A confusing matter, and a Dr Who complaint

When do gay kids start "acting gay"? - By Brian Palmer - Slate Magazine

Prompted by news of a lawsuit in America to do with anti-gay bullying in a school, Brian Palmer looks at the somewhat interesting question of whether a young child acting outside of "traditional gender roles" is an indication of future sexual identity. In brief:

A hefty pile of research shows that boys as young as 3 years old who break from traditional gender roles have a high likelihood of becoming gay adults. Predictive behaviors include playing with Barbie dolls, shying away from roughhousing, and taking an interest in makeup and women's clothing. (Read the Explainer's take on why boys prefer to play with sticks while girls go for dolls here.) The relationship isn't one-to-one, however, and it's certainly not the case that all boys who love Barbie dolls will later identify as gay. The correlation is much weaker in the other direction: A disproportionate number of boys who don't conform to gender stereotypes turn out to be gay men, but lots of gay men played with G.I. Joe as boys and quarterbacked the high-school football team. Neither does the relationship appear to be as strong among girls. Tomboys aren't as likely to become lesbian adults.

Psychiatrist Richard Green conducted the leading study in this field in the 1970s and '80s. He followed 44 boys who defied traditional gender roles from early childhood to adulthood. Thirty of them became gay or bisexual adults while just one child from a 34-member gender-conforming control group turned out to be gay. The subjects who strayed the most from conventionally boyish behavior were the most likely to be gay. Green's study has since been repeated by other researchers with similar outcomes. (Studies on females show that only around one-quarter of gender nonconforming girls grow up to be lesbians.)

The complicated thing about this is that acting outside of normal gender roles is also commonly seen as a sign of future gender identity issues. Why is it that some boys with this apparent inborn inclination to feminine interests will go on to develop a deep unhappiness with their own body to such an extent that they feel they can't be happy unless they hormonally/surgically modify it, and others will go to be "merely" homosexual, with varying degrees of feminine behaviour as part of that?

Of course, lots of people have written extensively about sexual identity and gender issues, but I am not inclined to waste a huge amount of time on reading about it; I just note that it is a matter that I think is obviously complicated, and far from properly understood.

I think I noted recently here that Native Americans (supposedly) saw cross-gender behaviour in kids as a sign they were a special, virtually holy, "two spirits" combining both male and female spirits. According to this article:

Every tribe watched their young carefully to determine if one of their children were two-spirits. If a boy leaned towards female clothes and mannerism, the tribe encouraged his explorations and vice versa for females.

Given the political use to which such anthropology can be put in the gay marriage debate, there is reason to be a bit suspicious about over-statements on this, and indeed, here's a site that claims reverence of "two spirits" was by no means a universal practice:

According to researcher Will Roscoe, former coordinator of the Gay American Indians History Project, there is no single belief about Two-Spirits among the more than 800 tribes in the United States and Alaska, about 200 of which are not federally recognized. Two-spirits may be respected within one tribe and ostracized in another, while the topic of sexuality could be ignored altogether in yet another tribe.

As I said, human behaviour and psychology in this field is very complicated.

It certainly also makes it a bit of a challenge wondering how one should explain "gay" issues to children. I have not yet had to discuss the "gay" question with my own kids, despite the best efforts of Dr Who to continually bring up gay issues again and again. Surely I can't be the only father in the world who finds this annoying. Even after the departure of the gay re-inventor of the show, Russell Davies, who you could clearly see was inserting a subtext of all types of pan sexual behaviour as being cool and normal, the new producer Steven Moffat, who is not gay, is openly going out of his way to keep introducing gay characters. Here's what he said in an interview:

But also someone pointed out to me [that] in the previous Doctor Who, the first one I had run, there were no gay or bisexual characters and I was sort of slightly appalled. I was thinking, I’m not like that at all. I would never have done that. So I was thinking, “Dammit, it’s the one criticism I’ve ever listened to. Good point, Doctor Who should always be…" It’s not because it’s politically and morally correct. It’s right for Doctor Who, isn’t it? It’s cheeky and off-centered. And fun.

Yeah, well, thanks a lot Steve. You've made it into a psyops program aimed at educating kids on sexuality. Yep, that's why we watch Doctor Who, which is, after all, still primarily a kid's science fiction program, just that it is well enough acted with good enough production values that adults watch it too. And, by the way, although I like the cast quite a lot, its stories are not as good as they were a few years ago, before the Davies decline. In fact, it's nearly time to give it a rest again, I think, after this season.

Anyway, back to kids and the "gay" explanation. I spoke to another father who said he simply answered the question "what's a lesbian" by saying it was a woman who loved a woman. Easy peasy. Maybe that is suitable for an 8 year old, but honestly, explaining homosexuality purely in terms of "love" isn't being realistic with a slightly older kid who has something of an understanding about heterosexual sex.

Part of the problem, as I say, is that it's not clear that adults understand it at all properly from a biological, psychological or cultural point of view either. So I don't care what others may say - it's a tricky issue to explain to a child/young teenager.

More calls for realism

Bishop of Derry calls for end to celibacy in Catholic church | UK news | The Guardian

I liked the last paragraph:

The reordination into the Catholic church of married Anglican priests has pointed up the fact that priestly celibacy is not a doctrine, but a discipline. In 1970, the decline in priesthood vocations persuaded nine leading theologians to sign a memorandum declaring that the Catholic leadership "quite simply has a responsibility to take up certain modifications" to the celibacy rule. Extracts from the document were reprinted in January. Not least because one of the signatories was the then Joseph Ratzinger, now pope Benedict.

Debriefing debriefed

Escaping from the past of disaster psychology � Mind Hacks

Here's a fascinating article about how trauma counselling by group debriefing gradually recognized as probably doing more harm than good.

Interestingly, it points out that you couldn't even tell that by asking the victims who had received it:

In one study, 80% of patients said the intervention was “useful” despite having more symptoms of mental illness in the long-term compared to disaster victims who had no treatment. In another, more than half said ‘debriefing’ was “definitely useful” despite having twice the rate of postraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after a year.

Debriefing involves lots of psychological ‘techniques’, so the psychologists felt they were using their best tools, while the lack of outside perspective meant it was easy to mistake instant feedback and regression to the mean for actual benefit.

This sounds a little counter-intuitive, but as the article notes, that the only way to reliably tell its effects is by comparing the future progress of groups who receive it to those who don't.

The Brisbane Space Pants Foundation

Free Shuttle Artifacts! | Space Exploration | Air & Space Magazine

From the article:

Currently up for grabs on a government website: a pair of astronaut pants, a spacewalker’s life-support backpack, a spacesuit glove, and thousands of black insulating tiles from the bellies of the space shuttle orbiters.

Now that the shuttle has retired after 30 years, NASA is having the equivalent of a massive going-out-of-business sale.

While most of the media attention last spring focused on where the vehicles themselves would go on display (Washington, Los Angeles, Florida's Kennedy Space Center and New York) thousands of lesser pieces of shuttle history are still looking for permanent homes. With help from the General Services Administration, NASA is giving away everything from spare main engines to sunglasses worn by the astronauts.

Sounds great. The only catch is in the next sentence:

The artifacts will go to museums, universities, elementary schools, libraries and planetariums all over the country to become part of their permanent collections.

Since there's another Brisbane in California, I think the best I can do is set up the Brisbane Space Pants Foundation, and see if I can score a free set of astronaut pants. Straight to the pool room, they would go. (If I had a pool room.)

I wonder if they have a set of the Japanese space underpants that were worn for 2 months straight? I probably wouldn't even have to pay for postage: give them the address, and they could probably walk their way to Australia.

Hormones are strange

In Study, Fatherhood Leads to Drop in Testosterone - NYTimes.com

The report notes:

Testosterone, that most male of hormones, takes a dive after a man becomes a parent. And the more he gets involved in caring for his children — changing diapers, jiggling the boy or girl on his knee, reading “Goodnight Moon” for the umpteenth time — the lower his testosterone drops.

So says the first large study measuring testosterone in men when they were single and childless and several years after they had children. Experts say the research has implications for understanding the biology of fatherhood, hormone roles in men and even health issues like prostate cancer.

Given that other studies have indicated testosterone can bounce around for all types of reasons, including whether your political party has just lost an election, or if (you are soccer goalkeeper), depending on if you are playing away or at home, I don't know that it is really that surprising.

Testosterone is a bit strange.

Good catches

It was interesting to note from last week's Economist that the TSA, the much maligned security service* in the US that is responsible for airport screening, has a "Good Catch" site up which makes occasional report of all the unusual and potentially dangerous things they have stopped getting on board flights. The TSA blog article about the site contains some of the comments you might expect against the TSA.

This is an entertaining idea for a website. The posts are coming in much too infrequently, though.

* usually by right wing libertarian types with psychological problems about their "junk" being vaguely seen by some bored screen watcher in another room, or brushed against during a pat down

McDonalds in the spotlight

Employment: Defending jobs | The Economist

According to the chart at the link, McDonald's is the world's 4th largest employer (following the US Dept of Defence, China's army, and Walmart. There must be a lot of Walmarts in America.)

On the weekend, I went to McDonalds and had their "birthday special" of the return of the McFeast and Shaker Fries. I actually don't recall shaker fries, but the disappearance of the McFeast two or three years ago has been a matter of deep regret. Its replacement, the "Angus" burgers, often feel a bit too heavy for lunch for me. The McFeast is their "just right" burger.

I seem that someone else in the blogosphere has done a detailed culinary review of the return of the McFeast, and gives it a big "fail". But then, he starts with an admission that he never liked it in the first place, as he doesn't like tomato on a burger (?) The bad review also notes that "the salad was too cold" and with the shaker fries " the shaking was embarrassingly loud." U-huh.

I see from his blog that he is from England (culinary heartland of the universe - ha) and has an entry about a Dr Who birthday cake that starts with what I hope is a joke, but I'm not sure:

I love Doctor Who…my lounge room is full of Doctor Who paraphernalia and my wedding cake had two Daleks on the top.

His taste in anything is, I'm afraid, not to be trusted...

Adventures in dioramas

You wouldn’t believe how long this diorama took to put together.  My son showed great talent in painting the tiny mining figures we found by good luck at a hobby shop, and he’s pretty good at construction with matchsticks and a hot glue gun too.   The trees are made from green scouring pads which are pulled apart and stuck onto a twig with appropriate “branches” (something I learnt from the internet.)

Yes, it took me half a century to learn how to make a diorama to primary school level.   (I don’t recall ever doing one at school.  It was all project posters with lots of words and illustrations in my day:  these seem to not be popular now.)

Great moments in Japanese politics

Radiation gag backfires on trade minister | The Japan Times Online

Trade minister Yoshio Hachiro crossed swords with the media Thursday by attempting to rub his body against a journalist after touring the stricken Fukushima power plant, sources said Friday.

"I'll give you radiation," he reportedly said to the journalist.

Dear Gillian

Change agent | Gillian Anderson

She's not looking bad, the older Agent Scully. (I bet she hates that. Mind you, I always get the impression from interviews that would be a bit intimidating to meet.)

Analysing people analysing Julia

As my regular reader Jason has an intense and somewhat irrational hatred of both Julia Gillard and Richard Glover, I'm sure he's happy to note this morning's column by Glover which starts "Can someone explain to me why people hate Julia Gillard with such intensity?"

I basically agree with all of it.

Elsewhere, I note that reaction to At Home With Julia has varied widely. It is, let's face it, a silly show that does not attempt to paint a realistic picture (someone somewhere said it's a bit like a human version of the old Rubbery Figures puppet show, extended out for 30 minutes, and I think that's about right.) But still, as I wrote before, as I was very pleased to be hearing some really good politician impersonations again, and found it pleasingly not mean spirited, I liked it.

Yet some on the Left thought it was awful: Mike Carlton hated it (and, I see from the same article, he's another Lefty who has joined the "Julia will go, and Rudd replace her" school of unreality. Why Kevin would be forgiven for the carbon tax, but not Julia, is a bit of mystery to me.)

The most over the top condemnation for the show came from Larvatus Prodeo, where it interpreted purely on feminist principles. Apparently, showing a male partner as feeling left out, ignored, or tormented by teenage boys for being a househusband means you are showing him as emasculated, and that just is so offensive. Yeah, whatever. As much as I can't stand where much of the Right is at the moment, I do not find myself being at all attracted to the dour feminism and sociological waffle of the prominent females at LP. (I like it when Anne Winter does a withering takedown of CL or someone else at Catallaxy occasionally, but I'm not unrealistic enough to think she doesn't hold me in low regard too.)

Oddly, on the Right, I heard Andrew Bolt on his radio spot say that he liked the show more than he expected, and in a way it made him more sympathetic to Gillard. Yet it seems as if he might be gearing up to criticise the ABC on his show tomorrow for trying to help Gillard this way. Again, whatever.

Anyway, it certainly is a show that has received a diverse reception.

UPDATE: I see Annabel Crabb confirms what I have said about Kevin Rudd for a long time. (Maybe I got the idea from her in the first place, I can't quite recall now.)

There's a fascinating, almost mathematical equation going on here.

With Julia Gillard, the probability that any given person will support the Prime Minister decreases with distance from the subject; she is supported by a majority of Cabinet and Caucus colleagues and viewed benignly in the public service, but despised by voters who have never met her.

Mr Rudd's equation is precisely the inverse; the warm support he continues to enjoy in the populace at large tails away sharply, the closer you get to the 2600 postcode. Outside Parliament House, voters might wonder why they can't bring that nice Kevin fellow back again. Inside it, people talk vigorously about chewing their own arms off before doing anything to hasten such a return....

I don't think I'll ever forget the conversation I had with one backbencher a few months after Rudd's overthrow. "I agree with Kevin on just about every policy inclination he has," the backbencher said. "In fact, there probably isn't another person in the party with whom I am more in line." There was a pause, and then the backbencher added, calmly and without even the mildest hint of melodrama: "It's just that I hate him so very much."

Warming water problem

Warming seas could smother seafood - New Scientist

All a bit of a worry:

More than half of a group of fish crucial for the marine food web might die if, as predicted, global warming reduces the amount of oxygen dissolved in some critical areas of the ocean – including some of our richest fisheries.

The prediction is based on a unique set of records that goes back to 1951. California has regularly surveyed its marine plankton and baby fish to support the sardine fishery. "There is almost no other dataset going back so far that includes every kind of fish," says Tony Koslow of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, who heads the survey. The survey records also include information on water temperature, salinity and the dissolved oxygen content.

Koslow's team studied records of 86 fish species found consistently in the samples and discovered that the abundance of 27 of them correlated strongly with the amount of oxygen 200 to 400 metres down: a 20 per cent drop in oxygen meant a 63 per cent drop in the fish. There have been several episodes of low oxygen during the period in question, mainly in the 1950s and since 1984.

Global climate models predict that 20 to 40 per cent of the oxygen at these depths will disappear over the next century due to warming, says Koslow – mainly because these waters get oxygen by mixing with surface waters. Warmer, lighter surface waters are less likely to mix with the colder, denser waters beneath.

It's complicated...

Switching from coal to natural gas would do little for global climate, study indicates

Maybe the Greens with their distrust of going heavily into gas as a stopgap on the way to completely clean energy have a point after all. It's all very complicated and debatable though, I'm sure.

Bee will

Backreaction: Predetermined Lunch and Moral Responsibility

Physicist Bee has been thinking and writing about free will. It's a long post that I have read yet, but I am sure it will be worthwhile. I'll get back to it later.

Fake meat not so palatable

I'm reminded via another blog that lab grown meat has been in the news lately, with an upbeat (more of a beat up, actually, as you will see) article in the SMH with an absurdly misleading headline "how synthetic sausages could be on our plates in six months time."

Err, no.

The report notes the work in the Netherlands that is hoping to make enough lab grown cells to make a hamburger in 6 months time.

People who want to know more about their work should read this interview from the Science Show earlier this year:

Joel Werner: So how long will it take you to produce the mince for a hamburger? I mean, you're talking about small muscle strips, but the hamburger patties I like to eat anyway are relatively large.

Mark Post: Right, so that requires making about 3,000 of these small pieces, and of course that takes time, so we estimate that it will take a year to make that first hamburger, and it will also cost 300,000 euros.....

Joel Werner: So what are the stumbling blocks to reaching that future?

Mark Post: Well, there are a couple of scientific issues, technological issues. One is to get the protein content higher than it is right now, it's now about 70%, and it needs to go up to 90%, 95%. Then there is of course eventually the scaling up of the whole process and quality control, because you don't want these cells to go into a cancer mode or anything like that, so you need to quality control it. And finally we need people to accept the concept....

Mark Post: For many of them it would. We actually spoke to the chairperson of the Vegetarian Society here in the Netherlands and she said, 'I wouldn't eat it because it still requires animal cells, but I'm sure that more than 50% of my constituents will start eating meat.' We still need donor animals to get the adult stem cells. We need a supply of donor animals, but we figure that a factor of 1 million less than we are using right now, and we may be able to improve that even more.

So, let's get this straight: at the moment, they have small pieces of pale, not high in protein, strips of cells that don't taste like meat. (Towards the end of the interview, they mentioned that someone did taste a bit.)

Also, as you still need the stem cells to grow it, vegetarians are still capable of objecting to it.

The other point to note is that, according to another Science Show interview on the topic, you are not likely to have any lab grown meat that resembles a steak any time soon:

....they never tell you when you're a kid that meat is muscle, and if you take a piece of muscle it is not just beef cells. You've got mostly the striated muscle cells, as they're called, which make up the bulk of the meat, probably 85% of it. They are called striated because if you look at the muscle cells under the microscope, each cell grows like a long fibre, like a ladder if you like or like a railway track, because across it are these very, very fine lines, like the sleepers or the rungs of a ladder. And those are the little lines that slide into each other and cause the muscle to contract. Those are the striated muscle fibres...

Robyn Williams: Are you saying that they are so complicated that you can't actually culture them?

Brian J Ford: No, you could culture those as much as you want, but all you are going to get is a culture of striated muscle and that's not meat, that is most of meat but it doesn't look like meat, it wouldn't have the texture of meat, it would be soft and slimy and mushy and slippery because those striated muscle fibre cells are held together in layers of what are called fibrocytes, fibre producing cells. And the fibrocytes produce thin...I don't know, like a cross between a piece of polythene and a piece of tissue paper. You see that kind of tissue when you take a piece of meat and lay it down on the kitchen slab, it's the surface coating of each part of the meat.

Frankly, it sounds like the future of lab grown meat is only going to be in something resembling mince, and even then it sounds like a hell of a lot of work is to be done to make it taste like beef.

It does sound to me like a ridiculously pie in the sky scheme, when you can just kill a cow instead.

One other interesting thing which I had never heard of before from that interview with Ford is this:

...it was in 1976 in a book called Microbe Power that I said how in a few square miles of countryside one could actually produce enough microbial protein to feed the entire world. That is true, and it has almost become true because...I don't know whether quorn is particularly popular in Aussie?

Robyn Williams: It is not necessarily so.

Brian J Ford: It's a vegetable protein which is very popular in England and now very popular in the United States as well, and it's produced by taking a fungus, which was originally discovered growing on barley in a field in the midlands of England about 30 or 40 years ago, and you grow this fungus so that it produces a sort of a rubbery, chalky mass which you then texturalised to be like meat, you add flavours to it to make it taste like meat, you mince it up or chop it into little cubes so that it looks quite like meat, and it is used as a substitute for meat.

This is grown in factories, and it seems to me to be very paradoxical, this. Quorn is particularly popular amongst natural food addicts, people who are vegetarians and others love quorn.

And here I'd never heard of it before. But Googling around, and it looks like Quorn based products are indeed available in Australia.

So we apparently already have a vegetarian based "fake meat" that is apparently better tasting than soy based products, and it could easily supply the world's protein needs? If anything, Quorn sounds like a much better solution to the "feed the world" issues that lab grown meat are fancifully suggested as answering.

I'm going to go looking for Quorn when next near a health food supermarket.

Bad news for Queensland

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center: La Nina is back

La Niña, which contributed to extreme weather around the globe during the first half of 2011, has re-emerged in the tropical Pacific Ocean and is forecast to gradually strengthen and continue into winter. Today, forecasters with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center upgraded last month’s La Niña Watch to a La Niña Advisory.

It happens...

BBC News - Drunk Swedish elk found in apple tree near Gothenburg

Apparently:

Drunken elk are not an uncommon sight in Sweden during autumn, when there are plenty of apples about.

Other residents of Saro had seen the elk on the loose in the preceding days.

Mr Johansson said the elk appeared to be sick, drunk, or "half-stupid", the Associated Press reported.

Record smashed

Only In It For The Gold: Daily Rainfall Record Exceeded By 60%

Michael Tobis notes (from Weather Underground) an extraordinarily record breaking amount of rain in one hit that happened the other day in the US:

An extreme rainfall event unprecedented in recorded history has hit the Binghamton, New York area, where 7.49" fell yesterday. This is the second year in a row Binghamton has recorded a 1-in-100 year rain event; their previous all-time record was set last September, when 4.68" fell on Sep 30 - Oct. 1, 2010. Records go back to 1890 in the city.

Tobis asks:

Have we been underestimating the extent to which climate change will drive extreme events?

All further grist to the mill of my recent comments that extreme flooding events may well be the most damaging, expensive and convincing early sign that future AGW induced climate change is not something you can easily adapt to.

A helpful article

Dessler Demolishes Three Crucial 'Skeptic' Myths

People who follow the AGW science issue would all know about the fight going on at the moment between the recent Spencer & Braswell paper and its apparent rebuttal by Dessler.

I've been finding the technical arguments over this to be very hard to follow, but Skeptical Science does a pretty good job at making it more understandable and noting its general importance for what are (as SS notes) the only two recent articles by skeptical scientists that argue for a very low climate sensitivity.

It is important to read the comments too: Spencer thinks he found an important error in Dessler; it seems that the error, if it's there, is not as big as Spencer claims.

Nude in Jerusalem

I found a rather interesting review of a book at First Things about how Christians should respond to homosexuality, followed by a very long thread with lots of interesting points and arguments on the topic. (I haven't read them all.)

The article does a good summary of the common argument by more liberal Christians as to why even New Testament scriptural condemnation of same-sex behaviour can be ignored in the modern world. I'll extract it here:

Jewish antipathy toward same-sex behavior in the ancient world, according to Selmys, was based on a perception that homosexual relationships were abusive. Selmys describes Greek homosexuality as pederasty. Greeks openly praised love of boys, an older lover and a younger (preferably beardless) beloved. It was mentoring, with sexual dividends for the mentor. So when Seleucid Greeks erected a gymnasium in Jerusalem, recounted in Second Maccabees, Jews were right to be alarmed. The no-clothing policy at the gymnasium provided not only a way for the Greeks to easily identify practicing Jews by their circumcision, but also an opportunity for Greek men to ogle Jewish boys.

Homosexual behavior was also part of ancient Rome, but the Romans, being Roman, skipped the idealism and went straight for virile conquest. Homosexual behavior was tolerated, if one was the dominant participant. The passive role, a decidedly less than virile position, was filled by a slave or by a social inferior, or someone looking to move up the career ladder or someone too intimidated to snub the offer.

Christians inherited the Jewish antagonism toward same-sex behavior. “Sodomy was implicitly connected with sexual predation in the minds of the late Roman, Byzantine, and medieval Christians,” Selmys writes. “This needs to be taken into account when reading the vitriol that is poured out against ‘sodomites’ in the writings of early Christians”—St. Paul included.

The part that I thought most post-worthy was the bit about the Greek gym in Jerusalem. I have a vague recollection of reading something about that before, but it's worth looking into. [Now there's a Two Ronnies double entendre for you, Jason!]

Google quickly turned up a paper by someone from the University of Pisa that's actually called "A Gymnasium in Jerusalem", although most of it is generally about the Hellenization of Palestine. It's pretty interesting. On the gymnasium itself, it notes:

II Maccabees specified that the construction was located near the acropolis of Jerusalem. In general, a gymnasium was an outdoors complex, open to the public at large, and provided space dedicated to sports and cultural activities. A standard gymnasium included a running track, a place for gymnastics, one or more swimming pools, dressing-rooms and other minor buildings...

In ancient Greek the word gymnos (from which gymnasium is derived) means naked, and every participant competed naked. Thucydides, who wrote in the 5th century BC, stated that in Asia this was not the rule, but he referred to an earlier period (8th century BC) and affirmed that barbarians could hardly be expected to follow such Greek customs. However, it is most likely that, following Alexander the Great and his conquests, the situation could have changed.

Most of the young competitors belonged to an association known as the ephebia. This organization included young males between 18 and 20 years (ephebes), who were trained in the use of weapons and prepared for public life. The ephebes were young citizens skilled in war who wore short hair, a little cloak and a petasus, a sort of large hat in order to protect them from the sun. The gymnasium thus served as a training ground for them. But it also had another role: it was considered the defining institution of Greek urban civilization, serving as the ideological and cultural centre of the city.

The gymnasium was the focus for social activities and provided education in writing, literature, and rhetoric. Therefore, the introduction of the gymnasium represented a set of wholly new values for the Jews.

....The gymnasium provoked opposition in Jerusalem because it featured naked competitors. Although the sources do not mention this directly, the various references to circumcision, especially in II Maccabees, may be read as indirect proof. According to Jewish tradition nakedness was looked upon as offensive. This attitude not only reflected moral beliefs. It also highlights the importance that the Jews attached to clothing and specific kinds of dress. Within the Jewish cultural tradition clothing took on specific roles and functions, including its ability to distinguish various categories of persons: the rich from the poor, the religious from the laity, leaders from their supporters. It seems the nakedness of the gymnasium represented a sort of equality in a society that was structured in a strongly hierarchical way. Moreover, Jewish males had serious problems with nakedness because of their circumcision. The Greeks regarded circumcision as an insane and shameful mutilation of the human body. For that reason, Jewish people suffered from their awareness of this physical difference, which sometimes led to mockery by others.

Someone at a Mormon site notes:

The Greeks did their athletics in the nude. The gym in Jerusalem could actually be seen from the temple and the site of men wrestling in the nude was very offensive.

The University of Pisa article I cited at length goes on to note:

The Jews who willingly took part in Greek culture used various strategies to hide their circumcision. The main method was a sort of operation (epispasmos) in which circumcision was disguised by an artificial foreskin. This practice began following Jason’s request to Antiochus IV. It is also probable that during Antiochus IV’s time in Jerusalem the epispasmos was embraced by more conservative people, who feared king Antiochus IV’s hostility toward Jewish traditions.

For those so inclined, there's a whole article about the epispasmos operation on the website of a modern nuttily obsessed anti-circumcision site here. I liked this line:

At a time before effective anesthesia, a man inclined to try this procedure had Celsus' assurance that it was "not so very painful."

Anyway, it's all rather intriguing to think that perhaps the effects of nude athletics in Jerusalem (including even where the gym was built) more than 2000 years ago can still have cultural influence today. (It's also odd to realise the anti-circumcision movement has been around a long, long time.)

Political punditry gone insane

I cannot believe what I am reading in the media and on the blogs at the moment re suggestions for Federal Labor to improve its position.

And no, I'm not talking right wing blogs full of ratbaggery: they just want to have an election and aren't about suggesting what Labor can do, unless it's something facetiously self serving, such as Andrew Bolt's call for a new leader who should drop the carbon tax. (In a sign of desperation, Bolt has taken to calling for a new leader to replace Gillard within a week or so, before the carbon tax legislation is introduced to Parliament.)

It's the Left leaning commentary that has gone insane. Firstly, there's old Phillip Adams calling for Kevin Rudd to be re-instated as leader. I don't hold his political punditry in high regard anyway, but his failure to see through the flim-flammery and flakiness of much of what Rudd did in the first year is typical of some on the Left. He seems to think Rudd is an intellectual powerhouse: I think most objective people see shallowness whenever he tries to show his smarts.

But even someone who generally writes intelligently and in a moderate voice, like John Quiggin, has given up on Labor having any chance under Gillard, and suggests she gets the carbon tax through and then resign for the good of the Party. Yeah right: she finally gets a big and difficult reform through Parliament, and she should say "well, people don't like me, so I'm off." I just can't fathom the logic of this. Quiggin suggests that while he didn't used to think Rudd should replace her, he thinks he is acceptable now, due to his having "more credibility"on the asylum seeker issue (!). This is just nuts, if you ask me. And as with all people suggesting a graceful Gillard departure, it's not as if they can point to an obvious successor.

Even more bizarre are some of the comments on the Lefty blog Larvatus Prodeo, where Kim takes essentially the same position as Quiggin, and many in comments agree. Fran, who actually can hold her ground in arguing about a carbon tax, goes as far as to write this insane bit on Gillard:

I didn’t respect her before she took the job and her appearance as the candidate of the mining thugs only served to lower my already poor impression of her. Throw in attacks on The Greens as entitled latte-sipping alarm-clock ignoring intellectuals and Gillard is Bolt in drag. The roll out of “people smugglers’ business model” ad vomitus gets her the unremittingly egregious tag. The only thing positively distinguishing her from Abbott is that at the margins, The Greens still exercise some restraint on her regime. Without that, I’d watch the government go over the edge of the abyss and spit on them on the way down.

In the papers, the moderate Mumble blog gets the analysis right:

We’re in a strange place. If this federal government announced it was erecting a new set of traffic lights*, local businesses would protest, residents would fret, petitions would be signed and convoys embarked upon.

MPs in Western Sydney would report that the issue was killing them—and Graham Richardson would agree.

These are odd, but special, political times. Yes it’s the policies a bit, but more than that is a dysfunctional dynamic.

But then suggests:

Could a new leader, perhaps after the passage of the carbon legislation, quarantine the Greens and generate some authority?

It’s probably worth a try.

No, it's not.

The essential problem for Labor has been its flip flopping on key issues that have made it look weak and indecisive; but conversely, those things in which it has sought to act quickly have sometimes come out looking too rushed, ineffective or just flakey.

There is no way that replacing Gillard with a new leader is going to address these core issues. In fact, it will exacerbate them.

Getting through a carbon tax, the mining tax, and finding a workable asylum seeker policy will go a long way to fixing the problems. It's absurd to think that, as this fundamental "fix" starts to happen, the PM should resign.

One of the comments at Mumble blog gets it right, I reckon. If anything, Gillard would improve by sounding tougher, not just with Abbott but with her appalling bunch of sleazy media critics, and those in the public (even those Labor sympathisers who are telling her to go). Here's the comment, from "Balmain":

Mumbles, I keep saying the same thing and you keep saying the opposite...but do you honestly, truly believe that the electorate will tolerate yet another leadership change? I can see Gillard becoming our answer to Thatcher (I hate to draw parallels based on gender..), but I can’t see any other way back for the government. They will not be able to run on their record (once again) if they lose her, and that will make for yet another disastrous campaign. If they hold tight and the country is in good stead come 2013, they will have a much better story to tell than “we’re sorry, we stuffed up and lost our nerve again”. It requires nerves of steel from the ALP, but if they have it surely it’s their best hope? I’m not saying Gillard will be liked, but if she can campaign on successful introduction of major policies by 2013 despite blatant adversity, there will be a begrudging respect factor, surely. I have noticed that a bit of media coverage lately, whilst mostly slating the government, has begun to make frequent mention of her incredible stoicism in the face of all this. It could be starting already…

He's right.

Of course, there are good reasons for fearing the Australian economy, which virtually every economist (save perhaps for the dropkick Sinclair Davidson - hey, he's called me much ruder names at his own blog) would agree has not been fundamentally mismanaged by this Labor government, will soon go through another set of trying times if there is another international financial crisis, and Labor will unfairly wear the blame for this. But this is the fate possibly awaiting any Labor leader, new or old, and replacing Gillard is not going to help that.

UPDATE: This post makes me sound like a complete convert to Labor and can't find a thing to complain about Gillard. Well, there is pretty strong evidence that she was behind the flip-flopping on what to do about a carbon price under Rudd, but as far as those who want to see one in are concerned, actually getting one through Parliament (and, it would appear, a better one than what Rudd nearly got through) should remedy that. On asylum seekers: well, that's a very difficult one for Labor, and no leader is going to find that a breeze to manage.

But if the Coalition would drop its stupidity on climate change, accept a mining tax is a legitimate thing to pursue, and install Malcolm Turnbull as leader, I would be happy to vote for them again. Otherwise, who knows, I might even vote Labor next time.

My other point about our PM which I made reference to a few days ago is that I honestly think that to improve her image for decisiveness, as well appear better to Asian leaders, she should just marry Tim. Don't make a big song or dance about it: just release one set of photos and do it in the gardens of the Lodge. Make sure Kevin Rudd attends!

At home with At Home

I didn't have high hopes for At Home with Julia, the short run sitcom based on an "re-imagining" of the life of our Prime Minister and her de facto partner.  However, I have to say I enjoyed it.

Of course, it's absurd to paint the Lodge as just a big house in which the PM or her partner have to cook their own dinner every night, and seemingly can only afford one hired help during the day.  But hey, it's just carrying on the tradition of movies which paint what's surely a ridiculously scaled version of the actual busy-ness of official residences.  (I thought Love Actually was particularly bad in this regard.)  

But the thing I did really like about it was the caricatures of  other politicians - the Paul Keating on the speaker phone droning on bitterly about what happened in 1995 was particularly funny, and although I'm sure the Rob Oakeshott prissiness about what to drink after dinner was unfair, it also amused me. 

I agree with the SMH video review - the best part of the humour was in these minor-ish details.

The actors who played the roles (including just the voice roles) did a piece on Radio National this morning, and it was quite funny.   Go have a listen at the audio link here (not the video, which is just a promo for the show.)

The psychedelic mouse

Did the use of psychedelics lead to a computer revolution?

Well, there are many things I didn't know in this Comment is Free article from The Guardian. (Why don't they put the best CiF articles on the main page like they used. I often forget to check it now.) Anyway, here are the most surprising bits:

...as New York Times reporter John Markoff told the world in his 2005 book, What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, Jobs believed that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he'd done in his life. That 2001 conversation inspired Markoff to write the book: a history of computing with the drugs kept in.

From 1961 to 1965, the Bay Area-based International Foundation for Advanced Study led more than 350 people through acid trips for research purposes. Some of them were important pioneers in the development of computing, such as Doug Engelbart, the father of the computer mouse, then heading a project to use computers to augment the human mind at nearby SRI. Grim also names the inventors of virtual reality and early Cisco employee Kevin Herbert as examples of experimenters with acid, and calls Burning Man (whose frequent attendees include Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page) the modern equivalent for those seeking mind expansion.

Well, if the idea of the computer mouse came up during an acid trip, it could well have started out as literally a mouse, if you follow my drift.

The article also notes a West Coast/East Coast theory of computer development, which I hadn't heard of before either:

Markoff traces modern computing to two sources. First is the clean-cut, military-style, suit-wearing Big Iron approach of the east coast that, in its IBM incarnation, was so memorably smashed in the 1984 Super Bowl ad for the first Apple Mac.

Second is the eclectic and iconoclastic mix of hackers, hippies, and rebels of the west coast, from whose ranks so many of today's big Silicon Valley names emerged. Markoff, born and bred in the Bay Area and 18 in 1967, argues the idea of the personal computer as a device to empower individuals was a purely west coast idea; the east coast didn't "get" anything but corporate technology.

Sounds kind of plausible.

The neighbourhood might be dangerous

Our galaxy might hold thousands of ticking 'time bombs'

A couple of astrophysicists have come up with an idea as to another mechanism which may be the precursor to supernovas, and suggest this:

"Our work is new because we show that spin-up and spin-down of the white dwarf have important consequences. Astronomers therefore must take angular momentum of accreting white dwarfs seriously, even though it's very difficult science," explained Di Stefano.
The spin-down process could produce a time delay of up to a billion years between the end of accretion and the supernova explosion. This would allow the companion star to age and evolve into a second white dwarf, and any surrounding material to dissipate.
In our Galaxy, scientists estimate that there are three Type Ia supernovae every thousand years. If a typical super-Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarf takes millions of years to spin down and explode, then calculations suggest that there should be dozens of pre-explosion systems within a few thousand light-years of Earth.
Those supernova precursors will be difficult to detect. However, upcoming wide-field surveys conducted at facilities like Pan-STARRS and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope should be able to spot them.

Well, how dangerous could a Type Ia supernova be?  According to Wikipedia:

Type Ia supernovae are thought to be potentially the most dangerous if they occur close enough to the Earth. Because Type Ia supernovae arise from dim, common white dwarf stars, it is likely that a supernova that could affect the Earth will occur unpredictably and take place in a star system that is not well studied. One theory suggests that a Type Ia supernova would have to be closer than 10 parsecs (33 light-years) to affect the Earth.[8] The closest known candidate is IK Pegasi.[9] It is currently estimated, however, that by the time it could become a threat, its velocity in relation to the Solar System would have carried IK Pegasi to a safe distance.[5]

Maybe we'll be OK after all.

Harry on carbon pricing

Australian Carbon Pricing - Harry Clarke

Economist Harry Clarke went to a meeting recently that was looking at carbon pricing, and made many interesting observations about the forthcoming Labor scheme.

One point about Tony Abbott's direct action plan which I had not heard raised before was this:

Birmingham claimed that because those direct actions were to be monitored on the basis of effectiveness and cost that the Liberal approach was market-related but missed totally the core point about the informational efficiency of prices in a setting where you want to change the behaviour of millions of agents. Certainly an army of bureaucrats will be needed to implement the Liberal policy which ironically seeks to make cuts in the climate-related bureaucracy.

Harry Clarke is satisfied generally with the the Labor scheme is " a remarkably successful first attempt by government to come to grips with the issue of climate change." He acknowledges it is not perfect, but in such a complicated and difficult area, I think he would say that that is hardly a surprise.

Harry used to visit and argue with the relentless and (frequently) ill-informed commentary at Catallaxy on climate change and carbon pricing. He appears to have given up out of frustration, and who can blame him.

I am pleased to see that the government is planning on getting its carbon scheme legislation introduced into Parliament as early as next week. The army of ill informed people who have been sucked in by the completely ill informed and/or dishonest right wing media figures such as Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones, Michael Smith and Jonova are going to tire of their campaign when the legislation goes through, and the Gillard will at least be able to point to one difficult issue in a decisive way, at last.

Very reasonable

RealClimate: Resignations, retractions and the process of science

Gavin Schmidt's commentary on the recent controversy over a Roy Spencer paper explains the situation very reasonably.

Who's writing them?

NASA Hopes Hard Sci-Fi Will Inspire Future Space Force

Roman might approve of a forthcoming line of science fiction books from NASA and Tor-Forge books. (Disclosure: Tor-Forge and Scientific American have the same corporate parent.)

The partnership aims to create scientifically accurate novels and to get the word out about NASA missions present and future. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center​ is hosting a workshop in November where authors can learn about NASA missions and the science behind them.

Revkin talks extremes

Extreme Weather in a Warming World - NYTimes.com

Andrew Revkin is pretty cautious on the attribution question of extreme weather events and global warming, and this post on the topic is worth reading.

More artificial reproductive stupidity

One Sperm Donor, 150 Sons and Daughters - NYTimes.com

Yes, one sperm donor in the States had been the father of 150 kids, and apparently there are many cases of 50 or so from the same donor. As the article notes:

Critics say that fertility clinics and sperm banks are earning huge profits by allowing too many children to be conceived with sperm from popular donors, and that families should be given more information on the health of donors and the children conceived with their sperm. They are also calling for legal limits on the number of children conceived using the same donor’s sperm and a re-examination of the anonymity that cloaks many donors.

“We have more rules that go into place when you buy a used car than when you buy sperm,” said Debora L. Spar, president of Barnard College and author of “The Baby Business: How Money, Science and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception.” “It’s very clear that the dealer can’t sell you a lemon, and there’s information about the history of the car. There are no such rules in the fertility industry right now.”

Although other countries, including Britain, France and Sweden, limit how many children a sperm donor can father, there is no such limit in the United States.

America: land of the free, and home of the "is that my half brother I'm kissing?"

Sleep your way to evolutionary success

Researchers seem to have a lot of interest in the sex lives of early humans.  Hot on the heals of the story last week that sleeping with Neanderthals had been good for our immune system, there's another story today of early homo sapiens sleeping with other homo-something-or-others which are no longer around:

Hammer and his colleagues argue that roughly 2% of the genetic material found in these modern African populations was inserted into the human genome some 35,000 years ago. They say these sequences must have come from a now-extinct member of the Homo genus that broke away from the modern human lineage around 700,000 years ago.

Hammer says this disproves the conventional view that we are descended from a single population that arose in Africa and replaced all other Homo species without interbreeding. "We need to modify the standard model of human origins," he says.

 Well, I suppose there was no TV in those days, and staring at the cave wall paintings was entertaining for only so long.

The right thing to do….

So that's where it goes

Extreme Flooding In 2010-2011 Lowers Global Sea Level

I find this surprising: it appears that the down bumps on the road to rising sea levels can be accounted for (at least in the last year) by the large scale flood which have happened around the world.

All the water will get back to the ocean, eventually.

It still seems to be that more frequent, larger scale, flooding, might well be the worst, early effect of global warming that AGW proponents did not really spend enough time warning people about.

Later...

Yes, Father's Day was nice, thanks.

I've found the app called Comics for the iPad, which will let me prepare my talentless "comics" easier than before.  This pleases me.

As with all people interested in politics, I am very curious as to what Newspoll will come up with for Labor tomorrow.

I am going to spend today meditating in preparation. 

Update:   could've been worse.  Primary dropping to 25% or below would have been psychologically very  bad, but Gillard can point to no drop in primary of 27%.  But what would have caused a 2% drop in Green vote?  

Odd film alert

A Dangerous Method: 'And out of the spanking comes psychoanalysis' - video | Film | guardian.co.uk

My more regulars readers will recall that I find Jung pretty interesting, and what happened between him and Freud is just about the most fascinating aspect of his life.

Now, it seems that a movie on the topic has finally been made, with David Cronenberg (or all people) the director. I see that it is based on a play, but I hadn't heard of it before.

The link above is a video report on the film's reception at the Venice Film Festival. It sounds like an interesting movie, but perhaps not one to see when tired.

Born into the job

Sex hormones impact career choices

This interesting study looked at job preferences of females with a congenital condition (CAH) that sees them exposed to abnormal levels of male sex hormone while in the womb:

The researchers report in the current issue of Hormones and Behavior that females with CAH were significantly more interested than females without CAH in careers related to things compared to careers related to people. The researchers also found that career interests directly corresponded to the amount of androgen exposure the females with CAH experienced -- those exposed to the most androgen in the uterus showed the most interest in things versus people.

"We took advantage of a natural experiment," said Berenbaum. "We're suggesting that these interests are pretty early developing."

Females without CAH had less interest than males in occupations related to things, such as engineer or surgeon, and more interest in careers focused on interactingwith people, such as social worker or teacher. There was no significant difference reported between males with CAH and males without the condition.

Political punditry

Amongst all the cries of "this is the end of Julia Gillard" and general despair and gnashing of teeth that the "Malaysia solution" was knocked over by the High Court, I would make the following observations:

a.   One of the best comments I saw came from Mumbles blog at The Australian:

....such is the low esteem in which the Gillard government is held it can’t even win a public opinion stoush against a bunch of do-gooding lawyers.

A visitor to this country today would be baffled. This is the most important issue facing Australia?

Only in Australia does the latest development in asylum seeker policy scream across the headlines and lead the evening news. It’s an issue that most of the technocratic class would agree is second order, but it’s a political hot potato because voters feel strongly about it.
Which is well and good, but it’s not as if many Australians could care less about the Malaysia, Pacific or Timbuktu solutions. What they do reckon is that John Howard was tough on border protection and stopped the boats and the Rudd and Gillard governments softened and made a mess of it.

 It was my feeling at the time Howard lost government that the public did have a feeling that it was appropriate to soften the approach to asylum seekers - certainly, Rudd promoted himself as dealing with it more "humanely".   Just goes to show what a fickle bunch Australians are on this topic.

The only right wing commentator in the land who has any sympathy to the Gillard government on the issue is Gerard Henderson.  He seems to always consider it a virtually intractable problem politically, and he's right.

The issues are complicated.  A softening of the approach has the unintended consequence of more drownings at sea.   Some idiot commentators in the blogosphere make this out to be a matter of moral responsibility of the Australian government, which is clearly absurd;  but people can still reasonably have concerns about unintended consequences.  

So, the solution?  I don't know.  Putting them in the Howard era detention centres in the middle of nowhere seems unpalatable in the extreme; but is it worth causing that human suffering if it saves a couple of hundred drownings a year?  (And let's face it, this High Court decision is going to lead to the unintended consequence of lot of boats leaving soon.)  Frankly, the Malaysian solution looked better (see next paragraph).

As for Nauru - maybe it is the best option.   But here's the thing - given the legal uncertainty, the only way I think Labor should agree to it would be if Abbott promised openly that he would not seek to make political points if either the High Court struck it down too, or if it fails to stem new boat arrivals.   There is reason to suspect that, given this judicial climate, re-opening Nauru would not stop the boats cold in any event.

b.   I actually didn't pay too much attention to the detail of how the Malaysian solution was going to work, but I had heard previously on Radio National a regional spokesman for UNHRC talking about how the deal was actually pretty useful for them, in that they thought that a successful arrangement over these people was helping set a better benchmark for the treatment of all refugees in the region.   And you know what - he was on RN Breakfast this morning pretty much making the same point.  They were not a party to the deal, but had been heavily involved in negotiations anyway.   This aspect of the deal seemed to get very little attention.   You can listen to the interview here; I think it starts after the sports report.

Or if you don't want to listen, I see now that the UNHRC website has a statement up that summarises their position:

UNHCR hopes that the Arrangement will in time deliver protection dividends in both countries and the broader region.  It also welcomes the fact that an additional 4000 refugees from Malaysia will obtain a durable solution through resettlement to Australia. The potential to work towards safe and humane options for people other than to use dangerous sea journeys are also positive features of this Arrangement. In addition, the Malaysian Government is in discussions with UNHCR on the registration of refugees and asylum-seekers under the planned Government programme announced in June on the registration of all migrant workers.

The Arrangement and its implementing guidelines contain important protection safeguards, including respect for the principle of non-refoulement; the right to asylum; the principle of family unity and best interests of the child; humane reception conditions including protection against arbitrary detention; lawful status to remain in Malaysia until a durable solution is found; and the ability to receive education, access to health care, and a right to employment.

The critical test of this Arrangement will now be in its implementation both in Australia and Malaysia, particularly the protection and vulnerability assessment procedures under which asylum-seekers will be assessed in Australia prior to any transfer taking place.

UNHCR will continue to monitor and review progress, remaining engaged with the parties to ensure the protection safeguards are implemented in practice as the two governments bring this Arrangement into effect.

 This is hardly the statement of a body that is feeling this was a terrible approach to the issue.



c.  For all this muttering about Gillard now being under threat of being replaced and maybe even Kevin Rudd returning, people are forgetting the key reason I reckon Rudd  was replaced:  people couldn't stand working for him or his office.    There was plenty of evidence around that Rudd had been a very unpopular boss right from the time he had a job in the Queensland government; and that he staffed his PM office with young turks who took every opportunity to throw their weight around and keep people from even getting to talk to Rudd until Rudd deemed he had a minute to spare.   I find it impossible to believe that enough Labor would think that there was sufficient sincerity in a Rudd mea culpa, and promises of "no, I really won't run my office like that again".  

There has also been no comparable complaint about how Parliamentarians have found working with Julia Gillard. 

I think she has to tough it out.  If I were her, I would be hiring the best speech writer she knows, and make an address to the nation within the next fortnight.   She is needs to counter the continual claim that there is complete dysfunction in the government at the moment; sell the mining tax as a reasonable step, re-emphasise that the carbon price is not going to kill the economy, and remind people about how difficult the asylum seeker problem is.

And Bee, for one, welcomes our new AI overlords

Backreaction: Will AI cause the extinction of humans?

Physicist Bee muses a bit about whether we should be scared of AI more intelligent than us. This last point is of note:

Thing is, I don’t really understand why I should be bothered about the extinction of humans if there’s some more intelligent species taking over. Clearly, I don’t want anybody to suffer in the transition and I do hope the AI will preserve elements of human culture. But that I believe is what an intelligent species would do anyway.

Gee. I thought a human/robot war was worth fighting. Bee will have to be rounded up, as she sounds like she may belong to the robot underground.

Rust in space

What would happen to the International Space Station if the astronauts were to leave? - Slate Magazine

According to this article, if NASA has to abandon the ISS, it should still last a few years and be capable of re-use.

One point they make about it I had not heard before:

Assuming the station didn't come careening out of orbit, its interior would stay in pretty good shape for quite some time. Rust is occasionally a problem up there—corroded wiring briefly disabled the orientation system in 2007—but that's only a risk when there is moisture emanating from the humans and animals onboard. NASA could easily dehumidify the station before withdrawing, preventing significant rust.

Actually, now that I think of it, does that make sense? Electrical wiring doesn't normally have much (or any?) iron in it, does it?

Will Google that later...

Productivity talk

There's been a lot of talk of a productivity crisis in Australia lately.  We aren't getting more productive any more, so it seems.

This is not a topic I know anything much about, but I thought the discussion of it by a some prominent Australian economists on Radio National this morning was quite interesting.   (John Quiggin and Saul Eslake feature.)

Can someone give the Prime Minister a hug?

Well, the newspapers are full of condemnation of the Gillard government for having tried a novel approach to the refugee issue and getting it knocked down by the High Court yesterday. Even columnists who the Right (unfairly, for the most part) normally consider to be too sympathetic to Labor are putting the boot in.

This morning on Sunrise, the normally Labor friendly David Koch has got ex Labor senator Graham Richardson on to help condemn the Gillard leadership. Richardson's new media career annoys me, because it trades on whatever Labor connections he still has and lets him continue his previous "career" of attacking his perceived enemies and boosting his political friends. Just as I think it is unseemly for a journalist with close connections to politicians to run for office (like Maxine McKew), I don't care for ex-politicians who want to be on TV every night still trying to play the game from afar.

(A good post by Ken Parish about Richardson's evident enthusiasm to see Gillard replaced as leader is here.)

It's true, as Annabel Crabb writes, the whole problem for Labor has been that it has been trying to find a way to differentiate itself from the Coalition approach, but has always given the impression it was coming up with ideas in a completely haphazard way.

Still, I can't help but feel sorry for a Labor PM (well, any PM other than Rudd) who is stuck on the horns of this dilemma.

One of the more radical suggestions gets a mention in The Age this morning - Labor could just withdraw from the Refugee Convention. It doesn't necessarily mean we don't take the same number of refugees, it would just be that we can deal with those who arrive in a way free of many of the current legal restrictions. But we could still pretty much follow the same assessment process that we use now.

As the article notes, this is likely to appeal to a large part of the population, but it would be anathema to a significant chunk of the Left.

I'm not sure where I stand on the question. To do it would be a triumph for Labor being able to show it is pragmatic, and if they continue taking higher numbers of refugees than before, that it has no great practical effect apart from freeing up the hands of government as to the way in which they can deal with a difficult problem.

The debate could still swirl as to where processing takes place, and be changed from off shore to on shore depending as circumstances change and the political mood at the time.

I guess there might be some downside that I am missing here, but my impression is that it might be worthwhile. But it almost certainly has no chance of happening. Labor is too attached to symbolism.

UPDATE:  gee, even Ken Parish thinks this seals Julia Gillard's fate, and she may as well go down with dignity by allowing on shore processing.

What he fails to address is the humanitarian aspect of not wanting to see hundreds of refugees drown every year on the dangerous trip from Indonesia.  I mean, it is this aspect that really makes the issue morally complicated. 

Big progress

Japan's life expectancy 'down to equality and public health measures' The Guardian

I didn't realise that the Japanese advance in life expectancy had happened over such a short space of time. Maybe I am forgetting what the comparative figures are for the West, but this still seems remarkable:

A baby girl born in Japan today can expect to live to 86 and a boy to nearly 80. But it has not always been so.

According to a paper in a Lancet series on healthcare in Japan, this is a rise of 30 years from the expected lifespan in 1947. While Japanese diet has contributed, it is far from the only factor.

The remarkable improvement in Japanese health began with the rapid economic growth of the late 1950s and 1960s. The government invested heavily in public health, introducing universal health insurance in 1961, free treatment for tuberculosis and cutting childhood deaths through vaccination and treatment of intestinal and respiratory infections.

Following the control of infectious diseases, Japan tackled its high death rate from stroke with salt reduction campaigns and the use of drugs to control blood pressure.

The cultural things that the article notes as significant to good Japanese health are attention to hygiene, and a high degree of health consciousness that means regular check ups. The downside, though, is pretty big (especially for a country that is forgetting to have babies):

The downside of Japan's success in keeping its people healthy is that the population is unbalanced and becoming more so. At the moment, 23% of the population is over 65 but by 2050, that will rise to 40% in a population shrinking from 127 million to 95 million. Other problems include drinking and smoking among overworking business people and a high suicide rate partly attributable to rising unemployment. Unless these issues are tackled, the paper suggests, Japan could lose its position at the top of the longevity table.

An amusing line

Just noted this while reading a Washington Post column about Rick Perry:

If Perry’s style resembles anybody’s in George W. Bush’s White House, in fact, it is that of former vice president Dick Cheney, whose just-published memoir, “In My Time,” might as well have been titled “Right Every Time (Even Though I Was Surrounded by Idiots).” Think of Perry as Bush without the charm.

As noted at another blog

Probably, re-reading this in 5 years time will make no sense at all, but I just want to preserve it as a comment I made at Andrew Bolt's blog. Maybe I should add background links later:

Andrew, your acknowledgement towards the end of the column that maybe some people think it was “mean” of you to be asking people to judge her character based on an old relationship from nearly 20 years ago.

This indicates to me you know it was sleazy - done in tandem with Michael Smith in a manner to maximise the drama (and ratings) about how revelations to come would bring down Gillard - when in fact all of the time the bulk of the story had been known and reported for years.

You would also know of other politicians with ex partners who have done wrong - if you want every politician to be judged by their past relationships you know the gossip would never end.

Then, when Milne’s carelessness (or whatever it was, I still don’t understand) gave the PM reason to blast the paper for a detail that was defamatory - you carried on like a drama queen about how her getting upset about this was like suppression of free speech.

She was upset at your foreshadowed sleaze, Andrew, and she had every right to be.

She called the paper out for actual defamation, which you repeated in your column with the attempted arse covering line “I’m not sure that’s right.”

Your behaviour in this matter has been disgraceful, and you’ve let your efforts at “kingmaking” go to your head since you had success with getting Turnbull chucked out.

A real shellacking

Mediawatch last night really showed up Alan Jones for his errors, bullying demeanour, and attempt to clear himself later, as a result of the Canberra truck rally last week.

An asteroid of our own

Apparently, some Chinese scientists think it would not be so hard to put some nearby asteroid into Earth orbit.

If they picked one full of minerals, it might be worth doing.

Nuclear for the Moon

The first nuclear power plant for settlements on Moon, Mars

It's light on details, but it appears thought is going into the design of small, molten salt nuclear reactors to power manned outposts on the Moon or Mars.

Then, all we would need is a rocket to get there...

Arsegate

So, the big political news over the weekend was all to do with what Tony Abbott said to Tony Windsor about his (Tony's) bottom 12 months ago.

Apparently, some people think he would not make a slightly crass joke about (considering) selling his arse to get the Prime Ministership, but I know that somewhere, on the internet, there is a very similar arse related comment that he is supposed to have said to someone (I think while visiting an aboriginal community?) given in explanation as to why he left the seminary (which he found far too "gay".) I haven't been able to find the quote via Google yet, but I know it is out there somewhere. Readers who find it are welcome to put the link in comments!*

Meanwhile, people have to remember even former Liberal staffer Niki Savva wrote:

In private, Abbott talks openly about sex to almost anybody who will listen, and usually at great length. And the conversation continues in public. Journalists persist in asking Abbott for his views on sex and he keeps answering their questions. Even though women resent it when he tries to tell them what they should do with their bodies, he refuses to shut up.

He thinks about it too much. Sex, I mean. Certainly he talks about it too much.

I don't think the Abbott quote sounds out of character at all, and I thought it hardly worth his while denying it. (Unless, of course, he didn't say it, I suppose....) Of course, it may be the fact that the quote indicates he'd do anything policy wise to get the leadership is the thing he objects to, but still the suggestion that he doesn't talk "like that" sounded to me like a denial that he has a "colourful", sometimes arse-related, turn of phrase.

Anyway, the biggest problem with the current union scandal within the Labor side is that is preventing people from remembering what a pillock Tony Abbott can be!

* Update: quote found, from the Sydney Morning Herald, no less:

The teaching staff members at the seminary were influenced by the reforms of Vatican II, and not at all to Abbott's liking. Some of the young seminarians were practising homosexuals. When many years later Abbott and Quarmby met Noel Pearson on business, Abbott jokingly said, according to Quarmby: "Peter and I were the only seminarians who didn't get f---ed."

Yeah, I find the reported quip to Windsor very unlikely (not).

Mungo is right this time

A political crisis like '75? Tell 'em they're dreamin'

I don't normally find much to agree with in Mungo McCallum's political commentary (he was one of the worst Howard haters around, if I recall), but he is right in his comparison of the 1975 Whitlam crisis and the fake crisis the Right is trying to promote today:

And this brings us to the second difference: the crisis of 1975 was actually about something. The government had attempted to bypass both the states and the Treasury to raise an overseas loan of $4 billion and the whole process had gone horribly wrong. A cast of weirdos in white shoes and green sunglasses had emerged making improbable promises and brandishing carpet bags. Whitlam had been forced to sack two of his most senior ministers for deliberately misleading parliament over their own roles in the affair.

This gave Malcolm Fraser the "unusual and reprehensible circumstance" he need to justify the blocking of supply, a move only made possible by an unprecedented breach of convention: on the death of a Queensland Labor senator, the state premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen had appointed as his replacement not another Labor member, as was accepted practice, but an anti-Labor stooge. With the numbers in the senate Fraser committed his own breach of convention, confident that it would force Whitlam to an election.

Whitlam fought back, attempting to find alternative means to pay the civil and military public service. Lawyers, up to and including the chief justice became involved, both openly and covertly and there was talk of both a general strike and of military intervention. This really was a political crisis; no wonder the place went apeshit.

But today... well, what crisis? The polls are against the Government, as are the shock jocks and sections of the media, but for the administration, it's pretty much business as usual. By international standards the place is in good shape, and although there are plenty of dissatisfied voters, there are no signs of a genuine people's revolt – the streets are largely empty of marchers. And as for the Parliament – it's noisy, but no more so than it has been in other times in its history. In the uproar after the crisis of 1909 the speaker dropped dead in his chair; Harry Jenkins remains robust.

Compared to 1975, it's pretty Mickey Mouse stuff. Whitlam had to sack cabinet ministers; Julia Gillard is having problems with a single backbencher. Fraser responded by blocking supply; all Tony Abbott can block is parliamentary pairings. Fraser's lust for power at least produced drama on a grand scale; Abbott's manifests itself in stunts and spite. Wacky and frantic it may be, but 1975 it's not. Trust me; I was there.

He is spot on.

The Right divided

Evolution, Climate Change Could Divide the Republican Party - Ronald Brownstein - Politics - The Atlantic

Have a read of this article and be amazed at, amongst other things, the polling that indicates the science attitude of the Right in America.

In a 2010 Pew survey, only about one in six Republicans said they believed human activity was changing the climate. In a Gallup survey this March that phrased the question differently, 36 percent of Republicans said they believed pollution from human activities had contributed to "increases in the Earth's temperature over the last century," while 62 percent of Republicans attributed those changes to natural changes in the environment. Rejection of the scientific consensus on climate change has become an article of faith for virtually all elements of the GOP coalition. Even in a secular, well-educated state such as New Hampshire, for instance, University of New Hampshire surveys since April 2010 have found that only about one-fourth of Republicans believe human activity is changing the climate. National figures provided to National Journal by Gallup combining surveys from 2011 and 2010 show that college-educated Republicans are even more likely than their non-college counterparts to reject the notion that human activity is changing the climate.

This is driven by the confluence of religious beliefs (see the article's summary of polling on evolution) and the free market/ libertarian small-government-and-all-taxes-are-evil ideology.

It is ideology playing games with the future.

Troublesome algae

Algae that turned toxic stumps scientists

This article talks about a type of ocean algae that sometimes makes people sick, but it's hard working it all out:

The study of harmful algal blooms is complex. Dinophysis, in particular, are difficult organisms. Experts around the globe hadn't been able even to grow them in laboratories until South Korean researchers figured that out in 2006.

Plus, they are weird little critters. Some, but not all, individual species create toxins. Some are only poisonous sometimes. And it's not at all clear what determines when they change.

"I have books from back in the 1930s that show pictures of this same organism," said Rita Horner, a research scientist and algae specialist at the University of Washington.

"I personally have knowledge of it being here since the 1960s. The algae isn't new. Just the toxin is new. But we don't know enough about the biology of the organism itself to know what caused it to change."

Said Bill Cochlan, an oceanographer and phytoplankton expert at San Francisco State University: "You can have blooms and it's not a problem, or you can have blooms that are a real problem. The Number One question is when and why are they toxic?"

Let's hope ocean acidification and CO2 fertilization does not have something to do with it.

Which reminds me, I haven't posted anything about ocean acidification for a long time. There have been some interesting studies, so I will post about it again soon.

Overstepping the mark?

Of course, we all know that the apparent evidence coming out relating to the way Craig Thomson’s credit card was used does not look good for him, but I am surprised that no one has come out yet to say that some journalists are surely overstepping the line in declaring already that he has committed crimes.

In particular, Michael Smith, who has played a big role in this, said directly yesterday “Craig Thomson stole money from the Union,” and invited Thomson to sue him if that wasn’t true. (There is no transcript, but you can listen to what he said at the second recording at the link.) Now, given that Thomson did cease his high profile defamation case against Fairfax, Smith knows that he is at little risk of facing a fresh one.

But as a right wing radio talkback jock who has clearly always hated the Gillard government, Smith clearly hopes that Thomson is charged with offences and that this will bring down the government if Thomson loses his seat.

But surely he realises that statements like that can be, at the very least, problematic for getting a fair trial? Is it only because there is no actual charge yet (and may not be for some weeks or months) that he feels he can talk about the situation like this? Certainly, this site indicates that sub judice rules apply from the time someone is charged, arrested or a warrant is issued.

Still, I am interested to see if anyone else comes out and criticises Smith for coming out directly with this statement.

UPDATE: Andrew Bolt refers to the "illegal use" of union funds, and indeed the current head of the union assumes a crime has been committed. Paul Sheehan also says "crimes have been committed", but in all cases they do not say specifically by who. It may be that Smith is the only journalist who has come out and said Thomson has stolen money. What will Alan Jones say about it today, though? Andrew Robb has also said Thomson is a thief, but under parliamentary privilege. Talking outside of parliament, I think George Brandis has been more careful to couch it terms of possible crimes that may have been committed.

The best commentary on the matter I found this morning in The Age by Shaun Carney, which includes this:

But the niceties of the law do not really interest the Coalition; they are merely vehicles by which they can continue their assault on Thomson's state of mind and Gillard's political authority. Any legal case against Thomson for misappropriation of union funds would take years to be mounted, listed and heard.

Even then, a conviction might not meet the relevant section of the constitution, which deems a person unfit to sit as an MP if he or she has been ''convicted and is under sentence, or subject to be sentenced, for any offence punishable under the law of the Commonwealth or of a State by imprisonment for one year or longer''.

Yesterday, opposition leader Tony Abbott veered close to over-reach, with his extraordinary claim that the issue was stopping the government from dealing with more serious problems.

He told the ABC in the morning that ''while the government is completely distracted by the Craig Thomson matter it's not properly able to attend to the pressing problems the country faces''. He made the same claim later in the day while arguing that normal parliamentary business cease in order for Gillard to make a statement about the matter. The ''distraction'' has been generated all along by Abbott. The Thomson affair merely adds to the semi-permanent state of crisis that continues to engulf the Gillard government. Its opponents, both inside and outside the Parliament, are trying everything to blast the government from office. Last week, around 3000 protesters gathered outside Parliament House to voice their opposition to the government and its carbon pricing policy. On Monday, a few hundred more turned up, most of them by truck, calling for a new election.

I'm not sure he's right that it will take "years"to get to trial, but he's certainly right that the "distraction" claim by Abbott is a silly bit of political game playing.

Meanwhile, the business of government continued, with plain packaging for cigarettes legislation passing through parliament.

As I have said before, there is no actual crisis relating to economic management, or any persistent failure of this government to get its legislative intentions through parliament. It is pure political spin by those who oppose the Gillard government (and, admittedly, that includes a lot of the general public) that there is an actual governance crisis happening.