The new, improved Kevin

Honestly, it's not just because I don't want Tony Abbott to win, and everyone knows I have long disliked Kevin Rudd and did not think he deserved his win in 2007; but....

I think it's undeniable that Rudd gave an extraordinarily self assured and good performance on his first 7.30 interview last night.   I feel pretty confident that it would have been causing no small amount of anxiety in Abbott's office as they watched it.  

Then this morning, the headline in the Australian indicates Rudd doing exactly the kind of thing that I had been thinking Gillard needed to do:  be seen to be "punishing" the New South Wales Right.

I am not sure what has happened at News Corp overnight, but even Julia Gillard is getting (well deserved) credit for the grace and dignity with which she took her loss of position last week.  This cannot hurt Labor overall.

And back at the ABC, Alan Kohler makes the point I have elsewhere:  Julia Gillard was remarkably unlucky in many respects (I'll do a post listing them one day), and it is certainly possible that any new government will reap the benefits of some positive changes just coming into effect now:

If the ALP loses this year it can count itself very unlucky indeed: the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd Government will have exactly encompassed the second-biggest crash and world recession in history followed by the slowest, most difficult recovery.

Compare that with John Howard, who, after winning that 2001 election, governed during one of the great economic booms in history, escaping into satisfied retirement 24 days after the stock market peaked.

Julia Gillard, in fact, was doubly unlucky because a key part of America's recovery from the bust that its own credit excesses had caused was the debasement of its currency. When the 2010 election was held on August 21, the Australian dollar exchange rate was 89.38 US cents on its way to parity by the end of that year and $US1.10 by mid 2011.

So by coincidence, Gillard's leadership more or less exactly encompassed the period of Aussie dollar strength, caused entirely by US dollar weakness. The good news is that it has allowed 2 percentage points to come off interest rates because of low inflation, but that didn't help Australia's first female prime minister.

 I would not be surprised to see significant betting market odds moving towards Labor as a result of all of this.

Update:   More news of good politics from Rudd:

Kevin Rudd has offered Tony Abbott a series of unprecedented briefings from the nation's security chiefs as he attempts to turn the tables on the Opposition Leader in the debate on asylum seekers.

The Prime Minister has written to Mr Abbott promising access to the heads of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Immigration Department, saying the coalition should have the latest confidential information on people smuggling.

Rudd's approach to this is very much like Peter Beattie, I think:   admit a past mistake, but move forward with a positive "we can fix it, though" attitude, and people might accept it.

And he is making Abbott look defensive and as if he is the one playing politics if he won't take the briefings on offer.

One final point:  Rudd's manner of speaking last night seemed to me to have few of his old Rudd-isms.    It was more direct, and (if I recall correctly) had none of his faux folkiness which so many have found annoying in the past. 

Update 2:  Anxiety levels are rising at Catallaxy, and the name calling increasing.  How amusing.  

Whoops

I seem to have found a way to delete comments by accident when using my tablet last night.   Two were disappeared, but it wasn't intentional..and I am sorry about that.

How they deal with child abuse allegations in Poland

Poland: A dark side of the Catholic Church | The Economist

Someone writing in The Economist in May this year:

One of the three items also featured my own experience whilst trying to investigate a case for France 24 television. We had spoken to a man who told us he had been abused in the late 1970s by someone who was now rector of a parish in Szczecin. We travelled to the parish and found the cleric in question (who cannot be named for legal reasons) leading mass. Afterwards, I asked him whether he had any comment to make on the allegations, and got an astonishing reaction. Accusing us of filming illegally, the priest led both me and the cameraman into the rectory… and locked us in.

After a few minutes we tried to escape, and were violently blocked by the cleric. Fortunately, in the scuffle that ensued he dropped his keys and we were able to get out. Our detention had lasted less than ten minutes and nobody was hurt. But since we had managed to film the whole thing on two cameras, we gave some of the footage to local journalists.The story made the national news the following day, prompting a degree of fuss, though not exactly an uproar.

What is remarkable is the reaction from the Church. For two days neither parish nor diocese would comment at all. Then came a statement from the diocese spokesman to the effect that they were looking into the possibility of charging us with trespassing and slander. According to prosecutors no such complaint has yet been lodged. We had already reported the incident to the police.

The spokesman also told TVN he had no knowledge of paedophilia charges against the priest in question. The very same spokesman’s signature is on documents relating to the formal complaint the victim lodged with the diocese more than two years ago

A couple of hydrogen fuel cell car stories

Acal Energy says its new hydrogen fuel cell is good for 300,000 miles

From the company's press release:

"Degradation has long held back the potential for the widespread use of hydrogen fuel cells in the automotive sector. Breaking the 10,000 hour threshold during rigorous automotive testing is a key reason our hydrogen fuel cell design and chemistry has been selected for trial by a number of the 6 top automotive OEMs."

He continued: "With our technology, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles can drive over 500 miles per tank of fuel, and can be refuelled in less than five minutes, emitting only water. For a driver, the only difference from driving an internal combustion engine car is what's going in the tank, but for the environment the significance of zero carbon emissions is enormous".

I wonder how much a tank of hydrogen will cost, though...

This article Honda, GM plan to establish alliance for fuel-cell vehicle development indicates that quite a few car companies are pursuing the technology, so maybe there is something to it.

The Australian's war on science hots up?

Today it's aging economist Maurice Newman with a litany of crap to the theme of "climate change is bunk" in The Australian.   By the end of the week, it will probably be IPA anti wind gadfly Alan Moran.  We all know from off hand remarks made elsewhere on the web by Judith Sloan (the paper's "contributing economics editor") that she thinks its all overblown rubbish too, but she doesn't tackle the topic head on.   (There are childcare teacher "dimwits" to call out, after all.)

Seriously, is anyone keeping a count on the number of anti climate change articles appearing in the Australian in the last few months?  My impression is that their frequency is increasing, perhaps in anticipation of an election? 

Abbott's scheme taken apart

Tony Abbott's paid parental leave policy: high cost, low benefit | Business | guardian.co.uk

Go to the link for a cool, calm explanation from Greg Jericho as to why Tony Abbott's parental leave is too generous, and too expensive, for no good reason.

A sad case

Parents warned after girl's battery death | The Australian

I for one didn't realise lithium button batteries were as dangerous as this for little kids:

SAFETY experts are trying to educate parents about the dangers of button batteries after the death of a young girl who swallowed one. 
 
Specialists tried desperately to save the four-year-old after she was taken to a hospital on Queensland's Sunshine Coast on Sunday with stomach bleeding.

But there was little that could be done for her.

Safety experts say they're worried parents don't fully understand the dangers in so many household items.

Kidsafe Queensland says an estimated four children a week are rushed to emergency departments across Australia each week after swallowing the batteries.

The biggest danger is when parents don't realise their child has swallowed a button battery, which tends to lodge in kids' throats.

Often parents can simply think their child is coming down with something, with symptoms including vomiting, coughing, abdominal pain and fever.

The Tony Abbott fence straddle continues

Coalition Blow to Local Government Referendum

Tony Abbott is a flaky politician who personally supports the constitutional amendment to clarify once and for all the Federal Government's ability to directly fund local council, but has crumbled under pressure from his dimwit Tea Party/IPA/conspiracist wing of the Coalition to find a way to try to ensure it won't pass.

He's a real disgrace, a million miles from being a "conviction politician" on anything.

A new weapon against high blood pressure

Removing nerves connecting kidney to the brain shown to reduce high blood pressure

Have I heard something about this before?  I can't remember.  Anyway, seems promising (and not overly invasive) for those with really serious blood pressure problems:

A new technique that involves removing the nerves connecting the kidney to the brain has shown to significantly reduce blood pressure and help lower the risk of stroke, heart and renal disease in patients. The procedure, which has very few side effects, has already shown promising results in hard-to-treat cases of high blood pressure....

The procedure, which has been successfully trialled on 19 patients at the BHI, is performed using a fine tube that is inserted in an artery in the patient's leg and positioned in the artery feeding blood to the patient's kidneys. The nerves to the kidney are around the artery and ablated by radio-frequency energy that is emitted from the tube....

Dr Nightingale, who runs the Specialist Hypertension Clinic at the BHI, said: "We have used renal denervation in patients who have hard-to-treat blood pressure. Similar to the results from the basic science experiments, we have also seen reductions in blood pressure which has been essential for reducing the risk of heart and renal disease, and stroke in our patients. This is an exciting new treatment for these patients who have struggled with high blood pressure which tablets are not controlling."

Dr Baumbach, an interventional cardiologist who performed the treatment, added: "The technique is very straight forward, performed as a day case and there are no side-effects. It is becoming a popular technique for patients with both resistance and poor tolerability to high blood pressure medication."

Does Andrew Bolt ever read Catallaxy threads?

Andrew Bolt starts off doing the right thing by calling out anonymous hateful twits who went on line to attack new Labor minister Ed Husic for taking his oath on a Koran, but then he makes a comment which indicates he must (if he was honest) also consider the threads of the Catallaxy (the posts of which seem to supply 30 -50% of his content now) to be the hate-filled poisonous pits:

His anonymous haters are of no account, and do not deserve the attention they are getting. There are too many such trolls on every chat site in the country. They do not deserve to intrude on adult conversation.

Hilariously, the "adult conversation" line is routinely used by the Bolt refugees who have taken over Catallaxy threads as a rejoinder to someone who disagrees with them.

Compare and contrast

Catholic Bishops in the news at Slate:

According to documents released today, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, moved nearly $57 million into a cemetery trust fund in 2007 specifically to shield it from lawsuits by victims of clergy sexual abuse. The New York Times has the scoop:

[T]he files released Monday contain a letter [Dolan] wrote to the Vatican in 2007, in which he explained that by transferring the assets, “I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.”

The Vatican moved swiftly to approve the request, the files show, even though it often took years to remove known abusers from the priesthood.

The files also reveal graphic details of the alleged abuse, including new revelations about its magnitude:

Archbishop Listecki released a letter last week warning Catholics in his archdiocese that the documents could shake their faith and trying to explain the actions of church leaders while offering apologies to victims.

“Prepare to be shocked,” he wrote. “There are some graphic descriptions about the behavior of some of these priest offenders.”

 Catholic Bishops as recently discussed at Father Z's blog:

From a reader:

When I was in grade school (1990′s), I was taught by a very devout teacher that one should genuflect (kneel?) on both knees with a slight bow of the head when entering/leaving the pew during adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.  I have never really seen this any place else, or even heard it discussed.  I don’t recall my grandfather ever doing this, and he spent at least an hour or more before the Blessed Sacrament each week and went to grade school in the 1930′s when all but one of his teachers were nuns.  What is the proper way to genuflect before the exposed Blessed Sacrament?  Thanks!

It is possible, even probable, that there were some variations of practice when the Blessed Sacrament was exposed. Also, conferences of bishops can, by and large, determine proper practices for Catholics in their regions.  If memory serves, some bishops conferences have eliminated the distinction of the “double-genuflection” when the Blessed Sacrament is exposed.  FAIL.

Against the IPA and the whinging anti-nanny staters

One hundred and fifty ways the nanny state is good for us

Simon Chapman attacks the IPA and its generic and predictable "the nanny state has gone too far!" campaign quite effectively, I think; even if one or two on his list of 150 laws which are "good for us" can be quibbled over.

(Just looking at it quickly, the one which I immediately think is legitimately called into scientific question is uniformly enforced bicycle helmets.   I have just read a recent article in the BMJ about the contradictory evidence on this topic, and the reasons why it is so hard to be certain whether it is a net good.   What I think should be clear to everyone is that it is silly to expect city bicycle hire schemes to be wildly successful if riders have to wear helmets while on those bicycles.  Why can't at least those bicycles be exempt?)

But the funniest anti-anti nanny state come back is this quote, which I don't recall seeing before:

Similar attacks once rained down on Edwin Chadwick, the architect of the first Public Health Act in England in 1848. He proposed the first regulatory measures to control overcrowding, drinking water quality, sewage disposal and building standards.

In response, the Times thundered:

We prefer to take our chance with cholera and the rest than be bullied into health. There is nothing a man hates so much as being cleansed against his will, or having his floors swept, his walls whitewashed, his pet dung heaps cleared away.

 That attitude expressed in the The Times uses exactly the same sentiments as Tim Wilson of the IPA and his new bff, the wannabe cultural warrior Nick Cater:

 As News Limited columnist Nick Cater argues in his recent book The Lucky Culture, there is a moralistic crusade by elites who object to “so-called adults” making different choices to themselves.

By standing up against excessive taxes, rules and regulations, Australians are merely objecting to the idea they are “children emotionally and intellectually” because they, for example, like a couple of beers with their barbecue.

 In fact, the idea that The Times could object to laws requiring the cleaning up of a filthy city sounds a bit hard to believe.  But, no, Googling the quote has led me to this page, from the British Library, which confirms that  The Times did indeed editorially campaign against sanitation, as did The Economist (!)  

In fact, in comments very reminiscent of excuses given by small government economists today regarding government led responses to CO2 emissions and climate change, the British Library notes that 160 odd years ago:

While it would seem that many people - from writers like Charles Dickens to social reformers like Henry Mayhew and civil servants like Edwin Chadwick - were in favour of sanitary reform, there were those who were against it. Often, it wasn't that there was opposition to the reform itself but, rather, to the cost or the effort involved in bringing it about.

Some individuals, usually those with an economic interest in property such as landlords, objected to reform measures - including clean water for every dwelling - because of the cost involved to install them in all of their properties.

Others were sceptical that sanitary reform would even improve the population's health. For example, the journal The Economist also objected to the campaign for sanitary reform, mainly because its editor and contributors believed that cholera and other epidemic diseases and illnesses were not directly caused by poor sanitary measures.

 Talk about your lessons from history...

Some pretty good, sweary, analysis

Swear words old and new: Sexual and religious profanity giving way to sociological taboos. - Slate Magazine

There are too many swear words in this article to allow much quoting of it at this blog, but its analysis of how swearing is changing is pretty good, I think.   (Even though it fails to note one big problem with swearing - it can become a very boring verbal tic, and this should be pointed out to all swearers who can't go more than a couple of sentences before using their favourite word again.)

The point that is made regarding the "sociological" taboos is true, I think, and I agree that it, broadly speaking, a good sign:

“What you can see becoming more taboo are racial slurs, but then also anything that kind of sums someone up,” says Mohr. “So people objecting to fat. And especially something I’ve noticed just in my lifetime is retarded. People and kids on the playground just said it all the time. And now, it’s really taboo.”

McWhorter refers to these as the “sociologically abusive” words. “Not God, not genitals, but minorities,” he says, adding a few others to the list. (You know the ones.) These words and utterances, it seems, are tracing a path that is the opposite of the one currently being traversed by bastard and goddamn and other classics of the cursing genre. “Racist, sexist, fatist terms, those sort of things where you insult the way a person looks, or their ethnic identity, have become far more taboo than they used to be,” Allan says. “People with disabilities generally used to be looked at and laughed at, but that’s not allowed anymore. And it’s becoming more taboo.”

......

“Not to sound too Pollyannaish, but I think this is a positive development,” says Mohr, “a sign that culturally we are able to put ourselves in other people’s shoes a little bit more than we were in the past, and, at least notionally and linguistically, respect people of all sorts.”

No one is perfect

No economist or economics journalist is ever completely right.

Take Tim Colebatch, for example.  I've enjoyed his writing this year, but then he came out a couple of weeks ago and said Julia had to go (well, OK, he can claim poll vindication there, but I'm still not convinced), but today he makes this surprising off the cuff claim:

The reason is simple: he keeps rolling out the same old mantras, to the same rusted-on supporters, rather than trying to win the middle ground. His recent policy statements on industrial relations and northern Australia passed muster as sensible policies, but we need a lot more.

No way is the "build infrastructure and they will come" a "sensible economic policy."  In fact, the policy is just to produce a white paper about how to develop the north of Australia, looking at this "food bowl" idea (already looked at a couple of years ago and dismissed as improbable); tourism (which everyone who has been looking at Queensland for the last 3 years knows is vastly subject to currency movements beyond government control, and the weather) and "building an energy export industry" (meaning gas, an idea which private companies are already or planning on doing.)  

 Bad line, Tim.  Even if Gina still owns part of Fairfax, you must get your act together.

The other economics related matter of interest today in The Age is Michael Pascoe's column, in which he suggests Rudd could indeed make a big splash policy wise by promising to borrow a lot of cheap money to build infrastructure.  He says a lot of economists or business figures support this:

Heather Ridout, John Edwards, Warwick McKibbin, Bob Gregory and Bernie Fraser aren't a particularly radical bunch in the usual left-right sense, but to a greater or lesser degree they've all said it could be a good time for the federal government to be borrowing more, not less. The caveat is what that borrowing is spent on: not recurrent expenditure at this stage, but on capital improvements.

Professor McKibbin has been the most radical, suggesting the government borrow big, in the hundreds of billions of dollars big, at low single-digit interest rates and use the money to build infrastructure that offers double-digit rates of return.

A refinement of that broad proposal that would require less borrowing is that the government builds the infrastructure, de-risks it by maintaining ownership for a while (as it turns out the private sector has no idea how many cars might want to go through a tunnel) and then flog it off to the private sector, using the money gained to build the next stage.

Encouragingly, the NSW state budget contained an element of that very thinking in funding the $10 billion WestConnex toll road. With so many failed private-sector tunnels around the nation, the government will build the road, using its access to cheaper finance, and subsequently privatise it.

The NBN model goes part of the way along the Big Idea superhighway, even keeping the funding off the immediate government balance sheet, but it fails on one major test: demonstrable and independently adjudicated double-digit internal rate of return.

McKibbin himself admits the problem with his plan is that you couldn't trust any politician with the money – the temptation to cater for a little vested interest here, a marginal electorate there, some generous political donors everywhere, is too great.

Which is where the establishment of a genuinely independent, arms-length body to supervise the process becomes paramount – a Reserve Bank of infrastructure. Infrastructure Australia is a step in that direction but not good enough, being more of a wish-list body than a ruthless task master.

The Productivity Commission's rigours would need to be employed for a start. Those who have abused government programs in the past would need to be excluded, for example, the Victorian CFMEU after the desalination plant rorting. To be made to work properly, there would be no room for mates of any colour.

It wouldn't be easy to reverse three years of surplus worship, particularly with the opposition sure to run the obvious lines about Labor just wanting to spend and go further into disastrous debt, but it could be done.

Well, as I said on this topic a few weeks ago, I still have this skepticism about how governments (or anyone) can really work out priorities in infrastructure.   I mean, unless its directly related to an industry (a railway line from a mining area to the coast, a new boat harbour near some industry) how do you really put a productivity figure on something like a new cross city tunnel that speeds up a commute by 15 minutes a day?  

I could, I guess, live with massive infrastructure that moves hard towards green energy; but I'm sure many economists would argue that the right technology is something about which governments should not be attempting to pick winners.

A high speed rail system has some Green credentials, but the sparse population that most of it will run through makes it questionable for a country this size.

So, my problem remains:  sure, Pascoe's idea sounds reasonable - but show me the infrastructure that immediately makes sense, and then I'll be completely convinced.

Not to be tried at home

I see that I missed a post at Mind Hacks a few weeks ago about the history of taking drugs in the most unconventional way.  Many wry comments are inevitably to be made when discussing this:

The earliest accounts of rectal administration of psychoactive drugs come from the Ancient Mayan civilization where ritual enemas were commonly used to induce states of trance and were widely depicted on carvings and pottery.

The image above is a Mayan carving depicting a priest giving reclining man a large ritual enema to the point where he sees winged reptile Gods flying overhead. Sorry hipsters, your parties suck.

It wasn’t just the Mayans, though. The historical use of psychoactive enemas was known throughout the Americas and is still used by traditional societies today.

Unfortunately, we know little about the history of similar practices in Africa but they are certainly present in traditional societies today – and largely known to mainstream science through documented medical emergencies.

In contrast, while it seems that enemas and douching were often used in Ancient Europe (for example, Aristides writes in his Sacred Tales that the goddess Athena appeared to him in a dream and recommended a honey enema – thanks your holiness), they do not seem to have been used for bottom-up drug taking.

However, there is some evidence that in medieval Europe, hallucinogenic ointments were applied to the vagina with some speculation that the ‘witch on a flying broomstick’ cliché arose due to the use of a broomstick-like applicator for strongly psychoactive drugs.

As the first synthesised psychoactive drugs became available in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, specialised delivery devices were quickly developed.

Cocaine was especially likely to be applied down-below because, although it makes you high, it is also an excellent local anaesthetic useful for discomfort and minor surgery. The development of cocaine tampons was considered a medical innovation that was “regarded as an especially effective treatment for gynecological diseases”.

I think we can leave it there, before getting to the topic of taking alcohol that way.  

A message across the aether (which will be understood by few - the rest can just ignore it)

Gee, soon Catallaxy open threads will be down to a face moisturising Perth man sharing gin cocktail recipes with a bunch of middle aged women.

That and a handful of other men with anger management issues, a chronic plagiarist whose copied works still appears at the blog, and young male student who likes to defame  female Australian journalists.  (If Latika Burke cares to email me, I'll provide the link.)

Updates:  I have a theory that Sinclair Davidson's continual defence of  Andrew Leigh - which is otherwise incomprehensible, given that every other economist who shares similar positions to Leigh is considered wrong at the blog - must have a science fiction element to it.  Maybe he once travelled back in time and fathered Andrew is my best guess so far.


 

Infallible or not

Why It's Good To Be Wrong - Issue 2: Uncertainty - Nautilus

Physicist David Deutsch has a somewhat interesting article regarding fallibilism, including (partly) in the context of the Catholic Church.   I liked these paragraphs in particular:

Fallibilism, correctly understood, implies the possibility, not the impossibility, of knowledge, because the very concept of error, if taken seriously, implies that truth exists and can be found. The inherent limitation on human reason, that it can never find solid foundations for ideas, does not constitute any sort of limit on the creation of objective knowledge nor, therefore, on progress. The absence of foundation, whether infallible or probable, is no loss to anyone except tyrants and charlatans, because what the rest of us want from ideas is their content, not their provenance: If your disease has been cured by medical science, and you then become aware that science never proves anything but only disproves theories (and then only tentatively), you do not respond “oh dear, I’ll just have to die, then.”

The theory of knowledge is a tightrope that is the only path from A to B, with a long, hard drop for anyone who steps off on one side into “knowledge is impossible, progress is an illusion” or on the other side into “I must be right, or at least probably right.” Indeed, infallibilism and nihilism are twins. Both fail to understand that mistakes are not only inevitable, they are correctable (fallibly). Which is why they both abhor institutions of substantive criticism and error correction, and denigrate rational thought as useless or fraudulent. They both justify the same tyrannies. They both justify each other.

Carbon pricing seems to be working

Is carbon pricing reducing emissions?

A good analysis at the link of whether carbon pricing, and not just a drop in demand, is behind reduced carbon emissions in making Australian electricity.  Here is one crucial part:

Although it’s difficult to point to concrete short term changes in the electricity market, the carbon price is having an impact on long term investment decisions, which is where the real benefits will start to play out. The economics of power systems mean that it’s much easier to materially affect the investment decisions for a new plant than to affect the short-term dispatch decisions of an existing plant. It has been argued that this already means wind is now cheaper than coal if you’re building a new plant, due to the very large impact of the carbon price on financing costs for emissions-intensive generation options.

The market is clearly responding to long term investment signals towards lower emissions generation. The vast majority of new plants in the planning stages are either renewable or gas-fired. Here again we must acknowledge complexity and the contribution of many factors – much of the investment in renewables is driven by the Renewable Energy Target scheme, and could not be supported by the carbon price alone at this stage.

But the lack of proposals for significant new coal-fired plant is a good indication that the carbon price is having an influence over investor decisions. This is where the real pay-off lies – by avoiding the installation of more coal-fired generators we avoid the very significant greenhouse emissions that would result from those power stations over their 30-year-plus lifetime.

Conservative Catholic Paranoia

I've never paid much attention to "Traditionalist" Catholics before (basically, the ones who are devoted to the Latin Mass, actually follow Papal teaching on contraception, and freak out about how everything in the Church has gone to hell in an handbasket since Vatican II.)

But reading the Catallaxy blog,  which has in the last couple of years increasingly attracted a significant number of Traditionalist Catholics and Catholic supporters, has led me to look at some conservative Catholic figures over the last 6 months or so.

What a worry they are.   In the US, they have culturally aligned with the Tea Party, so I suppose it should be no surprise that they seem to like Catallaxy, which is like the Australian Tea Party sub branch.

Father Z's blog  seems to be very popular in the US, and I gather that Zuhlsdorf has been on Fox News quite a bit.  A look around his blog indicates he likes guns, and nuns who use them.  (Yes, really.)  The blog gives an excellent taste of the Pharisaical obsession that this branch of Catholicism has with liturgy. 

He is pals with Michael Voris, a conservative lay Catholic who has built a subscription media business out of videoing himself every second day explaining how the Church must return to its pre-Vatican II state.  He seems to be pretty big in the Trad Catholic circles, but how is it possible that a man (especially an American) who advocated in all seriousness that a Catholic monarchy is "the only way to run a country" still have any popularity at all?  He does tick the box on other Right wing obsessions, though:  climate change is all a conspiracy to do something or other, for example.

In any event, the point of the post is this:  it would seem that the recent legal successes in court cases in the US for gay marriage, as well as Italian media reporting about gay priest in the Vatican, has sent both of the them in great paranoid spasms about the e-vil currently befalling the Church.  Here's Father Z a few days ago:

There are those who hate the Church with as much hate as we love the Church. They are organized, they have a great resources, they have a Dark Prince. Dreadful liberal publications and websites, and even the blitherings of some priests and bishops, are only shadows of the deeper agenda flickered out on the back of the cave for popular consumption by barely witting dupes.

Deeper enemies, like our own beautiful missionaries and martyrs of ages past, are willing to set aside their appetites, put on a facade, and endure for patient years for the sake of a long term plan.

Yes, I buy it. I have seen manifestations of communist, Masonic, and especially homosexual networking in the Church both in the USA and in Rome. It would be stupidly naive to think that it isn’t present. In the USA, Masonic and communist? Maybe not so much.  Elsewhere, yes.  The other thing?  Ohhhh, yes.

Those agents will probably go to Hell.  Let us remember that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church.

However, Our Lord did not promise that Hell would not prevail in these USA or, in the Roman Curia, in any other particular place.

When you hear awful stories, do not become discouraged.

We are nearing some kind of turning point. I think it is time to press forward HARD and with courage to renew our Holy Church’s liturgical worship, the best, clean antidote.

 Yes sir-ee.  Purity of liturgy is the answer to the "homosexual networking" in Rome.   Sure.

Voris has also been in Rome recently at the same time as Zuhlsdorf, both attending the same liturgy conference I think, and if you have never seen him before, this video of him hyperventilating about Roman gay priests and whether there is Satanism involved is as good a place as any, I guess.

(Actually, you could also look at this video in which he also paints the broad picture that the Church has gone all wrong since about 1960.)

These guys are hopeless:   poisonous Catholic Right wing cultural throwbacks who lack charity to a profound degree.  Even if they are "right" on a topic, they express it in such a way that it is embarrassing to say one agrees with them.   The Church will pass them by, but their ugly noise in the meantime is interesting to watch in a train wreck type of way. 

Pancakes and the Sunday morning butter explosion

I see that it was back in 2011 that I last mentioned a pancake recipe that was better than average.

I've decided it was too much work for your average Sunday morning, so today I tried another recipe, this time not from Gourmet Traveller, but from Kidspot.   It worked well, except for the unfortunate microwave butter explosion.  (I have successfully melted butter in the microwave before, but the container used today seemed particularly well suited to making melting butter explode.  Must use cling wrap to contain said explosions next time.)

Apart from that problem, the recipe worked pretty well:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate soda
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 2 tbsp butter, melted
• 4 tbsp butter for greasing the pan  (???  I am sure this a mistaken quantity.  Just use spray oil anyway)

Method:

In a bowl, place the milk, lemon juice and sugar together and whisk. Leave to stand for 5 minutes. The milk will take on a curdled appearance but that's fine.
In a bowl, sift the flour and bicarbonate soda and whisk in the curdled milk mixture.
Whisk in the egg and cooled, melted butter until well combined.

 Then you cook them.   Oh:  and I added a bit of vanilla essence too, and a pinch of salt.

Nice.

Speaking of movies, again...

I see George Lucas got married this week. Here's the lovely photo from People, assuming of course  that it's not an entirely digital creation from Industrial Light and Magic:

The magazine reports that the guests included "Samuel L. Jackson, Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Harrison Ford, Calista Flockhart and Tyler Perry." What the hey? Since when does Jackson go ahead of a list including Spielberg and Ford?

As it happens, a couple of nights ago I ended up  watching a lengthy documentary on the original Star Wars films that I think is part of the DVD set my wife has.  I had seen it before, but a long, long time ago, in a life time far far away.

Anyhow, I had sort of forgotten how young and weedy looking George was when he made the first movie.  (He would have been 33, if my maths is right.)   The work was genuinely gruelling for him, with a huge amount of studio pressure to wind up the shoot when it started to go over, trouble with editing it, and the special effects taking forever to come together and look half way decent.   He thought he was having a heart attack at one point.  (The same thing happened to Barry Sonnenfeld when he was directing Men in Black 2. In fact, here's his full summary of the stresses he has suffered as a director:

On the first movie I directed, The Addams Family, I ended up fainting when, after a sleepless night, I thought I could maintain some sense of awareness the next day by drinking nine straight espressos. When the head of Paramount Studios said that it was unreleasable, I spent the night weeping on Sweetie's (the wife's) lap. During Men in Black II, I was raced to the hospital with what I thought was a heart attack. After spending the night in the emergency room next to a woman whining, "I need quinine," I was given an echocardiogram and told that I was simply suffering from stress and that I should get into a program of meditation. (I didn't tell the doctor that I was meditating when the chest pain started.) On Wild Wild West, I broke my hand in five places when I punched Will Smith's arm.

In fact, I like nearly everything Sonnenfeld has done.)

But back to George:  sure, he lost his ability to recognise a good story from a so-so one pretty much after Empire Strikes Back (or, perhaps, Temple of Doom,) but he did work really hard for his success, and was essentially behind much of the technological innovation in movie making that was realised with money he generated, so I find it impossible to not have some admiration for him and wish him luck.

The virtual world of Gatsby

I still have no interest in seeing The Great Gatsby, but as it was only a couple of weeks ago that I linked again to a video from a couple of years back showing how they use green or blue screens in TV and movies for results with remarkable realism, I note with interest the new video out showing how the same technique is used to spectacular effect in The Great Gatsby.  (Sure, some shots where the camera zooms in and out make the background look un-real, but there are many, many shots here where it's completely surprising to see how much of what is on the screen is not there when it is shot.)

The Great Gatsby VFX from Chris Godfrey on Vimeo.

No danger for me, but beware Tony

Triathlon Deaths Increasing Among Males Over 40

As the average age of competitors in endurance sports rises, a spate of deaths during races or intense workouts highlights the risks of excessive strain on the heart through vigorous exercise in middle age.

Among the recent casualties: American Michael McClintock, senior managing director of Macquarie Group Ltd and a triathlete, who died at age 55 of cardiac arrest earlier this month after training.

The men's 40-to-60-year age bracket - often referred to as middle aged men in Lycra, or Mamils - now holds 32 per cent of the membership in USA Triathlon, the sport's official governing body in the US.

More fitness conscious than previous generations, their numbers in competitive races are swelling, along with their risk of cardiac arrest. Triathlons, the most robust of endurance races requiring swimming, biking and running, are also believed to be the most risky.

The ways in which over exercise can hurt a middle aged heart apparently includes just physical wear and tear:

Intense exercise for periods longer than one to two hours can cause over-stretching and tiny tears of the heart's tissue, says James O'Keefe, a sports cardiologist and head of preventative cardiology at the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri.

This type of repeated injury over years can cause irregular heart rhythms, increased inflammation, scarring and stiffening of the arteries, he says.

Athletic over-achievers tend to think that “more is better,” though when it comes to health, “moderation is almost always best,” O'Keefe says.

This part I find encouraging for my present lifestyle (heh):  

“If anyone is going to have a cardiac event they're far more likely to have one during exercise,” says Davison. A person is seven times more likely to have a heart incident while exercising than at rest, he says, citing a 1984 New England Journal of Medicine study.

Odd if it was in a movie

A movie based on this scenario would seem pretty odd, yet here it is, the subject of an upcoming criminal trial in Melbourne:

A tourist from Holland has claimed she was subjected to six weeks of sexual and physical abuse, mental trauma and a death ''ritual'' in a Melbourne hotel by a man possessed by an ancestor.

The woman, 22, has told police she was repeatedly raped and bashed, felt brainwashed and was blindfolded, hogtied with chains and forced to act like a dog and live on scraps.

A detective testified the woman claimed Alfio Granata, 46, performed a ritual by sealing an envelope with her photo, finger and toenails, a piece of hair and her blood to symbolise her ''being was no more''....

In the police summary, the bisexual woman said she met the two accused at a party in St Kilda last October and later engaged in consensual ''threesomes'' and drug use. It was alleged that by November he became violent to both women and then the tourist felt brainwashed and could not leave before she was subjected to abuse, death threats and trauma until she was admitted to hospital on Christmas Day.

Detective Senior Constable Marc Hodgson said at the bail hearing that Mr Granata had become ''possessed by one of his ancestors''.

Innovative idea for police public relations

Noticed in the Jakarta Post:

Dozens of boys wearing sarongs and black velvet caps looked worried, some sobbing on their moms’ laps, and many fled the police station premises upon hearing their friends scream in pain.

It was a free mass circumcision held by the local police as part of a public relations event to mark the 67th National Police Day on Friday.

Fry (and me) on loneliness

Only The Lonely � The New Adventures of Stephen Fry

A few weeks ago I noted Stephen Fry's "confession" that he had tried to commit suicide last year, despite his self awareness of his mental health problems.  (I saw one of the first stories about it, and probably wouldn't have bothered once it became widespread in the media soon thereafter.)

In any event, I see that he now has a post up at his website which deals mainly with the topic of loneliness.  Last I had noticed, he was a in long term relationship, but the post makes it clear he is single again, and I see now from Wikipedia that he has been since 2010. 

Fry's comments on how he, as a very famous and publicly popular figure who has a very active life can still be lonely, reminded me very much of part of interview I saw years ago with Freddie Mercury in which he expressed a very similar sentiment.   (From memory, it was along the lines that you can be surrounded by people every day who think you're great but still feel you have no friends.)  Given that by that stage it was already known he had led a very active gay recreational sex life, I also felt it a poignant comment on the lack of emotional satisfaction that such a lifestyle could entail.

Anyway, here's what Fry writes:

In the end loneliness is the most terrible and contradictory of my problems. I hate having only myself to come home to. If I have a book to write, it’s fine. I’m up so early in the morning that even I pop out for an early supper I am happy to go straight to bed, eager to be up and writing at dawn the next day. But otherwise…

It’s not that I want a sexual partner, a long-term partner, someone to share a bed and a snuggle on the sofa with – although perhaps I do and in the past I have had and it has been joyful. But the fact is I value my privacy too. It’s a lose-lose matter. I don’t want to be alone, but I want to be left alone. Perhaps this is just a form of narcissism, vanity, overdemanding entitlement – give it whatever derogatory term you think it deserves. I don’t know the answer.

I suppose I just don’t like my own company very much. Which is odd, given how many times people very kindly tell me that they’d put me on their ideal dinner party guestlist. I do think I can usually be relied upon to be good company when I’m out and about and sitting round a table chatting, being silly, sharing jokes and stories and bringing shy people out of their shells.

But then I get home and I’m all alone again.

I think that there may be many people out there who understand this - more than Stephen realises, probably.  When single, intimate (not just sexual) company can be missed sorely; yet when in relationships, any desire for time alone can be seen as being a slight on the partner or family, and people may feel a bit bad for even wanting some time alone. 

It seems to me that this latter attitude was not always with us.  I have the impression that, perhaps up to the 1960's or so, it was not so uncommon for at least the artistically inclined (writers especially?) to travel for lengthy periods away from their family for the experience and personal enjoyment, and it was not thought remarkable.  (Of course, being artists, one would also not be surprised if there were sexual encounters involved as well.)  I'm not sure when the tide turned against this, but I have the distinct impression that it has.

I don't raise this in any particularly autobiographical sense either - I very much enjoy domestic time at home after my long time as a single person, and in any event, the nature of my work affords little opportunity for time away - but if I was idly rich, I wouldn't mind short trips away.  Occasionally.

I'll now end on a note which will probably annoy some readers.  I had often wondered when I was single about how it was that, although I could wish I was more "connected", some people who are very outgoing, busy and popular with people (such as Mercury and Fry) can still feel lonely.   Fry perhaps has bipolar as a possible explanation, but I don't think that is always the case for people who feel like him.

My suspicion is that, for people who believe (or even, perhaps, have just believed in the past) in a personal God (or any non materialist belief system which involves an otherworldly care for their well being?) may always have a more fundamental feeling of worthiness that helps prevent loneliness from moving into despair.   If this is true, it shows the value of teaching such types of religious belief  to children, rather than the modern idea that it is more honest to let them know intellectually about all religions and decide which (if any) is true when they grow up.   And as for not teaching religion at all until people are adults, coming new to a belief in a personal God, or a deceased relative watching over you, carries too readily for them the suspicion of wish fulfilment.  But if you have a child feeling emotionally that it is true, and noticing that it provides comfort for others in their family, I half suspect that the psychological benefit persists even if they become agnostic in the future.

There's probably been some work on this somewhere which I could go looking for, but not right now. 

On the Rudd return

Harry Clarke has a personal dislike of Rudd that's probably even more intense than mine, but his post on the return of the bizarrely popular politician is pretty accurate.  Rather me doing a fresh post, I'll just put here my comment that I made at his blog, with a couple of corrections:

It’s hard to disagree with this analysis. If Rudd had put as much effort into helping articulate government policies as he did in getting revenge on those who dumped him, it could have helped the polling. But it didn’t suit him to do so.

Still, the biggest mystery is why Rudd is relatively popular with the public in the first place. It’s always been a puzzle to me, and it seems to be an unfortunate consequence of most voters only getting their news from the 6 pm TV bulletin that they did not have a clue that Rudd was replaced due to his own (hidden from the public) appalling management skills that many considered made him impossible to work with – not due to some vicious ambition of Julia Gillard to replace him at all cost. Those of us who had been paying attention to stories of the people he was offending (and who knew of his reputation in Queensland under Goss) were not surprised.

Having said that, I don’t want to see Abbott as PM – if anything, the Coalition is the side more in the need of an urgent clean out of ideologues who have been converted to the Tea Party obsessions regarding climate change and a hopelessly over-simplified view of economics. *

Funnily enough, last election I was pretty disappointed with much of Gillard’s campaigning – particularly her hopeless policy of seeking to put off carbon pricing until the silly idea that public meetings would converts dills who get their science from Andrew Bolt and Monckton had been tried.  Hence I actually did not vote at all in the House of Reps, but voted towards Labor in the Senate. But then Gillard started to impress once she formed government and started implementing policies with more care (generally) than the haphazard approach of Rudd.

I suspect this time I will have to vote Labor in both houses of Parliament despite my great annoyance at the Rudd re-ascendency and the appalling way Gillard has been treated in the right wing media and blogosphere. I suppose it does depend on his “new” policy adjustments, though.

 *  I have never, ever seen so much of the Right in Australian politics so ugly and dumb as it is at the moment.   With a few moderates in the Liberals leaving at the election, this could possibly get worse.  

The little known war

The Sino-Japanese war: The start of history | The Economist

This review of a new book on the Japanese war on China last century makes it sound an interesting read.  I think it's certainly true that most Westerners only know a vague outline, and (apart from one or two atrocities), few details:

It is also a story, pure and simple, of heroic resistance against massive odds. China is the forgotten ally of the second world war. For more than four years, until Pearl Harbour, the Chinese fought the Japanese almost alone. France capitulated in 1940, but China did not. Its government retreated inland, up the Yangzi river to Chongqing (Chungking)—a moment that would later be described as China’s Dunkirk (pictured). From there it fought on—sometimes ineptly, often bravely—until victory in 1945.

Asia has never had a strong China and a strong Japan. Their complex relationship in modern times began when Japan welcomed the West in the mid-19th century while China pushed it away. As Japan modernised, it became a model for Chinese reformers and a refuge for Chinese revolutionaries who opposed their own government’s insularity. Chinese students who went to Japan in the early 20th century included Sun Yat-sen, who led the 1911 revolution, and Chiang Kai-shek, the man who would lead the Nationalist government of China against Japan in the 1930s.

But as Japan’s imperial ambitions grew, China was the obvious place to expand. In 1931 Japan occupied Manchuria, turning from mentor to oppressor. The full-scale invasion began in 1937. Mr Mitter does not skimp in narrating the atrocities; the stench of war infuses his narrative. But he paints a broader account of the Chinese struggle, explaining the history that still shapes Chinese thinking today....

Up to 100m people (20% of China’s population) became refugees during the conflict. More than 15m were killed.

Suddenly, over Suncorp Stadium last night, the Airship "Ego" was seen rising again, to the usual puzzling acclaim

Well, that didn't go to plan...

Time to resurrect Julia the Kevin Slayer

Bonds on the brain

For a non economist like me, one of the most unclear aspects of an economy is the bonds market.

Take two stories in the media this morning, for example:  one in the Sydney Morning Herald, which talks about bond prices going up, and how Australian bonds don't affect as much as they do elsewhere; and then one by Alan Kohler, talking about concerns of there being "the biggest government bond bubble in history" and how it needs to deflate carefully.

I come away from both articles still being somewhat confused; but maybe that's just me...

Anyway, the comments following the Kohler article are interesting, including one by someone talking about the vast extent of the derivatives market being a major concern.  (Yes, according to him, the derivatives problem that caused the GFC are in a sense still around bigger than ever.)   Yet, someone following that points out that the value of this market all depends on how you count the amount of money at stake; and, I must admit, the first comment does sound as if it might be from someone equivalent to a fiat currency nutter.   But I don't know.

And now that I think of it - in the current situation, provided this bond market stuff doesn't blow up,  the goldbugs (who often tend to be climate change skeptics)  have probably blown a huge amount on gold investments,  and will never get it back, haven't they?*    Including, I hope, JoNova.    It couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.

*  Oddly, in the comment piece I link to, the writer says "I’ve always thought of ‘gold bugs’ as the crashing bores of the investment world — the same personality type who bangs on obsessively at dinner about the evils of Europe or the perils of climate change."   He's completely wrong on the point - see JoNova, and (I am sure) many in the Tea Party movement.

As inspired by watching Q&A last night

It's a history topic, OK?

I can't remember what article I was looking at recently that linked to this one from last year: Getting It On: The Covert History of the American Condom | Collectors Weekly, but the condom article  turned out to be a pretty fascinating read.

Things I learnt included the fairly gruesome sounding attempt by the military in World War 1 to deal with veneral disease with self administered clean up kits:

In 1905, in an effort to combat common infections like gonorrhea and syphilis, the Navy implemented the first trial system of chemical prophylaxis dispensed by staff doctors. Though the treatment was strictly post-intercourse, its results impressed Navy brass enough that the procedure became standard on all ships by 1909. However, one of the system’s major flaws was its dependence on self-reporting to a doctor, so the following year prophylactic kits or “pro-kits,” were distributed to soldiers for self administration. This was highly preferred to an exam, and though still painful, the pro-kits protected many recruits from being court martialed for contracting VD.

When draft examinations for World War I revealed infections for nearly a quarter of all recruits, military policy was altered to accept some soldiers with pre-existing VD. Over the next two years, around 380,000 American soldiers would be diagnosed with some form of VD, eventually costing the U.S. more than $50 million in treatment. Jim Edmonson explains that during World War I, American soldiers weren’t issued condoms; instead they were given a “Dough Boy Prophylactic Kit.” The idea behind these kits was that soldiers who “went out on a weekend furlough and had sexual contact would then clean themselves up afterwards with antiseptics and urethral syringes and so forth.” Edmonson points out that this method was like “closing the gate after the horse is out of the barn; not very effective.”

 You can see from the photo of the "Dough Boy" kit that it included some mercury compound - just about the last thing I expect any modern man with even a vague knowledge of toxicology would want to be using in a  ointment to be applied liberally to the relevant area (or in urethral syringe, although I am not sure what they contained).  It seems, from some other sites, that th Not only that, it didn't work so well anyway:

This half-hearted prevention program resulted in a complete epidemic of sexually transmitted infections. Sarah Forbes says nearly 18,000 soldiers a day were unable to report for duty because of these illnesses. Starting with the pro-kit, which Forbes describes as “glorified soap that was completely ineffective,” the U.S. military began its attempts to counteract the dire consequences of VD.  Slowly but surely, they provided condoms and developed health education programs, which Forbes says became the precursor to sex-education in American public schools.  

 One other thing of wry amusement in the article was the photos of condom tins from the 1930's, which "highlight fantasies of the Mid-East with names like Sheik, Ramses, and Sphinx."

Isn't it funny how cultural assumptions about regions change?  Although the I presume that the popularity (at least with women) of  Rudolf Valentino in his arabian roles in the 1920's may have had something to do with why a condom company in the 1930's would want their product to be associated with the Middle East, it does raise the whole question of how the region got a reputation for erotic allure, and then lost it totally.

I don't know much about the topic of its original reputation, although the description of this book gives some ideas:

 Richard Bernstein defines the East widely—northern Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific Islands—and frames it as a place where sexual pleasure was not commonly associated with sin, as it was in the West, and where a different sexual culture offered the Western men who came as conquerers and traders thrilling but morally ambiguous opportunities that were mostly unavailable at home. Bernstein maps this erotic history through a chronology of notable personalities. Here are some of Europe’s greatest literary personalities and explorers: Marco Polo, writing on the harem of Kublai Khan; Gustave Flaubert, describing his dalliances with Egyptian prostitutes (and the diseases he picked up along the way); and Richard Francis Burton, adventurer, lothario, anthropologist—and translator of The Arabian Nights.

When I think about it,  I guess the idea of the Middle East as a region of sultry sexual intrigue for heterosexual men lasted right up to the 1960's.  (Is it too silly to cite "I Dream of Genie" in support of this argument?)   But at some point - perhaps the 1970's or 80's, this all reversed, and I think it is safe to say that the Middle East is now seen as just about the last place a Western man would think of in terms of eroticism.  But how that happened, I am not entirely sure either.

In any event, I see that despite the new reputation, you could at least up to 1996 still buy Sheik branded condoms in the US.   (There's an annoying ad for them on Youtube.)  Condom name traditions die hard, obviously.

Update:  I was just googling around and found a brief account from a few years ago by a retired journalist of his WW2 experiences, which notes how the US managed to make the situation worse:

I was eventually assigned to an Army base about 60 miles north of Calcutta. The area boasted the highest rate of venereal disease of any overseas region in which U.S. troops were based. Before the American army's arrival, Calcutta was renowned as a sin city crammed with hundreds of brothels licensed by the British army. The incidence of VD was minimal, however, because the local prostitutes were periodically examined and treated by military doctors.

Aghast at what they regarded as official immorality, the U.S. Army chaplains pressured the British to abolish the system. With the whores now no longer under medical surveillance, the VD rate soared. For the men in my outfit, the 903rd Signal Co., the scenario was sadly familiar. Before coming to India, the company had been stationed near Alexandria, Egypt. There, too, the British Army's traditional medical control of local brothels collapsed with the arrival of the Americans. Once again, a VD epidemic broke out. A handful of my 903rd buddies landed in India with undesired "souvenirs" from their sojourn in Egypt.

 As someone in comments notes, the US and the backfiring ideal of abstinence has some history to it.

Everyone makes planes, except us

Aircraft-makers: Singin’ in the rain | The Economist

The Economist reports that the market for manufacture of civil aircraft is looking bright.

What surprised me, though, is that it's not just Brazil which is getting into mid size regional jet building, but Canada too (and Russia and China are hopeful new entrants too):

Other firms, including ones from developing countries, have long been eyeing the mainstream single-aisle market, where growth is strongest. They are closing in.

Closest of all is Bombardier of Canada. Pierre Beaudoin, its boss, promises that its new CSeries, aimed at the 100- to 150-seat market, will make its maiden flight this month, give or take a week, and that deliveries will start in 2014. Bombardier has 177 firm orders for the plane so far. It will be the first to use Pratt & Whitney’s geared turbofan engine, the closest thing to a big idea engine-makers have had for a while. Replacing the usual shaft between fan and turbine with a gear allowing each to revolve at its optimal speed should cut fuel use, emissions and noise significantly.

Embraer, the Brazilian firm that is Bombardier’s biggest rival in the market for smaller “regional” jets, confirmed at the show that it would revamp its E-Jet, designed for the 70- to 130-seat market, and said it already had 300 orders and options for the new version. It does not intend—yet—to compete against Airbus and Boeing, but it will overlap with the smaller version of Bombardier’s CSeries. And it will also use Pratt & Whitney’s new engine.

Russia too has aspirations. In Paris Irkut, owned by the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), displayed a mock-up of its planned 130- to 150-seater MC-21, which will again use the geared turbofan engine (and eventually a Russian one). Irkut expects to start building the aircraft this year and to fly it in 2015.

I suppose Australia did manage to build trouble prone diesel submarines; but in the high technology  stakes,  I would personally feel better it if we could build planes that other countries wanted.   Maybe they should try converting the flying box known as the Nomad  to vertical take-off and landing. (Ha.)

Silver benefits

Silver makes antibiotics thousands of times more effective 

I mentioned earlier this year that I was trying a new deodorant which claimed to incorporate silver ions.   (The exact quantity of them remains a mystery.)  I am happy to report that it seems to work well.

Silver's useful effect against bacteria other than those that live in my armpit (sorry for that image) are discussed in the above Nature article:

Many antibiotics are thought to kill their targets by producing reactive oxygen compounds, and Collins and his team showed that when boosted with a small amount of silver these drugs could kill between 10 and 1,000 times as many bacteria. The increased membrane permeability also allows more antibiotics to enter the bacterial cells, which may overwhelm the resistance mechanisms that rely on shuttling the drug back out.

That disruption to the cell membrane also increased the effectiveness of vancomycin, a large-molecule antibiotic, on Gram-negative bacteria — which have a protective outer coating. Gram-negative bacterial cells can often be impenetrable to antibiotics made of larger molecules.

“It’s not so much a silver bullet; more a silver spoon to help the Gram-negative bacteria take their medicine,” says Collins.

But too much silver does have toxicity:

Vance Fowler, an infectious-disease physician at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, says the work is “really cool” but sounds a note of caution about the potential toxicity of silver. “It has had a chequered past,” he says.

In the 1990s, for example, a heart valve made by St. Jude Medical, based in St. Paul, Minnesota, included parts covered with a silver coating called Silzone to fight infection. “It did a fine job of preventing infection,” says Fowler. “The problem was that the silver was also toxic to heart tissue.” As a result the valves often leaked².

Before adding silver to antibiotics, “we’ll have to address the toxicity very carefully”, says Fowler. Ingesting too much silver can also cause argyria, a condition in which the skin turns a blue-grey colour — and the effect is permanent.

That bit about blue-grey skin puts me in mind of alleged UFO aliens.   Possibly, they come from a planet (or future) with too much silver.  (It's a theory....)

Water everywhere

There seems to be a lot of flooding going on in the Northern Hemisphere recently:

*  the Northern Indian floods, which are described as being the result of an early monsoon season for that part of the country, could have killed at least a thousand people.  The most remarkable image was perhaps this one:

although it would be good to know the size of the statute we are looking at, to give us some scale.*

The papers are not giving too much detail as to how unusual this weather event is, but Jeff Masters at Wunderblog explains more:

According to the Indian Meteorological Department, Uttarakhand received more than three times (329%) of its normal June rainfall from June 1 - 21, and rainfall was 847% of normal during the week June 13 - 19. Satellite estimates indicate that more than 20" (508 mm) or rain fell in a 7-day period from June 11 - 17 over some regions of Uttarakhand, which lies just to the west of Nepal in the Himalayas. Dehradun, the capital of Uttarakhand, received 14.57" (370 mm) of rain in 24 hours June 16 - 17....

The June 2013 monsoon rains in Uttarakhand were highly unusual, as the monsoon came to the region two weeks earlier than normal. The monsoon started in South India near the normal June 1 arrival date, but then advanced across India in unusually rapid fashion, arriving in Pakistan along the western border of India on June 16, a full month earlier than normal. This was the fastest progression of the monsoon on record.

Masters does acknowledge, however, that some are saying deforestation, dam building and mining with inadequate environmental oversight has contributed to the scale of the floods,  and I would presume there is some truth in that.

*  Central and Northern Europe:   the recent floods there have been reported as being of record height for some rivers and cities (the countries affected include Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Germany.)  But to get more detail on the event, it's again worth looking up Jeff Masters:

The primary cause of the torrential rains over Central Europe during late May and early June was large loop in the jet stream that developed over Europe and got stuck in place. A "blocking high" set up over Northern Europe, forcing two low pressure systems, "Frederik" and "Günther", to avoid Northern Europe and instead track over Central Europe. The extreme kink in the jet stream ushered in a strong southerly flow of moisture-laden air from the Mediterranean Sea over Central Europe, which met up with colder air flowing from the north due to the stuck jet stream pattern, allowing "Frederik" and "Günther" to dump 1-in-100 year rains. The stuck jet stream pattern also caused record May heat in northern Finland and surrounding regions of Russia and Sweden, where temperatures averaged an astonishing 12°C (21°F) above average for a week at the end of May. All-time May heat records--as high as 87°F--were set at stations north of the Arctic Circle in Finland.

 Masters notes that it is increasingly argued that these changed patterns are part and parcel of global warming:

 If it seems like getting two 1-in-100 to 1-in-500 year floods in eleven years is a bit suspicious--well, it is. Those recurrence intervals are based on weather statistics from Earth's former climate. We are now in a new climate regime with more heat and moisture in the atmosphere, combined with altered jet stream patterns, which makes major flooding disasters more likely in certain parts of the world, like Central Europe.

 * Canadian floods:  the phrase "record flood"is appearing for the current Calgary event is appearing even in places like the Wall Street Journal, so it must be true.   The reason for the flood is again being put down to a "blocked"weather system (and this time it is not Jeff Masters talking):

The heavy rain is also the product of an odd set of circumstances, says Stephanie Barsby, CBC's meteorologist in Edmonton.

The massive weather system responsible for the storms was still trapped over southern Alberta on Friday by a high-pressure system to the north and winds blowing toward the west, the opposite direction of the prevailing winds throughout Canada.

"That high pressure system is preventing the storm from moving north, and the Rockies are preventing it from moving west, so it's stuck right over the regions that are seeing the flooding," said Barsby.

"It's unusual to see a system stuck in one place for such an extended period of time."

 All of these events have reminded me of a recent letter that appeared at Nature Climate Change regarding increased flooding due to a warming planet.  The article got a bit of publicity in the mainstream media, but not that much.  Here is what the ABC said: 

But now researchers from the University of Tokyo in Japan have done just that, presenting global flood risk for the end of this century, based on the outputs from 11 climate models.

The team predicts a large increase in flood frequency in parts of Asia, Africa and South America. It forecasts more moderate increases in northern Australia and Tasmania.

In certain areas, they predict flood frequency will decrease, including eastern and northern Europe and central North America.

You can see what Tim Flannery says in that report too.   As he is continually grossly misrepresented on water issues for Australia, it's a wonder Andrew Bolt hasn't been there already trying to twist something out of it.   It is a sign of Bolt's lack of intelligence (or rather, ideological motivation not to understand an issue) that he continues to have a ridiculous inability to understand that increasing the water cycle can mean both longer droughts and worse floods in some places.

I see that there is news this morning of another study about how climate change will affect the Indian monsoon with increased variability, in the region which is presumably the most unable to afford adaptation to floods.

In any event, I have been saying since the extraordinarily widespread Australian floods of 2011  that increased flooding and drought may well be the first climate change effect which really becomes very clear and convinces government and voters that serious action on CO2 needs to be taken.  Recent events suggest I may be right.

*  Update:  Here's the same statue, I think, at a different angle:

Here it is, from the same direction, in flood:

And by the way, who is that guy on Shiva's head? 

People aren't as upset with carbon pricing as much as politicians think they are?

Abbott carbon tax mantra blunted

I'm not sure whether to take encouragement from this, or doubt the accuracy of the survey:

Fewer voters want to see the carbon tax removed now than before it took effect on July 1 last year. Nearly half, or 48 per cent, wanted the tax scrapped a year ago.

But a poll of 1009 people, conducted by JWS Research for the Climate Institute, found just 37 per cent of them now supported the Coalition's intention to wind the tax back in favour of its ''Direct Action'' policy, which involves paying companies to reduce emissions.

Even fewer people - 34 per cent - would back an Abbott government calling a double dissolution election to fulfil its ''pledge in blood'' to repeal the tax.

Fewer than half the Coalition voters would back Mr Abbott taking Australia back to the polls.

Is it possible that, even though it hardly ever gets any commentary by economists, people have worked out that the Coalition "direct action" plan is a crock? 

Skin cancer risk

Look beyond the sun for skin cancer culprits, doctors warn

I was a bit surprised at the size of the risk increase:

Even things that seem unrelated to UV light—such as getting an organ transplant or a tattoo, or having an autoimmune disease—have been linked to skin cancer diagnoses.

People who've had an organ transplant have an extremely elevated risk for skin cancer—up to 200 times higher than others, according to Ibrahim. 

This stems from the medications that must be taken after a transplant to suppress the immune system. As a result, the immune system, which normally fights off growing cancer cells, may not be strong enough to do its job.

Organ transplant recipients should talk to a dermatologist to get an idea of their baseline risk for skin cancer and find out how often they need to be screened. Ibrahim said that some high-risk people who've had organ transplants need screening every three to four weeks.