Last week I mentioned a study on the importance of lab mice being handled nicely. This week it’s a more fundamental question: why are there so many lab mice anyway?
Neuroskeptic provides the answer. Rats used to rule the roost, but then they worked out how to knock out single mouse genes. A bit of bad luck for the mice of the world.
Cute, very.
There’s a good and sensible opinion piece on the appropriate response to illicit drug use in the Sydney Morning Herald today, arguing that a combination of both prohibition and treatment of it as a health issue is the correct approach. The arguments are set out clearly, and fully take into account the unintended consequences of often suggested reforms.
I certainly have complained for a long time that, at least in the Australian context, those who talk of major drug law reform often leave the impression that the “health problem”approach has been ignored. Yet, as far back as about 1980, I knew first hand that heroin users in Queensland were able to get on the methodone program and visited pharmacies to get their daily dose.
In fact, reader Geoff should be able to enlighten me here. If anyone turns up at a GP practice in Queensland today and says they want help to stop using heroin, speed, cannabis or alcohol, are they able to be readily referred to a free or cheap health program relevant to them? (Not just the alcoholics/drugs anonymous type that have been around forever, and are done in a group context that (I expect) may put some people off.)
I get the impression that methodone programs might not always have been as readily embraced in all Australian States, but also that access to at least some type of health programs to help drug addiction has been readily available for some time, regardless of whether people are in the criminal justice system or not.
Slate has a review of “The Honor Code”, which looks at how significant social moral changes have happened. The abolition of slavery, Chinese footbinding and English duelling all get a mention, and while the reviewer does not entirely agree with the author’s idea that it was changes in the sense of honour that led to reform, it still sounds like an interesting read.
So it's good to see that my suspicions may well be right: there's a very negative review of the book (and Franzen's writing style) in The Atlantic. It certainly sounds like the sort of book I would dislike, and it seems extremely likely I should not bother following this writer.Franzen tells the story of a deteriorating middle class family in Minnesota. The mom, Patty, is a former college athlete, a sort of basketball Emma Bovary who suffers from deep depression and a long unrequited longing for her husbands best friend from college, a successful rock 'n' roller named Rick Katz.
The husband, Walter, is a naive corporate do-gooder, oblivious to his wifes pain and his own. Their son Joey finds life more appealing in the house next door and he moves in with the neighbors, beginning an affair with their teenage daughter that extends throughout the entire novel.
Franzen tells this story in a form thats rather odd, marked by long sequences of exposition and a long middle section written by Patty for her therapist, which she composes in the third person.*
...every line, every insight, seems covered with a light film of disdain. Franzen seems never to have met a normal, decent, struggling human being whom he didnt want to make us feel ever so slightly superior to.
There are many amusing comments too, including one that is just this quote:Is this the Catholic line on lying? I didn't think so, leading me to believe for about 20 minutes that Ms O'Donnell might be a devotee of the great Prussian moral philosopher, Immanuel Kant. (Compare their views on lying to murderers and "wanton self-abuse".) However, further Googling led me to conclude that Ms O'Donnell's take on lying does indeed conform to the teachings of the Catholic Church. One Catholic encyclopedia reports:
Sounds like Ms O'Donnell paid attention in confirmation class!The chief argument from reason [against the permissibility of lying] which St. Thomas and other theologians have used to prove their doctrine is drawn from the nature of truth. Lying is opposed to the virtue of truth or veracity. Truth consists in a correspondence between the thing signified and the signification of it. Man has the power as a reasonable and social being of manifesting his thoughts to his fellow-men. Right order demands that in doing this he should be truthful. If the external manifestation is at variance with the inward thought, the result is a want of right order, a monstrosity in nature, a machine which is out of gear, whose parts do not work together harmoniously.
Could it be that Catholic doctrine is a risible barrier to office only if one is willing, as Ms O'Donnell clearly is, frankly to defend it in public without a hint of embarrassment?The answer does seem "yes", but then again you do have to take into account that this is the consequence of having church teaching that is not sufficiently informed by nature. As for masturbation as a political topic, one commenter has it right:
How can we reconcile the idea that Ms. O'Donnell's views on masturbation are risible, with the fate of Joycelyn Elders who was fired for airing the opposite views?
Is it just political suicide to mention masturbation at all, whatever you say about it?
Children swallowing a “disc battery” face more risk of injury than you might think:
"A disc battery is an increasingly common foreign body ingested by children," the authors write as background information in the article. The American Association of Poison Control Centers reported a total of 2,063 disc battery ingestions in 1998; the number increased 80 percent during the next eight years. When the battery is lodged in the esophagus, its alkaline contents can leak, causing tissue death and burns from electrical discharge.
There might be another explanation for what he found, but I like this one.WITH a hibernation period of up to 100 million years, bacteria discovered on the Arctic sea floor may have longest life cycle of any known organism.
Casey Hubert from the Geosciences Group at Newcastle University, UK, and colleagues came across the bacteria while studying biological activity in sediment samples from the sea floor off the Norwegian island of Svalbard.
The Guardian reports:
It's entirely possible they could get there before Americans return. I suppose that if they open a takeaway, it won't be such a bad thing.China could put an astronaut on the moon in 2025 and launch probes to explore Mars and Venus within five years, according to the boss of a Chinese space programme.
Ye Peijian said China could make its first manned moon landing in 15 years, send a probe to Mars by 2013 and to Venus by 2015.
"China has the full capacity to accomplish Mars exploration by 2013," he added.
In the 1840s, supporters of Whig presidential candidate William Henry Harrison described incumbent Democratic president Martin Van Buren as "luxury-loving." Boston's pro-Whig Atlas described Van Buren as a "dandy" in "nicely plaited ruffles," who was "leading off a minuet" while Harrison fought the War of 1812. The Harrison slogan "Van Van, you're a used-up man," suggested squandered masculinity—whether on frivolous pursuits or fellow men was left to the imagination. ...I don't believe I had heard of this particular incident from the 1950's before:
The newspapers of the late 1700s were filled with verse mocking bachelors' supposed moral degeneracy. But mentioning a politician's single status didn't necessarily suggest that he slept with men, says historian John Gilbert McCurdy. The implication was slightly more pronounced in the 19th century. When James Buchanan, the only bachelor president in American history, ran for office in 1850, the press alleged that his unmarried status made him an unfit executive. "He had no taste for matrimony, which plainly implies a lack of some essential quality," declared the New York Herald. "If he is elected, he will be the first President who shall carry into the White House, the crude and possibly the gross tastes and experiences of a bachelor." It's not clear to historians whether "gross tastes" meant sodomy or just loose women.
The early 1950s were consumed by not just the Red Scare but what scholar David K. Johnson refers to as the "Lavender Scare." In 1950, the State Department fired 91 "peculiars" solely on the basis of their suspected homosexuality. The Republican Party distributed a letter to thousands of members informing them, "sexual perverts … have infiltrated our government," and were "perhaps as dangerous as the actual Communists." The equation of homosexuality with communist sympathy was a favorite refrain of Joseph McCarthy, who said in a speech he gave in 1950 to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, "Communists and queers … have American people in a hypnotic trance." According to Johnson, amid the fear mongering of the 50s, this correlation seemed plausible to the public. Both communism and homosexuality, Johnson writes, "seemed to comprise hidden subcultures with their own meeting places, cultural codes, and bonds of loyalty."But given the prominence of gay intellectual traitors in Britain at the time, I find it hard to fault other nations' intelligence services for being (at the very least) extremely wary of homosexuality in sensitive work areas at the height of the Cold War.
....a group of NASA engineers is seriously studying the possibility of using a rail gun as a potential launch system to the stars, and they are looking for a system that turns a host of existing cutting-edge technologies into the next giant leap spaceward. Stan Starr, branch chief of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Kennedy Space Center said that nothing in the design calls for brand-new technology to be developed, but counts on a number of existing technologies to be pushed forward. He said developing such a system would be a “major technology revolution.”
1. Good work if you could get it:
The restored grave of the last known "sin-eater" in England has been at the centre of a special service in a Shropshire village churchyard.
Campaigners raised £1,000 to restore the grave of Richard Munslow, who was buried in Ratlinghope in 1906.
Sin-eaters were generally poor people paid to eat bread and drink beer or wine over a corpse, in the belief they would take on the sins of the deceased.
Frowned upon by the church, the custom mainly died out in the 19th Century.
2. I do wish this Bieber watching would just go away. If ever there was a safe bet, it's that young Justin will have a troubled adulthood; it has the inevitability of train approaching a blown up bridge, while the whole world sits on their folding camp chairs watching and videotaping. But meanwhile, I suppose there is some fun to be had imagining how bad an idea this is:
3. Australians: buy those books and CDs you want from the US right now, it seems.Justin Bieber plays a "criminal mastermind" in his acting debut. The Baby singer started having acting lessons earlier this year to prepare for his debut in US TV series CSI, in which he plays a criminal called Jason McCann. Explaining the role to Teen Vogue magazine, Bieber said: "It seems like I'm this sweet and innocent kid, and then it turns out I'm the mastermind behind everything.
4. Bet the Tea Party didn’t know about the videos under the control of natural enemy Bill Maher. Ha.
5. The Pope’s visit seemed to go very well. Geoffrey Robertson and Richard Dawkins can’t be all that happy about leading a bunch of condom obsessed, play time dress up demonstrators, can they?
6. Last night I had a dream in which the character of Ted from Scrubs was in the cast of ER. Pity I woke up during it.
Islam can be a very odd religion, and a very, very convenient one for men, if this report from Saudi Arabia is anything to go by:
I think we’ve all heard of the short term "away from home" Islamic marriages before, but not "summer" and "tourist" categories. (How does a “tourist” marriage differ from a “travelling away from home on business” marriage, I wonder.) And isn't it funny how the article concentrates on whether the sexless marriage is legitimate or not. The ones in which the women is treated as a mere short term sex outlet are those which I would have thought should draw a little bit more attention.With the end of summer — a time when many weddings take place in Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries — the local media is rife with reports announcing religious edicts surrounding marriages.
Under new forms of marriage including Misyar, Misfar (travel), Misyaaf (summer), Siyahi (tourist), friendship and lastly Wanasa (conversation), many Saudi and Arab Gulf tourists — who spend their summer holidays abroad — are reportedly engaging in temporary marriages with young girls and divorcing them before returning home. All of these new forms have stirred religious, ethical and social controversies.
Shaikh Saleh Al Sadlan, a member of the Saudi Supreme Council of Senior Scholars and professors of higher religious studies at the Imam Mohammad Bin Saudi Islamic University, stirred a controversy by approving the Wanasa form of marriage, which does not include sexual relations between a man and his wife.
Al Sadlan said that scholars of the past had approved such a form of marriage, which focuses only on talking, without having sex.
This, he said, used to happen between old men, who needed attention, and young women who didn't mind giving it in return for the status and security associated with marriage.
Several people in New Jersey claimed they saw a person falling from the sky with no parachute, but an extensive police search has turned up no evidence, NBC Philadelphia reported.
Witness Kelly Hale and two of her co-workers at Shore Veterinarians in Egg Harbor Township said they watched from their office windows as a human fell head-first from the sky on Tuesday.
But there were no reports of missing skydivers.
That report was from MSNBC, and as far as I can tell, no body (or explanation) has been found yet. Sites like Gawker are making jokes about it. but I’m not sure that’s appropriate unless it was a dummy.
Last night, I caught up with Westall '66, a documentary first shown a few months ago on the Sci Fi Channel about a pretty intriguing UFO "close encounter" in the Melbourne suburb of Westall in 1966, when I were but a lad.
I’ve read a fair few UFO books over the years, but this case had escaped my attention. A large number of high school children saw a classic flying saucer disc shaped thing hovering beside their school. It came down behind some trees, apparently landed, then took off again, leaving at high speed according to some. It is said to have left a grass swirl on the ground.
It seems only one teacher is around who saw it too. His report is apparently a little different in some detail, and for some reason he declined to appear in the documentary. I suspect part of his story is a muddle with some more mundane aerial action from the not too distant airport. (See my link to a skeptic’s take on the events below.) Yet he apparently also claims to have been threatened by a couple of military visitors to not talk about it.
However, the documentary turned up a couple of other, off school, adult witnesses who saw the disc, and their version of events does not seem to differ significantly from the students.
Witnesses say that military personnel turned up very quickly after the sighting, and apparently insisted on taking the camera of the one teacher who took photos. More than one student say they were under distinct pressure to not publicise the sighting, and they were adamant it was not a balloon (the explanation suggested in The Age the next day) or any known type of aircraft.
Nearly all of the witnesses in the documentary come across as quite credible and genuinely puzzled about what happened.
An army historian on the show made the good point that the quick appearance of the military at the scene is strong evidence that they had pre-knowledge of what was seen. (An extensive search of Australian defence force files has never found any material relevant to the case.) He seemed inclined to think it might have been an experimental craft, presumably that had got into trouble. (That would make more sense than a deliberate test of a secret craft over the suburbs of Melbourne. )
What a puzzle! You would think there must be some of the military people involved out there still who could shed some light on the defence involvement. If it was a balloon and there is no mystery, surely they could confirm that. It's hard to imagine why a top secret balloon would be landing in Melbourne, given that all US enemies were up in the Northern Hemisphere (and perhaps harder to see how it could take off at high speed after landing.)
A skeptical take on the event can be found here, but it’s not actually clear if the writer had seen the documentary before writing it. When you see the documentary, it makes some of his arguments seem implausible. He emphasises the fallibility of memory a great deal, but the documentary covers enough different (and newly found) witnesses to persuade that they can’t all have become so muddled.
A Facebook page created by the doco makers indicates some further information will be forthcoming (including the location of a girl who fainted and was taken away, never to be seen again by a fellow student!) (I am guessing that will have a mundane explanation.)
Anyway, it’s a great local mystery, and let’s hope its solved one way or another.
So, BHP has come out and said that it wants Australia to have a carbon price, even before there is any international agreement regarding same. As Mark Davis points out in The Age, given that Garnaut has changed his position, this means a carbon tax instead of an ETS. As the Greens seem to favour a tax too, there does seem a real hope that the complicated ETS of questionable value may be replaced with something better. Who said this election result was a disaster? (I’m looking at you, jtfsoon.)
Davis also points out that Turnbull sounding all responsible and economically reasonable on broadband sort of highlights the fact that it is his party that is the economically unreasonable on carbon pricing.
There is one other aspect of the current situation which I think is pretty remarkable: BHP also agreed in principle with Labor for a mining profits tax. So, now we have big business accepting taxes that aren’t in their direct interests, but are regarded by most economists (I think that applies to the mining profits tax) as beneficial to the nation.
And the party and leader opposed to these tax changes: the Coalition under Tony Abbott.
Labor may have a problem with the way it spends money, but it’s currently the party that makes more sense about taxes.*
* The same can be said about the Democrats and Republicans at the moment.
In one of the silliest posts ever seen at Watts Up With That, Anthony Watts recently criticised a Nissan electric car ad for making a polar bear look cute and (literally) cuddly. Watts seemed to fear it would cause some people who happened to find themselves near a real live polar bear to put themselves in danger by trying to hug one, and put up videos of polar bears attacking people to show just how misleading the ad is.
As Joe Romm wrote, we can now presumably wait for Watts’ denunciation of the creators of Yogi, Smokey and other fictional bears (those in the outrageously inaccurate The Golden Compass come to mind) for creating a public safety hazard.
In any event, this is just a preamble to show the video of how they made the Nissan ad. They actually used a live polar bear more than I thought:
It’s hard to keep up with the controversy over wide scale PSA screening for prostate cancer, and whether it causes more harm than good.
My general impression is that there is pretty good evidence for the nay-sayers (see this brief report last year), yet you still get things opening like a new Prostate Screening clinic in Brisbane just a couple of months ago, so clearly some think promoting widespread screening is worthwhile (although perhaps mainly for the clinic’s pockets?)
Anyhow, this report from the Guardian indicates that maybe you get just as well by getting just one PSA test done at the right age:
Professor Philipp Dahm and colleagues at the University of Florida reviewed six previous screening trials involving 387,286 participants.
They found routine screening aided the diagnosis of prostate cancer at an earlier stage, but did not have a significant impact on death rates and raised the risk of over-treatment.
A second study headed by Professor Hans Lilja, showed a single "prostate-specific antigen" (PSA) level test at age 60 strongly predicted a man's risk of diagnosis and death from prostate cancer.
The team found 90% of prostate cancer deaths occurred in men with the highest PSA levels at age 60, while men with average or low PSA levels had negligible rates of prostate cancer or death by age 85.
The findings suggested at least half of men aged 60 and above might be exempted from further prostate cancer screening.
Sounds reasonable.
The ABC’s Dr Norman Swan has written a first hand account of his recurring bouts of retinal detachment, and it’s well worth reading just to be aware of what to look out for. (Swan himself didn’t pay enough attention to the warning signs the first time he had it.)
He mentions that the short sited are more likely to get it. I’ll be keeping it in mind.
The theory is that it was from grain used for beer making that was contaminated with tetracycline producing mold.Armelagos was part of a group of anthropologists that excavated the mummies in 1963. His original goal was to study osteoporosis in the Nubians, who lived between about 350 and 550 A.D. But while looking through a microscope at samples of the ancient bone under ultraviolet light, he saw what looked like tetracycline — an antibiotic that was not officially patented in modern times until 1950.
At first, he assumed that some kind of contamination had occurred.
"Imagine if you're unwrapping a mummy, and all of a sudden, you see a pair of sunglasses on it," says Armelagos. "Initially, we thought it was a product of modern technology."
His team's first report about the finding, bolstered by even more evidence and published in Science in 1980, was met with lots of scepticism. For the new study, he got help dissolving bone samples and extracting tetracycline from them, clearly showing that the antibiotic was deposited into and embedded within the bone, not a result of contamination from the environment.
The analyses also showed that ancient Nubians were consuming large doses of tetracycline — more than is commonly prescribed today as a daily dose for controlling infections from bad acne. The team, including chemist Mark Nelson of Paratek Pharmaceuticals, reported their results in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
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.
To put it mildly, this does not speak well of modern attitudes to child bearing and raising.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.
"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.
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.
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"?
"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."
Concerning the existence of free-floating planets of smaller mass, Stevenson (1999)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.
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).
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.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).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."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.
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.Whatever happened to "no sex please, we're British"?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.
"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.)
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!"...I'm glad it's a version of reality TV that has not caught on here.
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.
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.
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. ..So, use up your groundwater, and suddenly you may find your local area quite a bit hotter than before.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.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."
Well, I was in Sydney recently, and I haven’t played with Tiltshiftmaker.com for a while, so here goes:
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:
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.
"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.
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.Not exactly encouraging.'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.'
The total krill catch this season is expected to be 150,000–180,000 tonnes, exceeding last year's total by about 40%.But more generally, climate change may well be an issue with them too:
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.
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.
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.
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."
* 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.
