Mixed emotions, with added Tintinitis

The Season of Spielberg - NYTimes.com

Akk! My favourite director is posing with my least favourite animal in the lead photo in the above generous article on Steven Spielberg's sudden burst of activity. (He has Tintin and War Horse both out this year, and is finally shooting his long-in-development Lincoln.)

As for War Horse, which was apparently a successful play in England (featuring horses?), an Australian horse trainer featured in an episode of Australian Story recently, and talked about working with Spielberg:

Steven Spielberg was a very difficult director to work for.

Cut! Cut! Wait a minute right there. This is the first time ever that I, a person who reads everything that ever crosses his path about Spielberg, has read something like this. In all honesty, he seems to one Hollywood juggernaut who has barely had a friendship go cool, let alone make an enemy. (The New York Times article notes that he is still working with the same editor since Close Encounters; John Williams is still scoring his films at age 79, and heaps of times he has worked with producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall.) But this woman does work with horses, so I'll put it down to that. Anyway, it turns out not to be as bad as it might sound:

He has so much in his head, surely, at any one moment but he is a man of few words. One day, Steven took me aside and he briefed me, he said "You know this is a really important sequence in the movie, if this doesn’t come out just right, it’s make or break for the movie" And I was thinking "Could you put any more pressure on me?!" He said, "I want this horse excited. It’s got to be so excited!" To me an excited horse is a horse showing a lot of movement. So I bring the horse in, bring him in hard and fast and stop the horse and make him excited. Throw his head around, get him crazy. "Cut, cut, cut, cut!" OK. Let’s try that again. We must have tried it three or four times, I suppose, before Steven starts getting visually distressed. Steven yells out "Cut cut! It’s a disaster! It’s a complete disaster! " And I just sunk, died a thousand deaths and I thought 'This is the lowest point in my whole career.' Steven called me into his tent "Bring her here, bring her here". And he said "The horse must be happy, the horse must be happy". And I said "Do you mean affectionate? Do you want him to nuzzle? Do you want him to be gentle and warm?" And "Of course that’s what I want!" He said, "Yes, that’s what I want! Now go and do it!" And poor old Abraham had to go from this crazy excited behaviour that I thought Steven was asking for to this beautiful, gentle, soft, loving acting stuff - and he did really, really well and I was very proud of him. And it was a very scary day for Abraham and I....

At the end of the job and Steven threw his arms out for a big hug and he said "All of the love that you put into your animals has come out on screen, on my screen, and it will be there forever." It meant a lot to me, and to Craig too.

See: it all comes good in the end.

But still, this means I have to see a horse movie. I will if it gets good reviews.

As for Tintin, I meant to post last week about the highly amusing, if extremely strange, obsession The Guardian has had with publishing derogatory, high brow complaints about the film, which has garnered good reviews in England and America.  I thought it was probably old news by now, but instead, I find that The Guardian was at it again yesterday.

I do believe there have now been 6 (yes, count them, 6) different people dissing the film one way or another featured over the last fortnight on their website. The criticism has not just been in their Film section, but also  in Books and (I think) Culture sections, as if  the upset over what appears destined to be a big hit for a young-ish audience simply could not be contained. 

This obsession with being the one outlet determined to keep telling the public that the film is some kind of aesthetic outrage has not gone unnoticed by the site's readership, and the comments about the articles have become increasingly funny. For example, following an article yesterday which broadened the attack on Tintin to one on Spielberg generally:

A seriously bizarre vendetta against an enjoyable romp of a kid's flick.

and

Every day I think the Guardian must have got tired of attacking the Tintin film, only to find yet another article exploring just why it's so rubbish from a slightly different angle.

and

The film currently has an 85% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so it's not really true that critics are hating it.
I've got no desire to see this film myself, but I've got to add to the chorus of confused voices: What IS the Guardian's problem with this film?

But I did like this one, perhaps after Anti-Tintin (movie version) rant Number 4, or was it 5?:

This is the second Grauniad article about Tintin I've read in the space of a week that disappears entirely up its own arsehole within the first three paragraphs. Is it possible, perhaps, to get someone who's actually going to talk about the content of the film rather than making thoroughly pretentious remarks about the aesthetical qualities of Herge's art? I mean seriously. I know this is in the books section, but Jesus H. Christ.

Or, to put it more simply:

The Guardian has a very weird vendetta against this movie.

But the true explanation for this is possibly here:

Nice middle-class children were always given TinTin to read by their parents as this made them feel they were doing somthing vaguely continental and therefore "sophisticated" ( This is the Seventies we're talking about, after all).
The Guardian is largely populated by those children who now feel Nasty Commercialism is besmirching their childhood dreams.
You'd get the same reaction at the Mail if George Lucas did a Famous Five movie.

Good landing

Plane carrying 230 people from US makes crash landing in Poland | News.com.au

Good photo at the article of a big plane landing on its belly. Was it on the news this morning? I didn't see...

Lots of science

There seem to be an unusually large number of interesting science stories on phys.org today.

*  the most important one is buried as a one liner near the bottom.   The paper which I am sure I have noted before about  observational evidence for the laws of the universe not being the same across the universe has been published.  I see this is given more prominence at a Physics World blog, where it is noted that peer review having taken a year is an indication of how controversial the work is.

* urine for electricity?   Yes, make up your own “pee” jokes as you read about Microbial Fuel Cells which work well with the addition of fresh urine.  It would be nice if they would explain what size these MFCs are to produce useful electricity, but you have to admire the optimism:

Lead researcher Ioannis Ieropoulos said: "With an annual global production rate of trillions of litres, this is a technology that could help change the world. The impact from this could be enormous, not only for the wastewater treatment industry, but also for people as a paradigm shift in the way of thinking about waste."

* We'll be hearing more soon about a IPCC paper saying more extreme weather is on the way due to AGW.  Attribution of weather events being what it is, though, you get things like claims that the unusual snowstorm in the US is not climate change related; wait a few months and you will probably get another scientist who says it is.    This seems to have happened with the Russian heat wave, if I understand a new paper that is discussed at Real Climate recently.

There’s more, including sonic shock therapy to help with impotence, but I have run out of time. 

More Kael talk

Pauline Kael Reviews: The Ones She Got Wrong

I miss Pauline Kael reviews, and it's always interesting reading about her large and interesting body of work.

Bit busy....

But Qantas dispute dealt with at Dodopathy.

The thrifty Japanese

Japan Gets Electricity Wake-Up Call - NYTimes.com:

The Japanese did well with reducing electricity demand during summer, but they aren't out of the woods yet:

This past summer, traditionally a period of peak demand, Tokyo residents pared electricity use 16 percent in the inner-city area known as the 23 wards. But looming winter power shortages look to pose an even bigger challenge.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry predicts that unless power production is restarted at some of the nuclear reactors around the country that are now suspended for inspection, national demand will outstrip supply by 4 percent to 20 percent during December, January and February — the coldest winter months.

Spooky fun from Japan

The ridiculously frightening world of Japanese spooks | The Japan Times Online

Well, what a fun article this is about old supernatural tales and games in Japan. For example, this is how samurai would sometimes amuse themselves:

During the Edo Period, for example, there was a popular game among the samurai called Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai (A Gathering of One Hundred Supernatural Tales). The players gathered in a room at night and, after lighting 100 candles, took turns telling scary stories. After each tale a candle was extinguished, and the room steadily grew darker and darker. It was believed that when the room was pitch black, a ghost would appear.

Pretty good fun before TV was invented.

The Japanese do have amusingly strange folkloric creatures. The one mentioned in the last paragraph is particularly impressive:

Another distinctive feature of Japanese folklore is a quite large gang of oddball demons and spirits called yōkai that walk a thin line between horror and ridiculousness. Not exactly human but capable of a wide range of human emotions, these creatures tend to be neither good nor bad but are certainly mischievous, often getting their kicks by playing tricks on their victims.

Matt Alt, an American yokai expert whose book "Yokai Attack!" is a guide to surviving an encounter with these monsters, says that their shape-shifting powers make them particularly hard to recognize. "Probably the easiest to grasp are the kappa (water goblin), the tengu (mountain goblin), the kitsune (fox) and the tanuki (raccoon dog)," he says.

The most famous Tokyo-specific yokai are probably the Nopperabo ("faceless ones"), which Lafcadio Hearn wrote about in his 1904 story "Mujina," and the huge leg featured in "Ashiarai Yashiki."

"The Nopperabo are normal-seeming humans but with horrifyingly smooth and featureless faces," explains Alt. "A century and a half ago they were often seen in Akasaka's Kiinokuni slope, once considered one of the scariest places in the city."

"Ashiarai Yashiki," on the other hand, is the tale of an enormous, disembodied leg and foot that smashes through ceilings without warning in the dead of night, demanding to be washed. "Legend has it that the first 'big foot' appeared in a royal mansion in the Edo district of Honjo, corresponding to Sumida Ward in present-day Tokyo," Alt says.

Problems for the Tone

Abbott Pledges Oath In Blood To Repeal Carbon Tax

George Williams explains that it may well be three years after the introduction of Labor's carbon pricing scheme before Abbott could repeal it.

Provided that Labor can keep its minority government together for the next 18 months to 2 years, and assuming the world economy does not tank completely, I strongly suspect that Abbott's gung-ho and shallow populism is not going to play as well leading into the next election as he currently thinks.

7 billion soon

India is the most likely place for the seventh billionth child to be born | Global development | The Guardian

I was just getting used to 6 billion people on the planet, and in a week or so I have to start saying 7 billion.

The article above talks about the population growth of India, and the associated problems.

I didn't realise this:

India is home to nearly a fifth of the world's population and around 2020 it is projected to overtake China as the most populous nation on Earth.

A PM with a significant friend

I'm surprised to read an opinion piece in the paper this morning co- authored by Julia Gillard and - wait for it - Bill Gates! It's about eradicating polio.

I'm impressed. The biggest name in technology and charity Tony Abbott has ever been associated with is probably Dick Smith.

(Speaking of Mr Abbott, he features in the next, long awaited by no one, post at Dodopathy.) 

The trouble with vegetarianism

Mind Hacks has an extract of an article looking at the psychology of vegetarianism, and it's a tad amusing:

How vegetarians are seen has shifted radically over time. During the Inquisition, the Roman Catholic Church declared vegetarians to be heretics, and a similar line of persecutions occurred in 12th century China (Kellman, 2000). In the earlier half of the twentieth century, the sentiment toward vegetarians remained distinctly negative, with the decision not to eat meat being framed as deviant and worthy of suspicion.
Major Hyman S. Barahal (1946), then head of the Psychiatry Section of Mason General Hospital, Brentwood, wrote openly that he considered vegetarians to be domineering and secretly sadistic, and that they “display little regard for the suffering of their fellow human beings” (p. 12). In this same era, it was proposed that vegetarianism was an underlying cause of stammering, the cure for which was a steady diet of beefsteak.

Well, we all know about Hitler now, don't we...

Space, technology, etc.

Some links of some interest:

*  small, modular, nuclear power continues to be developed, but not without some financial issues.

*  Russian cosmonaut says they ought to find a good cave for a moon base.   I agree.  Lunar cave exploring is a topic inadequately covered in science fiction, as far as I know, too.

*  American lunar scientist says you could build a decent sized moon base using tele-operated robotics before you send astronauts there.  First job:  dig up some water at the poles.   Easier said than done, and sounds rather improbable.  But whatever happened to the idea that a private company had, maybe during the 1980’s as I think I read it in Omni magazine:  put a tele-operated lunar rover on the Moon and let people on earth pay for time controlling it.   You would need it to be in a scenic part, though.  An hour of trundling across a flat plain is hardly going to be worth it.

  *  NASA has been thinking about using “fuel depots” in space instead of having to launch a spaceship full of fuel to get where it needs to go.  There are, however, some obvious problems:

Propellant depots carry risks, too. Fuels like liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen must be kept at ultracold temperatures and, unless the depots were heavily insulated, would boil away over time. And transferring fuel in the weightlessness of space is not straightforward, although perhaps simply setting the depot and spacecraft into a slow spin would generate enough force to push the fuel into the spacecraft.

Sounds a bit improbable, again.

*  Somebody’s been studying sea monkeys ™, it would seem, to learn about their fluid dynamics.  Why one would remains a significant mystery of the universe.

Cranky Watts was wrong - again

Big news in the world of climate science - physicist Richard Muller's much ballyhooed independent re-assessment of the temperature record over the last hundred years or so is finished.

And guess what:

They say their results line up with previously published studies and suggest that the average global land temperature has risen by roughly 0.9 °C since the 1950s.

Muller says he is surprised at how well the findings line up with previous analyses, which he takes as evidence that the various scientific teams working on these data did indeed go about their work "in a truly unbiased manner". 

Anthony Watts, who early on pinned much hope on this effort showing that silly old climate scientists had stuffed this all up, is very annoyed.   It's not peer reviewed yet, you see.

Somehow, I would be surprised if that makes much of a difference.

Watts puts up the familiar meme we hear all the time from skeptics now: 

And, The Economist still doesn’t get it. The issue of “the world is warming” is not one that climate skeptics question, it is the magnitude and causes.

But remember folks, it was in the last year or so that Watts was on Andrew Bolt's radio show claiming that maybe .5 of a degree of the US temperature record increases of about .7 degree was due to poor siting of temperature stations.  Only problem was, within months of that claim, it was disproved by his own surfacestations project published paper.  Watts wanted people to believe the real temperature rise was so small it was ridiculous to worry about it.

Hey, maybe that's why Watts is so keen on  peer review: it helped prove his own estimates were completely wrong.   But actually, I think it was getting a real climatologist on board - John Neilsen-Gammon - to check the stats that showed up Watts' error even before it went into peer review. This is why I doubt peer review is going to show anything especially wrong with Muller's results.   (Of course, Muller himself is a self promoting show pony who was making big, populist claims about how outrageous the Climategate emails were.   I don't particularly hold him in much regard either, but if he and his team have taken some more wind out of the sails of the likes of Watts, he has done something useful.)

Watts has never apologised for those claims on Australian radio.  He has never explained how he got his own estimate, made so close to the paper being finished, wrong.

Andrew Bolt has never corrected Watts' estimate on his blog. 

The AGW skeptic movement is a sham, and should get out of the way and let real science guide policy response to a (likely) dangerously warming world.

The potato in history

It must be time for another potato post.  [Interested readers can use the search function on the right to find my previous forays into the field of potatoes.  (Ha.)]

This time, a BBC story looks at the recent decline of the spud, and whether its recent-ish poor reputation is really deserved.  But along the way we  get a bit of history, of which I was not really aware:

The potato used to be considered something of a wonder food. Grown originally in South America, its introduction to Europe literally transformed agriculture.

Before the introduction of the potato, those in Ireland, England and continental Europe lived mostly off grain, which grew inconsistently in regions with a wet, cold climate or rocky soil. Potatoes grew in some conditions where grain could not, and the effect on the population was overwhelming.

"In Switzerland, for instance, the potato arrived in the early 18th Century and you can see over and over again as people started growing potatoes, the population grew," says John Reader, author of The Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent.

"Birth rates rose, infant mortality improved, women became more fecund and all of that can be absolutely attributed to the potato."

For decades, potatoes were one of the most reliable sources of energy. They grew when other grains and vegetables could not, they required little processing once grown, and they packed a healthy dose of nutrients.

I hope you noticed the title of the book in there.  I don't believe I have ever seen the word "esculent" before.  Let's double check the dictionary:  a thing, esp. a vegetable, fit to be eaten.   Well, we learn something every day.

Back to the BBC article.  It appears that somehow, the writer located a potato obsessive in New Mexico:

That is why Meredith Hughes, managing director of the Potato Museum, is not worried about pockets of anti-potato sentiment. "I don't agree that the potato is vilified," she says. "I think the potato is just taking off."

Ms Hughes and her family have built up the largest private collection of potato artefacts, currently located in New Mexico, but in search a permanent home. Both she and the museum are unaffiliated with the potato industry.

"The potato is an incredibly influential food," she says. "It has changed the course of history, it has influenced popular culture. It has saved people from starvation."

Actually, given that the potato is becoming more popular in China, she could have a point about the potato "just taking off".

Anyway, this makes me  feel like checking the potato recipe book I got from the book fair.  I guess I'm cooking again this Saturday.

Deliberate mistakes?

Arthur Sinodinas, who impresses me generally and I welcome as new Parliamentary blood for the Coalition, writes in the Australian today:

There is talk that Rudd is wooing Bob Katter so he can dispense with the support of Andrew Wilkie and the pesky pokies tax.

What? There is nothing "tax" about voluntary pre-commitment for pokies at all. Yet this same line had been used by Channel Nine spokesperson last week when they wrote about how it was a political ad was spoken during a high rating rugby league match:

''The comments relating to the federal government proposed poker machine tax reflect the views of the Nine Network regarding matters directly affecting the NRL community,'' she wrote, again misconstruing the pre-commitment policy as a tax.

This is a bit of a convenient mistake that keeps getting repeated, isn't it?

Lay by plan not such a good idea

IVF WARNING: Expert tells single women to settle for Mr Not-Quite-Right

I didn't realise clinics were "targetting" this service:

Director of Monash IVF Professor Gab Kovacs said that women should not be fooled into thinking that freezing their eggs for social reasons offered a "guaranteed family in the fridge".
Fertility clinics have begun targeting their services to women in their 20s and 30s, but Professor Kovacs warned women that the success rate from egg freezing was low and that women couldn't rely on it later in life, Fairfax newspapers report.
"I think they should be working harder to find a partner or changing their criteria for Mr Right," Professor Kovacs said.
"Maybe there is no Mr Right and you have to settle for Mr Not-Too-Bad. There is no such thing as a perfect person for anybody, and even if they're perfect now, they won't be perfect in five or 10 years time."

Egg freezing costs between $10,000 and $14,000 per cycle is not covered by Medicare if done for non-medical reasons.

Of course, in the comments following there are a smattering of women saying "well, I only got married late and had my first child at 38, these concerns about infertility are overblown.  You hang out for the right man, girls!" which probably annoys fertility clinic doctors no end, because they actually know what the figures are.

(Personal disclosure: my wife and I came late to parenthood too, but still, I don't doubt that age related infertility is a major issue.)

Art and Andy

On Andy Warhol | Bryan Appleyard

Sadly, Bryan Appleyard has stopped regular blogging again. (He disappeared for quite a while, popped back for a few weeks, but now is only notifying readers of his feature articles and interviews in the press.)

Anyway, the link above is to his recent, very lengthy, article on Andy Warhol, containing much erudite discussion of modern art in general, and a little in the way of biographical detail. It's fine writing.

I'm not sure, but I think I had read and forgotten this strange story of how he came to be shot:

Valerie Solanas was a radical feminist who believed in the violent creation of an all-female society. In 1967 she asked Warhol to produce her play Up Your Ass, but he lost the script and Solanas started demanding payment. Finally, in June 1968, she turned up at the Factory and shot him in the chest. It was a grievous wound – Warhol had to wear a corset for the rest of his life to, as he put it, “keep my insides in” – and he only just survived.

As Appleyard notes, his work went down in quality after this, but you do get the feeling Bryan still has a soft spot for him.

Referral

Spaceport America opens – but space tourists will have to wait | Science | The Guardian

This story led me to do this quickly this morning on the iPad, which I trust people will remember was inspired by this (even though when I first saw that photo, I assumed it was photoshopped.)

Christmas viewing sorted

The Adventures of Tintin - Rotten Tomatoes

Initial reviews for Spielberg's Tintin movie seem pretty good. But it doesn't start here until Boxing Day. :(

UPDATE:  There are some really glowing reviews coming out, but as might be expected with any "classic" comic which nerdy adult men obsess about, there are those who are outraged by the movie.  The Guardian (which really operates as nerd/geek central in the English press, given the amount of time their blog gives to the likes of Dr Who) has a half funny, over the top reaction:

Coming out of the new Tintin film directed by Steven Spielberg, I found myself, for a few seconds, too stunned and sickened to speak; for I had been obliged to watch two hours of literally senseless violence being perpetrated on something I loved dearly. In fact, the sense of violation was so strong that it felt as though I had witnessed a rape....

The sense of outrage is palpable, and even after two days I find myself moved to pity; to pick up my shuddering, weeping copy of Hergé's The Secret of the Unicorn, cradle it in my arms, and whisper soothingly to it that everything will be all right; but all the time knowing that, after this, it won't be; nothing will be the same again. The forces of marketing, and of global idiocy, will see to that. But I will try to make things better as well as I can and remind you of some of the things that made Hergé's original one of the consistently great works of art of the 20th century.

As someone says in comments:

Dare I suggest you get out a bit more?

Warm water, warm air

There continues to be useful and interesting discussion around the climate science blog-o-sphere about ocean warming and climate change.

It really seems that limited understanding of how exactly it works, and its role in "pauses" in the climb in surface temperature rises, is a major unresolved issue in climate science. 

Have a look at Skeptical Science, Bart's site, and Rabbett Run for some of the interesting posts, which again
feature Roger Pielke Snr.

Some ideas for Malcolm in the middle

Missing in all the political commentary or reports about Tony Abbott's "pledged in blood" spoiler role for the future of the carbon trading scheme ("don't buy into it, companies, we're going to revoke it") I haven't yet seen anyone mention the person in the Liberals who must be absolutely grinding his teeth over this.

I refer, of course, to Malcolm Turnbull.

Not only has he had to go along with the vote against the legislation, he now has to sit back for 2 to 3 years while his leader charges ahead with "maintaining the rage" against it.   This must surely cause him some despair.

I wonder:  will this be enough to push him over the edge in future?   Let's face it, there are enough climate change deniers in the Coalition that must give Malcolm the pip, but he was probably at least hoping that after the scheme was in place, he didn't have to put up with listening to them anymore.  But now, it is going to again be a live issue in the lead up to the next election.

What is the best he can hope for?    That the companies who have to buy permits will, in the run up to the next election, tell the Coalition to face reality and let the scheme continue?   That the public will react against the loss of compensation?   Some (more) really bad weather internationally will convince more people that really adverse climate change is already upon us?

If Abbott resists the obvious reasons for not dismantling the scheme, surely it will fill Malcolm with despair.

Could he breakaway before the election on this issue?  Become an independent, or even form a new par1ty:  one that actually takes science and economists seriously?  He might even get to re-run his Republican campaign again.

I hope he is giving these sort of options some thought.   He may as well start planning now.

Jobs, health and Apples

Steve Jobs, neuroendocrine tumors, and alternative medicine : Respectful Insolence

Here's a really, really long blog post talking about Steve Jobs' health, which is of interest mainly because it notes his initial hope to treat a tumour by diet for the first 9 months.

He was, it would appear, a bit too alternative for his own good, although he eventually went as far as he possibly could with conventional medicine.

I have neutral feelings about Jobs and his products. Sure, I like the iPad a lot, but is anyone who puts iTunes on their Windows PC a fan of the software? I doubt it.

And news like this:

Apple claims the Korean technology company ''blatantly copied'' its highly successful tablet computer and infringed at least two patents related to touch screens and the gestures controlling them.

make it hard to embrace the company, surely. A patent for controlling hand gestures? I bet there a few hand gestures being made at Samsung towards Apple HQ all the time.

Witch doctor worry

BBC News - Where child sacrifice is a business

Wow. Quite a horrifying story of the apparent revival in child sacrifice in Uganda by witch doctors.

It doesn't appear to be a case of mass hysteria, as one might initially suspect, as there are injured and dead children, as well as an interview with a witch doctor, as evidence it is real:

For our own inquiries, we posed as local businessmen and asked around for a witch doctor that could bring prosperity to our local construction company. We were soon introduced to Awali. He led us into a courtyard behind his home, and as if to welcome us he and his helpers wrestled a goat to the ground and slit its throat.

"This animal has been sacrificed to bring luck to us all," Awali explained. He then demanded a fee of $390 (£250) for the ritual and asked us to return in a few days.

At our next meeting, Awali invited us into his shrine, which is traditionally built from mud bricks with a straw roof. Inside, the floor is littered with herbs, face masks, rattles and a machete.

The witch doctor explained that this meeting was to discuss the most powerful spell - the sacrifice of a child.

"There are two ways of doing this," he said. "We can bury the child alive on your construction site, or we cut them in different places and put their blood in a bottle of spiritual medicine."

Awali grabbed his throat. "If it's a male, the whole head is cut off and his genitals. We will dig a hole at your construction site, and also bury the feet and the hands and put them all together in the hole."

This situation has lead to one of strangest police task force names:

The Anti-Human Sacrifice Police Task Force, launched in response to the growing numbers, says the ritual murder rate has slowed, citing a figure of 38 cases since 2006.

It's a bit like living in a place where a Grimms' Fairy Tale could actually happen.

Carbon price thoughts

What more can be said about the Gillard government finally passing its carbon price legislation? Typically, the right wing blogs are in a frenzy about the death of democracy, the coming glorious electoral defeat of leftism for all eternity, etc. (Have a look at this joke of a post at Catallaxy, where the resident obsessive about Say's Law quotes James Delingpole as some sort of authority.) I assume Alan Jones' radio show was absolutely chock full of this sort of guff today, and will continue in the same vein for the next couple of days at least. 

But once legislation like this is passed, it's hard to imagine any media figure being able to keep it as hot an issue for the next 12 months.

I have previously expressed here great doubts about an ETS being better than a carbon tax, but basically, it seems that credible and moderate economists (that is, those who are not wholly dedicated to right wing, anti-tax, as-small-a-government-as-possible ideology) think otherwise, and I'm willing to go with their judgement. I do get the impression that lessons have been learnt from the problems with the European ETS. Let's hope that's right.

How it will all pan out is still highly uncertain. As papers have already been noting today, Abbott's pledge to revoke it actually leaves some businesses in a bit of a limbo as to what to do over the next year or two. I suspect that most will have to assume that the tax will survive, and some will start to call on Abbott not to revoke it before the next election.

And honestly, if Abbott is to be taken at face value (in reality, most people who are strongly opposed to a carbon price hope that Abbott is lying about his intention to reach the same CO2 target) he is not going to find an economist around who is going to say that his means of achieving a similar reduction is going to be better than the ETS. Tony Windsor is on Lateline tonight making this point as I type.

The worst scenario is that the world economy tanks badly in the next 8 months, and the scheme commences operation at a time of great economic pessimism. Abbott's pledge would presumably then remain popular, and a double dissolution threat to ensure it is achieved may seem like a good bet.

I hope it doesn't come to that. There will never be an obviously "good" time to introduce such a scheme, but it would be bad luck indeed if this turned out to be the very worst time to introduce it.  

Finally, although you can be cynical and say that Gillard made a rod for Labor's own back by being wishy washy on an ETS after its initial failure under Rudd, I think Annabel Crabb is right to note that what she has been forced by circumstances to achieve still shows off her skills and practicality:

In bringing the Parliament to this point, Julia Gillard is picking up the can that has been kicked down the road by John Howard, Kevin Rudd and, in his own way, Malcolm Turnbull. It's maimed all of them, this diabolical issue, but Julia Gillard is still standing, and has today pulled off a legislative feat that - under the circumstances - deserves recognition even among the non-enthusiasts.

Bringing regional independents together with the Greens, to reach agreement on a fiendishly difficult economic reform like this one? Convincing the Greens to exempt petrol from the scheme?

Prevailing upon Bob Brown - hardly an International Man of Steelmaking, ordinarily - to rescue $300 million in assistance to steelmakers after Tony Abbott refused to vote for it?

All of these outcomes looked fairly unlikely as the New Paradigm was lowered nervously into place, and yet they have come to pass. Where her predecessor ached to be popular, this prime minister has made unpopularity into something of a personal art form.

In light of this, I find those on the Left who want to see Gillard replaced by Rudd, like John Quiggin, to be exercising perversely strange logic. This is actually an achievement by Gillard, and she should be given the opportunity to reap any benefits from finally being seen to take action. Success on the mining tax should also be seen as an achievement by the Labor base, and that is another thing Rudd didn't achieve.

Replacing Gillard anytime soon makes no sense, and I have much greater confidence in her achieving results than I had in Kevin Rudd.

The population at large is still easily conned by the boyish, earnest facade of Rudd, but that does not mean he is actually capable of good leadership.

Well, this is how I choose to interpret the situation....

but I could be misconstruing things... : )

PS: photo is from Sourcewatch, credited to Bob Burton. Someone should let me know if there is a copyright issue.

The Fake Crisis continues

I see that The Australian (and Denis Shanahan in particular) are in full blown "campaign" mode to see Julia Gillard replaced as Prime Minister.  This has been obvious for some time, but some headlines from last week, and this morning in particular, just confirm it:

Coalition storms ALP strongholds: Newspoll
Labor leader has lost public's faith
Leaky boats could sink Julia Gillard 

It's obviously important to Shanahan that a 3% increase to Labor in Newspoll not be interpreted as a clear sign that Labor has bottomed out, so he writes as follows:

A three-point rise in the Newspoll primary vote for the ALP has avoided the unthinkable for the Gillard government of going to 25 per cent or below to have less support than the combined vote for the Greens and various odds and sods, but the broader view of this survey of public opinion about Labor - as well as the personal standing of Julia Gillard - is devastating. The electorate has not only stopped listening to Labor but rejected it on every front.

In fact, the way I read the poll, Labor is still preferred outright on IR and education, arguably has more people favouring their position on climate change if you make the assumption that the substantial number for "someone else" are mostly Greens, and is even pegging on health.    
 
People are saying the Coalition handles asylum seekers better, which as I have noted before, is at complete odds with other polls indicating that they are no so keen on offshore processing.   You just have to assume that people are completely (to put it generously) confused on this issue.  No, forget it:  people are stupid on this issue. And let's be clear here:  this extends to those on the Left too, who (as shown on Q&A last night) pretty much completely ignore the issue that a completely open and welcoming processing regime would be practically guaranteed to involve hundreds more deaths at sea on leaky boats.

On this issue, I note that the local UNHRC rep has again said that he thinks the Malaysia solution is better for people than being locked in detention centres in Australia:

ASYLUM seekers would receive better protections in Malaysia under the Gillard government's proposed transfer deal than being held in indefinite mandatory detention in Australia, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office has said.

Australia ''would fall well short'' of the human rights criteria demanded of Malaysia under the deal signed in July, the UNHCR's regional representative, Richard Towle, has told a parliamentary inquiry....

''In the context of the Malaysian arrangements, the assurances of legal stay and community-based reception for all transferees can be seen as a more positive protection environment that protracted - and in some cases indefinite - detention that many face here in Australia, provided the assurances are carefully monitored,'' Mr Towle wrote.

The High Court struck down the refugee swap partly because Malaysia is not a signatory to the UN refugee convention. But Mr Towle said many signatories did not meet the ''the fundamental protection safeguards that were expected of Malaysia under the arrangements''.

The UNHCR has also dismissed a ''misperception'' that asylum seekers could be caned, saying the document to be issued proving their legal status would have been ''a significant safeguard''.
Mr Towle said the Malaysian government also planned to extend legal work rights to all refugees, not just those sent from Australia. This would allow refugees to access insurance and health schemes.

The Malaysians have an incentive to see that the Australian sent asylum seekers are not mistreated:  they get to give us lots more Burmese asylum seekers.  This idea, based as it is on Departmental advice given by the same public servants who advised the Coalition, should be tried.

Back to the Newspoll:  the Coalition leads Labor by a large, large margin on the economy, but here it is clear that the public is buying into the idea that there is some sort of crisis going on about how Labor has handled it.

The reality is that, although the Coalition under Turnbull might have spent a bit less money on the GFC spending, there is no credible economist around who is regularly condemning Labor's response. Internationally, it is difficult to find anything other than praise for how Australia handled it.

The worst thing about all of this is that some Labor supporting figures like John Quiggin have given up on Gillard at a time when she is just getting some major reforms through Parliament.  It has always been absurd to suggest that she should be replaced at this time. 

Meanwhile, Bruce Hawker has suggested today how Labor can improve.  I have always found him boring on TV, but he is right in this column.  It was a serious mistake for Gillard to appear with Bob Brown as if he was a virtual deputy leader.   Hawker suggests distancing herself from Brown, and coming up with simple, distinctive Labor policies, like universal dental care.  He's right.

Quite a surprise

Prenatal testing could spare babies from toxoplasmosis complications

A study from Stanford finds strong reason for routine testing of toxoplasmosis in the US:

Their research found much higher rates of serious brain and eye disease among U.S. infants with congenital toxoplasmosis than among similar infants in Europe, where the prenatal testing is routine....
Eighty-four percent of the North American infants studied had serious complications of the parasitic infection, including calcium deposits in the brain, water on the brain and eye disease that caused visual impairment or blindness. By contrast, few European infants had these problems – for instance, about 17 percent of French infants with the infection develop complications.

“It was a shock,” said Jose Montoya, MD, the study’s senior author and an associate professor of Medicine in Infectious Diseases at Stanford. “We were dismayed to see so many little ones with severe eye disease, hydrocephalus and brain calcifications.”

The reason for the different outcomes between affect US and European babies:

...effective medications exist to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the Toxoplasma gondii parasite – and babies who receive these drugs in utero have much lower rates of complications than the infants in Montoya’s study, whose mothers did not get the prophylactic meds.

The test is cheap too. I wonder if it is done in Australia?

As I like to say to my children when they're feeling down..

‘Humans are just modified fish’ (Science Alert)

Not a good place to be sick

South Pole Worker Stranded After Stroke - NYTimes.com

Oceans heating, but how deep?

RealClimate: Global warming and ocean heat content

This Real Climate post, and the comments and discussion following, are important.  The issue is heat going into the oceans, and whether once it gets there, it is possibly a problem again in the future.

There has been a skeptic argument around that if upper ocean heat is getting "buried" in the deep ocean (a fact which itself is very hard to measure, apparently) then the heat does not represent any future "threat" to surface temperatures again.  Yet Trenberth had made a statement that any heat going down "has not disappeared and so it cannot be ignored. It must have consequences.” 

Gavin Schmidt seems to indicate that, whatever Trenberth had in mind (and, curiously, he doesn't seem to know exactly what it was,) heating of the deep ocean has never been considered a threat to surface temperature.

Roger Pielke Snr turns up in the thread too, and Schmidt dismisses most of he claims about Ocean Heat Content.  In particular, he says the ARGO system simply can't measure ocean heat moving from the top layer of the ocean to the deep ocean, whereas a skeptic meme (started by Pielke, I think) is that the "missing heat" can't be going into the deep ocean because ARGO hasn't seen it passing through the top 700 m.

This really does appear to be a very complicated topic, and it is surprising to see that this may be a case where climate scientists have contributed to a skeptic meme via their own looseness of language.

Domestic notes from the weekend

*  Yesterday morning started off with a bang, and being woken up by a loud clap of thunder at 6 am is not that common for Brisbane.  The storms seemed to hang around then for about 3 hours, and it was very dark with many close lightning strikes in my area during that time.   The weather bureau predicted a stormy summer for Brisbane, and maybe this is a sign they were right, as indeed they were this time last year when they warned the Government that conditions were right for big floods.    

*   The mother possum hasn't been seen for a few days now.  In fact, her spot under the balcony on Friday morning seemed to be occupied by two smaller possums (as far as we could tell - we could only see one head but what appeared to be two rear ends.)   What do possums do - play a game of musical nests each night, and just stay at the one nearest them when the sun comes up?

*  Had a go at making limoncello this afternoon.  It now has to sit in the cupboard for a month before being strained and ready to taste.   I'm just hoping I sterilised the bottle enough - the last time I tried to do something with lemons (preserved lemons) they went mould pretty quickly in the jar.  I hope the alcohol in limoncello helps prevent that.  The recipe being followed is this one.   I'm using vodka as the base, which is a form of alcohol which I could never see the point of drinking.  I figure that even if one's intention is simply to get drunk, surely it's more interesting doing it with something with flavour.   In any event, I was aware that fancy schmancy vodkas of all varieties were trendy for a while, particularly in the US, I think, given that I had seen a Mythbusters segment in which they were seeing if they could really tell the difference between high end brands.  And indeed I was surprised to see today just how many brands are on the shelf in Australia too, most of which are only interesting for the nifty bottle designs.  It's funny, but in two different bottle shops, the cheapest brands were actually made in France.  When did they become a producer of cheap vodka?  I also see now that many flavoured vodkas are sold, which is fair enough, I guess.  Better than drinking plain old vodka.

*  Speaking of lemons, it's spring and the lemon and lime tree are having their annual outbreak of stinkbugs.  These bugs (the flat bodied bronze orange bug) appear to be extremely common on Australian citrus, and as this article notes, they do have a very vile smell when disturbed.   They  die pretty easily with any pyrethrum garden spray, but the big problem is reaching the one sitting up near the top of the lemon tree.  (By the way, while Googling around on the topic, I came this page:  Stink Bug Field Guide for Brisbane.   We do seem to have many, many stinking bugs in this region - something to be proud of, I guess...)

*  OK, this has nothing in particular to do with my weekend, apart from the fact that I just read it.  The Taiwanese have an indigenous population?  I didn't know that, although I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, because I had heard about the Ainu, being the Japanese equivalent.  Funnily enough, if you watch the video at this link, you'll see a spokesman for the Ainu who looks a little bit like a younger version of Geoff Clark.

*  I found out today that the McFeast is still on the menu at McDonald's as a "birthday special", but I remain concerned how much longer this will be the case.

*  I guess I didn't mind the last Dr Who episode of this season, but as the final episode in this season's big story arc of how the Doctor avoids his (apparent) death at the start of the season, it did come up with a trick that seems just a little too "easy", if you ask me.  Again, I see the Guardian (gosh they discuss this show a lot) has a long article about whether everyone is completely happy with the direction it has taken under Steven Moffat.  It's good to see that I not alone in preferring the better stand alone stories to the overblown (and increasingly silly in their way)  story arcs that Moffat seems most interested in. 

Again...

That's: dodopathy.blogspot.com

Nasty utilitarians

Moral philosophy: Goodness has nothing to do with it | The Economist

Here's a short article about the apparent personality traits of the small-ish number of people who (in a thought experiment) think strongly enough of utilitarianism to kill someone innocent to save the lives of others.

Perhaps not surprisingly, they don't appear to be very nice:

They found a strong link between utilitarian answers to moral dilemmas (push the fat guy off the bridge) and personalities that were psychopathic, Machiavellian or tended to view life as meaningless. Utilitarians, this suggests, may add to the sum of human happiness, but they are not very happy people themselves.

Always had my doubts about them!

Possible explanations

Gas 'n' Air - Technology Review

Wow, that was quick. The link above has quite a few papers from arXiv talking about how the faster than light neutrino experiment may be flawed, and/or possible explanations as to what is going on if the result is real.

Strange experiment

Single dose of hallucinogen may create lasting personality change

I'm not entirely sure why anyone would want to take a shot at magic mushrooms if you knew ahead of time about this:

A single high dose of the hallucinogen psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called "magic mushrooms," was enough to bring about a measureable personality change lasting at least a year in nearly 60 percent of the 51 participants in a new study, according to the Johns Hopkins researchers who conducted it.

Lasting change was found in the part of the personality known as openness, which includes traits related to imagination, aesthetics, feelings, abstract ideas and general broad-mindedness. Changes in these traits, measured on a widely used and scientifically validated personality inventory, were larger in magnitude than changes typically observed in healthy adults over decades of life experiences, the scientists say. Researchers in the field say that after the age of 30, personality doesn't usually change significantly.

"Normally, if anything, openness tends to decrease as people get older," says study leader Roland R. Griffiths, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

All of the participants were already "spiritual", however, and the fact that they were agreeing to an experiment with a hallucinogen indicates something about their "openness" already, surely. The article also notes:

As a word of caution, Griffiths also notes that some of the study participants reported strong fear or anxiety for a portion of their daylong psilocybin sessions, although none reported any lingering harmful effects. He cautions, however, that if hallucinogens are used in less well supervised settings, the possible fear or anxiety responses could lead to harmful behaviors.

Count me out, thanks.

The Right gets a recruit

Angry Anderson has joined the National Party and is looking at running for a Federal seat.

This post from his blog: The New World Order of the New Free World gives some idea of the scattergun mind of someone who the Nationals (and Abbott) seem to think would be a good candidate:

Do we really believe that this push for a Tax on Carbon pollution is about anything but raising more revenue for the government and the United Nations in league with the international banks using the “New World Order” as a blueprint for the Globalisation of the New Free World?

Are we so naive that we have ignored those warnings written about, not so long ago, by the likes of Toffler and his ilk about how these unseen people will have to come up with more and more ways to separate us from our hard earned cash?

I, for one, do not believe in this transparent lie of global warming, global warming created by us the population. Talking of population, why isn’t anyone talking about that as an issue related to this matter – the world is overpopulated but is anyone talking about reducing or slowing the population growth as a measure to slow this so called warming? No they aren’t!...

David Suzuki once said that to be a productive citizen of the world we should think globally and act locally. This is what we need to do now, to even begin to address issues that do now affect us and will affect us for years to come. The World was created by the perfect hand and prolific forests were always integral to the quality of life on this planet; I am suspicious of the attempt to take our focus away from such obvious problems as rampant logging of old growth forest and replacing them with new less understood but seemingly “hipper” subject matter....

I get suspicious. Who is pushing so hard? Gee, it’s big business cleverly or not so cleverly disguised as “do gooders”. This has been pointed out in emails that have been circulating in recent times worth investigating. Wouldn’t be the first time the international banking cartels have duped and enlisted the young and outraged to do their dirty work whilst preying on the fears of the older working population threatening them with their mortgage and livelihood, keeping us distracted with issues, like trying to educate our kids and keeping a roof over our heads, while they plot and scheme to fleece yet more of our money away from us.

The Right of politics in Australia and the USA , with few exceptions, is truly in an embarrassing state at the moment.

An Australian birthday

I had missed this last week - the neighbour's out of tune birthday trumpet serenade that Prime Minister Julia Gillard received on the national news.  (It's the first part of the video after the newsreader's intro):


This strikes me as a very distinctly Australian thing to happen - a sign of our egalitarianism that includes not taking the office of Prime Minister too seriously, and a politician who is definitely not "up herself". 

Domestic report

Here’s what’s been going on at home:

*  In cute news:   the possum that lives under the balcony (well, most days anyway -  it would appear that brushtail possums like to keep alternative abodes going) has a baby.   My wife spotted this first, while handing the mother a piece of fruit.  The possum leaned down from its perch and a pink furless body was able to be seen in the forward facing pouch.  I saw it myself yesterday, when feeding it watermelon and kiwifruit.   It will be some months before the baby is furry and adorably cute, like this one, and I hope we get to see more of it.  Here's a recent photo of our possum eating:


She is much less shy than before, but I hope she never learns to knock on the front door.

*  Yesterday involved a bit of ambling driving around Brisbane, and on a whim, seeing we were at Hamilton already, I took a drive out to Pinkenba.

I grew up on the north side of Brisbane, and a trip out past the old airport to the strange combination of oil refinery, sewerage plant, houses and riverside shacks known as Pinkenba was always a novelty.   I am happy to report that a trip to this strange part of town is still interesting.   In fact, I am amazed as to how much of the old riverside land out beyond “Pinkenba Village” has been converted to light industrial.  During the weekday, at least, it looks as if it would be a much more lively place than it used to be in the 60’s and 70’s.  

There are more houses there than I remembered:  some of them not too bad looking for the area.   The small primary school, which looks very much like the old Nudgee Beach primary school also on the northside, appears to have closed late last year.

But the local hotel “The Pink” still exists, and from its website, looks a lot better on the inside than from the outside.  (A prominent sign for the scheduled “Hot Girls” shows mark it out as place catering for young male workers who go to the expanded industrial estate, I guess.)    While we drove past it, I suddenly remembered that I had brought something unusual from the bottle shop there once when I was young and used to visit unusual pubs occasionally for something to do.  I think it was there that I bought a bottle of Gekkeikan sake – the only brand you could ever get in Australia decades ago.    I didn’t care for the taste, but it represented a sort of foreshadowing of a turn my life would take.  Certainly, I enjoy sake a lot now…

The other reason to visit Pinkenba is because from the road you can get very close to one of the cavernous Qantas maintenance hangers, and watch planes being towed in if you’re lucky.   In fact, it might be Qantas workers, for all I know, who frequent the Hot Girls shows at the Pink; but I certainly hope it is only after work and they have their work on their minds while they check the fuselage of a 767.

*   Went kite flying today.   Brisbane is not the best place for kite flying, at least if you are not near the coast, as I just don’t think it is that breezy a place.  [Well, unless you are dealing with a summer storm, in which case it can be very breezy indeed, but only in short bursts.]  But today was a good day for my daughter to get out a birthday present she got last year from a friend.  It was from Aldi, which was a bad sign, and indeed it needed work with a pair of scissors usually reserved for eyebrows and nose hair to get rods into pockets which otherwise did not exist.  But despite all of this, it flew quite well.

I find getting a kite airborne and keeping there for more than 10 minutes at a time is an unusually satisfying experience.  I’m not sure about my daughter: I was reluctant to hand it over to her at all.  (I’m joking, but as it turned out, she did relinquish it to me often.)

Like taking kids fishing, having a go at kite flying with them is something that just has to be tried  at least once.   That reminds me, we need to go fishing again to see if they can catch something next time.  The first attempt only resulted in my wife getting something.   My manly abilities to provide food from the wild for my family are still in question.

An alternative outlet

Introducing Dodopathy.

May be gone a while ....

I really need to concentrate more on work at the moment. I probably won't post again until next weekend - possibly longer. Wish me luck with resisting the urge to post, and my attempt at ignoring the internet generally. (But I will be back.)

The Doctor is back

After complaining about Dr Who recently, I just wanted to note that the last two episodes, which were "stand alone" stories, were really quite good.

It confirms my earlier observation that the big story arcs are the worst aspect of the show now. It seems that I am not alone in these thoughts.

An interesting idea

Gravitational Waves Can Explain Dark Energy And Axis of Evil, Says Cosmologist - Technology Review

I've had a look at the paper, which is not written for the lay person, of course, but I remain a little uncertain as to whether he is claimed that this gravitational wave idea could explain away the apparent acceleration of the universe entirely, or only partially.

Thinking about teenagers

Teenage Brains - Pictures, More From National Geographic Magazine

Mind Hacks liked the above article in National Geographic a lot, as it gives a fresh perspective on why teenagers take risks, other than the overly simplistic "brain's not fully developed yet" meme.

In the garden today…

My wife grouped some flowers together in pots a couple of  months ago, and they look very nice now:

"Overshare" (The correct name for Facebook)

Facebook Ticker: Mark Zuckerberg's terrible plan to get us to share everything we do on the Web. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine

I saw something on TV about his last night, and thought it looked terrible.

Manjoo actually hates the whole devaluation of privacy that Facebook imposes much less than me, but his point is still good: if Facebook makes it easier to share any old rubbish, it is killing taste and the exercise of good judgement.

About Ebert

Life Itself - A Memoir - By Roger Ebert - Book Review - NYTimes.com

Maureen Dowd wrote this review of movie critic Roger Ebert's new memoir.

I am not the world's greatest fan of Ebert's reviews. I tend to find him inconsistent; sometimes too forgiving, sometimes far too nitpicking. He doesn't write with the depth and wit of Pauline Kael, but still, I am usually curious to see what he thought of a movie if I have seen it and have my own strong reaction for or against.

Sometimes he really despairs of modern tastes in movies, and I understand the sentiment. He really hated Kick-Ass, for example, and called it morally reprehensible. This half tempts me to see it, because I don't really like morally reprehensible things to pass without enough condemnation.

I knew almost nothing of his personal life, except that his writing sometimes gave me the feeling that he may be gay. Turns out he's married (well, I think I did read that some time ago) to an African American (I didn't know that), but he did marry late due to the influence of a very domineering mother. Dowd writes:

Ebert writes about his own alcoholism — his last drink was in 1979 — and that of his mother, who wielded a ’50s Catholic sexual repression that retarded Roger’s ability to “make free” with girls and produced a few scenes with a whiff of ­“Psycho.”

His mother’s recriminations about his girlfriends, as well as his drinking, caused him to live vicariously through movies and kept him “unmarried for an unnatural length of time. Did I know drinking made me unmarriageable, or did I simply put drinking ahead of marriage?”

Well, certainly sounds like the conditions were right for my suspicion.

The review spends a fair bit of time on Ebert's illness (jaw and related cancers which have led to massive facial surgery which failed, and he's now unable to speak and has to eat through a gastric feeding tube.) Poor guy. As Dowd notes, though, he's remarkably upbeat about the fact that he is still alive.

Don't hold your breath

Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos? | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

As I hoped, Cosmic Variance has the best commentary on the faster than light neutrino story I've seen. I liked this in comments too:

a nicely nuanced and non-dismissive interpretation of a nicely nuanced and non-hyperbolic announcement that has, predictably but unfortunately, resulted in a comically un-nuanced (perhaps even anti-nuanced) avalanche of headlines.

Seems about right.

Violence down

The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker - review | Books | The Guardian

This review contains a detailed summary of Pinker's book long argument that humanity has become much less violent over the centuries. It sounds like a fascinating read. Here are some extracts (of the review, not the book):

Pinker thinks that most of what we believe about violence is wrong. To convince us he sets himself two tasks. First, to demonstrate that the past was a far nastier place than we might have imagined. Second, that the present is far nicer than we might have noticed. So to start with we get a litany of horrors from ancient and not-so-ancient history: a catalogue of the unspeakable things that human beings have traditionally been willing to do to each other. This is slightly overdone, since anyone who thinks that, say, medieval Europe was a friendly, peaceable place can't have thought about it very much. Still, it is hard not to be occasionally struck dumb by just how horrible people used to be. The image I can't get out of my head is of a hollow brass cow used for roasting people alive. Its mouth was left open so that their screams would sound like the cow was mooing, adding to the amusement of onlookers.

The real fascination of this book is how we got from being a species that enjoyed the spectacle of roasting each other alive to one that believes child-killers have the same rights as everyone else. ...

At the heart of this book is Pinker's careful, compelling account of why the 20th century does not invalidate his thesis that violence is in a long decline. He makes his case in three ways. First, with a multitude of tables and charts he shows that our view of the century is coloured by presentism: we think it's the worst simply because it's the most recent and we know more about it. If we had equivalent coverage of the whole of human history (how many books have been published about the second world war compared to, say, the Mongol conquests of the 13th century?) we would see that all of it has been scarred by mass slaughters, some of them proportionately even worse than the horrors of the past hundred years.

Second, Pinker argues that the violence of the 20th century is best understood as a series of random spasms rather than part of a trend.

Heartwarming

Forgotten Japanese War Diary Returns Home - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

This was a lovely story on 7.30 last night, about the return of a war diary to the daughter of a Japanese naval officer who died on New Guinea during the World War 2.

Getting closer

London fashion week finale: menswear - in pictures | Fashion | guardian.co.uk

Have a look at some of the photos half way through this slide show from fashion week, and see if you agree that we seem to be coming close to actually having the Urban Sombrero.

If you want more to worry about re methane...

Try reading this post: Idiot Tracker: More methane madness

An interesting situation

Paul Sheehan, who really hates this Federal Labor government, nonetheless starts his column this morning with the observation that he doesn't actually disagree with an assessment that Tony Abbott has " a streak of bogan" in him.

Sheehan, of course, then paints this as meaning he cuts through to the electorate. I take it as meaning that, despite being a Rhodes scholar (Sheehan notes he has degrees in law, economics and philosophy) Abbott does not sound very smart.

I mean, honestly, no one (even his admirers in the commentariate) can accuse him of approaching his current job from some grand and consistent intellectual position.

Yet the most interesting thing about Sheehan's article is that he goes on to explain that Abbott refusing to concede to amendments the government wants to let the "Malaysian solution" proceed is a mistake, and will be recognized as such by the "bogans" who admire him.

This is, I think, potentially important. Sheehan is always a conservative populist at heart, and despite the waffling Paul Kelly and the inconsistent Greg Sheridan in The Australian both strongly expressing the same view, I suspect Abbott and his supporters in Parliament are much more likely to be influenced by Sheehan's opinion.

Of course, the opinion they probably value most, Andrew Bolt's, is strangely ambiguous at the moment. Sure he wrote a column saying Labor should just go with Nauru, but I suspect he probably sees potential danger to Abbott too if the government doesn't follow his suggestion, but is unwilling to say so. Bolt is obsessed with Gillard being replaced, and the unprincipled games he has played over the last couple of months to see this achieved mean he opinion on anything political at the moment has to filtered through this lens.

Liquid something

The day I saw a saint’s blood become liquid

Apropos of nothing, the Catholic Herald has a description by a priest of his witnessing a decade ago the "marvel" (the Church does not formally acknowledge it as a miracle) of the liquefaction of the blood of St Januarius in Naples.

There is also a link to a helpful Wikipedia article on the saint, which gives some details of the research that has been conducted on the "blood". (The most popular scientific explanation is that it is a thixotropic substance - a gel that liquefies when agitated.) The simple matter of extracting a small amount and putting it in a mass spectrometer is not on the cards, apparently, but I was surprised to learn that a light spectroscope has been used a couple of times, including as recently as 1989. These results are said to be consistent with the vial containing hemoglobin.

Wikipedia also mentions that there are a couple of other saints' blood relics around Italy which liquefy, and apparently it doesn't happen in other countries. This does suggest that the answer lies in an Italian who came up with a neat thixotropic compound, and put it to innovative use in the 1300's, but it is unusual that this type of compound is not mentioned in science until 1863 (this is mentioned in the update following).

UPDATE: I see this morning that there is a really good, detailed report by what looks like an Italian skeptic group (although the tone of article is moderate). It details how there have been attempts, going back to last century, to make mixtures which behave like the relic. The "marvel" has been the subject of skepticism for a long time.

Did everyone remember to bring their electrodes to school this morning?

BBC News - Stimulating brain with electricity aids learning speed

Uh-oh (for methane)

Contribution of oceanic gas hydrate dissociation to the formation of Arctic Ocean methane plumes

The abstract:

Vast quantities of methane are trapped in oceanic hydrate deposits, and there is concern that a rise in the ocean temperature will induce dissociation of these hydrate accumulations, potentially releasing large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Because methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, such a release could have dramatic climatic consequences. The recent discovery of active methane gas venting along the landward limit of the gas hydrate stability zone (GHSZ) on the shallow continental slope (150 m to 400 m) west of Svalbard suggests that this process may already have begun, but the source of the methane has not yet been determined. This study performs 2-D simulations of hydrate dissociation in conditions representative of the Arctic Ocean margin to assess whether such hydrates could contribute to the observed gas release. The results show that shallow, low-saturation hydrate deposits, if subjected to recently observed or future predicted temperature changes at the seafloor, can release quantities of methane at magnitudes similar to what has been observed, and that the releases will be localized near the landward limit of the GHSZ. Both gradual and rapid warming is simulated, along with a parametric sensitivity analysis, and localized gas release is observed for most of the cases. These results resemble the recently published observations and strongly suggest that hydrate dissociation and methane release as a result of climate change may be a real phenomenon, that it could occur on decadal timescales, and that it already may be occurring.

Dam ideas

Why damn northern Australia? - The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

OK, so the author is from the Wilderness Society. He still goes on to fill in some of the background as to why North Queensland (and the Ord River project) is not the new agricultural nirvana that one might hope.

I had been wondering what happened to the Ord River dam - I had a vague idea that it had never lived up to its promise. It is a long way from anywhere, but it would appear there are other problems too.

Thoughts on watching 7.30 last night

Let play pretends

Burning Man: Why would anyone go? - By Seth Stevenson - Slate Magazine

I do find this event hard to fathom, but I think someone in comments comes close:

I love how today's version of "Hippies" are upper-middle-class white people with plenty of money to take some time off from work, pay hundreds of dollars to get to/in an event where they can pretend they're "Counter-Culture" for a weekend.

Appalling stuff

More Cherry Ice from Joe D’Aleo | Open Mind

Read this, and the earlier post it links to at the beginning, to see the appalling examples of dishonest misinformation that get posted at Watts Up With That as part of climate change "skepticism".

A strange case of celebrity

gulfnews : Yemeni enjoys drinking motor oil and radiator water:

Riyadh: A Yemeni resident of Makkah who is employed at a vehicle maintenance workshop has been stunning viewers by drinking engine oil, radiator and battery water.

The Saudi Akaz newspaper said on Thursday that the Yemeni, Mohammad Omar, nicknamed "Bin Omar", drinks two to four cans of all motor oil daily.

He told the newspaper that "I enjoy drinking radiator, battery and brake water, and eat daily 2.5kg of grease used for cars. I have been doing that for quite a long time".

Omar added that he has been doing that as he spends 900 Saudi Rials per month to buy oil, grease and their derivatives as meals. "Praise Allah, my health is good", he said.

Uh huh.

Malaysian solution not the end of the world

Toxic Policy Helps No One | Asylum Seekers

It's interesting to note that in this article in which onshore compulsory detention for processing asylum seekers is strongly criticised, the writer still ends on this note:

That said, it is also prudent for Australia to pursue a regional agreement to handle the huge flow of refugees from strife-torn nations such as Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma and Sri Lanka. No single country can cope with this massive movement of people - not Australia, not Malaysia, Thailand or India.

On paper at least, the deal with Malaysia, which also provides for community-based processing, appears to be a balanced alternative to Nauru and Manus Island, where people would be detained in cultural and geographic isolation while their claims were assessed.

As I have noted before, the local UNHRC was also not appalled at the Malaysian idea, and Coalition supporters who have been acting as if it was the worst idea in the world have been ignoring the psychological suffering of the Nauru system which had originally led those who voted for Rudd to have some sympathy towards relaxing the whole system.

My belief is that voters don't know what they want for the asylum seeker issue. This is reflected in the polls which have actually indicated a majority support on shore processing, yet a large number also think the Coalition does a better job on the issue than Labor. This contradiction makes no sense at all, if you ask me. If the explanation is that people hate asylum seekers arriving by boat, and expect a government to stop that, how do they reconcile that with support for on shore processing which is surely going to do nothing to discourage boats from arriving?

I feel sorry for the Labor government trying to work out how to keep the very confused public happy on this issue.

More complicated that you thought?

We need to talk about HPV vaccination – seriously - opinion - 16 September 2011 - New Scientist

It's a bit surprising to see New Scientist running an opinion piece that questions whether the grounds for universal vaccination of girls with the HPV vaccine are really well enough established.

A possible explanation

Deep oceans can mask global warming for decade-long periods

Here's a good, succinct report on modelling that indicates the deep oceans indeed may be absorbing the "missing heat" that Trenberth wrote about famously in his "Climategate" email.

To track where the heat was going, Meehl and colleagues used a powerful software tool known as the Community Climate System Model, which was developed by scientists at NCAR and the Department of Energy with colleagues at other organizations. Using the model's ability to portray complex interactions between the atmosphere, land, oceans, and sea ice, they performed five simulations of global temperatures.

The simulations, which were based on projections of future greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, indicated that temperatures would rise by several degrees during this century. But each simulation also showed periods in which temperatures would stabilize for about a decade before climbing again. For example, one simulation showed the global average rising by about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 degrees Celsius) between 2000 and 2100, but with two decade-long hiatus periods during the century.

During these hiatus periods, simulations showed that extra energy entered the oceans, with deeper layers absorbing a disproportionate amount of heat due to changes in oceanic circulation. The vast area of ocean below about 1,000 feet (300 meters) warmed by 18% to 19% more during hiatus periods than at other times. In contrast, the shallower global ocean above 1,000 feet warmed by 60% less than during non-hiatus periods in the simulation.

"This study suggests the missing energy has indeed been buried in the ocean," Trenberth says. "The heat has not disappeared, and so it cannot be ignored. It must have consequences."

I wonder if work is being done on measurements to confirm it?

The future of food guesswork

Increasing Focus on Climate Change/Food Crisis:Beware ‘Single Factor’ Explanations, Uncertainties | The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media

I just note this article from earlier this year that details a lot of the uncertainty that revolves around the issue of future food production under global warming and increased CO2.

I would suspect that, since the last IPCC report, there would have to be greater concern developing about the future effect of extreme weather events on local and global production.

A bit of a worry...

A first glimpse at model results for the next IPCC assessment | Serendipity

Quite an interesting post here about some modelling runs which show the importance at looking at the long term future (not just up to the end of the century.)

Notes from all over–Spring edition

*  Because those making $1,000,000 a year are hurting.   How silly are Republicans who chose to call Obama’s proposal that tax be increased for the rich “class warfare”?     Very stupid, in my books; but then again, what do I expect from a party that is being held captive on what it can say about climate change by the Tea Party element?  

*  Jerry Pournelle has looked at the new NASA heavy lift vehicle proposal and is not impressed.   I don’t trust his skeptic assessment of climate change, but he knows a lot about rocketry and its developmental history, and his criticisms here are worth considering.

*  Americans not only have an un-natural degree of embarrassment over the sight of a used clothesline, they are not big on washing clothes in cold water either.  (But then, nor are Germans, according to the article.)   I would be very surprised if the majority of Australian washing is not done in cold water now.  The report says the Japanese mainly use cold water; why is there resistance to the idea in the US?

*  Good news for the PM?   At least one Labor idea, a mining tax, is quite popular according to a survey.   This is not the first survey to show this.   Doesn’t this mean that the Coalition promise to undo everything Labor implements might not get quite the universal acclaim that they expect it to during an actual election campaign, despite the fact that people are at the moment  in such an irrational  “anything but Gillard” mood  that they couldn’t care less what Tony Abbott is saying?

*  The New Yorker has a somewhat amusing article on sexual revolutions of the past.  I liked the bit about the “celestial bed” (top of page 2) in particular, because I hadn’t heard of it before.   It might have been a bit disturbing for the neighbours, I expect.

*  The possum under the balcony is getting and more used to us.  We feed it fruit most days now: 

Fish success

Last year, I posted a Mediterranean baked fish recipe which had been a success. For whatever reason, I haven't ever cooked that again, but last night I tried another Italian type of baked fish recipe by Neil Perry, which was in last weekend's Sydney Morning Herald. It too was a success, so I'll paraphrase it here:

Thinly slice a fennel bulb, a red onion, and a red (or as I used, yellow) capsicum. Skin, seed and dice four tomatoes and chop up a bit. Put in a flat type of casserole and mix most of 60 ml of olive oil. Add 6 anchovies, as many capers as you like (washed), and olives, and mix up with the veges. The recipe called for chilli flakes too, but as the kids were eating it, I left them out. Season liberally with sale and pepper.

Roast in 200 degree oven (uncovered, but you might have to stir around a bit half way through if your oven has hot spots) for one hour.

Put white fish fillets in a single layer (hence the flat casserole pan) into the sauce, put the rest of the olive oil over the fish, and back to the oven for maybe 15 minutes.

The roasted veges make an excellent sauce, and even the kids were happy to eat it (although I didn't serve them the olives.)

Thank you Neil: very nice.

(But then, I love fennel in anything.)