Another Chinese problem

An increase in the use of prostitutes (and the number of bisexual men) is being blamed for some pretty startlingly bad figures on the recent rise in syphilis in China:

Syphilis was almost wiped out in China 50 years ago, but has increased 10-fold over the past decade to emerge as one of the country's top five infectious diseases, the China Daily said, quoting the ministry of health.

The rate of mother-to-child transmissions jumped alarmingly to 57 cases per 100,000 newborns between 2003 and 2008, from a previous seven cases per 100,000, it said.

What's the rate in Australia, I wonder? This site paints a very mixed picture:

The rates of syphilis in Australia are about 10/100 000, nearly double that in New South Wales, and up to 140/100 000 in the Northern Territory, with a national indigenous rate of 300/100 000.  Despite remaining fairly stable in the heterosexual community, syphilis rates continue to rise in homosexually active men.  Other groups in Australia at risk of syphilis include rural and remote indigenous communities and those from overseas. Most infections are detected in the late latent phase, when the patient is asymptomatic, having passed the early infectious stages unrecognised and undiagnosed. 

The total rate in China, according to this graph that was in the New England Journal of Medicine article that is that basis of this story, indicates a rate of about 20 per 100,000.   So, in fact, the national rate is not all that huge, although I see that some Shanghai is a particularly bad place for it.  But the sharp rise in congenital cases is remarkably steep.  According to the NEJM:

…more than half of pregnant women with syphilis have a spontaneous abortion or stillbirth; and babies with congenital syphilis may have serious, irreversible sequelae with rates of death in infancy of more than 50%

That’s pretty sad.

Crowe stories

A rude awakening

The Sydney Morning Herald has run a story from The Telegraph by the author of a new book on the now (as I understand it) existing-in-name-only Dreamworks studio.  It's all pretty interesting, but as we all love a "Russell Crowe is a vain, preening idiot" story, it's mainly worth reading the bits near the beginning about him, such as this:

While filming [Gladiator] in Morocco, he walked off the set twice. For ''fun'', he challenged crew members to foot races only to lose and then complain for days that he couldn't ''run in the sand in sandals''. Years before the actor would become famous for the kind of short-tempered fuse that launched airborne telephones in the direction of hotel receptionists, his diva antics were already at a remarkably impressive level: upset that his assistants' pay wasn't high enough, he placed an angry call to Gladiator  producer Branko Lustig at 3am. Lustig, in turn, called Spielberg in Los Angeles: ''Steven, I'm leaving. Russell wants to kill me.'

But by far the most detailed first hand account of, shall we say, Crowe's personality "issues" was by Jack Marx in 2006, and happily it is still available at Fairfax.

Why bother existing, revisited

I could put this as an update to my post a few days ago about philosophers (and others) who think it's not such a bad idea for people to just, you know, go away from the universe, but who's going to notice if I do that?

Hence, I'll point out here that the ridiculously productive blogger James Lilek has also visited the story, with pretty much the same reaction that I had, but expressed in wittier form:

You have to love this: let’s say everyone agreed not to have children. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? The obvious answer is “yes; no children” but since the childless future with no humans at all, just birds and fish and bugs, doesn’t mean any human suffering, then the net amount of suffering is reduced, and we can all have a party. This is also an argument for smothering everyone under 15 so they don’t suffer broken hearts and angsty 20s, which happen to everyone. But don’t worry; he’s just asking questions.

It's all worth reading.

Depends how you define "disaster", I suppose

This is, of course, a very fair and reasonable blog, and although it has long decided that the world ought to be working hard to urgently limit CO2 reductions, it's not above pointing out some of the confusions and exaggerations which occur on my side of the argument.

Hence, regular readers might recall that in January this year, I noted that papers talking about the effect of loss of glaciers in the Himalayas on water flow in Indian and Chinese rivers seemed to be using some pretty confusing figures which were hard to reconcile.

Well, my confusion was justified, it seems. Nature reports on a new paper which tries to put the issue of glaciers and water flow in that area more into perspective. It starts with the heading "Global warming impact on Asia's rivers overblown", which appears to be part of environmental journalists new campaign not to be caught exaggerating again, even when the thing they are reporting on is quite seriously bad. Here are some extracts:

Although global warming is expected to shrink glaciers in the Himalayas and other high mountains in Central Asia, the declining ice will have less overall impact on the region's water supplies than previously believed, a study concludes.

It's an important finding, says Richard Armstrong, a climatologist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, who notes that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had previously predicted dire restrictions on water supplies in Asia. "There clearly were some misunderstandings," he says.

Yes, well, OK, but while the current study did find that the importance of glacier meltwater is not so important for some rivers, it's still pretty important for others:

The researchers behind the latest study began by calculating the importance of meltwater in the overall hydrology of five rivers: the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the Yellow River and the Yangtze in China¹. The authors found that meltwater is most important to the Indus, with a contribution roughly 1.5 times that from lowland rains. In the Brahmaputra, meltwater flow is equivalent to only one-quarter of the volume supplied by lowland rainfall, and, in the other rivers, it forms no more than one-tenth of the input.

Furthermore, the study found that in the Indus and Ganges basins, glacial ice contributes only about 40% of the total meltwater, with the rest coming from seasonal snows. In the other three rivers its contribution is even lower.

OK, so with some model's predicted changes to rainfall/snow, what effect might AGW have?:

Climate change will therefore have two effects, Immerzeel says. One will be to reduce the contribution of glaciers to total run-off. The other will be to change weather patterns, including rain and snowfall. Combining these and looking at averages from five climate models, Immerzeel and colleagues concluded that the change in upstream water inputs will range from a decrease of 19.6% for the Brahmaputra to a 9.5% increase for the Yellow River. The latter, he notes, is due to increased winter rains. "The Yellow River depends only marginally on meltwater," he says, "and, on average, the models project an increase in winter precipitation in the Yellow River basin."

What this means, Armstrong says, is that river flows are dominated by seasonal rains. "The glaciers are tiny, compared with the monsoon," he says.

All sounding relatively comforting, kind of, until you hit the next paragraph:

Nevertheless, the study concludes that climate change will reduce water supplies enough that by 2050, declines in irrigation water are likely to reduce the number of people the region's agriculture can support by about 60 million — 4.5% of the region's present population.

So the previous over-estimation of how many in India may be badly effected by AGW within 40 years is downgraded to a mere three times as many as the population of Australia.

How very comforting for them.

Of course, precise predictions of changes to rainfall is one of the rubberiest areas of climate science at the moment, but still, it would seem a fair bet that one of the worst hit areas from human induced climate change will be the relatively helpless poorer people in parts of Asia.

Mysterious programming

I see that in 2008, I mentioned how enjoyable I was finding the BBC's current incarnation of Robin Hood. (One suspects it gives much more pleasure than Russell Crowe's movie version.) It's one of those rare programs that is sufficiently sophisticated for adults, yet is enjoyable for the younger family members too.

After the traumatic ending of series 2 (it really was a surprise, and quite moving, and if you have no intention of watching it, you can find out what happened here), I was aware that a third series was in production and was on the look out for it on Australian TV.

Well, sad to say, ABC has decided to run it on ABC2, which I don't always think to check on Saturday night, and as a result I've come in late to this series 3.

I still think it's a good show, although it's probably right that it ends with this series. It's hard to see where else it could go.

Free speech in Kuwait

Kuwaiti activist's detention extended until June 21

A Kuwaiti court on Monday extended the detention of Kuwaiti lawyer
and columnist Mohammad Al Jasem until June 21.

The court said that it would hear the testimony of an investigation
officer on the case that has divided the Kuwaiti society and sparked
international calls for the release of the 54-year-old detainee.

Al Jasem, charged with damaging national interests, told the court
that his detention was illegal and his team of lawyers called for his
immediate release, according to Kuwaiti media.


The court kept the defendant in police custody, but agreed to have him
examined by a medical team to assess his health condition. His family
said that he had had heart problems in the past.

The public prosecutor last month imposed a gag on the coverage of the
trial of Al Jasem who last November was detained for 12 days in a
separate case initiated by the Kuwaiti prime minister who accused him of
slander.

I assume America, which took more than a little effort to help this place, is making representations.

Helen's legacy

Gosh, it's been a slow news week as far as I'm concerned. There just hasn't been anything much that I have deemed blogworthy.

But, Colbert's handling of the Helen Thomas resignation amused me:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Helen Thomas's Reputation
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

I also thought that the next segment on Colbert, in which he dealt with the Israeli "aid flotilla", was pretty remarkable in that it managed to be funny without being offensive, and even featured the Israeli ambassador to the US in one of Colbert's interviews which manage to amuse but let some real information and commentary in too.

Reversable eunuchs

BBC NEWS | Europe | 'I was chemically castrated'

In light of Poland introducing compulsory chemical castration for some sex offenders, the BBC has this interview with a Canadian sex offender who found his voluntary undergoing of the procedure quite helpful.

Interestingly, he talks about how, now that he is out of jail but still undergoing the chemical castration, he has a girlfriend, and he's trying to work out how to tell her about his background. (His plan is to stop the treatment at some point.)

Talk about delicate topics to bring up over your dinner date!

MRI videos

I forget what I was looking for when I found these, and they have been around for some time.

But - here a few videos about MRIs that interested me:

* here's a staged demonstration of the powerful magnets in them;

* here's what appears to be the un-staged consequences of forgetting about the powerful magnets;

* here is the latest in Japanese MRI's (it's silly, but I still find it pretty funny.)

Philosopher thinks himself out of existence

Should This Be the Last Generation? - NYTimes.com

This is kind of amusing. Peter Singer looks at the big question of whether it is better to exist or not exist, and notes one recent ultra pessimistic book:

Schopenhauer’s pessimism has had few defenders over the past two centuries, but one has recently emerged, in the South African philosopher David Benatar, author of a fine book with an arresting title: “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.”

Singer sounds quite sympathetic to the arguments, but in the end outs himself as an optimist after all. That's a shame in the way; I would find it quite funny if he joined a philosophical movement that seemed to want to apologise for drawing breath, and causing a new icky human life form to trod the earth.

Reasons he drinks

It's interesting to read Christopher Hitchens explaining in detail his drinking routine, and his very cheery view of the habit.

An odd connection

Gut bacteria may contribute to autism - health - 07 June 2010 - New Scientist

Children with autism appear to have a characteristic chemical signature in their urine which might form the basis of an early diagnostic test for the condition.

The finding also adds weight the hypothesis that substances released by gut bacteria are contributing to the onset of the condition.

The researcher is keen to point out that this has nothing to do with the discredited idea that vaccination causes autism.

More research is coming:

The next step is to confirm the results in a much larger group of age-matched children, as well as following high-risk children from birth in order to identify whether there are markers that precede the development of autistic symptoms.

Colebatch on the mining tax

Rudd In Fight Over 40% Mining Tax

Once again, a good, clear column by Tim Colebatch on the fight over a mining tax.

Meanwhile, Niki Savva makes a suggestion for Tony Abbott that makes a lot of sense to me: don't just resist all mining taxes; take up the miner's suggestion that they could afford to pay more tax and work out a deal with them.

But would Abbott be smart enough to do this?

Angry elephants

AFP: Elephants and humans clash over resources in Bangladesh

The wild Asian elephant wrapped its trunk around Parul Chambu Gong's husband and dragged him, kicking and screaming, into the forest.

His badly damaged corpse was recovered some hours later, and the father-of-five joined the list of an increasing number of Bangladeshis killed by wild elephants each year.

There aren't too many of them in Bangladesh, but those who get angry at being shoo-ed away from crops can be mean:

"I've seen an elephant snatch a torch from a man with its trunk while we were driving away a herd, and throw the flame on a house setting it on fire," said Luise, 51.

I guess it's just lucky that it's hard for an elephant to hold a box of matches with feet like that

Sunday at the Dominion

Yesterday went as follows:

* Breakfast: I make pancakes, of the instant "shake" variety. I used to like these, but after making my own from scratch quite a few times, I find I don't care for them anymore. I think it may be the real vanilla essence in the home made ones that makes a lot of difference, but I am not sure. Following my wife's advice, buttermilk does seem to make much nicer result too.

* Attend family church service at the kids school. Is it too curmudgeonly to say that I find the efforts of my kids' teachers to find ways to get their class involved in the once a year family service downright awful? I mean, yesterday's effort involved a little play (performed by four10 year olds) about the importance of "respect", in which a couple of parents made the family's elderly grandfather eat his dinner from a wood bowl in the corner of the room so that he didn't mess up the table with spilt food. I can't quite remember now how it was that the kindly child in the story convinced the parents they were wrong and let the grand-dad come back to the table for meals; somehow he shamed them into it.

Is this a scenario that is in any way likely to resonate with the middle class family kids in attendance? Who writes these stories? Hasn't someone written a book of better mini-plays for 10 year olds to perform in church services?

Furthermore, as I know some of the parents attending are not even Christian, let alone church going, does the church really have to use graphics (on their screens that show the words to the songs) which are all of "Jesus is my friend and likes to give me hugs" variety? Does this church only use these graphics for family services, or all the time?

(It is, I should hasten to add, not a Catholic church, although I admit the local Catholic church I am familiar with likes to use some of the same pop-ish "Jesus I really, really love you" songs too.)

Of course, you can't really say there is anything wrong with praise and worship per se in the Christian context. I suppose you could, if you are protestant, easily ridicule the Catholic veneration of the Eucharist which, incidentally, you don't see much anymore. But that Catholic style of worship had a certain, I guess, gravitas about it which seems much more appropriate to a God who is powerful and beyond complete human comprehension, rather than the singing of the equivalent of love songs to the guy next door.

* Lunch at McDonalds: happily, the kids generally prefer Subway as fast food now, which is definitely a healthier option, but the urge for McDonalds still arises sometimes. I see the fiddling with the menu is continuing apace, but I do think the Chicken Deluxe burgers are now pretty good. I'm still not convinced by the Grand Angus at all.

* Possibly succeeded in attempt to teach my mother about how to use Youtube. It was, of course, in the context of an 86 year old woman whose only interest in the internet is keeping up with the latest Colin Firth news. She wanted to see him accept his best actor award from the Venice Film Festival, even he only spoke in Italian. She was one of the hundred or so people who went and saw A Single Man in Brisbane, fully aware that it was about a depressed gay man, which is not the type of film she would normally seek out. But if Colin appeared in the equivalent of "Shortbus", she would be there to see it.

* Scared the kids. Showed them the first and end bits of The Twilight Zone movie. The middle is hardly worth bothering with, but the updated version of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet - my God it's fantastic. It's the perfect scary mini-movie, suspenseful and frightening without involving blood or loss of limbs at all. (I have no stomach for too much violence in horror.) Add a touch of unexpected humour, and it's perfect. Directed by George Miller I see. (I had forgotten that.)

That was followed by watching a couple of episodes of the original Twilight Zone. My wife had hired this at the library for me and the kids - which just goes to show that she is a good match for me. A couple of things I noticed:

- the two episodes I saw were written by Rod Serling himself and I was struck by their literary quality. The dialogue was quite dense and (to my mind) of a quality more akin to going to the theatre than watching the more "realistic" dialogue of today's TV dramas. (Not that I watch much of that to know, I guess.) It did make me feel a little as if the whole world has dumbed down quite a bit since I was a child.

- Rod Serling was really a deeply unattractive looking man.

* Dinner: my wife prepared a nabe cooked at the table with gyoza dumplings for the protein. A family sharing a meal at the table is good, but I think sitting around and participating in the cooking in front of you is even better. Some sake (Australian Go-Shu brand is fine) helps every Japanese style family meal too.

* Watched Dr Who: I actually thought last night's episode was pretty good, but it's the first of a two part-er, so we'll see how it pans out next week.

Update: it has occurred to me that a Twilight Zone style story may work well in church service requiring a morality mini-play put on by 10 year olds. Some kid in a suit could come out at the start with a fake cigarette and heavily made eyebrows to introduce the story, and then tell us the lesson at the end. I would be the one laughing loudly at the back of the congregation, while everyone else just gets confused.

Pardon?

I think Kevin Rudd swears in ways I don't even understand:

Meanwhile, there has been no official word yet from China after backroom comments Mr Rudd made during last year's Copenhagen climate change conference were reported in an essay by the Herald journalist David Marr. ''Those Chinese f---ers are trying to ratf--k us,'' Mr Rudd reportedly told a group of journalists and officials during a background briefing.

While our socially inept Opposition Leader doesn't know when to stop talking politics at an Italian Day function:

At this point, many in the 500-strong audience became agitated, murmuring among themselves that their guest was using the event to play politics.

Mr Abbott kept trying to make his point, but much of the last part of his speech was almost lost as crowd members yelled at him to keep politics out of the event. One man stood up, telling the Opposition Leader: ''I'm sorry Tony, this is not a political forum.''

This is the most depressing election choice in the history of Australian politics.

Those confusing glaciers

Glaciers' wane not all down to humans : Nature News

Hey, this isn't posted at Watts Up With That yet, but it's bound to be.  Some study is saying that maybe only half of glacier melt in 20th century was due to climate variations other than AGW:

"This doesn't question the actuality, and the seriousness, of man-made climate change in any way," says Matthias Huss, a glaciologist at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, who led the study. "But what we do see is that current glacier retreat might be equally due to natural climate variations as it is to anthropogenic greenhouse warming."

Good video of "UFO" rocket

UFO talk rockets around Gold Coast Local Gold Coast News | goldcoast.com.au | Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

The big, glowing, spiralling thing seen in the early morning sky yesterday all over the east coast of Australia was, of course, a rocket stage in orbit and the best video I have seen of it is embedded at the link above.

Everyone seems to agree it was the privately owned Falcon 9, but why it was letting out such a large cloud of gas I haven't seen explained yet.

Who hates the leaders

George Megalogenis has some interesting commentary on the personal approval ratings of
Rudd and Abbott:

The price of the Opposition Leader’s plus 8 rating among men aged 35 to 49 is consistently poor numbers across all other groups: younger and older men, and all women.

His problem is, officially, with women.

Abbott turns off women of all ages at roughly the same rate - minus 10 - unlike Rudd, who has the young on his side.

Abbott is also in the red with men aged 18 to 34, where his net rating is minus 6. This is possibly the most interesting distinction of all because this is the group where Rudd has residual respect, notwithstanding his reversal on climate change.

Perhaps young people see through Abbott’s tough-guy pose, while adults and seniors see through Rudd’s pretence of having a personal connection to middle Australia.

As to why Abbott is more popular with middle aged men:

The Opposition Leader is increasingly popular with men aged 35 to 49, a sign that the triathlons have impressed blokes confronting midlife crises.

Well, that's kind of embarrassing for my own gender and age cohort.

Of interest to defence forces everywhere

Moving repeatedly in childhood linked with poorer quality-of-life years later

I'm not surprised by this study indicating that frequent moves in childhood is, generally speaking, not good for kids. I personally would have hated moving while I was at primary school especially.

It must be a very major problem for defence forces everywhere as to how to deal with this. (Well, maybe not so much if you are from a relatively small country like Britain, where a weekend commute is nothing like travelling from one end of Australia to another.)

I guess there is no easy solution, unless you go for a gay armed force again, as in the general vicinity of ancient Greece (apparently.)

The really good stuff

Fromage fort: The cheese that tried to kill me - Salon.com

This paragraph, from an entertaining column by Francis Lam about cheese in France, contains a very amusing anecdote:

I have to say first that, of course, it's just stupidly easy to get your hands on socks-knocking-off-good cheese in France. On my very first day here, my friend Julia and I went down the street and randomly came home with a wedge of Brie from Melun so good, so soft and so sticky and so rich and woodsy and creamy that I caught her talking to it the next day. "Hey, Brie," she purred after getting home from work. "I've been thinking about you, baby. You been thinking about me?" (No, really. That happened.)

All of the article is good; you should read it.

A good interview

You don't always learn all that much about Colbert's guests' ideas, as the emphasis is more on jokes than information. But tonight's interview with Lisa Miller, whose book on the history of heaven has been the subject of a couple of posts here recently, gave her enough time to explain her book's key points, and was quite funny as well:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Lisa Miller
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

That's the trouble with politics today - not enough eunuchs!

Tadpoles, eunuchs and testosterone deprivation - Science Show - 22 May 2010

A couple of weeks ago there was a somewhat interesting interview on The Science Show with Richard Wassursug, who, as a result of having to be "chemically castrated" himself because of prostate cancer, has developed a big interest in eunuchs.

For example, as to the role of eunuchs in history:

What I found from actually studying eunuchs in history is they were not wimps, as our modern presumption is, these were the most powerful people in government. From one end of Asia to another, for the last 3,500 years, the most stable governments were run by castrated people, and we actually know why. This is unpublished, but with a colleague we've been studying people who wish to be castrated, a very strange group of people, we ran what's called the big five personality test, and we now know what it actually means to have no balls, and it isn't what most people think. The major personality change appears to be in agreeability, which may sound to a macho male like somebody who just obligingly agrees with everybody, but if you actually look at the roles that eunuchs played in history, they had to be great negotiators, they had to be empathetic and listen to both sides of an argument in order to maintain a stable government. That skill is enhanced by getting off testosterone.

In the Australian context, it's hard to imagine Kevin Rudd being oversupplied with testosterone; I think his problems are more just a personality defect.

But Tony Abbott: his testicles have already led to one embarrassing incident, and his exercise obsession has a whiff of overly macho male competitiveness about it. He's the one who would do better as a eunuch, I'm sure.

Update: by co-incidence, I was just at the BBC website, and for some reason this item from 2005, which indicates how castration can be achieved at home, even without instruments, is currently in its "most popular shared story" column:

Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage when Geoffrey Jones, 37, rejected her advances at the end of a house party, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

She pulled off his left testicle and tried to swallow it, before spitting it out. A friend handed it back to Mr Jones saying: "That's yours."

By the light of the moon

Japanese firm wants to transform the Moon into a giant solar power plant

The Shimizu Corporation, a Japanese construction firm, has recently proposed a plan to harness solar energy on a larger scale than almost any previously proposed concept. Their ambitious plan involves building a belt of solar cells around the Moon’s 6,800-mile (11,000-kilometer) equator, converting the electricity to powerful microwaves and lasers to be beamed at Earth, and finally converting the beams back to electricity at terrestrial power stations. The Luna Ring concept, the company says, could meet the entire world's energy needs.

Someone there must be looking for free publicity.  I like the first comment:

Pfffft I say Dyson Sphere or bust!

Temperature watch

Temperatures reach record high in Pakistan | World news | The Guardian

Mohenjo-daro, a ruined city in what is now Pakistan that contains the last traces of a 4,000-year-old civilisation that flourished on the banks of the river Indus, today entered the modern history books after government meteorologists recorded a temperature of 53.7C (129F). Only Al 'Aziziyah, in Libya (57.8C in 1922), Death valley in California (56.7 in 1913) and Tirat Zvi in Israel (53.9 in 1942) are thought to have been hotter.

Temperatures in the nearest town, Larkana, have been only slightly lower in the last week, with 53C recorded last Wednesday. As the temperatures peaked, four people died, including a prisoner serving a life sentence for murder and an elderly woman. Dozens are said to have fainted.

The extreme heat was exacerbated by chronic power cuts which have prevented people from using air-conditioning. The electricity has cut out for eight hours each day as part of a severe load-shedding regime that has caused riots in other parts of Pakistan where cities are experiencing a severe heatwave with temperatures of between 43C and 47C.

This article does go on to talk about how hot 2010 is shaping up to be globally, and ends on a cautious note about how some think this is part of "long-term climate change". (Note: journalists still seem too spooked to talk too clearly of AGW.)

It must be small, furry animal news week

Pet rats may harbour deadly fever

There's a warning from an Australian doctor here that some pet rat owners are catching a rare disease from their pets.

It's called "rat bite fever", but as far as I was aware, your "normal" hand raised pet rat pretty rarely bites. (I see from the comments at this site, thought, that it definitely happens.)

Still, the good doctor mentions a case of a Western Australian girl who got an infection but denied having been bitten by her rat. She did clean its cage, though, and perhaps got it that way.

Certainly, good hygiene around pet rats is important, and I would say that rat owners who let them (ugh) lick their teeth (Youtube gives many examples) are simply nuts. But I suspect the danger of a normally clean person catching something from a pet rat is probably no worse than catching toxoplasma from a cat.

In other small, furry animal news

Squirrels show softer side by adopting orphans, study finds

As squirrels rarely interact, they learn who their nearby relatives are by hearing their unique calls, he said. If they fail to hear a relative's calls for a few days, they may investigate. "We suspect that, if they find pups on the territory, they remember that their neighbour was a relative and carry the pups back to their nest. This would be quite intelligent behaviour for a squirrel."

It doesn't happen often though, it seems. I wonder if the much maligned grey squirrels of England do the same thing? It would be good for their PR.

From the "a propos of nothing" files...

Agents portrayed Hitler as gay Jewish eunuch

I think everyone knows that British propaganda in WW2 used to help spread the belief that Hitler was short at least one testicle, but I hadn't realised that they were quite this creative until I stumbled across this 1994 article in The Independent:

Special Operations in London sent out to Gibraltar for distribution in Morocco boxed sets of gramophone records in Arabic making lewd suggestions about Hitler's anatomy....

A po-faced official on the staff of Lord Gort, the Governor of Gibraltar, says side one 'records the story of an Arab caravan journeying to Marrakech'. He bemoans the stagnation of trade in Morocco, and blames Hitler and the fact that British ships are detained in Moroccan ports. But by side two the official is becoming upset. 'It states that Hitler cannot marry and that he hates both Jews and Arabs with a 'fiery hatred' and explains the reason.

'Hitler is a bastard - presumably of Jewish blood - and his original name was Schicklegruber. Some 30 years ago he was but a humble house-painter when one day he was painting the ceiling of a synagogue and fell and damaged one of his testicles]'

The doctor, trained by an Arab, is a former violinist used to giving encores, so when he is applauded for taking off the first testicle, he repeats the performance.

That last bit sounds more like an attempt at humour, really. But Adolf Schicklegruber, I like that.

It's also hard not to be amused by the next part of the article:

The second story has Hitler being visited in his bedroom by Mrs Goebbels, who is shocked to find the Fuhrer has gone to the front to have sex with his generals. The official says in his report to Lord Gort that the Arabs would be likely to be impressed rather than shocked by such behaviour.

Local warming

Hundreds die in Indian heatwave | World news | The Guardian

Record temperatures in northern India have claimed hundreds of lives in what is believed to be the hottest summer in the country since records began in the late 1800s.

The death toll is expected to rise with experts forecasting temperatures approaching 50C (122F) in coming weeks. More than 100 people are reported to have died in the state of Gujarat where the mercury topped at 48.5C last week. At least 90 died in Maharashtra, 35 in Rajasthan and 34 in Bihar.

Interestingly, The Guardian does not specifically mention global warming in the context of this story. I assume that is all part of the new sort journalistic reticence to raise AGW, just at the time global tempertures are in fact on the rise?

Hard to change

The science of a healthy marriage - Times Online

There's not much I particularly wanted to refer people in this article by the writer of a new book on the science of marriage. But this paragraph (about an American study on infidelity in marriage) amused me:

Overall, cheating rates were extraordinarily low—only 11 per cent of respondents reported infidelity. But the scientists also found that cheating was associated with some specific risk factors: being a man; thinking about sex several times a day; having a high number of sexual partners; living in the city; being in a long relationship; living together without marriage; having lived together before marriage and being unhappy.

Possibly important

Failure of Bell's Theorem and the Local Causality of the Entangled Photons

Physicist Joy Christian has had a string of papers recently at arXiv (well, I see now that he has been putting his position in print for a few years) in which he argues that "quantum non-locality" is actually an illusion.

His argument is hard to follow (even by other physicists, it seems) but he talk of an topological error and (to quote from an earlier abstract):

When topologies are correctly identified, local-realistic completion of any arbitrary entangled state is always guaranteed in our framework. This vindicates EPR, and entails that quantum entanglement is best understood as an illusion.

To put it another way, as the paper linked to at the top of this article says:

One of the first steps we often take towards measuring a physical quantity is to set up a Cartesian coordinate system {x, y, z} in the Euclidean space E3. This amounts to modeling the Euclidean space as a 3-fold product of the real line, IR3. This procedure has become so familiar to us that in practice we often identify E3 with its Cartesian model, and simply think of IR3 as the Euclidean space.

As we shall see, however, this seemingly innocuous act of convenience comes with a very heavy price: It is largely responsible for the illusions of “quantum non-locality.” Once a coordinate-free geometric model of the Euclidean space is used, the correlations observed in the EPR-type experiments involving photon pairs ... are easily understood, in a strictly local-realistic terms.

Well, it's not clear to me what this means, but my hunch is that if he might be onto something.

There's not too much about him on the web, but there is a bit of a bio here (and proof that he is a "he", not a she.)

Getting rid of quantum non-locality sounds a good way to make the world more aligned with common sense, but maybe Christian's ideas have their own form of counter-intuitiveness as well. (If only I could understand his explanation of the topological issue.)

One disc to rule them all

Japanese team discovers 'super disc' material

A Japanese research team has found a material that could be used to make a low-price super disc with data storage capacity thousands of times greater than a DVD, the lead scientist said Monday.

And the material is a form of titanium oxide, which has this advantage:

Titanium oxide's market price is about one-hundredth of the rare element -- germanium-antimony-tellurium -- that is currently used in rewritable Blu-ray discs and DVDs, Ohkoshi said.

"You don't have to worry about procuring rare metals. Titanium oxide is cheap and safe, already being used in many products ranging from face powder to white paint," the professor said.

Very clever, those Japanese. Now if only they would get out of the lab and have children...

My ovaries are safe, then

Drinking tea may reduce ovarian cancer risk

It's research from Queensland too. Yay.

Mercury still rising

Experts fear Taiji mercury tests are fatally flawed | The Japan Times Online

The Japan Times keeps up its (I think) single handed media attack on the issue of the mercury poisoning in Japan from eating dolphin.

This latest update questions whether the health of those found with high levels of mercury really has been assessed properly, and includes comments from more experts (including one from pilot whale eating Faroe Islands!) saying that it's crazy for the government to let them keep eating it.

For those interested...

in manufactured chicken sandwiches, I have updated my story about them a few posts back.

Funny 'cos it's true...

As a person who still works in Wordperfect, never uses IE if I can avoid it, and thinks Irfanview is the best image viewer, I understand entirely.

Inconsistent from the start

Abbott no Captain Courageous

Lenore Taylor gives a lists of the ways in which Tony Abbott has been inconsistent in policy since he became leader. She doesn't mention how many positions he had on the ETS in the half year before he became leader, but his flexible views are still on display now:

To audiences such as the listeners of climate sceptic and 2GB host
Alan Jones he says things like ''in the end, this whole thing … should
be a question of fact, not faith - and we can discover whether the
planet is warming or not by measurement and it seems that,
notwithstanding the dramatic increases in man-made CO2 emissions over
the last decade, the world's warming has stopped''.

To the environmental business leaders on Thursday he had a
differently nuanced argument: ''I am confident, based on the science we
have, that mankind does make a difference to climate, almost certainly
the impact of humans on the planet extends to climate.''

There are changes in the last few months that even I hadn't noticed, such as the "Green Army" being downsized from 15,000 to 1,000. It's a corny idea in the first place. There is the hint that he will still try to introduce a bigger "baby bonus" as an election promise.

As Taylor notes, it's only the "ham-fistedness" that has suddenly swept over the Rudd government that has stopped more media concentration on this. But it seems to me a very cogent case she makes for Abbott's unsuitability for top office.

And in other commentary: Michelle Grattan rips into Rudd for the decision to run an expensive ad campaign for his mining tax changes:

TO SAY the government is hypocritical is an understatement. After all Kevin Rudd's sanctimonious statements about getting the politics out of taxpayer-funded advertising, we have Labor's $38 million campaign to sell a new tax.

It's back to John Howard and the GST campaign, ''Unchain My Heart''. Politicians with their backs against the wall can't resist dipping into the public honey pot to help get across their message.

Still, you have to wonder about Rudd's reasoning. Maybe the government is simply desperate - the miners' onslaught has bitten more than expected. Otherwise, it is hard to explain why the PM, already under attack for backflips and broken promises, would further trash his reputation.

Yet the advertising was planned only days after the tax was announced. Maybe the government thinks we won't remember what Rudd said three years ago.

Once again the PM is victim of his own hyperbole. In 2007, he condemned partisan government advertising as a ''cancer on democracy''.

The government doesn't just look hypocritical, but dodgy too.

What an appalling choice between hopeless, awful leadership we have coming up in the next election.

Not enough rats

This blog has been lacking something lately: cute rats:

The well travelled chicken sandwich

It's close to lunch time.

Yesterday, I purchased a pre-packaged "herb chicken" sandwich from Coles supermarket. (They are quite nice.) But I noticed on the packet that it appears to have been made by a company in Victoria.

This seems an extraordinarily long distance for a chicken sandwich to have travelled before it reached my stomach. No wonder Australian CO2 emissions are so high, when our chicken sandwiches have to travel a thousand kilometres before consumption.

This is, of course, something about which we should take action. Local chicken sandwich manufacturing could just be the thing for small pockets of high unemployment. But then, how much CO2 can you really save if the chicken sandwich meat industry is all based in Victoria, and the filling has to travel from there until it makes it to the (local) chicken sandwich factory?

Chickens are raised everywhere though. Surely we don't ship chickens from Brisbane to Victoria to be turned into chicken sandwiches which then travel back to Brisbane?

These are all very vital questions, I am sure you will agree. Write to your local politician and demand a Royal Commission into the Chicken Sandwich Industry of Australia.

Meanwhile, I will try to remember the website of the Victorian company, as soon as I buy my new sandwich today, and report here further.

UPDATE: Relax everyone. The sandwich making company involved has got 'fresh operations' sites in each capital city, including Brisbane. It appears quite possible that my sandwich came from Slacks Creek, a suburb of Brisbane, not Melbourne. (Although the website is not entirely clear on the point.)

According to their website, Australian Convenience Foods makes 14,000,000 sandwiches a year. Some of their range is sold to shops frozen. (I don't think herb chicken is, but I can't find it on the website at all.) I am feeling hungry now.

I have also learned of a new product in their range of stuff you microwave at a convenience shop if you're really desperate:

...we have launched a new burger, ready go eat Double Cheese Burger. It offers high satiety, and is a welcome addition for tradesmen and male teenagers looking for a substantial hot snack or meal.

Well, at least they're very honest about the target market. And "high satiety" is a phrase I look forward to using at the next dinner party I'm invited to.

Playing with God(s)

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti: What happens when three men who identify as Jesus are forced to live together?

I have no idea why this story has a run in Slate now, but it's an account of a fascinating experiment, as follows:

In the late 1950s, psychologist Milton Rokeach was gripped by an eccentric plan. He gathered three psychiatric patients, each with the delusion that they were Jesus Christ, to live together for two years in Ypsilanti State Hospital to see if their beliefs would change. The early meetings were stormy. "You oughta worship me, I'll tell you that!" one of the Christs yelled.

As Slate explains, the experiment did not really help any of the three "Christs", and even Rokeach later regretted the unethical nature of what he did.

I'm not so sure he should feel so bad. In the 21st century, we've had years of Big Brother: unethical psychological torture for public entertainment.

Local hero

It's well worth watching this video for a bit of ordinary heroics. It's noteworthy for how little attention the episode, in which he could well have just saved a young life, gets from the other people in the shopping centre.

This is the end....surely

Sex and the City 2 Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes

As I expected, the movie is attracting aggressively bad, and somewhat funny, reviews.

For example, the Salon review notes this about the marriage of "Carrie" and "Big":

Big yearns to lie on the $12,000 leather couch, get fat on takeout food and watch the Weather Channel on his new flat-screen TV -- the character seems to have bypassed his 50s and gone straight to supper-at-Denny's age since the first SATC film -- but through various forms of time-honored feminine coercion Carrie extorts diamond jewelry out of him and drags him to restaurants and red-carpet premieres night after night. Oh, the suffering! They're like the wounded couple in Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage," except with millions and millions of dollars and no souls. When Carrie asks Big, "Am I just a bitch wife who nags you?" I could hear all the straight men in the theater -- all four of us -- being physically prevented from responding.

And that's one of the milder passages from becomes an increasingly savage review.

Surely it's the end of the "franchise".

Conspiracies continue

U.S. Is a Top Villain in Pakistan’s Conspiracy Talk - NYTimes.com

Conspiracy theory is a national sport in Pakistan, where the main players — the United States, India and Israel — change positions depending on the ebb and flow of history. Since 2001, the United States has taken center stage, looming so large in Pakistan’s collective imagination that it sometimes seems to be responsible for everything that goes wrong here.

“When the water stops running from the tap, people blame America,” said Shaista Sirajuddin, an English professor in Lahore....

“People want simple explanations, like evil America, Zionist-Hindu alliance,” said a Pakistani diplomat, who asked not to be named because of the delicate nature of the topic. “It’s gone really deep into the national psyche now.”

One of those pundits is Zaid Hamid, a fast-talking, right-wing television personality who rose to fame on one of Pakistan’s 90 new private television channels.

He uses Google searches to support his theory that India, Israel and the United States — through their intelligence agencies and the company formerly known as Blackwater — are conspiring to destroy Pakistan.

Creator of many worlds

CultureLab: The many-worlds physicist couldn't cope with this one

I've mentioned a fascinating fact about Hugh Everett III here before, and now there is a full biography out about him, his theory, and his sad personal life. Sounds like I should read it.

Be the first to find that hidden alien presence

Moon Zoo

That's my plan, anyway.

Parasite of the day

Dangerous lung worms found in people who eat raw crayfish

I'm not sure why Americans would be eating raw crayfish in the first place (sushi-mi, maybe?), but it can cause a serious parasite infection.

The half-inch, oval-shaped parasitic worms at the root of the infection primarily travel from the intestine to the lungs. They also can migrate to the brain, causing severe headaches or vision problems, or under the skin, appearing as small, moving nodules.

Some of the patients had been in and out of the hospital for months as physicians tried to diagnose their mysterious illness and treat their symptoms, which also included a buildup of fluid around the lungs and around the heart. One patient even had his gallbladder removed, to no avail.

It also happens in Asia:

Paragonimiasis is far more common in East Asia, where many thousands of cases are diagnosed annually in people who consume raw or undercooked crab that contain Paragonimus westermani, a cousin to the parasite in North American crayfish.

Travellers beware, I guess.

The main question

Crop circle season arrives with a mathematical message - This Britain, UK - The Independent

I find it hard to believe that there is anything mysterious behind crop circles, but the big question to my mind remains: why does it seem that crop circle makers are never (or rarely) caught in the act?

Doesn't seem fair

I fought the squirrel… and the squirrel won | Science | The Guardian

According to this brief article, which indicates squirrels in England can be just as invasive as rats in Australia:

Woods says that more and more people are buying traps from him. "However, it's illegal to re-release squirrels into the wild. So if you use a live trap, you need to kill the squirrel yourself and the only legal ways of doing that are shooting it with an air rifle, or putting it in a sack and hitting it on the head."

What's wrong with release? Although grey squirrels are an invasive species there, I thought scientists now thought they weren't causing much harm.

And I see that pro-grey squirrel activists now have their own website. How nice.

Psychiatric disorder of the day

People who are certain they stink, and the psychiatrists who sense this may be a disorder

We've all known of people who have bad body odour but don't know it. It turns out there are people with the opposite problem; they only think they smell:

Patients with the proposed diagnosis of "olfactory reference disorder" (sometimes referred to as a "syndrome") are certain beyond doubt that they stink, when in fact they smell no worse than is average for a 21st century American. According to Dr. Katharine Phillips, director of Rhode Island Hospital's Body Image Program, four in 10 people who likely have the disorder have sought out medical treatments for what they believe to be bad breath, foul body odor, stinky feet or residual fecal or urine smell. Their worry preoccupies them for between three and eight hours a day, on average, and impels patients to shower for hours, consume bars of soap or gallons of mouthwash in a single day -- even to drink perfume in an effort to eradicate the imagined smell.

A slight majority -- 60% -- of sufferers appear to be women, Phillips told her colleagues, and most began to suspect that they emitted foul odors at around 15 to 16 years of age.

Clearly, this is not something author Lionel Shriver suffers from. (See her mention of how her dislike of clothes washing leads her to wear the same clothes for a week, despite her cycling everywhere.) Call me weird, but my description of her as "quite the oddball" at another blog yesterday, when she says in the same interview that she is "eccentric" and thought of as "peculiar," seems entirely apt.

Worth a look

Nitro PDF Reader out to blow away Adobe

This appears to be little more than a PR blurb for some new .pdf software, but it does sound worth a look:

Nitro not only lets people read paperwork scanned in Portable Document Format (PDF) but lets it be annotated, filled-in, or otherwise altered and then saved as files.

Adobe's widely used free reader lets people see and print digitized documents but not tinker with them, a restriction that can foil efforts such as filling in emailed or online PDF forms.

One thing I really hate about the .pdf forms that government websites sometimes provide is how, if you need to put in more words than the box allows, it just keeps reducing the size of the font until it's unreadable. Maybe use of Nitro allows a way around this?

UPDATE: here's the link to the Nitro reader site. It does look pretty good and innovative, but I haven't tried it yet.

Martin Gardner - a belief ignored

The Great Beyond: RIP Martin Gardner

So Martin Gardner, who is well known and respected in skeptic circles, has died at the age of 95.

Apart from his long running maths columns in Scientific American, he is best known for his work “discrediting scientific fraud and quackery”. This means, for example, that he is getting favourable and sympathetic comments from rabid atheist PZ Myers and his followers.

Yet, few people are noting in detail that, despite his generally skeptical take on life, Gardner never became an atheist, and wrote an entire book in which he justified his "philosophical theism."

The book is "The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener", and I do have a yellowing copy on my bookshelf. As someone who wrote a review at Amazon explains:

Gardner is a "fideist," meaning that he acknowledges the impossibility of demonstrating rationally the existence of God and related issues, but insisting that faith is an appropriate mechanism for getting around these difficulties. Gardner is never heavy-handed or preachy in his positions, and he gives the arguments against him a fair hearing.

That's a position I basically agree with, and as such I did find it a very good read. Gardner did not go so far as to believe in Christianity, but his position is one that I think any thoughtful Christian could call a very reasonable "fall-back" position.

What I find a little curious, though, is how in atheist circles, like PZ Myers' blog, this aspect of Gardner seems to be being ignored, or at least downplayed. I don't really see why Gardner's views, and his deep faith in "faith", so to speak, should not be the subject of the same ridicule that Catholics and other Christians have faced from Myers. Maybe he just hasn't read the book.

In fact, I am a little curious as to whether Gardner in his later years, was starting to get a bit indignant about the aggression of the "new atheism".

Someone else has already noted that the New York Times obituary paints his religious belief quite misleadingly, if you have read his "Whys.." book. I suspect it is one of his least read, but most deserving, works.

Strangest consequence of 9/11

9/11 attacks linked to loss of male babies | e! Science News

This is a very surprising story:

The stress caused by psychological shock from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, felt even by people with no direct link to the event, may have led to an increased number of male children being miscarried in the US. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Public Health found that the fetal death rate for boys spiked in September 2001, and that significantly fewer boys than expected were born in December of that year...

Bruckner and his colleagues used data from the National Vital Statistics System, which compiles fetal death data from all fifty states of the US, from January 1996 to December 2002 to calculate how many male fetal losses would be expected in a 'normal' September. They found that in September 2001, this figure was significantly exceeded. Speaking about the reasons for this, Bruckner said, "Across many species, stressful times reportedly reduce the male birth rate. This is commonly thought to reflect some mechanism conserved by natural selection to improve the mother's overall reproductive success."

A good comment

A woman writes a really long piece in the Guardian about how much she hated the first Sex and the City movie, even though she loved the series. She thinks the second movie looks even worse, going by the trailer.

This is a topic of mild interest to me, given that I still find it hard to believe that so many women felt that a show about gay men played by women was deep and meaningful. But my favourite comment following the article is this:

At college I wrote essays about the cultural significance of shows like Friends and Frasier, even Dawson's effing Creek.

Then I became an adult.

Read a book, love.

UPDATE: well, yeah, I should be reading a book, but if David Edelstein's take is anything to go by, I will have the pleasure of reading many bad reviews and bitchy comments soon:

The film is an epic eyesore. It’s as if they set out to make a movie that said, “You’re right! We are hideous!” It begins with the nightmarish manic gaiety of Mamma Mia!, with strenuous lockjawed smiles that make you think you’re watching stroke victims. Then Liza Minnelli shows up to perform a gay marriage. Heralded (and hooted at) as the embodiment of camp unreality, she looks more human—nervous but happy to belong somewhere—than the four leads....

Amy Odell, of nymag.com’s The Cut, accompanied me to the screening and was kind enough to whisper that a particular dress of Carrie’s cost 50 grand. But what’s the point of spending that much when the cinematographer, John Thomas, lights Sarah Jessica Parker to bring out the leatheriness of her skin? How did he manage to mummify the lovely Cynthia Nixon? Kim Cattrall, fresh off her witty, subtle work in The Ghost Writer, is costumed to look like a cross between (late) Mae West and (dead) Bea Arthur. Kristin Davis gets by (just) pulling little-girl faces, probably for the last time.

Journalists: look, over here!

I could have missed it in the Australian press, but as far as I can see from Googling, only the ABC has mentioned the important Nature paper that came out last week on ocean warming.

What is wrong with our journalists? For years they re-printed any press release regarding the more dubious possible effects of climate change, without any sign of independent thought at all. Then, when AGW skeptics use such reports as alleged evidence that global warming is not to be believed at all, the journalists say "oh yeah, we'll be rather quiet now for a while." (I guess I have put my finger on the problem with that bit about "no independent thought".)

All at a time when in fact it looks increasingly clear that:

a. "climategate" is not going to reveal any fundamental problem with the temperature record;

b. the issue of "missing heat" is more of a technical one about the difficulties of measuring ocean heat content;

c. increasing ocean heat content is pretty consistent with the models on the bigger scale, just as climate change is something that has to be looked at on the bigger scale.

Anyhow, important commentary on the ocean warming paper is to be found at Real Climate, and John Cook has a really good post about it with links that get around the Nature paywall so you can read directly the commentary by Trenberth.

My fantasy politics

Not much choice between Robopol and Terminator | The Australian

This article by Niki Savva expresses my sentiments perfectly, and helps explain why I haven't been saying much about politics here lately. Everyone with political common sense can see what's happened in Australia in the last six months, and what the cure would be: a joint address to the nation by the administrative leaders of each the major political parties in which they admit and agree:

"1. We're terribly sorry, we've both made terrible, terrible mistakes in the selection of our current leaders. Yes, we know, we're not blind: the Labor Party always knew Kevin was a jerk who faked his way into the job, but we were surprised how long it took the public to realise it. Everyone already knows Tony doesn't really want the job and is too full of self doubt and anxiety that only goes away when he is on bicycle. They are both completely hopeless as leaders, and all reasonable people, even within their own parties, can see that.

2. We've agreed, and there will be no point scoring between us: Malcolm, all is forgiven, and you can have your party back. Julia, your political appeal is undeniable, and have the Prime Ministership now; not in another 2 or 3 years of bloodless meandering by K Rudd.

3. OK, now that we know we have a real contest, let the election campaigning begin."

Still not enjoying it

Doctor Who review: Vampires of Venice - Telegraph

Well, it's good to see it's not just me. A considerable number of comments following the above review of this week's episode agree that there is just something "off" about this season's Dr Who. As commenter "Mike" says:

I do agree there's a problem with the new doctor. I can't decide what annoys me more, his occasioanl and completely unexplained rages, or the inconsistent plot lines where you're left wondering if a led to be and then to g whether you'd dropped off through c, d,e and f. It's a shame, you can't blame the cast, they're trying their best, but the writing and direction isn't working. Maybe steven should just direct from now on and have someone else write.

Pity really.

They have to get out more...

Taste Test: Passion fruit - Boing Boing

Boing Boing runs a story by someone who has only recently discovered passionfruit? As an Australian says in comments: "I had no idea passionfruit was so little-known".
(Several comments are also about how gross the insides look - like frogs eggs. They make your average Australian seem like a regular Anthony Bourdain.)

UPDATE: I mentioned this to my wife over the weekend, only to be told that she had eaten frog's eggs, as a dessert, at an expensive Chinese restaurant in Japan...

Lane on Robin

“Robin Hood,” review : The New Yorker

Anthony Lane's review of the new Robin Hood begins in amusingly bitchy fashion:

Our hero is one Robin Longstride, played by Russell Crowe, who seems a bit short for the name; it suggests someone rangy, whereas the dauntless persona that Crowe has constructed, over many films, owes less to his gait than to his lightly submerged temper and his bearish build. The solution would have been to call him Robin Phonethrow, but Scott has a thing for historical details, so I guess that didn’t wash.

Overall, his impression of the film as too dour and serious is similar to that in many reviews, and puts me off seeing it.

I am a bit surprised how so many reviewers of the new movie mention in passing how bad the Kevin Costner version was.  Yes, his accent was hopeless out of the place, but I thought RH Prince of Thieves was still quite fun and enjoyable in its way.  Certainly sounds a better experience than this present take.

Small nuclear update

Miniature Nuclear Plants Seek Approval to Work in U.S (Update1) - BusinessWeek

Maybe not too much new in this story, except for the fact that development of small scale nuclear power is proceeding, but with government certification of them not even started yet.

His "sustaining fantasy" is that he is worth reading

ABC The Drum Unleashed - Sustaining fantasy

Bob Ellis, who always now gives me the impression of writing under the influence of a bottle of red, writes of the "sustaining fantasies" that people use to get through life. It contains pearls such as this:

We are told a priest who buggers choir boys can eat Christ's flesh on our behalf and save us a billion years of fiery torture thereby, though he himself will suffer a trillion of fiery torture for buggering choir boys against God's will though God, who is all powerful, neglected to prevent him from doing this, a God who loves us all. And some of us believe that too.

I'm fairly certain it's been quite a while since he looked into Catholic theology.

And there is a distinct sense of self justification for past behaviour in this section:

We are told there are faithful husbands who spend months each year travelling the world. Who are they? I would like to see a list of ten names. Yet we base our notion of civilised society on this premise and sack our politicians if they don't live up to it. What a fantastical premise it is and how useless it is to believe it.

Adultery has been frequent since the invention of the bicycle and very, very frequent since the invention of the Pill and the universal availability of cheap interstate air travel and we should probably work out how to cope with it, in rules that won't be easy to construct. But denying it happens or saying it won't happen in particular cases is ludicrous fantasy.

It's easier to give up smoking. The wife-swapping parties of the 1950s and '60s (so well evoked in The Ice Storm) seem wiser now than they did then and the destructive, child-smashing divorces of today a moronic alternative.

Yes Bob, but I wonder what your past partners think about this.

Wacky hotel

Dezeen » Blog Archive » Inntel hotel by WAM Architecten

This is a supremely wacky looking hotel from the Netherlands.  (Maybe it's all the drugs in the coffee shops.)  Go on, have a look and tell me I'm wrong.  I can't stop looking at it.

For more information, I see the Guardian had an article about it about 6 weeks ago.

Ocean temperature rising

Robust warming of the global upper ocean : Nature

No doubt this will be a much discussed paper. The abstract above needs some interpretation, which can be found in the Physicsworld report:

After gaining an understanding of the sources of uncertainty in each OHCA curve, the team was able to combine the data to obtain a curve that is more representative of global ocean temperature than its constituents. It reveals that the oceans have warmed at a rate of about 0.64 ± 0.11 W/m² over the past 16 years. According to Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, this is "reasonably consistent with expectations from other indications of global warming".

However, the re-analysis sheds little light on why ocean temperatures appear to have remained steady since about 2004. This is at odds with satellite measurements, which suggest the Earth has continued to heat up over the past six years, leading to questions over where the "missing heat" has gone.

Indeed, Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at Potsdam University near Berlin, says that the new study does solve this problem. "The accuracy of measurements is still not sufficient to close the energy budget particularly for short-term variations, in other words, over a few years, as associated with El Niño".

Team member Doug Smith of the Hadley Centre in the UK points out that this stalling seems to occur just when the Argo floats became the primary data source. This could mean that further work is needed on how to interpret Argo results and how to integrate them into temperature records.

Well, that's still a little confusing, but I'm sure the major climate change blogs will be onto this soon.

Understatement of the month

Good news! Kentucky Fried Chicken doubles-down on the KFC Double Down

It has featured at this blog before in a very funny Colbert clip.  But the "sandwich" has turned out to be popular:

KFC says Americans are gobbling down so many Double Down sandwiches that the fast-food chain will offer the bunless, meaty sandwich longer than it had planned.

Originally the sandwich — bacon and cheese surrounded by chicken filets — was to have been available through Sunday.

But KFC said Wednesday that the sandwich will be available now for as long as customer demand remains high.

What I really like about this story, though, is this fine bit of understatement at the end:

Some have questioned the sandwiches' nutritional value.

Skepticism's wheels get wobbly

It's a peculiar thing, but just at the time when a significant part of the public seems to be thinking that "climategate" meant that global warming science has become somewhat tarnished and deserves to be taken less seriously, there has evidence gathering at skeptic blogs themselves that AGW skepticism is looking distinctly wobbly. For example:

1. Raw temperature / adjusted temperature not so different after all? Lucia's Blackboard is a well know "soft" skeptic site, but she has been running posts lately about individual bloggers attempts (if I read this right) to chart "raw" land temperature records to see how the results looks compared to the adjusted "official" temperature records. (Remembering that many a post at Watts Up With That and elsewhere loves to find examples of adjustments to individual station records that they think shows something untoward going on with the "official" adjustments.)

Well, guess what? These amateur attempts at charting raw data are not giving any reason to doubt that the official temperature charts are far off the mark. Have a look at Lucia's latest post about this.

She doesn't seem to be exactly making a clear point about this, but unless I am misunderstanding something here, this is a pretty damning indictment of the irrelevance of much of AGW skepticism when it comes to questioning the temperature record.

2. Widget fails. I have been wondering whether skeptics are starting to be a little embarrassed about the Watts Up With That's widget. It was meant to help encourage the view that there was not much of a relationship between CO2 increase and temperatures. But look at it now:

I wouldn't be surprised if some people think the purple CO2 line is just the mean of the temperature anomaly graph - which is far from the impression Anthony Watts intended.

3. Stepping out of his knowledge zone. Speaking of Watts Up With That, regular contributor Steven Goddard recently got inspired to start his own reappraisal of planetary physics, by posting that he had worked out all on his own that NASA and many, many scientists were completely wrong about CO2's role in creating a greenhouse effect on Venus.

He convinced no one, apart perhaps from some the old Velikovsky faithful (Australia's very own Louis Hissink amongst them.)

I reckon this foray into a topic he is ill prepared to fully understand has substantially harmed Goddard's (and Watt's) credibility.

4. Ice issues. While skeptics were heartened by the extent of North Pole ice cover over winter appearing to be back to being very close to average in April, barely a month later and it's virtually back to the 2007 low. (And this does not take into account the question of how much ice is "old" ice, a topic skeptics don't seem to discuss much.)

If Arctic ice this (northern) summer drops well below 2007, skeptics are going to have to start making excuses again. In fact, there's a touch of pre-emption in Goddard's recent post about it here.

Skeptical Science also had a post recently criticising WUWT's claims that sea ice is nearly "back to normal", and in particular Goddard's understanding of Antarctic ice. Goddard did not take the criticism well.

Learn about papyrology

The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology - RN Book Show - 14 May 2010

Last week I happened to hear this long interview on Radio National with an expert on Eygptian papyrology (basically, reading and studying the thousands of old bits of papyrus scrolls still being found in Egypt.)   It was very interesting, but it's only available as an audio.  Worth a listen, though.

Further doubts about Nietzsche

Gosh I'm happy that Bryan Appleyard is back blogging. He's come out and helped confirm my hunch that I don't have to bother having to read Nietzsche.

Warm weather

NOAA has announced that April was warm - warmest on record in fact:

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for both April and for the period from January-April, according to NOAA. Additionally, last month’s average ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for any April, and the global land surface temperature was the third warmest on record.

Go look at their map with all the dots to see where the heat anomalies were highest. (Hint: think of toy making elves wearing galoshes.)

Gospel truth

Searching for Jesus in the Gospels : The New Yorker

This is a long essay by Adam Gopnik, covering some of the latest books considering the question of the historical Jesus, and adding some of Gopnik's own thoughts, particularly in relation to the Gospel of Mark. He writes very well on the topic.

And this reminds me - I never got around to mentioning a post at First Things which led to a good article in Christianity Today by a New Testament scholar (Scot McKnight) explaining how he now believes the quest for the historical Jesus has failed. He quotes another scholar who makes some revealing points:

Allison admits this about one of his own books on Jesus: "I opened my eyes to the obvious: I had created a Jesus in my own image, after my own likeness." He's not done: "Professional historians are not bloodless templates passively registering the facts: we actively and imaginatively project. Our rationality cannot be extricated from our sentiments and feelings, our hopes and fears, our hunches and ambitions." So, he ponders, "Maybe we have unthinkingly reduced biography [of Jesus] to autobiography."

On top of this genuine problem is the problem of method. Allison: "The fragmentary and imperfect nature of the evidence as well as the limitations of our historical-critical abilities should move us to confess, if we are conscientious, how hard it is to recover the past." With one ringing line, Allison pronounces death: "We wield our criteria to get what we want."

There is, in other words, no value-or theology-free method that will enable us to get back to Jesus. Allison is not a total skeptic; he thinks that we can get behind the Gospels to find some genuine impressions. But his book led me to conclude, "The era is over."

Earlier in his essay, McKnight writes this:

Most historical Jesus scholars assume that the Gospels have overcooked their portrait of Jesus, and that the church's Trinitarian theology wildly exceeds anything Jesus thought about himself and anything the evangelists believed. These scholars pursue a Jesus who is less than or different from or more primitive than what the Gospels teach and the church believes. There is no reason to do historical Jesus studies—to probe "what Jesus was really like"—if the Gospels are accurate and the church's beliefs are justified. There are only two reasons to engage in historical Jesus studies: first, to see if the church got him right; and second, if the church did not, to find the Jesus who is more authentic than the church's Jesus.

This leads to a fundamental observation about all genuine historical Jesus studies: Historical Jesus scholars construct what is in effect a fifth gospel. The reconstructed Jesus is not identical to the canonical Jesus or the orthodox Jesus. He is the reconstructed Jesus, which means he is a "new" Jesus.

Sounds about right to me.

UPDATE: I didn't realise I had a couple of bad links there. Been fixed now.

I'll wait for the opera version

Doctor Who: coming live to a stage near you

The Doctor – plus assorted adversaries and creatures including Daleks, Cybermen and Oods – is to tour the UK this autumn with Doctor Who Live....

The new Doctor, Matt Smith, and assistant Karen Gillan, will not appear in the stage show, which is being developed by Doctor Who's head writer Steven Moffat and will feature in "on-stage battles, pyrotechnics and special effects".

The show, produced by the BBC's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, will open in wartime London and conclude with "an epic onstage battle". There will also be a live soundtrack, performed by a 16-piece orchestra, by Doctor Who composer Murray Gold, responsible for the programme's controversial new theme tune.

Yeah, I'm not so keen on the re-arranged title music either.

Colebatch worth reading again

Swan's budget numbers hide ugly reality

Lately, it seems to be Tim Colebatch's columns which are the most readable, straight forward explanations of economic issues.  I think he does a good job again today, where (amongst other things) he covers the new mining "super profit" tax.