Up close and personal with the bonobo

Last night’s Foreign Correspondent was initially about the bonobos in the Congo, and was interesting for several different reasons:

* I didn’t realise before, but the famously pan-sexual primates are pretty ugly. The female genitalia and backside look as if they are permanently engorged and virtually dragging on the ground, and even the males seem to have a more prominent penis than do regular chimps or gorillas. But apart from that, even their face and head shape are a bit different from regular chimps, and not for the better.

* The show continued the “bonobos are the peaceful hippies of the jungle” meme, seemingly indicating they are vegetarians and do nothing nasty. But in fact, as I’ve noted before, they do eat other primates and mammals from time to time. Just because they seem to spend half their day having sex and are run by the women doesn’t mean they are the Bob Browns of the animal kingdom.

* The second half of the show concentrated on the people who live near the bonobos, and the efforts to improve their living conditions. Conditions in the Congo do look extremely basic. A “new”medical clinic featured in the show with dirt floors and an operating table (of sorts) that looked like it had been salvaged from a car wrecker’s yard. The amount of monkey meat on sale in the towns was pretty disturbing too.

If you can put up with the monkey sex that is briefly featured, it’s worth watching.

Tiny electric plane

Have a look at this tiny French airplane and its cute l'il battery powered engines that still manage to make it fly and sound like a mosquito:



Not that it has much range yet, but I am still surprised it flies at all. More details at Popular Science.

Babies via courier

I know this sort of thing has been around for a while, but I am still surprised at the number of women happy to avoid the whole outrageously complicated and icky business (that was sarcasm) of actually meeting someone they like and trust enough to be the father of their child. Instead, it's the livestock option: anonymously inseminated via courier. The details are in this story of the prosecution of an illegal business in Britain:

Two businessmen earned £250,000 through an illegal fertility company providing women with access to sperm donors, a court heard today.

In the first case of its kind, a jury was told that Nigel Woodforth, 43, ran the firm from the basement of his home in Reading, Berkshire, with 49-year-old Ricky Gage.

Nearly 800 women signed up to use the online service provided by the company, operating under various names including Sperm Direct Limited and First4Fertility.

Their website introduced would-be donors to women trying to conceive, Southwark crown court in London was told.

Philip Bennetts, prosecuting, said: "In short, the website introduced men who wished to supply sperm to women who wished to use the sperm to impregnate themselves in order to have a child."

The women, having paid an £80 joining fee and £300 to use the service, would then choose from a list of men before the sperm was delivered to their homes through a courier company at £150 per delivery.

To put it mildly, this does not speak well of modern attitudes to child bearing and raising.

Surprising medical fact of the day

Big baby boys are more likely to be earlier maturing, bed hopping young adults, so it seems. But the main surprise is this:

"Most people are unaware that male infants in the first six months of life produce testosterone at approximately the same level as an adult male," said Christopher W. Kuzawa, associate professor of anthropology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and author of the study. "We looked at weight gain during this particular window of early life development, because testosterone is very high at this age and helps shape the differences between males and females."

Clearly, internet porn filters are needed from a very early age.

Oceans not understood

Nature has a brief report on a new study which shows that the global "conveyor belt" circulation of ocean water is more complicated than previously thought. This would seem to be relevant to the issue of where ocean heat is going.

Hawking, God, etc

I haven't really bothered talking about the Hawking comments on "physics shows there is no need for God" because anyone who knew about Mr H knew that he never believed in God, and the statement was a mere publicity blurb for a book.

But there are a few commentary pieces on Hawking and the book which are worth following:

* Paul Davies, who has also made more than a few dollars by talking about God and physics, is always worth reading.

* Roger Penrose, despite getting on in the years, talks about the book and some past big statements made by SH.

* Peter Woit, whose site Not Even Wrong is always pointing out that media releases claiming that some scientist has just found a possible way to test string theory are invariably wrong, looks at the book and strongly criticizes the scientific position Hawking seems to have put himself in. He also makes it sound like it definitely not going to be a best seller.

Smarter than the average economist?

Nicholas Gruen seems a nice enough guy, for a (no doubt well paid) chess playing economist who writes easily mocked boring articles on how exciting Web2 and Gov2 are. (Just go through Club Troppo to see what I mean.)

But, it amuses me to see that I seemingly can outsmart him when it comes to Tiger Airlines. As I recently noted, my family and I have triumphed in 3 return trips with the rule-ridden discount airline over the last few years, all the time watching only other people (like Nicholas) lose their temper and arguing at the check in desk.

Politics, politics

Gosh there is an unusual amount of noteworthy political commentary in the papers today:

1.   News Limited is no doubt disappointed that it didn’t persuade the public with its “Coalition for government” post election campaign.   Shanahan has to sheepishly concede that Newspoll indicates a large majority of voters approve of the independents going for Labor.

2.  Niki Savva usually provides fair commentary (not that I agree with all of it), and today she makes some recommendations to Tony Abbott about cutting dead wood, and reinstating Turnbull to finance.   Fair enough, but as far as I’m concerned, there’s a hell of a lot of dead wood to be pruned.

3.  Michael Stutchbury explains why a carbon tax is a better idea than all the mixed direct action steps that Labor has imposed (and more of which we would have had under Liberals.)   This makes sense, and again shows how bad an idea it was for Abbott to promise to never introduce any carbon pricing.    If he doesn’t change that line, it’s hard to see why he should ever be  seen to have economic credibility.

4.  Meanwhile, over at Fairfax, Maxine McKew writes an article that promotes a higher density, more populous, Sydney on environmental and economic grounds, and in doing so shows some smarts which she failed to do while she was an MP.  Too late now, Maxine.

The science of mice handling advances

Nature reports on a study about the best way to pick up a lab mouse:

Picking up mice at the base of the tail is standard practice in laboratory research, but whether this is the best method is unclear. Researchers now suggest that cupping a mouse in the hand or carrying it in a small tunnel reduces stress and encourages cooperation.

I like that last bit about mouse co-operation. Has a pharmaceutical company ever had a meeting in which its scientists said to them "sorry the new drug tests failed, but you know we're not entirely sure the mice were co-operating"?

It is, however, a little surprising to me that these science types haven't tried to standardize mice handling before:

"The paper has made me rethink some of the things we do," says Scott Russo, a behavioural neuroscientist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. His lab members routinely clutch mice by the tail, even though they investigate the effect of stress on anxiety, depression and addiction. "Tail handling could absolutely influence the effects we observe," he says. Anxiety behaviour in mice is notoriously inconsistent — it fluctuates across strains, and even across days, he says. "If this is a way to reduce inter-experimental variability, this would be a very important finding."

Just not cricket

Odd story for the day:  cricket farming is in crisis. 

Just thought you should know.

Flying humour

Given that my main birthday gift featured all the equipment I need to become a Microsoft Flight Simulator tragic (thank you, kind wife) I found this video quite amusing:

Information of uncertain significance

I've always liked this They Might be Giants song, but there are only audience videoed live versions on Youtube with dubious sound quality, and you can't hear the lyrics clearly. So instead, let's listen to a recently posted ukulele version, with a vocal performance which I find oddly endearing. (It's not great, but may still be better than what I could achieve):



Thanks faceless singer.

By the way, the song is particularly apt for today, which may, or may not, record my entry into my 6th decade (yes, yikes!), depending on whether you are counting in Earth or Mars years. On the upside, I feel much wiser and benevolent already. On the downside, I did have to pluck hair from my ears on Thursday, extract nose hair yesterday, and shave the odd patches of hair on my shoulders this morning.

Relax: death by rogue planet kinda unlikely

As it happens, my wife and son were watching 2012 last weekend. (I was moving in and out of the room, but from what I saw, it did look every bit as silly and bad as I expected.)

Of course, I have reassured the son that it's just a silly story and the science in it is just ridiculous. He doesn't seem concerned. Now I can show him a paper by (I think) an astronomer, inspired by some of the apocalyptic theories about what might happen in 2012, with the great title:

Is it plausible to expect a close encounter of the Earth with a yet undiscovered astronomical object in the next few years?

Short answer: no.

Actually, it is interesting to note from the paper that there has been a fair bit of work on what might be lurking around in interstellar space. I was aware of "brown dwarfs" possibly being loose out there, but didn't know (or had forgotten about) the possibility of rogue planets that could unexpected wander into a solar system:

Concerning the existence of free-floating planets of smaller mass, Stevenson (1999)
noted that, under certain circumstances, Earth-sized solid bodies wandering in the
interstellar space after being ejected during the formation of their parent stellar systems may sustain forms of life. Again as a consequence of three-body interactions with Jovian gas giants, Debes & Sigurdsson (2007) have recently shown that during planet formation a non-negligible fraction of terrestrial-sized planets with lunar-sized companions will likely be ejected into interstellar space with the companion bound to the planet. Debes & Sigurdsson (2007) yield a total number of free-floating binary planets in the Galaxy as large as 7×108. At present, no planets like them have yet been detected. Proposed microlensing surveys of next generation will be sensitive to free-floating terrestrial planets (Bennett & Rhie 2002); under certain circumstances, they may be able to yield 10100 detections of Earth-mass free-floating planets (Bennett & Rhie 2002). One to a few detections could be made with all-sky IR surveys (Debes & Sigurdsson 2007).

Anyhow, the paper goes on to list the reasons why we would already know about it if something was about to zoom into the solar system by 2012.

What a relief. :)

A kind of vindication, and vague reason for optimism

Here's a slightly altered version of something I just posted at Catallaxy:

Over at Skeptical Science, Roger Pielke Snr (quite a favourite of climate change skeptics for many a year) been actively commenting in a recent post which criticised him for overstating the case on what’s been happening with ocean warming since 2004. (He says there is none; everyone else says there is no reason to be so confident based on the short timeframe and doubts about the adequacy of the measuring system).

Most interestingly, at two different points he says:

“Thus to conclude that I have ever not been concerned about the addition of CO2 and how it affects the climate system misrepresents my perspective. I am particularly concerned with respect to the biogeochemical effects of added CO2.” and

“In terms of CO2, we do not even need to discuss global warming to be concerned by uncontrolled increases in its atmospheric concentration. We see directly from observations of atmospheric concentrations of CO2 that humans are increasing its levels. If global warming were not occurring at all, we should still be concerned.”

Which is what I have been saying since, oh, 14 Nov 2006. (Although I have been persuaded since then that AGW itself is also a serious concern.)

I note that Pielke does not make it clear what biogeochemical effect he is talking about: the one I have concentrated on is ocean acidification, but I can't see that he has ever made reference to it at his blog. Is there another that he is referencing? He does talk about biogeochemical effects in relation to anthrogenic land cover change, but it doesn't sound as if this paper talks about CO2 causing biogeochemical effects.

So what his precise concerns are remains a bit of a mystery to me, but certainly I still believe that, like his son, he is being disingenuous by letting his warming skepticism (or in his son's case, glee over IPCC mistakes) be promoted all over the blogosphere and thus encourage policy inaction on CO2, when in fact he claims it's a "reason to be concerned."

Meanwhile, I see that a new study that did the exercise of looking at what would happen to CO2 levels and temperature if you never built another CO2 emitting device. The answer is a bit surprising:

The researchers found that atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ would stabilize at less than 430 parts per million (ppm) and the increase of global mean temperatures since preindustrial time would be less than 1.3°C (2.3°F).

"The answer surprised us," says Davis. "Going into this study, we thought that existing sources of CO2 emissions would be enough to push us beyond 450 ppm and 2°C warming." In light of common benchmarks of 450 ppm and 2°C, these results indicate that the devices whose emissions will cause the worst impacts have yet to be built.

Of course, it's impossible to turn off the new CO2 making device switch, but it does emphasise that aggressive action on CO2 production has a vague chance of working to limit temperature increases.

Not keeping it nice

What's the latest trend in England? Old people getting STD's:

The figures showed that 45 to 64-year-olds saw the biggest rise in syphilis, herpes, chlamydia and genital warts between 2000 and 2009. They also saw the second-biggest rise in gonorrhea cases, beaten only by the over 65s.

Cases of syphilis in 45 to 64 year-olds rose ten-fold from just 52 in 2000 to 503 in 2009. In the over 65s, cases more than quadrupled from just 7 in 2000 to 32 in 2009.

Gonorrhea fell in all age groups between 2000 and 2009 except for the over 45s.

Whatever happened to "no sex please, we're British"?

I was also surprised to read recently that a very popular show there is a medical reality one called "Embarrassing Bodies" in which people, for some reason I find hard to fathom, are happy to come on and show their oozy, swollen, warty crevices and appendages on national TV. One of the doctor stars says:

"I didn't think piles and verrucas would be exciting to a Channel 4 audience," he says, "but I soon realised that people hadn't seen the novelty of haemorrhoids before, because we're usually pretty crap about talking about this stuff. Yes it's a bit gross, but we never treat it in a sensationalistic way...."

As the Guardian article (which I am quoting from) notes, while the show may encourage some people with conditions that really deserve treatment to go to their doctor, there are concerns that the show's attitude to plastic surgery is not helpful:

One of the surgeries Jessen recommended on an episode in 2008 was a patient's labioplasty. In her book Living Dolls, Natasha Walter details how uneasy this made her feel. "[In this episode] a young woman consulted a doctor about the fact that her labia minora extended slightly beyond her labia majora and that this caused her embarrassment. Instead of reassuring her that this was entirely normal, the doctor recommended, and carried out, surgery on her labia. The comments left on the programme's website showed how this decision to carry out plastic surgery to fit a young woman's body to a so-called norm made other young women feel intensely anxious. 'I'm 15 and I thought I was fine, but since I've watched the programme I've become worried, as mine seem larger than the girl who had hers made surgically smaller! It doesn't make any difference to my life, but I worry now that when I'm older and start having sex I might have problems!' one girl said.

There are plenty of gross and normally private things to be seen on the show's website. (Including vulva, penis and breast galleries over which 15 year old teenagers can either feel encouraged, or, just as likely, fret.)

Look, I obviously can't say that the show is all bad for the reason already mentioned; and I don't think I count as prudish about non-sexual nudity. (See my previous comments about Japan.) But it still seems that the show is a symptom of a distinct change in the British psyche over the last 40 years or so from instinctive reserve to exhibitionism. How else can you read comments like this (from the Guardian again):

Natasha, who wants to talk about irritable bowel syndrome. Her boyfriend, Peter, waits patiently by the fence. "We love the show," he tells me. "My mother died of skin cancer this year and the programme showed me the warning signs to look out for. Plus all the blokes with their tackle out – they ask questions I wouldn't dare!"...

Kelly Coulter, who's brought her 18-month-old son to the truckstop to talk about a problem with his gums, says she'd "absolutely get my breasts out on the show if I was guaranteed a boob job". ....

Rosie and Kelly are 13 years old, and so excited to be in the presence of Dr Christian that they're quivering, visibly. .... they're recalling their favourite episode from the three series so far. Was it the episode with the interior designer's oversized labia? Was it the one about the woman with the udder-like breasts? The one with Christina's anal warts? They remember all of those, but their favourite was the episode where Dr Christian stood in a locker room to compare the penis sizes of a whole rugby team.

I'm glad it's a version of reality TV that has not caught on here.

Definitely Jungian

Back in my recent review of Inception, I guessed that the movie was based on Jungian psychoanalytical theory. It seems I was more correct than I knew. A post at Mind Hacks goes into a lot of detail about how the movie reflects Jungian ideas.

Say a prayer

Here at the Dominion we like any study that suggests prayer is a Good Thing.  Mainly because it annoys atheists, but also because prayer research is just inherently interesting.

The Economist ran an article recently  about study that showed the benefits of praying daily for your romantic partner.    It makes you like them more.

It’s an odd study, sure to have holes poked in it by godless killjoys, but I like it.

Urban heat island, meet rural cool island

Here's something I hadn't heard much about before. Global warming skeptics go on a lot about urban heat islands causing a significant part of temperature increases over the 20th century.

But there is another effect - increased irrigation causing an artificial cooling:

Scientists are just beginning to get a handle on irrigation's impact. In a hundred years, the amount of irrigated farmland has grown four-fold, now covering an area four times the size of Texas. Puma and his coauthor, Benjamin Cook, a climatologist at Goddard and Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, are the first to look at the historic effects of mass watering on climate globally by analyzing temperature, precipitation and irrigation trends in a series of model simulations for the last century. They found that irrigation-linked cooling grew noticeably in the 1950s as irrigation rates exploded, and that more rain is now falling downstream of these heavily watered regions. ..

Globally, irrigation's effect on climate is small—one-tenth of one degree C (about 0.2 degree F). But regionally, the cooling can match or exceed the impacts of greenhouse gases, say the scientists. For example, the study found some of the largest effects in India's arid Indus River Basin, where irrigation may be cooling the climate up to 3 degrees C, (5.4 degrees F) and up to 1-2 degrees C in other heavily irrigated regions such as California's Central Valley and parts of China. The study also found as much as .5 degree C cooling in heavily watered regions of Europe, Asia and North America during the summer.

Irrigation has increased because it boosts crop yields, supporting many millions of small farmers, said Upmanu Lall, head of the Columbia Water Center at the Earth Institute. But concern is growing that groundwater supplies in India and China may not keep up.

So, use up your groundwater, and suddenly you may find your local area quite a bit hotter than before.

I trust Watts up With That will post on this soon. They had better, after spending so much time on urban heat islands.

A new government. Yay.

This is, at the very least, going to be a very interesting term of Federal government to watch. 

Labor is lucky not to have to run everything past Bob Katter.  If it were up to him, I expect it would be decaying spaceports and opera houses on Cape York in 20 years time, and stalled development of a revolutionary baby formula using freeze dried bananas and barramundi oil.  

Now Julia Gillard should prove her conservative social views claim by quickly getting married to Tim. 

Her parents turned up on ABC 24 hour news channel yesterday, and they seem very nice.  It also became clear that Julia gets her over-endowed earlobes from her mother.   Sadly, the computer I was watching it on did not have an easy screenshot save on it, so I missed that. [ Hopefully, mentioning Julia’s earlobes will again cause a 500 extra visitors over the next couple of days.]

And how’s this for a perfect picture for a caption competition today:

If I had enough time I would supply a few myself, but I’m late for work.

Dawn of D Day

So, we should know who the independents will support in government by this afternoon.

There seems to be a late swing of opinion that maybe the Coalition will get their support after all, despite many reports over the weekend that it had pretty much given up hope. Well, with Bob Katter involved, anything could happen.

Never has the matrix of the good, the bad and the ugly of political policies on offer at an election been so hopelessly mixed between the parties. I've already disclosed this elsewhere, but I voted informal in the House of Reps, and a Labor - Liberal mix in the Senate. I made sure the Greens were far down the list, as even though they have one good idea (a moderate introductory carbon tax) I am loathe to give them too much power to implement their mostly objectionable policies.

By rights, this means I have no real grounds to complain about the election outcome. But I still think a severely chastised Labor has the better chance of making a good government than an Abbott-led Coalition. I simply don't trust Abbott's instincts as leader, and the substantial rump of climate change skeptics who form his support base make me very pessimistic about the party as a whole. His Swedish style parental leave plan is a folly introduced in exactly the same self centered way Rudd would get some of his flakier ideas up. His is similarly populist on immigration limits, and there were clear errors (and hidden elements barely noticed by the electorate - such as big savings in pharmaceutical benefits) in their policy costings.

On the other hand, I couldn't quite bring myself to be seen to be rewarding the large amount of rushed, barely justified policy making of Labor. I think the NBN, while sounding all shiny and impressive, is overkill for Australia, and the ideal solution is almost certainly one that falls between the Coalition and Labor extremes (probably closer to the Coalition plan). To take a couple of other examples: a laptop for every student was a populist waste from day one, and the insulation scheme had absolutely hopeless implementation in the face of plenty of warnings.

One hopes that the way these policies were developed (seemingly on the back of a Rudd envelope) will not be repeated with the removal of uber control freak Kevin.

Also in Labor's favour, I have to say that, regardless of the exact amount it will raise, I don't understand why any government should not proceed with a mining super-profits tax if you have in principle agreement from the major miners. My impression is that, as with nearly all new taxes, it is likely to raise more than expected rather than less.

Perhaps this indicates I should have voted for Labor anyway, but although I like her personally, there wasn't a Gillard led government record to vote on. I share the view of the Labor strategists who now say that going to the election early was a mistake.

With any luck, if Tony Abbott does not become PM he'll have another burst of self doubt and not be leader next time around. No one seems to think that will happen, because he has been deemed a success merely by not being entirely the mistake ridden campaigner that everyone expected. (The all running, never sleeping action man image was as shallow as the Kevin 07 campaign really, although I always knew there was an element of deceit in the latter's public persona.) I still consider Abbott a policy flake, too willing to change on a whim, and in that respect, he is actually close to the Rudd model in terms of policies he will run, even if he is much more collegiate in dealing with his Parliamentary colleagues. (Mind you, no one else would have run a government like Rudd, not even Turnbull.)

Ha ha

The new green Germany can't afford to be so Green after all:

The German government has decided to extend the life spans of the country’s 17 nuclear plants while alternative energy sources are developed, a move that is also likely to create windfalls for both power companies and strained government coffers. ...

New taxes levied on utility companies as part of the deal will be used in part to help develop renewable energy sources, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday. But she said Germany could not afford to get rid of nuclear power as planned because the amount of renewable energy available would not be sufficient to fill the gap.

“Nuclear energy is a bridge,” she said.

Under a German law, passed by a previous government in 2002, the last nuclear power plant was to be shut by 2022. That decision, bitterly resented by the nuclear energy companies, was largely supported by the German public, which has a deep aversion to anything nuclear, a sentiment that intensified after the nuclear accident at Chernobyl.

Recent polls have shown attitudes shifting, however. A survey by Forsa, an independent polling institute, in July found that 81 percent of Germans said the country could not do entirely without nuclear power, up from 59 percent five years ago.

Bad writers

The Independent has a long-ish article listing the ways in which several prominent British children’s authors were, in their private lives, not very nice people.

It spends most of its time on Roald Dahl, as there is a new biography of him out. I think I have read before about his famous rudeness, but it takes some talent to write to your publisher threatening to leave it and get this responce:

"Let me reverse the threat," he wrote to Dahl. "Unless you start acting civilly to us, there is no possibility of our agreeing to publish you. Nor will I – or any of us – answer any future letter that we consider to be as rude as those we've been receiving."

I think I have read elsewhere that he was nice to his children, at least when he was home and not sleeping around town, but that might one of the few examples of considerate behaviour.

The article then gives shorter histories of other British authors who it is a pleasure not to have known. Even Enid Blyton gets a serve, with one of her daughters writing:

"The truth is," wrote Imogen later, "Enid Blyton was arrogant, insecure, pretentious, very skilled at putting difficult or unpleasant things out of her mind, and without a trace of maternal instinct. As a child, I viewed her as a rather strict authority. As an adult I pitied her."

The unifying theme is that they pretty much all had tragedy in their early lives. Maybe that’s why I don’t care for Harry Potter: a mere divorce is hardly enough for Rowling to be a good writer.

On a related matter, I recently read the short autobiography of Graham Green “A Sort of Life”. (This was another of my triumphant finds from the Lifeline Book Fair.) It was well written and pretty interesting, dwelling a lot on his unhappy teenage years in school and how he ended up in therapy for a time.

Greene clearly recognized as an adult that he had always had mental health issues, describing how boredom had always felt like a ballooning pressure inside his head which led to both reckless behaviour (Russian roulette to make him feel more alive) and extensive travel. Given that he is now well known for his rampaging sex life, it was a little disappointing that he only relates his very first erotic feelings (when seeing some actress in a play) but then says nothing at all about how or when he lost his virginity.

It also ends rather abruptly, and although I know he did a second volume of autobiography, I can’t say I have ever seen it around. But still, a good read.

Ancient brews

Biblical Archaeology Review covers all the important stories, such as the one discussed in detail in this article: "Did the Ancient Israelites Drink Beer?" The short answer: yes, but you wouldn't realize from the Bible:

Beer was a staple in the Israelite diet, just as it was throughout the ancient Near East. Yet a search of most English translations of the Bible will produce few, if any, occurrences of the word “beer.” Ancient Israel’s affinity for beer has largely been ignored. I believe this is for three reasons: (1) confusion about the meaning of the Hebrew word shekhar (שכר), (2) a general snobbery in academia causing scholars to scorn beer drinking while celebrating wine culture, and (3) the unique challenges archaeologists have faced in finding (or identifying) beer remains in the Israelite material record.

It's a pretty interesting article generally, shining light on the possible importance of beer to the evolution of human society (seriously!):

Humans have been making beer for at least 5,000 years, and most likely much longer. Some anthropologists have argued that it was a thirst for beer, rather than a hunger for bread, that led to the Neolithic Revolution (c. 9500–8000 B.C.E.), during which humans gradually abandoned a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in favor of sedentary farming. Beer eventually became a defining characteristic of human culture, much like wearing clothes.

Sounds to me like there's a faction of anthropologists who study this just so they can count visits to the local pub as research. Anyhow, ancient beer was something I'm not entirely sure I would enjoy:

Beer was often produced by creating a bread or cake made from malted barley or wheat. The bread was then placed in water, forming a sweet liquid known as a wort. In a few days, after adding yeast, the carbohydrates would be converted to alcohol and carbon dioxide, which would cause the liquid to bubble, indicating fermentation. Thus the wait from the time it was produced until the time it was consumed would have been only a few days. Moreover, beer did not keep well, so it was made for immediate consumption.

I wonder if there are ancient beer brew hobbyists out there who try to recreate this. I wouldn't be surprised.

Dump and gone

On Saturday night, I ended up at a Highgate Hill park with hundreds of other people watching the Brisbane Riverfire fireworks display, most noteworthy this year because it apparently really is the last time the city (or anyone in Australia?) will see an F111 dump and burn.

An explanation as to why this is a unique trick of this particular aircraft is given here:

Wing Commander Gray, who will be piloting one of the F-111s on Riverfire night, says the dump and burn is simply down to a quirk of design.

"Every big aircraft that carries a lot of fuel - even big airlines have that ability to be able to dump fuel in case they need to come back to lighten the load," he said.

"With the F-111 the dump port where the fuel comes out is actually between the engines and because we are an after-burner aircraft, which is gives us more power, we basically inject fuel into the exhaust. That's what most fighter-type aircraft do.

"If we're dumping fuel at the same time when we're in afterburner the fuel ignites, whereas in other aircrafts it would just be seen as a vapour stream."

Given that they have always been based at Amberbley, I suspect Brisbane is pretty unique in having this as a regular feature of our fireworks and other displays.

I think, but haven't been able to confirm through Google yet, that the first time it was done here for entertainment purposes was for the Commonwealth Games in 1982. There were four of them that peeled apart while alight, causing some surprised residents to think the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were paying a visit.

Anyhow, the people in the park on Saturday night seemed particularly pumped to see the F111, which did put on 3 particularly long burns this year. Low cloud makes it look brighter too. I've looked at various movies taken of it on Youtube, and I think this is one of the best:

Sydney tiltshrunk

Well, I was in Sydney recently, and I haven’t played with Tiltshiftmaker.com for a while, so here goes:

Saturday stuff

* Richard Glover provides a somewhat refreshing list of good things about the today's Australia. It's good to reflect on such stuff from time to time.

* On the other hand, last night on TV there was a quick shot of a girl at her soldier Dad's funeral (in Brisbane, I think), and the way she started to cry after putting a message on his coffin broke me up suddenly too. Life's a funny balance between blessings and pain, isn't it.

* Back to the upbeat: there's a really long article from the New York Times magazine about William Shatner, and much of it is pretty funny. Such as this scene:

At 3 in the afternoon, we slid into a booth at Tony Roma’s restaurant in Lexington. I told Shatner I was exhausted from chasing him all over in the rain. “I was just trying to torment you,” he said. The waiter appeared. I said I wanted a salad for an appetizer, and Shatner interrupted: “No! He’ll have the ribs appetizer.” I said I didn’t want the ribs. “You’re having the ribs,” he said. “They’re delicious.” Liz said, “But honey, he doesn’t want the ribs.” Shatner said: “He’s. Having. The. Ribs.” Then, sharply, he added: “This is the man’s table. Go sit over there at the woman’s table.” Liz ignored him and began talking about the equestrian games. Shatner shrugged, as if defeated. When the ribs arrived, we all picked at them. “These are good,” I said. “I think I’ll have them as a main course, too.” But Shatner said: “No. Have something else.” I said, “But I want the ribs!” Shatner said: “Some. Thing. Else.” I ordered a sandwich. The waiter asked if I wanted coleslaw or fries. Shatner answered, “He’ll have the fries.” I said I wanted the coleslaw. Shatner said: “I. Want. The. Fries.” I pointed out that he was having a baked potato. He said: “All right. I’ll let you have some of my potato.”

The article brought to my attention that Shatner has done a long running series of TV ads in the States for Priceline (for discount travel.) Never having seen them here, I've watched many on Youtube now, and would say these are my favourite:





On a related matter, this clip from Big Bang Theory was pretty amusing.

Katz's Ring

This week's column by Danny Katz, about Melbourne staging Wagner's complete Ring cycle in a few years time, is amusing. I've never been to any opera, but this sounds right:

It's going to be a stupendous show, this four-ring Ring Circus, though there's just a couple of teeny near-negligible things that may put some audiences off. Like its length: it's going to be 16 hours long, and opera-hours are like dog-years, they're a ratio of one to seven, so this will feel more like 4½ days, but with only two toilet breaks. And it's going to be pricey: this is a $15 million production, so producers will need to charge high ticket prices to recoup their investment - and with a total of only nine Aussie fans on the ''I heart Wagner'' Facebook page, it may have to be $1.7 million for an A-reserve ticket, with a much cheaper $1.2 million obscured-view ticket, sitting behind the left side of Brunhilde's armoured hydraulic uber-boob.

Sick oceans news

The biggest political surprise this week was that Bob Katter, who I took to be a climate change skeptic, came out with this comment on radio in explaining why he didn't bother meeting Nicholas Stern & Garnaut:

"Just to indicate how stupid those people are, there is a very unassailable scientific case that there will be a problem arising in the oceans. They don't mention that."

What? I can only assume he means ocean acidification. He's about the last politician I would have expected to have concerns about that. But then why would he not meet leading economists who want to talk about the best way to reduce CO2? He's an enigma under an akubra wrapped in a banana skin.

Anyhow, onto other sick ocean news:

* a study of naturally low pH ocean waters near some CO2 vents in the Mediterranean indicates that it's very bad for the biodiversity of single celled organisms called Foraminifera:

The study, published in the September issue of the Journal of the Geological Society, found that increasing CO₂ levels caused foram diversity to fall from 24 species to only 4.

'Previous studies have shown a reduction in diversity of 30%, but this is even bigger for forams', said Dr Jason Hall-Spencer, one of the study's co-authors. 'A tipping point occurs at mean pH 7.8. This is the pH level predicted for the end of this century'.

...

'At a mean pH level of 7.8, calcified organisms begin to disappear, and non calcifying ones take over. We are headed towards that being the case in this century. The big concern for me is that unless we curb carbon emissions we risk mass extinctions, degrading coastal waters and encouraging outbreaks of toxic jellyfish and algae.'

Not exactly encouraging.

* Meanwhile, the krill in the Southern Ocean is being increasingly fished (to provide feed for acquaculture, it appears), and there is concern about its sustainability. Nature reports:

The total krill catch this season is expected to be 150,000–180,000 tonnes, exceeding last year's total by about 40%.

Another worry is the number of fishing vessels being deployed in the Southern Ocean. Norway is now operating three ships, for example, and China is expected to rapidly increase its krill fishing after sending its first vessel this year. "If China starts fishing in a big way, catch will expand rapidly, outstripping our ability to orderly manage it," says Steve Nicol, a marine ecologist with the Australian Antarctic Division in Kingston, Tasmania, who advises the Australian government on krill fisheries.

But more generally, climate change may well be an issue with them too:

Researchers suspect that Antarctic krill are also feeling the effect of climate change. Krill larvae feed on algae living on the bottom of sea ice, which is rapidly dwindling around the Antarctic Peninsula. According to one estimate, the number of krill in the Southern Ocean may have dropped by 80% since the 1970s. But "there is no definite answer as to how the krill responds to warming", says Nicol. It is also unclear whether krill stocks are transient or fixed to given areas, and how many live deeper than 200 metres, below the most heavily fished and studied region of the ocean.

So keep your concerns about the oceans going, Bob.

UPDATE: Curious as to how big 180,000 tonnes of krill really is, in terms of the total amount of fish caught in the sea? I turned up this from 2005:

AFTER DECADES OF GROWTH, the reported global wild fish catch peaked in 2000 at 96,000,000 tons, then fell to 90,000,000 tons by 2003, the last year for which worldwide data are available. The catch per person dropped from an average of 17 kilograms in the late 1980s to 14 kilograms in 2003--the lowest figure since 1965.

As fishing fleets expanded through the late 1980s and fish-finding and harvesting technologies became more efficient, the world's fishers systematically have gone after their catch at greater depths and in more remote waters. Over the past 50 years, the number of large predatory fish in the oceans has dropped by a startling 90%. Catches of many popular food fish such as cod, tuna, flounder, and hake have been cut in half despite a tripling in fishing effort.

Thinner by the week

In the newsagent today, I picked up a Time magazine and noted how very thin it seemed to be. I had noticed this a couple of weeks ago too. Newsweek has undergone the same process, and we know how that has ended up.

The cover story was also about organic Vs regular food, which seems a rather insipid topic for a news magazine. (I suppose they are worrying about their eggs at the moment, but still.)

Add it to the list of worries

Not sure that I’ve heard this before:

Recent work by UTS researchers shows that future scarcity of the element phosphorus (P) will be a major threat to food security and a potential source of conflict.

…Professor Stuart White, Director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at UTS, said that unless further attention is paid to the issue of P scarcity, we risk a global 'hard landing' as demand outstrips production in less than 25 years.

……the world resources of phosphate rock, concentrated in Western Sahara and in China, will not be sufficient to keep up with growing demand as a result of changing diets, increasing population and increasing biofuels production.

"We will need to dramatically improve the efficiency of use of P if we are to have a 'soft landing' to avoid significant fertiliser and food price volatility," Professor White said.

Oddly enough, the article ends with mentioning “P” of a different nature:

"In cities, capturing and reusing human waste, especially urine, can help in completing the nutrient cycle."

Sex, murder, mayhem, bees

All of the cinematography on Life is great, and last Sunday I particularly liked this story of Australian desert bees where life is brutal, especially if you're a male:



They look a bit like the blue banded bees which the kids found in our garden last year, and the females of which also live in burrows. I wonder if their mating is such a disaster zone too.

Slow on science

So, Andrew Bolt picks up a story of a potential asteroid threat, but misses that it this was discounted by NASA 8 years ago after closer observation of its orbit.

If this is an indication of the attention as he pays to science reporting, I'm expecting he'll be a global warming convert by 2018.

Bring on the entrails

Seems to me that if you're going to say that a WA National who says he could never support a mining tax, but doesn't want to absolutely support the, um, national Nationals, is going to be counted as part of the Coalition seat count, you may as well count the Green who has already pledged he couldn't work with the Coalition as part of the Labor count.

So that leaves us with effectively 73 seats all, with 4 Independents trying to decide what to do.

Wilkie and Oakeshott seem dead keen on a carbon price. Windsor supports it too, but had big reservations about the ETS. (Colebatch's column this morning explains.) He also likes the soil carbon ideas of Abbott, even though no one really seems to know how to properly account for it in your CO2 abatement figures. Katter will do anything that he thinks will support farmers or the general population in his electorate, but a carbon price doesn't seem to help there.

Gillard ruled out a carbon tax before the election, but Bandt would presumably be pushing for it again rather than a revised ETS.

Abbott claims that he'll never have a carbon price of any form. I would have thought that this would factor large in the minds of Wilkie and Oakeshott, but maybe they are figuring that with Gillard's silly "peoples convention" on the topic, Labor is not planning on getting anything going during the current term anyway, so maybe it's really more of an issue for the next election.

So, this is all rather complicated.

I personally am leaning towards more traditional methods for selecting the leader. The Governor General in a white priestess gown slaughtering a duck on the forecourt of Parliament House and studying its entrails sounds a good start. Then Julia and Tony have to do a Masterchef cook off with the body to be judged by a team comprising Clive Palmer, Graham Richardson and a third independent person with absolutely no interest in the outcome. Perhaps a Chilean miner. (Sorry.)

One other factor should be taken into account: if you want stability, I think I know which leader is less likely to die of an accidental death during the next term of government, and it's not the one who was nearly wiped out by a semi trailer a few months ago, swims with the sharks, and goes bicycle riding nearly every day*. On the other hand, I think we can be pretty sure there won't be any repeat mystery Prime Ministerial disappearances at sea with Julia.

* I see cycling takes out around 30 -40 Australians a year. I don't know how many it leaves with brain injury.

Today’s miscellany

* It’s looks rather like a cross between George Jetson’s digs and a Bond eco-villain’s lair, but it is in fact a German house that generates five times the electricity it consumes. At least while the sun is out. Looks kind of cool, even if ridiculously expensive. But do they have a law against curtains in that country?

* Several English papers are mentioning the high death toll in northern Italy caused by picking mushrooms. Not poison mushrooms, just ill prepared people who keep falling off hillsides and tumbling down ravines. As the Guardian explains:

…this year most of the deaths have been caused by falls. In many cases, the victims had been trying to outwit rival gatherers by going into remote and steeply inclined woods before dawn.

"It's a problem of mentality, unfortunately," said Gino Cornelli, head of alpine rescue in the Fassa valley in the Dolomites. "Many arrive in the dark. They set off with lights on their heads, even though it is banned. They dress in grey or brown to disguise themselves from the others."

He told La Repubblica newspaper: "They do the opposite of what they should. Too many cock a snook at the rules, and unfortunately this is the result."

Dying in the unsuccessful pursuit of an inanimate fungus does seem a fairly ignoble way to go. But then again, I suppose there aren’t all that many noble choices around.

* There’s a long article by PJ O’Rourke in the Weekly Standard about a trip to Afghanistan that seems quite full of interesting observations in the O’Rourkian style, but I haven’t finished reading it yet. One assumes he has recovered fully from his embarrassing variety of cancer. Hat tip to JF Beck.

* Finally, who can resist a series of photos of a monkey and its pet /captive cat? I predict the cat will be out of there as soon as it realises this primate can’t operate a can opener.

Biggest Christian country of the future

The BBC ran a story recently about how the Chinese government (or some subsets of it at least) has decided it quite likes Christianity after all.  This comment piece from the Guardian discusses the report, and adds some more details.   It ends with this:

On its current trajectory and with state backing, as the former Time magazine Beijing chief David Aikman notes, within three decades there may be nearly 400 million Christians in China. The future of Christianity may well lie in the east.

Knock yourselves out, libertarians

I can safely predict there will be argument about this amongst the sweary, teenage boy libertarians  over at Catallaxy:

TEN years of suicide data after John Howard's decision to ban and then buy back 600,000 semi-automatic rifles and shotguns has had a stunning effect.

The buyback cut firearm suicides by 74 per cent, saving 200 lives a year, according to research to be published in The American Law and Economics Review.

The numbers game

It’s quite surprising, isn’t it, that the purpose of Russian “numbers stations” is still not known for sure.  According to Gizmodo, the numbers have changed recently.   As I imagine a lot fewer people now spend time listening to the shortwave band than when I was a youngster, perhaps fewer people know about them?

Hello, readers?

Well, after a large amount of visitors during the election campaign who came here looking for Julia Gillard's earlobes, the completion of the election itself seems to have caused a sudden precipitous drop in such hits, and indeed in any visitors at all.

What's wrong, y'all internet-ed out after watching it intensely during the election campaign? (I know I did.)

I gotta stop spending so much time on the net - I know I say that every couple of months, but this time I mean it. Sorta.

The intersection of physics, philosophy and religion

Discover magazine has just put online an article from April about quantum experiments that some physicists take as confirming the idea that the future influences the past, and it’s a great read.

I was particularly interested in the discussion of what this means for free will, to be found on the second page of the article. I’m not sure that reading this extract will make complete sense without reading what precedes it, but here goes:

The Rochester experiments seem to demonstrate that actions carried out in the future—in the final, postselection step—ripple back in time to influence and amplify the results measured in the earlier, intermediate step. Does this mean that when the intermediate step is carried out, the future is set and the experimenter has no choice but to perform the later, postselection measurement? It seems not. Even in instances where the final step is abandoned, Tollaksen has found, the intermediate weak measurement remains amplified, though now with no future cause to explain its magnitude at all.

I put it to Tollaksen straight: This finding seems to make a mockery of everything we have discussed so far.

Tollaksen is smiling; this is clearly an argument he has been through many times. The result of that single experiment may be the same, he explains, but remember, the power of weak measurements lies in their repetition. No single measurement can ever be taken alone to convey any meaning about the state of reality. Their inherent error is too large. “Your pointer will still read an amplified result, but now you cannot interpret it as having been caused by anything other than noise or a blip in the apparatus,” he says.

…

The error range in single intermediate weak measurements that are not followed up by the required post­selection will always be just enough to dismiss the bizarre result as a mistake.

Tollaksen sums up this confounding argument with one of his favorite quotes, from the ancient Jewish sage Rabbi Akiva: “All is foreseen; but freedom of choice is given.” Or as Tollaksen puts it, “I can have my cake and eat it too.” He laughs.

Here, finally, is the answer to Aharonov’s opening question: What does God gain by playing dice with the universe? Why must the quantum world always retain a degree of fuzziness when we try to look at it through the time slice of the present? That loophole is needed so that the future can exert an overall pull on the present, without ever being caught in the act of doing it in any particular instance.

“The future can only affect the present if there is room to write its influence off as a mistake,” Aharonov says.

I can’t think right now if there is a word for it theologically, but doesn’t this sound a lot like the idea that God does indeed influence the world, but only in ways that can never be clearly identified as such? This was what God said at the end of my favourite episode of Futurama. I suppose it’s like saying that the God of the gaps will always have a gap in which He can be concealed; it’s inherent in the nature of the universe.

Atheists will say “what a cop out”, but the quantum world seems so weird, I don’t think they’re really in a position to rule anything out.

The idea of backward causation is also relevant to Tipler’s Omega Point, in that the end state of the universe (essentially, eternal God) determines the beginning and what goes on in between. That Tipler manages to cram the miracles of Jesus into that as a necessary element is the stretch that nearly no one can swallow, but the big picture an eternal superintelligence pulling the universe towards it retains a deep appeal.

UPDATE: There was another recent paper on arXiv about quantum entanglement as a measure free will; but I find it rather hard to follow, even in this explanation of the paper.

Drug house update

In May, I posted extracts from Discover magazine about the surprisingly big problem of cleaning up American houses that had been used for illegal methamphetamine production.  

It seems the problem is cropping up closer to home, as these comments from an Australian group indicate:

“In New Zealand, they have recently torn down several houses where drugs were made because they were so polluted it would be hazardous for anyone to live there afterwards.

“So this is also a serious issue for landlords, who can find themselves facing legal action, clean-up costs of $150,000 or more, a huge drop in property values or even their building being razed to the ground, as a result of an activity which they knew nothing about.”

“Individuals who are exposed to drug lab contamination may experience dizziness, headaches and reactions, chemical burns, lung damage, and nerve damage,” he adds.

The most at-risk populations are drug ‘cooks’, and subsequent residents or neighbours of labs – but police, fire fighters, environmental inspectors and other public servants may also be exposed.

Interpretation provided

I recently noted a new paper on arXiv that had an intriguing title, and Max Tegmark as co-author, but I didn’t really know what it was about.

Now, New Scientist has an article explaining it.  Pretty interesting.

Lizards good for something

A trial is underway at University College London Hospitals in UK to establish whether the drug 'Exenatide' could be used to treat patients with the progressive neurological condition.

A synthetic version of this drug, originally found in the saliva of the Gila monster, is already an approved treatment for patients with diabetes.

However, laboratory evidence suggests it could also arrest the neurodegenerative process that causes Parkinson’s disease - potentially leading to a cure. Four independent groups around the world (including colleagues at the School of Pharmacy, London), have shown that this drug can improve symptoms of Parkinson’s and rescue dying cells in five different rodent models of the disease.

More details here.

Japan & Korea revisited

Recently, I referred to the interesting Foreign Correspondent episode that looked at ethnic Koreans living in Japan, and the tensions that continue between the two countries.

Now, there’s a good article in The Japan Times about the relationship, looking at recent apologies from Japan (there have been more than I realised) and why it is they don’t seem to be making much difference.  Here are some interesting points:

It is 65 years since colonial rule ended, but the scars of the past have not healed and bilateral relations remain vexed by history. Numerous apologies by Japanese politicians, and one by Emperor Akihito in 1990, have been undone by discordant voices of denial and unrepentant justification. These mixed messages reflect a lack of consensus in Japan about its colonial era. They also help explain why Koreans remain seething and indignant, unconvinced by Japan's sincerity and unwilling to extend a hand to the perpetrator…

Christian Caryl, contributing editor to the journal Foreign Policy, argues that, ". . . part of the problem is a Korean nationalism that is built around a deep-seated notion of Korean victimhood. Koreans need to get over this if they're ever going to have a healthy relationship with their neighbors."…

As the victims, the Korean governments are in a position to decide how to deal with the colonial past, and they see few incentives in reconciliation. Given that apologies are offered, but shunned, and gestures of contrition never quite measure up, the odds against reconciliation are high…

The perception gap remains a chasm, with a recent NHK/KBS poll indicating that 62 percent of Japanese have positive attitudes toward South Korea, while 70 percent of South Koreans have negative attitudes toward Japan. It is revealing that Japanese associate South Korea with a now-popular soap-opera actor, while South Koreans cite Hirobumi Ito when they think of Japan; light-hearted pop versus heavy history.

 

The article does make the point that it doesn't help that apologies are often criticised by nutty Japanese nationalists, but also other politicians who seem to just be acting opportunistically.

Careful with the crayfish

Another story about (possible) dangerous food in China:

....dozens of people in Nanjing were hospitalized with strange symptoms of unbearable muscle pains after eating crayfish since July. The doctor’s diagnosis was rhabdomyolysis (the destruction or degeneration of muscle tissue) serious cases even cause kidney damage. The speculation was that the “shrimp washing powder” (洗虾粉) which was popularly used by the sellers to make the crayfish look spanky fresh and clean could be the root cause.

Inconstant universe

It seems that there is new evidence that the fundamental constants of the universe are not so constant:

Today, John Webb at the University of South Wales, one of the leading proponents of the varying constant idea, and a few cobbers say they have new evidence from the Very Large Telescope in Chile that the fine structure constant was different when the universe was younger.

But get this. While data from the Keck telescope indicate the fine structure constant was once smaller, the data from the Very Large Telescope indicates the opposite, that the fine structure constant was once larger. That's significant because Keck looks out into the northern hemsiphere, while the VLT looks south

This means that in one direction, the fine structure constant was once smaller and in exactly the opposite direction, it was once bigger. And here we are in the middle, where the constant as it is (about 1/137.03599...)...

The implication from Webb and co's data is that the fine structure constant is continuously varying throughout space and is merely fine-tuned for life in this corner of the cosmos: the universe's habitable zone. Elsewhere, presumably well beyond the universe we can see, this constant is entirely different.

That's likely to put the cat among the pigeons.

If the work holds up, this is big news.

Heightened reality

The 100 year old colour photos of pre-revolution Russia which Tim Blair linked to yesterday really are worth looking at. It's amazing how seeing history in crisp colour makes the past feel not such a distant country after all.

Unusual help

Slate has an article about a book written by a guy who grew up with parents who were both Jungian psychotherapists. Apparently, most people who hear this assume he will have been driven mad by his parents psychoanalyzing everything, and when you read this bit of parental help the author received, I don't really wonder why:

Toub's parents .... actively brought their Jungian practice into their parenting technique. There was a lot of dream analysis in the Toub household, of course, and also exercises in the Jungian technique of "active imagination," which Toub explains is "deliberately exploring one's imagination and fantasies by … acting them out verbally or physically to read the message that one's unconscious is trying to communicate." In one memorable scene, Toub's mother encouraged him to "be" an erection in order to help him get over a bout of teenage impotence. To accomplish this, she took young Micah to a local park and had him pretend to be his own boner. "Your name is not Micah, you are not a human being," she told him. "You are an erection. What words come into your head?" He visualized himself as a "victorious penis," running around the park triumphantly.[*] Laugh away, but the treatment worked: Micah is no longer plagued by an uncooperative member.

Apart from the therapy, I am surprised by two things: a. a teenager can suffer impotence? and b. a teenager would tell his parents he is suffering impotence.

Update: * I also get the feeling the exact same visualization was being used by Tony Abbott to try and win the election.

Meaning unclear

For no reason I can think of, this morning, while walking to the car, the theme music for Gigantor came to mind. I am hoping that this later proves to be a meaningful co-incidence; but preferably not by a giant Japanese remote controlled robot appearing in my city.

Pebble Bed returns?

Pebble Bed Advanced High Temperature Reactor at UC Berkeley – low cost nuclear?

Well, I haven't heard anything about the South African pebble bed reactor development lately. (Probably, I learn right now, because it has definitely gone belly up.)

Yet a new type of pebble bed reactor is discussed at Brave New Climate: one that uses molten salts as a coolant. Reporting on a visit to UC Berkeley:

So, back to Per’s lab. He has various engineering models set up to test movement of TRISO pebble fuel through a fluoride salt coolant, whereby the pebbles are inserted in the inlet pipes and rise up through the reactor module over time, and then are put back through 5 or 6 times. This allows for very high burnup — exceeding 50 %, high power density due to the heat capacity of the liquid salt, and high temperatures thanks to the durability of the pebbles. This is a big (potential) advantage over the current Pebble Bed Modular Reactor technology (PBMR), because in that design, the gas coolant has a very low power density. He’s flipped the problem on its head. The reactor also has various inherent safety design features, such as control rods that sink naturally in response to elevated coolant temperature, thereby passively regulating reactivity. Very safe!

Of course, this does not sound as modular as the South African design was intended to be, but it is still being explored as means of making cheaper nuclear designs than the current designs. (The article explains that the cost of new nuclear is still providing prohibitive for its expansion in the US.)

So it's a case of the pebble bed is dead...long live the pebble bed!

At least it's amusing

I've said this on another blog, but repeat it here.

Regardless of who ultimately forms government, I'm finding it very amusing to watch Tony Abbott, whose promoters loved him for his aggressive approach to Opposition (he brought down Kevin Rudd! He united his party! He didn't bite a Labor opponent during the election campaign, like everyone thought he might!) having to present a new face - conciliatory Tony - due to having to deal with independents to gain government.

So in recent days it's all "yes, Parliament is unnecessarily confrontational, isn't it" and "sorry Andrew for the way the last government I was in said you were nuts". Looks distinctly unlike the "real Tony" to me, but we haven't heard any of that from the "how many Julia's are there" crowd yet.

Some time ago I jokingly noted that Tony might do better as a eunuch, as some academic had suggested they had historically (in many societies) been able to play an important role in government by not being so distracted by testosterone. Seems the joke had more truth in it than I realised at the time.

Attack of the flash drive

This is pretty interesting. An enemy attack could be bound up in something as simple as a USB flash drive inserted in a laptop on the other side of the world:

The most serious cyber attack on the US military's networks came from a tainted flash drive in 2008, forcing the Pentagon to review its digital security, a top US defense official said Wednesday.

The thumb drive, which was inserted in a military laptop in the Mideast, contained malicious code that "spread undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control," Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs.

The code was placed on the drive by "a foreign intelligence agency," Lynn wrote.

"It was a network administrator's worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary."

Previous media reports speculated that the attack may have originated from Russia.

Mouse guard needed

Saudi Arabia is seeking to stop just any old mufti from issuing "absurd fatwas" by decreeing that they can only be issued by the Council of Senior Religious Scholars.

An example of an absurd fatwa:

Shaikh Mohammad Al Munjed, a Syrian scholar living in Saudi Arabia, said that Mickey Mouse should be killed because he is a mouse and mice are considered unclean in Islam.

I take it that Disney Riyadh won't be opening any time soon.

Wartime disaster noted

World War II was so chock full of dramatic death and disaster, there are still examples of it which I haven't heard of before. From The Independent, noting in a obituary the death of one of the survivors:

Wednesday 23 August 1944 began like any other day in the sleepy Lancashire village of Freckleton. Situated on the banks of the River Ribble, once the traditional haunt of smugglers, during the Second World War it played host to a large contingent of American airmen, based mostly at the neighbouring Warton aerodrome.

At its heart lay Holy Trinity primary school where 176 children, many of them evacuees, were in their second day of a new term....

At 10.30am, an American Liberator Bomber 42-50291 took off from Warton on a routine test flight. Eleven minutes in, a huge explosion, thought to have been sparked by a bolt of lightning, tore the huge plane apart. Large parts of the fuselage rained down on the village, hitting the school and a neighbouring snack bar. In the ensuing inferno, 61 people were killed, including 38 members of that infant class; it was the greatest loss of civilian life outside London during the Second World War.

Science additions

I've added two science blogs to the roll: Erin, who is doing science communication but has much better hair than Bernie Hobbs, has started "Buzzing Universe", at which she hopes to concentrate on controversy in cosmology. What a good person to know.

I've also added Backreaction, the long running blog of physicist Sabine Hossenfelder. She's always been good to read, and seems a lot less of a culture warrior than many physicist bloggers (like those at Cosmic Varience, who just love getting upset with religion all the time.)

Rent a poor womb

A disturbing article is here at Slate about how popular the use of surrogacy in India has become as a way for poor, often illiterate, women to make a large amount of money:

It is not uncommon for surrogates to authorize contracts with a thumbprint as opposed to a signature because they are illiterate. Even those who are literate often aren't able to read the contracts, which tend to be written in English. Lack of technological understanding among rural Indians also breeds misconceptions about surrogacy. Many, for example, thought that it would be necessary to sleep with another man in order to conceive. Even the pricing structure of surrogacy perpetuates social inequality: Many religious Indian surrogacy clients would prefer for their child to be birthed by an upper-caste brahmin, so high-born surrogates can get paid up to double.

And how about this as an example of the appalling excuse making that some in the reproductive technology business undertake:

The country is romanced by the idea of selling human capital as its next great commodity. So surrogacy resonates not as an old problem of exploiting the poor but as an inevitable part of the "new India," where the locals provide much needed services for the new global economy. This kind of forward-thinking economic liberation dovetails with an ideology of personal freedom. "I think women should be free to choose what they do with their bodies," says Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, a fertility specialist in Mumbai. "We shouldn't treat them as stupid just because they are poor."

Going back a few months, I never got around to posting about the Melbourne woman who was off to Thailand to have sex selecting IVF to get a girl. I doubt she had much public sympathy: oh, except probably from some in the IVF industry. As was noted in Eureka Street in April, before that Melbourne mother's case was publicized:

In recent weeks, several reports have appeared in the media that Australia's ban on couples using IVF to choose the sex of their children for social reasons or to balance their families might soon be lifted.

Most stories quoted 'IVF pioneer' Professor Gab Kovacs, who is said to be 'leading the charge' or 'leading the lobby'. A number of other fertility doctors are also involved.

This seems to be a pre-emptive attempt to sway public opinion. The inquiry has not yet commenced. And supporters of this view know that many of us are not comfortable about parents choosing the sex of their children. So ahead of time, they're trying to change our minds.

Your urine powered future

Lots of jokes to be made at the expense of this article about research into using urine to generate useful amounts of electricity.

The problem with helium

The Independent explains how the world's helium is running out:

Scientists have warned that the world's most commonly used inert gas is being depleted at an astonishing rate because of a law passed in the United States in 1996 which has effectively made helium too cheap to recycle.

The law stipulates that the US National Helium Reserve, which is kept in a disused underground gas field near Amarillo, Texas – by far the biggest store of helium in the world – must all be sold off by 2015, irrespective of the market price.

The experts warn that the world could run out of helium within 25 to 30 years, potentially spelling disaster for hospitals, whose MRI scanners are cooled by the gas in liquid form, and anti-terrorist authorities who rely on helium for their radiation monitors, as well as the millions of children who love to watch their helium-filled balloons float into the sky.

Further down, though, the article says all the helium may be gone within 100 years.

So how much should a helium balloon cost?:

Professor Richardson believes the price for helium should rise by between 20- and 50-fold to make recycling more worthwhile. Nasa, for instance, makes no attempt to recycle the helium used to clean is rocket fuel tanks, one of the single biggest uses of the gas.

Professor Richardson also believes that party balloons filled with helium are too cheap, and they should really cost about $100 (£75) to reflect the precious nature of the gas they contain.

Soon it'll be hydrogen balloons for the kiddies, but only if their parents don't smoke.

Back to science

Here’s a good article on the very surprising (apparent) finding that solar neutrinos – or another mystery particle from the sun - affect radioactive decay on Earth.  (I’m sure I mentioned this here before a long time ago.)  Much work remains to be done, though.

Contrainception

I went and saw Inception yesterday, partly for the rare treat of seeing a well reviewed adult movie, and partly to see whether my hunch was right that the weekend election was a dream within a dream. I'm leaning to the theory that soon Malcolm Turnbull will wake up and resume his rightful place as Prime Minister.

Anyhow, I have to say I was pretty disappointed.

Christopher Nolan's career has coincided with my young child raising years, so I still haven't seen his well regarded Momento or even The Dark Knight. But if Inception is any guide, it certainly appears he doesn't do ordinary human emotion very well. It's flashy film making with money and CGI effects galore, but its over-riding fault is how very cold [update: probably more accurate to say "unengaging", as did the WSJ review] it feels at an emotional level. In that respect, it seemed rather like a Kubrick effort, but lacking that director's more careful pacing and powerful set piece imagery which usually more than compensated for the artificial quality of much of the acting.

There was one element that came close to feeling emotionally real and being an interesting plot point - the DiCaprio character's unresolved guilt over the fate of his wife - but the details of it were revealed far too late in the film, and not resolved in any especially memorable way.

Here's a list of other problems I had with it:

* no wonder it's said to have taken 10 years to write. It's supposed to be an adage of good filming making that it is better to show character and story rather than have protagonists explaining it, yet this would have to be the most "explained" cinema event since An Inconvenient Truth.

* talk about your cursory attempts to portray a new technology. Group dreaming involved a briefcase sized device with what seemed to be intravenous lines into the wrist, although even that was not so clear. The drugs involved seemed to come from a backyard operation. Come on, if the participants had a least a electronic mind wave reading skull cap on, it would have had some vague plausibility, but just linking up via the wrist?

* the action scenes were, by and large, just poorly directed, with editing that was too choppy to tell what was really going on, and who was in danger. And because a lot of the figures being shot or crushed were merely dream characters, there was not the same sense of danger that you get from "real life" action.

* the near climatic action around a snow bound fortress looked extremely similar to the snow chases and gunfights we've seen many times in James Bond films. Why did Nolan think this would look particularly interesting? It was actually hard to tell who was who during parts of this segment.

I would guess that Nolan was heavily influenced by Jungian ideas on the subconscious and dreaming, which makes his lack of emotional involvement all the more puzzling, given my impression that Jung was a "warmer" character with less of the cool intellectual approach of Freud.

This is a film that would have been better served by a lighter touch, a shorter length, and director better with emotion. People like to complain about Spielberg's sentimentality, but the way he dealt with adult emotional material in the very serious science fiction of AI and Minority Report left you feeling something at least, unlike this effort.

It also reminded me of another film dealing with fights inside dreams - Dreamscape from the 1980s. I remember very little of its plot now, but do recall enjoying it as a bit of a romp, and that's about as much as you should expect from this implausible type of science fiction. (Amusingly, on the question of originality of Inception, I have just read the Wikipedia entry I linked to above, which notes that the central idea is very similar to the plot of an Uncle Scrooge comic! I see the Kubrick similarity has been noted by others too.)

Gee, now that I have put down my issues with it, it sounds like I really hated it. That's not quite true either, but as you can see I spent a fair bit of time thinking about why it wasn't working for me. I also tend to react more strongly against a very big budget film that I consider a failure than a more modestly scaled one, for the obvious reason that it feels more of a waste when it has sucked money away from (say) 3 smaller scale examples of science fiction which could well have been more enjoyable.

So maybe that's it for my adult movie viewing for another year. I'm half tempted by "Salt," but it's hard to believe I could really like an Angelina Jolie film.

Update:   It's me, from the future, finding that I enjoyed it more on the second viewing.  Huh.

Election comment