, she's moved well out of the "girl next door who just happens to like girls" vibe that she used to represent. To me, she now looks kind of mean and humourless; but that's how I interpret nearly all short haired butch lesbianism. (Sorry, all you nice and sweet examples of the genre out there, somewhere.)

I wonder if it will hurt her crossover appeal somewhat with the heterosexual viewers. (Mind you, her audiences always appear to be simply adulatory, for reasons I don't grasp.)

Triumph of social networking

Internet casual sex is blamed for rise in syphilis

People using social networking sites for casual sex are to blame for a four-fold increase in syphilis, a director of public health said today.

Sensitive Singaporeans

Apology - Correction - NYTimes.com

Important date noted

Happy birthday, William Shatner | Hero Complex | Los Angeles Times

He's just turned 79.  When he finally dies, I hope he's prepared some bizarre video to be played at his funeral.  

Science news of note

* "cold fusion" still getting some research, including in China, it seems. When it will produce enough heat at reasonable cost to be useful, though, still seems anyone's guess.

* another book on the universe as giant quantum computer gets a good review. Not entirely sure what the implications of that are.

* The Economist's long article on climate science last week was very good, arguing that the uncertainties still existing are no reason not to take action. Hear hear.

* Don't worry, you may as well keep eating meat even as you argue against the coal being burned.

* One day, I expect to be able to catch a scramjet to space. Australians are still working on it.

Interesting reasoning

Minister calls anti-smoking edict ‘unwise’ | The Jakarta Post

Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali has criticized Indonesia’s
second-largest Muslim organization for its anti-tobacco edict, calling
on it to “act more wisely” and not “cause public restlessness”.

The organization, Muhammadiyah, which has around 30 million followers
across the country, last week declared smoking to be haram, or forbidden
under Islamic law.

The edict has sparked protests, particularly from the country’s tobacco industry and groups protesting the perceived meddling by religious groups in private affairs....

Suryadharma added he did not agree with Muhammadiyah’s branding of smoking as haram, saying he believed Islam’s original stance on tobacco was makruh (frowned upon) but not haram.

“Unless it poses a direct threat to human health, such as by causing heart disease, then smoking should not be haram,” he said.

Wish I was there

My stressful fortnight begins at work. Not sure how often I will post.

Meanwhile, I've been fiddling with 2 ways to blog better. One is Scribefire, a Firefox add on that would be good if it always worked properly. At first, it was adding unwanted tracker code (until I realised how to turn that feature off.) Then it started stuffing up the formatting of indented quotes, requiring me to log into Blogger and fix up the edits there. It did, however, allow me to post larger sized pictures than what appears when adding a photo with Blogger. (Hence the larger the normal photo of the dog and the roses last week.)

Getting sick of its recent formatting issues, today I've loaded Windows Writer, which also allows posts like this one to be prepared and then published. It seems to specialise in giving more options with photos, such being able to add the photo and then crop and adjust it quite a bit within the unpublished post.  That’s quite clever, I think, and lets me easily tart up an old photo on my hard drive like this:

It seems pretty clever software, but as often happens, I actually would like some combination of features from both Scribefire and Writer to be in the one software.  Oh well.

Bad figures

Bubble prophet fears new disaster | The Japan Times Online

Quite a lengthy article here on the shaky looking future for Japanese public debt. The pessimists suggest government bankruptcy and hyperinflation in the not so distant future:

Japan's present debt-to-GDP ratio is only comparable with what it was at the end of World War II. At that time, the only way the government could reduce the debt was through hyperinflation, which wiped out much of the people's wealth with skyrocketing prices.

"I can't tell exactly what will happen (this time), but what actually happened after the war was that the price level surged 60 times in just over four years," Noguchi said.

"If the same thing happens again, a ¥10 million bank account will have the same net value of just ¥100,000 today. It's actually possible," he warned.

The answer, some suggest, is a serious increase in sales tax now, but it's a country not exactly known for having brave politicians.

Also in The Japan Times, land values dropped pretty substantially last year throughout the country.

Evil in pearls

The ABC News website today came up with this cracker of a photo of you-can-see-who, looking like Hitler's nastier grandmother, or something.

The problem with iced tea

Drug accused woman freed after substance found to be iced tea

Now for a problem in the Australian legal system. The poor woman:

A Filipina arrested last weekend at Melbourne Airport and charged with drug importation was freed today after the substance was found to be iced tea....

She had been charged with importing a commercial quantity of a border control drug and had been in custody since Saturday.

The court heard the three 800-gram packages of iced tea bought in the Philippines, tested positive on Saturday to a swab and again, in a presumptive test.

A drug dog also indicated a positive result for narcotics when it checked the packages.

But defence barrister Michael Penna-Rees told the court final analysis of the substance by the Australian Federal Police found it was lemon-flavoured iced tea.

He said there had previously been incidents of the tea being wrongly identified as a drug, which in this case was wrongly identified as methylamphetamine and then amphetamine.

I see she got $5000 costs awarded to her. I hope her lawyers, who surely didn't have a hell of a lot to do, aren't taking it all.

Jail for thought crimes

BBC News - Dubai jails Indian pair for 'sexy texts'

Steamy text messages have resulted in a three-month jail sentence for an Indian man and an Indian woman in Dubai.

Judges ruled that they had planned to "commit sin", a reference to an extramarital affair - which is illegal in the United Arab Emirates.

The unnamed pair, aged 47 and 42, were working as cabin crew for Dubai's Emirates airline....

The court said there was not enough evidence to determine whether the man and the woman had actually had an affair, which could have brought a harsher sentence.

What a joke of a legal system.

Small market

American space firm seeks professional astronauts - Telegraph

As opposed to those shonky, backyard operating, fly-by-night kind you see on A Current Affair all the time.

Let the Scientologists deal with it

Rogue star set on collision

I'm a bit slow posting on this one, but here it is anyway:

There is a high probability our solar system will feel the effect of a close encounter from a nearby star, according to a new study.

The star, known as Gliese 710, could disrupt planetary orbits and send a shower of comets and asteroids towards the inner planets when it passes in 1.5 million years time.

The only people alive today who'll need to worry about this are the Scientologists in Sea Org who have signed the billion year contract. Suckers.

Why impossible here?

Study: Daylight saving time a waste of energy

I didn't know this:

The US state of Indiana has 92 counties, but until 2006 only 15 of
them adjusted their clocks for daylight saving time, with the remainder
keeping standard time all year, at least partly to appease farmers who
did not want the change.

That's exactly what people have suggested for Queensland: the South East Corner do daylight saving, but not the rest of the State. The line could easily be drawn through the lightly populated rural stretch between Ipswich and Toowoomba, from the border up to just north of Noosa.

Anyway, Indiana shows that it doesn't save energy there. As you expect, the problem is airconditioning:

Kotchen and Grant's work reinforces the findings of an Australian
study in 2007 by economists Ryan Kellogg and Hendrik Wolff, who studied the extension of daylight saving time for two months in New South Wales and Victoria for the 2000 Summer Olympics. They also found an increase in energy use.

Daylight saving was initially introduced, and has been extended,
because it was believed to save energy, but the studies upon which this
idea was based were conducted in the 1970s. A big difference between
then and the present is the massive increase in the take-up of air
conditioning. In hot periods daylight saving time means air conditioners tend to be run more when people arrive home from work, while in cooler periods more heating is used.

Just give us solar panels to run our airconditioners, and we'll be OK.

Reason to be sceptical

Iron Fertilization In Ocean Nourishes Toxic Algae - Science News

It's a pity that an idea that initially sounded like a good candidate for geo-engineering to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere now seems to have many potential adverse consequences.

Just shows the importance of actually reducing the production of CO2 in the first place.

Blog added

I'll be adding a new blog to the blogroll (under "the meaning of life" category): Neuroskeptic. Found via Mind Hacks, it contains so many fascinating and well written posts that I wanted to bring it to people's attention. This latest one about quitting tobacco is a good example.

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.