The interesting Atlantic

My last post came from The Atlantic, which has a couple of other interesting articles up:

*  one showing a few cards from the time of the suffragette movement seeking to inspire fear that men would be completely emasculated.  The "suffragette madonna" gets particular attention:

That's quite an odd mind that came up with that, if you ask me.  (Although I have to say it strikes me as something the mysteriously 1950's Catholic re-incarnation of a man known as Currency Lad would approve of.)













As for this card:

you might have to click to enlarge it, but what is that thing coming out of the baby's mouth?  It looks strangely like it is connected to a computer mouse, but there is presumably another explanation.





*  The other article that caught my eye was one talking about the relatively high wages McDonald's employees get in Australia, compared to the US, at least if they are above teenage years.   Of course, the article does acknowledge that this also means that Australian outlets of the Golden Arches are full of teenage staff, who are (so I believe) worked in a particularly high pressure fashion to extract every bit of human output for the lavish $8 an hour they get paid.   Still, if you're an adult, you are much better off here working for McDonald's than in the US, and the article suggests (quite rightly) that perhaps consumers can tolerate marginally higher prices so that not every staff member in the store is expected to work for the equivalent of pocket money.

*  Wait, there's a third article that's fascinating - a summary of the pre-flight routine of astronaut Alan Shepherd, in which we learn something new - the Mercury astronauts had tiny tattoos to mark the spot for their electrodes (!)   There's a photo of Shepherd in his spacesuit too:

I always liked the slim fitting, silvery Mercury era spacesuits:  they are what a spacesuit should look like, much more so than the later, bulkier, white Apollo suits.

A fair bit of work has apparently been done on the tight, body hugging design for future suits that features in some science fiction (Jerry Pournelle used to feature it a fair bit in his books),  but unless they are silver, they just won't be as cool looking...

Unusual habits on the high seas

The Strange Sexual Quirk of Filipino Seafarers - Ryan Jacobs - The Atlantic

Actually, apart from the amateur attempts at body modification of which I had not heard before, the article gives a pretty interesting discussion about how Filipinos came to dominate seafaring. 

From the "only in Japan" files

'Sun Child' statue to symbolize Fukushima recovery at Aichi festival

NAGOYA—A giant child wearing a fluorescent yellow hazmat suit to guard against radiation arrived on Aug. 6 in one of the venues for Aichi Triennale 2013, a powerful symbol that conveys a message of hope for the future.

Contemporary artist Kenji Yanobe, 47, created the “Sun Child” statue hoping that the areas affected by the 2011 accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant will recover from the disaster. The accident was triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.

“This is a monument of recovery that makes people think about the coming future,” Yanobe said.

So, what does this "monument" look like:

Uhuh.

The old problem with tattoos

An interesting piece here on the history of tattoos in ancient Greece and Rome:

Tattoos today are decorative and voluntary, even if sometimes recklessly selected and deeply regretted later. But in ancient Greek and Rome tattoos were punitive, forcibly inflicted on slaves, prisoners of war, and wrong-doers. Tattooing captives was common in wartime. For example, in the fifth century BC Athens defeated the island of Samos and tattooed their Samian prisoners’ foreheads with Athens’ mascot the owl. Later, the Samians crushed the Athenians and tattooed their captives with the Samos emblem, a warship. In 413 BC, after Athens’ disastrous defeat at Syacuse, 7,000 Athenian soldiers were captured. Their foreheads were tattooed with the symbol of Syracuse, a horse, and they were sent as slave to work the quarries. Slaves were routinely tattooed and runaway slaves had sentences such as “Stop me, I’m a runaway” crudely gouged and inked into their faces.

These dehumanizing tattoos were not artistic or carefully applied: ink was simply poured into grooves carved in flesh with three iron needles bound together, with no thought of hygiene. There was copious bleeding; infection could be ugly. The indelible marks turned one’s body into a text recording forever one’s captivity, enslavement, or guilt. Naturally, there was a market for hiding or removing shameful tattoos, should one be lucky enough to escape a master or prison. Some opted for a painless approach: Grow long bangs to cover forehead tattoos. During the Roman era, pirates’ crews offered a haven for many criminals and runaway slaves. The dashing pirate scarf trick—tying a bandana around their foreheads—was invented to mask the tattoos of one’s old life.

Mormon underdaks

Here's a pretty non judgemental explanation of the Mormon "temple garments" - the much derided "magic underwear."

I've never looked this up in detail before.  Now I know.

The Libertarian* horoscope

Aynian:  a mooching loser will make your day a misery.  Kick them in the shins.

Collectivarian:  once again, you do something stupid to help drag humanity back to the dark ages.

Smokertarian:   a good day to enjoy your domination over the forces of nature by going through at least a pack of 30, and that's just after lunch. 

Roarkian:   two, possibly three, members of the opposite sex will want you to aggressively have your way with them.  Enjoy, you magnificent beast. 

Lootarian: just do us a favour and die in a train crash, won’t you?

....etc (further suggestions are welcome).

* yes, yes, we know about Ayn’s claims about the term.

Possibly significant physics news

Has LHCb spotted physics beyond the Standard Model? - physicsworld.com

 One of seven experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the LHCb experiment focuses on the physics of B-mesons – those particles containing the bottom (or beauty) quark – produced during proton collisions. One process of great interest is the decay of a B-meson into a kaon (K*) and two muons: B →  K*μ⁺μ^–. This is a relatively rare decay and according to the Standard Model it occurs only because of the subtle effects of heavier particles – W and Z bosons – that mediate the weak force. As a result, particles that are not described by the Standard Model may be contributing to the decay and so their effects could be measured by LHCb. Evidence that this decay happens in a manner that the Standard Model cannot explain could point the way to "new physics".

It'll be a while before they feel certain this is happening, though.

Let's catch up with Tony Abbott and his dynamic power base

Electric optimism

Electric Cars Are Doing Better Than Hybrids Did in Their First Three Years | MIT Technology Review

There's much to learn in the infographic at the above link.

Improbable idea for a webcam

Last night,  for no particular reason (other than a generic interest in krill,) I thought that I should post an image of the Southern crustacean.

It turns out I can do better than that.  For some reason known only to someone in Hobart, the Australian Antarctic Division of the Australian government's environment department has, since 2008, run a regularly updating video of its krill aquarium.  Yes, every 15 minutes, you can see a new short video of krill being krill. 

There might be odder webcams of bits of nature in captivity out there, but this one would have to rank pretty high in the peculiar stakes.

They do have big eyes, by the way.

Update:  for those readers who can't be bothered clicking on the link, here's a shot of what they were up to 10 minutes ago:

 

In slightly more interesting webcams from the Australian Antarctic Division, here's a shot from Macquarie Island this morning:

Gee.  It seems not very high above the high water mark, in a ocean known for rough weather, doesn't it?  If you look at the 48 hour time lapse video they make from the webcam, it looks even worse.

 

Good memories

Dolphins remember each other for decades 

I didn't know this about dolphin "names":

Between the ages of about 4 months and a year, every bottlenose dolphin settles on a whistle of its own that stays the same for the rest of the dolphin's life. In another recent study, published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences², Stephanie King and Vincent Janik, two marine-mammal biologists at the University of St Andrews, UK, have shown that dolphins use these whistles in the same way as humans use names: they voice their own whistles to identify themselves to others, and they mimic others’ whistles to call to them.

Tony had a dream

OK, maybe I have to confirm to readers that it's Gina*, and who knows, maybe it's her dream too...

* Gina is joining the club of rich Australians who are losing in court.  I thought this might cheer her up...

Why do it?

Sam Rockwell in talks for Poltergeist remake | Film | theguardian.com

It's always a puzzle as to why people want to do remakes of films which were critical and commercial successes at the time.  (At least if they are not based on earlier, "classic" stories or novels.)

So this seems a very strange proposal.

"Poltergeist" was an enormously enjoyable and witty fright flick; well directed, written and cast.   It played as emotionally real as well (remember the scene where the spirit of the girl passes through the mother, and her reaction?)

Why remake it?

What? Is Abbott doing the full Romney?

It was just mentioned on Lateline, as breaking news, that the ABC understands the Coalition will tomorrow announce a tax cut for companies, worth $5 billion (I think) over an unspecified period.

Well, if true, those Liberal Party operative trips to learn how to do politics with the Tea Party influenced GOP is going to backfire.

Because everyone knows, the way to deal with an ongoing government revenue problem (and government debt dis-arrs-ter)  is for it to, um, cut revenue.

Update:  So, I see the justification is expected to be:

a.   that it compensates big companies for the parental leave plan levy. (Responses noted in some comments at The Guardian:  "yeah, big companies like the banks are doing it so tough we must be very careful they never hurt"; and "so Abbott is effectively having the public fund it after all".)  

b.  part of the Henry Tax review proposed cutting the company tax rate.  But,  um, didn't he also expect a mining tax to usefully increase revenue for the government?

Update 2:  to be honest, to do the full Romney, a politician or economist has to have read Ayn Rand and say things that indicates he's thinking in terms of Moochers and Looters.   Abbott is (note dear readers:  I am giving him a compliment) almost certainly not silly enough to have read Rand, and his Australian variety of Catholicism helps ensure that he is happily free of the weird Randian influence that we see in US Catholic/libertarian Republicans.   Still, there's always a slim hope that at some point in the campaign he might make some comment about what a bunch of losers some of the electorate are, and then we award him "the full Romney". 

Update 3:  well, even with all the normal reservations (online polls are hardly scientific and can be scammed easily by partisan players, particularly during a campaign, and this is a Fairfax poll after all, etc etc) I would still guess that the response shown here on the issue indicates most people aren't overly impressed with the policy:

Update 4: so, the "we never saw a tax cut we didn't like - it helps ensure the teeny, tiny government we believe in on ideological grounds" crowd are noting Labor's not so long ago support of lowering the rate of company tax. But Wong handled this pretty well on radio this morning - Labor was saying they were "aiming for" this when they were also saying they could be back in surplus in a couple of years. That hasn't happened, and won't for a while yet, so they put off the company tax reductions too.

Isn't the problem for the Coalition that, as they like to run with simplistic economics arguments that governments have to control their budgets like households do, then that approach is going to come back to bite them when they try to go with Laffer curve, trickle down arguments for lowering taxes at a time when they are simultaneously saying there is a government debt crisis.

More evidence I'm not alone...

Slate has a article entitled Clint Eastwood made Mitt Romney's strategist vomit, and other tales. with some short extracts from a book about the 2012 US Presidential campaign. Given that I was scathing at the time of wingnutty people who thought that the Clint Eastwood "empty chair" performance was brilliant, I am happy to see that even as it was happening, it was freaking out Romney people (or, at least, one of them):

Stuart Stevens, watching in another room in the hall, was literally sickened. He walked out of the room and threw up.

- Balz on how Romney's ad guru watched the RNC Clint Eastwood speech.

Heh.

No one cares? Excellent...

Avatar sequels? Three? No one cares. Here's why.

I have seen about 10 minutes of Avatar while the kids were watching it on DVD.  The blue characters looked a bit cartoonish to me.  I had no interest in the story, which is just about a guy who goes blue, and  native, isn't it?  James Cameron is personally bizarrely brave (even thinking about sinking for hours into the black, crushing abyss in a one man submarine makes me feel claustrophobic) but I have never cared much for his films. 

So I was pleased to read this article which explains that the film hasn't had the same cultural longevity as its box office might suggest.  Good. 

It certainly gets around...

HPV linked to oesophageal cancer

The human papillomavirus (HPV) triples the risk of the most common form of oesophageal cancer, a study by researchers at the University of New South Wales has found.

There was other HPV and throat cancer news around recently that I didn't note.  Here it is:

One third of people diagnosed with throat cancer are infected with a form of the HPV virus, a study suggests.

HPV (human papillomavirus) is the major cause of cervical cancer, and the virus is known to spread through genital or oral contact....

Experts said this study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, which quantifies the link, showed "striking" results.

There are more than 100 types of HPV. Most people will be infected with HPV at some point, but in most the immune system will offer protection.

There are two HPV strains which are most likely to cause cancer - HPV-16 and HPV-18. 

HPV-16 is thought to be responsible for around 60% of cervical cancers, 80% of cancers in the anus and 60% of oral cancers.

Fake meat made to vaguely taste like meat

BBC News - What does a stem cell burger taste like?

Yes, well.  Regular readers would know I have a considerable degree of skepticism about fake meat grown from stem cells.   This article should indicate why.

I mean, how many other reports noted this:

The breadcrumbs, egg powder and seasoning that were added for flavour must certainly have helped with its taste. It was also coloured with beetroot and saffron - as the stem cell strands on their own are an unappetising pasty colour. 

And it was fried in a heap of butter.  That might have helped a bit with the flavour, don't you think?

The point is, because a slab of steak is a lot more than just muscle cells, I reckon the most you're ever going to get from it is going to be mince meat style products. They might be marginally better than other imitation versions of mince meat, but in terms of environmental and cost comparisons with other ways of making protein, you would really have to compare it to what you can make from the likes of soy or fungus.

I strongly suspect that it is always going to be cheaper and environmentally friendlier to extract protein from fungus (Quorn is the product that currently does this) and made it into imitation meat rather growing muscle cells and convert them into imitation meat.   (Basically, because I expect the growing medium for the former to be cheaper than what you would have to grown stem cells in.) 

I could be wrong, but this is my hunch.

A paralysed life

This is a really remarkable story, about a Brazilian man (and woman) who have only known life in hospital (with rather occasional outings.)  

You have to admire the resilience of some people.

"Let's be reasonable" Vs "It's a dis-arrs-ter!"

The media divide on economics commentary is shown in hilarious contrast in Fairfax Vs News Ltd papers today.

From Fairfax:  Tim Colebatch reinforces Michael Pascoe's line from yesterday with this:

We could try to put the budget back into surplus now, but to do so we would have to make at least $30 billion a year of spending cuts and/or tax rises. That amounts to taking 2 per cent out of an economy in which growth is running at only 2.25 per cent to start with.

What would happen if we did that? Very likely, Australia would go into recession. Unemployment would rise rapidly, output would fall. Welfare spending would rise, and revenue would fall, so we would be back in deficit, and would have to make even steeper budget cuts to get back into surplus. Europe provides plenty of examples of the consequences of this policy error.

Which would you choose? To get the budget back into surplus even if the economy goes backwards, or to keep the economy growing, even if the budget goes backwards?

It's important to get our priorities right. The budget deficit is the result of a weak economy, not the cause of it. One of Wayne Swan's worst mistakes as Treasurer was to lock himself into a commitment to deliver a surplus in 2012-13, and treat it as a test of good economic management - a test he then failed.

(Interestingly, further down, he says the carbon price is estimated by Toyota to only put $115 on the cost of a new car made here.)

And Peter Hartcher talks about Ken Henry's view that government is simply not facing up to the need to increase revenue in light of the future needs of an ageing population.

Meanwhile, at Murdoch's "The Australian"  (new masthead features the sub-heading "Labor - It's a dis-arrs-ter", some anonymous economist tells us we're heading into a recession we don't have to have, and cites all the usual Right wing suspects - we need a budget surplus, less regulation, more flexible IR laws, etc.  He complains that Treasury hasn't been giving independent and fearless advice about the problem:  presumably he hasn't caught up with what Ken Henry has been saying for some time.  And funny how he can be talking about Australia's cost competitiveness problems without mentioning the unexpectedly persistent high Australian dollar for the last few years.

Then Judith Sloan regales us with a tabloid "it's so unfair to hit the poor with higher tobacco taxes" (what's the bet Sloan was a smoker at one point in her life?  It's virtually a requirement to any participant at Catallaxy.)  And speaking of Catallaxy, Sinclair Davidson gets quoted in a lengthy article featuring a line up of economists, but only ones who are small government/less regulation advocates from way back, about how bad spending and unnecessary regulation under Labor has become.  

The disappearance of Fairfax would be a disaster for political discussion in Australia.

Pascoe on the economic situation

Joe Hockey's 'please explain' moment

Michael Pascoe really puts the boot into "Hockeynomics", with an analysis that will warm the heart of Labor:

The Hockeynomics contradictions were front and centre on Friday. You can either be appalled by the forecast rise in unemployment and give the impression you would reduce it, or you can be appalled by the larger deficit and give the impression you would reduce it – but you can't do both at the same time.

If you accept that the economy will grow more slowly this financial year, that there's a bit of a gap in the transition from the resources construction boom to the rest of the economy lifting its game, the very good news in Friday's economic statement was that the deficit is indeed being allowed to grow. After heading in opposite directions over the past year, fiscal and monetary policy are now aligned, both providing stimulus for a year when growth will be softer.

Just as the politics overshadowed the most important economics in the May budget, the higher deficit and unemployment rate grabbed the economic statement's headlines – they're the two simple issues that dominate the political screaming match.

Lost was the admission that the record fiscal contraction was even worse than published in May. The budget papers estimated 2012-13's public final demand (net state and federal government spending) would shrink by 0.5 per cent. The economic statement says it actually contracted by 1.5 per cent. The budget intended to keep public final demand flat this year. After the revised shortfall in revenue, the government is letting the “automatic stabilisers” do their stuff and public final demand is forecast to rise by 0.75 per cent this year and by 0.5 per cent next year before efforts to reduce the deficit kick in.

The new deficit forecast of $30.1 billion represents 1.9 per cent of gross domestic product, compared with the May prediction of an $18 billion deficit worth 1.1 per cent. Any business doing it tough should be grateful for that extra 0.8 percentage points, given that the economy is only expected to grow by 2.5 per cent. Yes, if a lunatic took control and immediately cut spending by $30 billion to balance the budget, GDP would theoretically grow by just 0.6 per cent at best – and actually by considerably less due to knock-on impact.
So if the forecast 6.25 per cent unemployment rate is displeasing, there's no point demanding an immediately smaller deficit.

Tony Abbott: "Everyone knows I'm a crook negotiator and I promise I won't try it again."

Abbott Won't Lead Minority Government

Kind of an odd way for Tony Abbott to kick off an election campaign, isn't it?, given that a hung parliament is certainly not out of the question given current polling.  Does he mean he would not join with a nut or two from Katter's party to form a minority government?  Probably not, is my guess.  

I also just saw Abbott on Sunrise.  He looked tired and a bit lethargic already, after about 15 hours of the  campaign.   He might be attempting to copy Kevin Rudds "no sleep is necessary" approach to life, but it doesn't suit him.

Update:  here's a shot from Sunrise, which is typical of how he looked during the interview:

 "Tired and worried" written all over it, if you ask me...

First election visual comment...

Nice view

The cheapo Samsung Tab 2 was never sold for great specifications on its camera, but it does make taking panorama shots easy, and it was a lovely afternoon at Mt Cootha today:

(Clicking it should enlarge it.)

I think there was an election called while I was in the sun.  This calls for some more photo app play... 

Taming the possum

(There's a new, smaller, shy possum visiting us now.)   

Europe was built on...milk

Nature has a lengthy, fascinating article up about archaeology and milk.  Apart from being a potential reality check for 10 year olds dreaming of that job after watching Indiana Jones movies, it explains  the importance of how (some) humans developed the ability to digest lactose, then spread out to Europe.  Here are some highlights:

During the most recent ice age, milk was essentially a toxin to adults because — unlike children — they could not produce the lactase enzyme required to break down lactose, the main sugar in milk. But as farming started to replace hunting and gathering in the Middle East around 11,000 years ago, cattle herders learned how to reduce lactose in dairy products to tolerable levels by fermenting milk to make cheese or yogurt. Several thousand years later, a genetic mutation spread through Europe that gave people the ability to produce lactase — and drink milk — throughout their lives. That adaptation opened up a rich new source of nutrition that could have sustained communities when harvests failed.

This two-step milk revolution may have been a prime factor in allowing bands of farmers and herders from the south to sweep through Europe and displace the hunter-gatherer cultures that had lived there for millennia. “They spread really rapidly into northern Europe from an archaeological point of view,” says Mark Thomas, a population geneticist at University College London. That wave of emigration left an enduring imprint on Europe, where, unlike in many regions of the world, most people can now tolerate milk. “It could be that a large proportion of Europeans are descended from the first lactase-persistent dairy farmers in Europe,” says Thomas.

This figure sounds surprisingly low:

Only 35% of the human population can digest lactose beyond the age of about seven or eight (ref. 2).

The effect of the genetic mutation which I happily share was possibly profound:

Most people who retain the ability to digest milk can trace their ancestry to Europe, where the trait seems to be linked to a single nucleotide in which the DNA base cytosine changed to thymine in a genomic region not far from the lactase gene. There are other pockets of lactase persistence in West Africa (see Nature 444, 994–996; 2006), the Middle East and south Asia that seem to be linked to separate mutations³ (see 'Lactase hotspots').

The single-nucleotide switch in Europe happened relatively recently. Thomas and his colleagues estimated the timing by looking at genetic variations in modern populations and running computer simulations of how the related genetic mutation might have spread through ancient populations⁴. They proposed that the trait of lactase persistence, dubbed the LP allele, emerged about 7,500 years ago in the broad, fertile plains of Hungary.

Once the LP allele appeared, it offered a major selective advantage. In a 2004 study⁵, researchers estimated that people with the mutation would have produced up to 19% more fertile offspring than those who lacked it. The researchers called that degree of selection “among the strongest yet seen for any gene in the genome”

Compounded over several hundred generations, that advantage could help a population to take over a continent. But only if “the population has a supply of fresh milk and is dairying”, says Thomas. “It's gene–culture co-evolution. They feed off of each other.”

I suggest everyone have a strawberry shake in honour of this research.  Unless you're lactose intolerant, of course...

Hydrogen and solar

Here's a comment I made for another blog, but I wanted it here so I have the links:

I have speculated for some time that using some capacity of solar thermal to split water into hydrogen might be helpful (although I gather it's not efficient to then use the hydrogen to heat the salts on a cloudy day.)  I see just now that a new technique is proposed for hydrogen production using solar thermal.  Unfortunately, moving hydrogen around is not so easy, I think, but using it in house scale fuel cells might be one way of helping with intermittent direct supply from the grid. 

Sunny Greenland

It's been warm in Greenland recently:

The Danish Meteorological Institute is reporting that on Tuesday, July 30, the mercury rose to 25.9 C (78.6 F) at a station in Greenland, the highest temperature measured in the Arctic country since records began in 1958.

The balmy reading was logged at the observing station Maniitsoq / Sugar Loaf, which is on Greenland’s southwest coast, the DMI reports. It exceeded the 25.5 C (77.9 F) reading taken at  Kangerlussuaq on July 27, 1990, in the same general area. Mantiitsoq is Greenland’s sixth-largest town, with a 2010 population of 2,784.

Mantiisoq doesn't look too bad, for a small town in Greenland.

If only Treasury had been worrying about the right things, like stagflation....

Well, the ABC collective (the Australian, Bolt and Catallaxy, for those who have forgotten) gets a boost today by Sinclair Davidson doing a summary of about 2 years of Catallaxy posts (well, except for the ones mentioning what will be mentioned below) in a long column at the Australian which, of course, is also extracted at some length at Andrew Bolt's blog.

Davidson is very big on "holding people to account".   He's forever making shock jock style calls for judges, parole boards, economists, politicians to be sacked or somehow publicly pilloried for matters about which he appears to have no particular experience or knowledge of how decisions were made.   (Mind you, it would not be surprising if the Victorian parole board is about the get a legitimate bollocking by someone - Callinan - who has a better idea of how the system works.)   His libertarian inspired views on economics contain the embarrassing and poisonous stain of Randian thought (he put up a video of a long talk to small government types he gave in New Zealand recently where, in response to a question at the end about use of language in economic debate, he confessed to personally thinking in terms of "moochers and looters".)    

Yet despite his fondness for punishment, he's the economist who, two years ago, started a column with this:

High inflation combined with a sluggish, or stagnant, economy is described as 'stagflation'. The last time the world saw anything like this was in the 1970s.

It is the consequence of pursuing Keynesian economic policy. It should come as no surprise that the return of Keynesianism during and after the Global Financial Crisis could see the return of stagflation.

 He turned up on (surprise!) Andrew Bolt with the same warning.

Look, I know its tough medicine, but Paul Krugman on inflation and the anti-Keynesians seems to have been right for, what, a decade or more now? 

Well, Sinclair should take his punishment and given himself a severe sacking.   

No wonder I need glasses...

Your eyes are half a billion years old

A browser recommendation

I have formerly recommended the Mercury browser for the iPad, because it has the equivalent of a scroll bar down the side, which helps overcome one of the most tedious aspects of most touch screen browsers - getting to the bottom of a long, long thread quickly without a lot of frenetic finger flicking.

Now that I mainly use a Samsung tablet, I haven't found the equivalent.  Until now.

The Maxthon browser not only lets you get to the top or bottom of a large site quickly, its method of flicking back quickly to a link you've just come from is the fastest and most pleasing thing I've seen in a tablet browser.  I think it might load a new site you are going to marginally slower than, say, Chrome; but this is more than compensated for by the way you are instantaneously back from whence you came.

I have only been using it a short time, but it has my endorsement already.   Maxthon (available for both Android and Apple too, I see.)

Hi everyone...have a look at my...

Some time ago, I noted English media reports about the spectacularly odd medical exhibitionist program Embarrassing Bodies.  When I wrote it, I didn't realise it was being shown late night on one of our networks. Since then, I have seen brief bits from it, but last night I got my longest burst of it while half browsing the internet.

This show causes me something close to the cognitive meltdown that awaited poor old HAL. First of all, you could say that the bedside manner of the doctors is exemplary, and (if last night's show is any guide) the patients appear pretty ordinary, normal folk off to get some free medical advice (and, I would hope, treatment.)  The medical explanations of their problems are often accompanied by clear and understandable graphics, and you can appreciate an educational aspect of the show.

But on the other hand, the show can be summarised like this (from last night's episode): "hey world, have a look in close up at my hairy butt while the doctor puts on a glove and tries to work out why I have poos so big they hurt me". Or - "Mum, Dad, everyone I know down my street - did you know I've been finding sex painful since childbirth, and the scar tissue near my vagina will be on telly tonight."

On the third hand, you can say that excessive prudery about nudity is cultural and a bit silly really, and everyone on the show has a (kind of) commendable maturity about it. But honestly, mere nudity is a bit different from having your vagina or testicles examined on TV. There's rarely any doubt about whose genitals are up on the screen too - there are plenty of long shots showing both faces and those bits on display.  And besides just the physical aspect - there is a difference between being open and not embarrassed about a bodily function with a doctor in his or her rooms, and the same on international television. 

How do these patients warn people they know that if they don't want to learn more than they care to know about them, they should not watch an upcoming episode? Do the producers kindly provide a standard warning email/telephone service that seeks to prevent parents/co-workers/neighbours from having nightmares (or, at least, strange conversations around the watercooler the next morning)?  "So, Raj, I didn't realise you actually shave down four inches below your neck so we wouldn't know your body is ape-like hairy."  (Yes, another story from last night's episode.)
 
And why do normal looking and sounding people go on the show at all? Is the NHS so hopeless that they can't get decent treatment except while naked on international television?   And, as I noted in my last bit of writing about the show, what is it about the British that have swung from having Mary Whitehouse as a prominent figure, to being the nation most willing to talk about their genitals and what they do with them on TV?  It's a blessing she's dead; shows like this and the other British series I think I mentioned before about the cheery souls being tested for VD at the clinic would have had her on medication.

The show is both (sort of) good, and so weird I can't stay with it for more than 20 minutes.

How to cyber defeat an enemy?

Don't touch that flash drive—you have no idea where it's been.

This Slate article starts:

If you found a pretty little USB stick on the ground, would you plug it in to see what’s there? No? OK, what do you think your parents, neighbors, and co-workers would do?

When the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ran a similar test in 2011, they discovered that 60 percent of those who found flash drives planted outside of government and contractor buildings plugged them right into their networked computers. Even worse, when the drives were outfitted with an official logo, the number jumped to 90 percent.

Well, maybe those people weren’t properly trained in cyber security, you might say. (Insert joke about incompetent government workers.) Alas, a recent study divulged that 78 percent of IT security professionals confessed to experimenting with unidentified flash drives. Of those surveyed, more than 68 percent had been personally responsible for a security breach at work or home, often as a result of the orphaned drives.

Gee.  Sounds like all you need to do to cyber defeat an enemy is to have agents with sacks full of virus infected USB drives discretely dropping them around government buildings.   And just around the neighbourhood generally, perhaps.

Or maybe you could use a drone to disperse them from the air....

Infrastructure confusion

Infrastructure: No longer a no-brainer | Club Troppo

Yesterday I was quoting Tim Colebatch saying Australia's level of infrastructure spending had long been too low; now someone is arguing our spending is now too high.

No wonder I find this topic confusing.

All I know is that, given the amount of money on tents both sides of politics seem to be intent on spending, my idea of a yurt led recovery no longer seems implausible.

Life in the bridge

I've always wanted to see what the residences inside the Indooroopilly Bridge looked like, and now it seems I will have a chance....

Germs recommended

I seem to have missed a 2011 story about this: Social amoebae travel with a posse, have amazingly complicated social lives

More detail: 

...scientists had discovered a single-celled organism that is a primitive farmer. The organism, a social amoeba called Dictyostelium discoideum, picks up edible bacteria, carries them to new locations and harvests them like crops.

And last night on SBS, the documentary "Pain, Pus and Poison" about how a treatment for syphilis was found, as well as the interesting story of how penicillin was rushed into production in World War II was great, if often gory, viewing.

Slate must be trolling for comments

Kids and dogs: If you’re having a baby, do not get a puppy. - Slate Magazine

Last week, it was inviting a flame war between Apple and Android users (that was kinda fun to read, actually.)  This week, it's an odd column by a women who says you shouldn't get a dog if you want kids, because you'll completely ignore the former when you have the latter.  Actually, both she, and her dog, sound a tad neurotic.

Never mind that billions of Earthlings find dogs and little kids make for a happy household. (Probably a healthier one too.)

Trolling for comments is the only explanation.

Infrastructure talk

Build it, and a stronger economy will follow

Well, that's interesting.  Tim Colebatch talks up infrastructure, and says that spending on it has been too low for about 30 years now.   He also notes that although the Coalition claims that they will make cost benefit analysis of projects a priority, they are already announcing funding for things which probably wouldn't pass that criteria.

But the column also makes mention of things which raise my doubts about how valid cost benefit analysis can sometimes be.  For example, cities used to be very keen on building urban railway lines well before there were people living along them.  Sure, everyone benefits from that maybe 80 years later, but you can't model that well at the time you're building it, can you?

Funnily enough, I see that Henry Ergas is said to have expertise at infrastructure economics.  I wouldn't trust him to have a valid opinion on things like my plan for a yurt led recovery for the Australian economy.*

*  A joke, Joyce.  Yurts aren't "infrastructure".

Just back from Rio, I guess

Sorry, the latest app on the tablet continues to amuse me with its easy method of mild ridicule.  

  

Update: A message across the innerwebs: IT: she seems very resistant to the charms of this blog. How far do I have to go in photoshopping type stuff to get her to visit?

A fan speaks...

An awful lot of claims without explanation

Henry Ergas' latest column in The Australian seems especially full of figures and claims (all about how disastrous Labor policies are) with no explanation or justification.

Maybe he thinks his Right wing fan club follows him enough to remember previous columns where he did explain figures?  In any event, this is a terrible way to write a column.  

Jason Soon, I think, used to hold him in high regard.  I wonder if he still does...

Global warming and floods, continued

Atmospheric Rivers Grow, Causing Worse Floods Ahead | Climate Central

For some parts of the world, "atmospheric rivers" carrying large amounts of water within narrow bands, are likely to get worse under AGW. 

Interesting.

How odd

Harvard scientists say coffee ‘could halve risk of suicide’ - Science - News - The Independent

Don't overdo it, though:

Coffee has in the past been shown to reduce the risk of depression in women, and it also stimulates the central nervous system.

This was the first effort to observe the link between caffeine and incidents of suicide, of which there were 277 among the participants.

Despite the results, researchers advised against people drastically changing their drinking habits in order to self-medicate.

They observed throughout that most people naturally adapt their use of coffee to levels that feel right for them, and added that while the sample size of those who drank large quantities (six cups of more) was too small to make for significant findings, a major Finnish study showed a higher risk of suicide among people drinking eight or nine cups per day.

“Overall, our results suggest that there is little further benefit for consumption above 2-3 cups/day or 400 mg of caffeine/day,” the authors wrote.

Monday physics and philosophy

Bee at Backreaction has a couple of good posts up recently, one about theorising about how stable the photon may be (the short answer - very, very stable), and another lengthier one about free will and not worrying about not having it.

I haven't had time to go through the free will one in detail (and the long list of comments, which will no doubt contain some interesting material) but hope to soon.

Amazing re-writes of history

I have been utterly gobsmacked to read a couple of the "regulars" in comments at Catallaxy in the last few weeks promoting the idea that the Rudd government's ending of the "Pacific Solution" following its election in 2007 was not an election policy.

This highly creative (by which I mean, imagined) meme then gets the occasional comment of support "well, someone should be calling out Rudd as a liar then, when he now says his changes in 2008 were simply putting an elective mandate into effect."

I have seen exactly one person challenge it with anything resembling a reference to evidence - someone saying that they remembered a Kerry O'Brien interview where Rudd said he would close down Nauru.

That is correct.   Here is the section of the interview in question, held only a couple of days before the election:

KERRY O'BRIEN: On refugee policy, Mr Rudd, there are 82 Sri Lankans and seven Burmese being held on Nauru as we speak, part of Mr Howard's Pacific Solution. If you win on Saturday, how quickly will you move to shut down the Nauru and Manus Island options and where would the detainees go?

KEVIN RUDD: We haven't taken advice on that. What we have said that for us, we have an appropriate offshore detention facility, though it's part of Australia on Christmas Island. Christmas Island, I understand, has the capacity of some 800 beds. The so-called Pacific Solution has cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars. Why not use Christmas Island instead? It strikes me as pretty well self-evident.

KERRY O'BRIEN: But how quickly would you move to close down the Manus Island and Nauru option?

KEVIN RUDD: Not privy to the specific contractual and administrative arrangements which were associated with each of those deals...

KERRY O'BRIEN: But I think it's policy. I think Mr Burke your shadow Minister says you will.

KEVIN RUDD: It's policy. We will but your question was how soon.

KERRY O'BRIEN: I think his statement is that you would do it immediately.

KEVIN RUDD: That's true.

KERRY O'BRIEN: And I am asking in terms of your immediate priorities in government, your immediate priorities, will you move as an immediate priority to deal with that?

KEVIN RUDD: At a very early stage. The Pacific Solution is just wrong. It's a waste of taxpayers' money. It's not the right way to in fact handle asylum seekers or others and therefore we think the best way ahead is to use Christmas Island instead. It's a facility which is part of the Commonwealth of Australia. The other thing is this. You think I'm somehow quibbling about this. If you're a responsible alternative government you need to actually look at the advice entirely in its detail on whatever contractual arrangements now exist with those...

 For a broader context, there is this:

On 24 November 2007, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) won the federal election, defeating the Coalition Government which had been in power for nearly twelve years. Kevin Rudd was sworn in as Australia’s 26th Prime Minister on 3 December 2007. The ALP National Platform, which was formally adopted in April 2007, represented the party’s ‘long-term aspirations for Australia’.[2] In relation to immigration, the ALP ambitiously resolved to implement significant changes for asylum seekers and refugees if elected. Most notably, to end the so-called ‘Pacific Solution’; to give permanent, not temporary, protection to all refugees; to limit the detention of asylum seekers for the purposes of conducting initial health, identity and security checks; to subject the length and conditions of detention to review; to vest management of detention centres with the public sector; to retain the excision of Christmas Island, Cocos Islands and Ashmore Reef; and to create a new Refugee Determination Tribunal.[3] In the area of refugee policy the key themes of the platform were ‘humanity, fairness, integrity and public confidence’.[4] 

Reflecting on the Government’s first year in power, the then Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Chris Evans, noted ‘Labor was elected on a platform of change’.[5] One of the first things the newly elected Labor Government did upon taking office was to stop processing asylum claims in the small Pacific Island State of Nauru—which the then Minister described as a ‘shameful and wasteful chapter in Australia’s immigration history’.[6] However, in retaining the former Coalition Government’s excision policy (which removes the right of asylum seekers to apply for a visa) and use of its purpose built immigration reception and processing centre on Christmas Island, the Government attracted criticism from refugee advocacy groups and academics alike—Adjunct Professor Michael White being  of the view that Labor’s new approach ‘did not fundamentally alter Australia’s previous immigration policy and many features of the Pacific Solution remained’.[7]

I find it inconceivable that adults with an alleged interest in politics such that they spend hours every week commenting at a political blog could have convinced themselves that this history from all of, oh, 6 years ago does not exist.

And, as I say, that so few readers at the blog would actually try to correct them.

But then, it is a blog full of AGW conspiracists and deniers. 

At least I give credit to a handful there who see the parallels between the last US presidential election and what is happening now.   Because it is shaping up that way:   a large slab of the Right here is viewing many issues as part of a cultural war of their own desiring.   They have positioned themselves as the darlings of the older end of the electorate, and are making little connection with anyone under about 35.

There's still time for Rudd to blow his credibility out of the water, and a lot will depend on revised Treasury figures as to the budget position; but at the moment, I think a Labor win is looking quite on the cards.

Update:  I forgot to mention last night that even Tim Blair, who one imagines Catallaxy readers visit regularly, was talking only 4 days ago about how Tony Burke was writing before the 2007 election about how Labor would close down the Pacific island off shore processing centres.  

And besides which, when they were closed, there was absolutely no media outrage that it was unexpected.

It was completely expected.  

Get your act together, ABC

I feel like a general bleat, even though I have said it before:  the ABC News website is just awful design for a news site, with its minimal number of "headline" stories and the need to "drill down" to find a more extensive list of stories.

This is rubbish for a well funded news organisation.

As far as I am concerned, a news website should maximise on the front page the number of direct links to stories:   the layout of The Guardian runs rings around the ABC site, with its multiple links to further detail on major stories, as do the Fairfax sites.  I would even say that The Australian (God forbid) is substantially better than the ABC layout (if you ignore the paywalling, at least.)

BBC News has a touch of the ABC's about it, but is still more information heavy on its front page than the latter.

I can't be the only person who finds this ABC News web design crappy, surely?  

Yet another article on bloated Hollywood

Steven Spielberg Hollywood imploding: How he predicted a disastrous summer at the box office. - Slate Magazine

A balance article here that puts a bit of perspective on the current failed big budget movies of this American summer:

In an interview with New York magazine critic David Edelstein, producer Lynda Obst also pins the current trend toward gigantism on the increased importance of the foreign market, coupled with a collapse in DVD sales, which once provided a safety net for midrange pictures that didn't pan out. Obst's new book Sleepless in Hollywood features a list of movies she's certain wouldn't get made today, including such Oscar winners as Moonstruck and Forrest Gump.

‪It’s not the first time Hollywood has succumbed to the allure of bloat. Film historian David Bordwell points to the expensive musicals that followed in the wake of The Sound of Music. “The industry had pinned its hopes on films like Dr. Dolittle, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Star!, and Darling Lili,” Bordwell emails. “They were the ‘tent-poles’ of their time, and they mostly failed. There were also the super-sized comedy spoofs like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Great Race, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, all of which remind me a bit of The Lone Ranger’s elephantiasis.” Still, Bordwell adds, “the flopolas here weren’t happening in such a compressed time span, as we’re finding this summer.”

 Update:  by the way, both Moonstruck and Forrest Gump were fantastically over-rated films, in my opinion. It's unfortunate that they are given as examples of films not being made now.

Lose weight, become a jerk

The post heading is inspired by, and describes, the recent history of Joe Hockey.  Here he is quoted today:

But shadow treasurer Joe Hockey told The Australian Financial Review the process was becoming a sham and the Coalition would no longer respect the figures in either the economic ­statement or PEFO.

Previously, he promised to release detailed costings of Coalition policies only when PEFO was released. Now, he said, that pledge may no longer hold.

“We’re not going to cop the Treasury being bullied by the government into producing PEFO numbers that are closely aligned to the government’s,” he said.

“If PEFO looms the same as the economic statement, then PEFO won’t be worth the paper its written on.”

The problem, as I understand it, is to do with revenue.  The Coalition will promise to "fix" it by big spending cuts.    In fact, the lower dollar will soon start to help the economy anyway.  

Hockey seems to believe that Treasury wants to bend over backwards to accommodate just one side of politics; so much so that they will fudge figures for Labor.   That is, surely, an enormous slur on public servants, and if Hockey (if Treasurer) oversees a clean out of Treasury, is it going to be staffed with Right wing twits who support this "Treasury is too politicised" guff?   Why not put Judith Sloan in and be done with?

Hopefully, it was a good false memory...

False memory planted in mouse's brain | Science | The Guardian

No, reading the article, it was a fear memory.

(By the way, I associated "engram" with Scientology, but apparently it has a legitimate science use too.)

Gravity 2

I put up the first Gravity trailer, and now the second one is also making a big splash around the Web.  It looks fantastic, especially if you watch it full screen:



The only thing I don't get:  if the movie is about two astronauts who get marooned in space in the first act, how does it make their plight interesting for the next two acts?

A place unknown

No Man's Land an Abandoned Sea Fort, Soon Accepting Bookings

I don't recall hearing about this place, which looks entirely suited to be a Bond movie setting, before.   

No inflation woes, still

Inflation figures expose carbon scare campaign

Tim Colebatch feels vindicated:

Some wrecking ball that was! Australia's first year with a carbon tax has ended with inflation so low that it was only the carbon tax that kept inflation from falling out of the Reserve Bank's target range.

The Bureau of Statistics reports that in the year to June, consumer prices rose 2.4 per cent on the raw data, 2.3 per cent after seasonal adjustment, and 2.2 per cent on the trimmed mean measure, which strips out the biggest price rises and falls to define underlying inflation.

If you take out the September quarter - as the next set of inflation figures will - then inflation over the nine months to June was running at an annualised rate of just 1.3 per cent. Underlying inflation is tracking at 2 per cent.

And while the dollar has fallen in the past three months and petrol prices have jumped, it's odds-on that the next measure of inflation will start with a 1.

That is low inflation by any measure. It shows the Coalition's scare campaign against the carbon tax was just a scare campaign.

What were other right wing figures saying about the carbon "tax" and inflation?

Well, a retiring RBA board member and businessman at the start of 2012 was worried, and told The Australian (who else):

... Mr Kraehe said the introduction of the carbon tax, rising wages in the resource sector and a weaker Australian dollar could all combine to put upward pressure on inflation in the year ahead. While interest rates were currently "ideally positioned" at 4.25 per cent, Mr Kraehe said inflation was set to become "more of an issue".

And look, guess which paper (hint:  after "The", it starts with an "A") ran this opinion piece from the anonymous (but leading independent economist, apparently) "Henry Thornton":

A tax of $23 a tonne for the CO2 emissions of Australia's 500 greatest polluters will severely handicap Australia's most productive industries. Production, jobs and emissions will be shifted offshore to countries and competitor producers less concerned than the Australian government about the supposed costs of greenhouse gas emissions.

This is action guaranteed to reduce the productivity of Australian industry, increasing the strength of the stagflationary forces already evident.

 Stagflation!  Well who does that remind me of?   Yes, he was having a gripe in October last year:

 Government (and Treasury?) would like us to believe that the carbon tax is on track, the modelling all fine, and concerns about utility prices overblown.

 And here he is, complaining that the ABS was not going to try to differentiate the contribution of the carbon price to inflation.

When overall inflation is so well in the range, what would be the point?

Something you are unlikely to see anywhere else on the Internet

After just reading again about the way biographers have spent much effort psychoanalysing CS Lewis from afar, it amuses me greatly to think how much could be imagined into blog posts in the age of the internet, especially when apps let something like this be easily made:

Yet more CS Lewis biography

Mere C. S. Lewis | TLS

There are still biographies being written about CS Lewis, and this review of two of them is not a bad read, but it didn't contain much in the way of information that I hadn't read elsewhere.  Except, perhaps, for this minor anecdote:

In his biography, McGrath is candid about the eccentric and less edifying side of his subject’s life. Lewis was personally shabby and unkempt, and he let his house get into an unhealthily filthy state. He refused to learn to type or drive a car. He smoked and drank heavily: Tolkien was amused to hear a reference to “the ascetic Mr Lewis” on a day when he had seen him down three pints of beer at lunchtime.

Neat

Hunt for alien spacecraft begins, as planet-spotting scientist Geoff Marcy gets funding

So, the Templeton Foundation, much criticised by some prominent atheist scientist figures (well, Sean Carroll comes to mind at least) for promoting "woo", has given some funding for a search to look for signs of alien civilisations (spaceships, Dyson spheres, or lasers).

It's not clear what should be looked for yet, but that's part of the fun:

Marcy hopes that hiding within it will be hints about intelligent life abroad. What if, say, the dimming of a star that Kepler observes is caused by something even more fanciful than the passage of extrasolar planets? Something synthetic, perhaps? Marcy admits that even he's not certain what he's looking for.

"I do know that if I saw a star that winked out, then at some point it winked back on again, then winked out for a long, long time and then blinked on again, that that would be so weird," he says. "Obviously that wouldn't constitute the detection of an advanced civilisation yet, but it would at least alert us that follow-up observations are warranted."

Such an irregular pattern might signal the leisurely and unpredictable passage of massive spacecraft in front of the star. But, perhaps more likely, it might indicate the presence of a Dyson sphere, a mainstay of science fiction first proposed by physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960.

As for the laser search:

The rest of the $200,000 grant is buying Marcy time on the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the largest telescope in the world, to search for - what else? - a galactic laser internet.

While the movie Contact, based on Carl Sagan's book of the same name, popularised the idea of aliens dozens of light-years away picking up an old telecast of the 1936 Berlin Olympics that was unintentionally transmitted into space, our civilisation has become quieter to any outside observers in recent decades. As our civilisation makes the jump from analog to digital, communication is increasingly carried by fibre-optic cables and relatively weak mobile phone repeaters rather than powerful broadcast transmitters. Rather than spilling out messy radio transmissions, Marcy posits that alien civilisations would use something much more precise and efficient than radio waves to stay connected, and lasers fit the bill. At the Keck Observatory, he hopes to spy an errant beam flashing from a distant star system, an observation that would be strikingly obvious on a spectrum.

Research well worth doing, I reckon.

Say something stupid, get endorsed on Catallaxy

Bernard Keane from Crikey made this statement about plain packaging cigarettes:

One of the highest profile public health industry lobbyists, Professor Mike Daube, yesterday claimed “the primary focus for plain packaging was always to reduce smoking among children, but it is a real bonus that it has clearly had an impact on smokers”. That’s rather different to what Daube said when plain packaging was first announced, when he claimed “we know from research that it will have a significant impact on children and adults”. Is Daube readying for when we see that plain packaging hasn’t affected tobacco sales?

Actually, Bernard, it is not "rather different" at all.   You can say that something will have a significant impact on both A & B, while believing that the primary effect will be on A.  To say that the impact on B is "a bonus" is hardly controversial rhetoric.

Anyone who had read anything about the plain packaging argument knows that the effect of getting less children to start smoking was always believed by many to be the main way it would work.  Here's Harry Clarke in 2012:

Well, I think the main target is youth.  Young people, it's claimed, are seduced by the attractive packaging and the brand names that are associated with cigarettes.  I guess for confirmed smokers it won't make so much difference, but certainly for youth, it's well recognised that branding does have an impact on purchasing choices.  We've currently done pretty well in Australia in reducing smoking rates among young people, but this is really trying to clinch the deal and to reduce the initiation of smoking among young people as much as possible.

Anyone with any common sense would also then assume that this effect would take time to show.

But all of that is not good enough for Sinclair Davidson, who thinks evidence should be in by now and that the lack of evidence on the number of smokers means he can already declare the "policy is a dog."  The policy has been fully in effect for about 7 months. 

Talk about taking glib and pathetically poorly informed criticism to new heights.

Guess where...

 

It's been warm up north - like 32 degree warm, and this very pleasant looking beach on a body of fresh water is:    Loch Morlich in Scotland.

Not your typical Scottish image, hey?

$40 a tonne?

Origin Energy chief says low carbon price will encourage future investment in coal-powered plants 

I saw this interview with Grant King on Sunday, talking about how you would actually need a carbon price of about $40 a tonne to make developing new coal fired power stations unattractive.

This sort of figure has been bandied about before, and given the state of the European ETS price, it makes you wonder why economists like John Quiggin seem so relatively relaxed about Australia joining up to that scheme.

I really don't understand. 

But, on the other hand, I still am yet to hear any economist in the land argue that the Coalition direct action plan is an efficient way to do what it claims to want to achieve.  

Big movie failures

‘Turbo’ and ‘R.I.P.D.’ Open to Disappointing Results - NYTimes.com

From the report:

With extremely weak domestic ticket sales over the weekend for “R.I.P.D.” and “Turbo,” Hollywood has now sustained six big-budget duds since May 1, the start of the film industry’s high-stakes summer season. The other failing movies have been “After Earth,” “White House Down,” “Pacific Rim” and “The Lone Ranger.” 

The main thing disappointing about that list is that there are no Marvel superhero movies included.   I'm desperately sick of all the money being sunk into them.

I actually want to see The Lone Ranger - some reviewers have liked it, and I am very fond of the Pirates of the Carribean movies.  Even the third one has grown on me by re-watching it on DVD.

What you have to do is what the whole  series in quick succession - say, over a week.  The entire arc of the story makes much more sense that way, and you actually notice jokes in the last movie (for example) that depend on remembering incidents and characters from the first movie.

On a sailing related note, I also finally caught up with Master and Commander on DVD.  As with Pirates of the Caribbean, I am continually impressed with how utterly realistic modern movie technology can make sailing ship battles and storms appear.   But the movie itself seemed more interested in just being an earnest portrayal of life at sea in the British Navy in 1805, rather than having a really compelling story or characters.  Maybe the books are better, but the movie felt a little hollow at heart.  I don't really see that it was worth 10 Oscar nominations.

Arthur noted

I've only caught the last 20 minutes of Q&A tonight, but I have to say again that Arthur Sinodinos is one of the few on the Coalition side of politics at the moment who appears to be a decent, relatively straight talking politician.  He and Malcolm Turnbull are about the only two who don't set my teeth on edge.

As for the rest:  Abbott needs to chuck it in for being promoted above competency; Julie Bishop is, I am sure, actually a robot; Christopher Pyne can't "handle" the truth (or rather, he can't deliver it);  Joe Hockey looks means and cranky since he lost weight and has to puff himself up with indignation and hyperbole for the cameras regularly; Andrew Robb does not look quite engaged, despite his medication; Scott Morrison is an arrogant motor mouth; Greg Hunt has to sell his principles and learning and endorse a rubbish climate change plan; Sophie Mirabella has a reputation for appalling bitchiness in Parliament; Bronwyn Bishop is still floating around and endorsing anti-science; Eric Abetz has a touch of the "not quite human" like Julie B; George Brandis is (I believe) well hated by many Liberal Party members for being annoying and arrogant.

It's a great line up....

Free will on the brain

Is free will a scientific problem?

The article refers to a book by Peter Tse, which argues that the brain's ability to re-wire itself quickly actually means that free will is real.  From another link:

Tse draws on exciting recent neuroscientific data concerning how informational causation is realized in physical causation at the level of NMDA receptors, synapses, dendrites, neurons, and neuronal circuits. He argues that a particular kind of strong free will and “downward” mental causation are realized in rapid synaptic plasticity. Recent neurophysiological breakthroughs reveal that neurons function as criterial assessors of their inputs, which then change the criteria that will make other neurons fire in the future. Such informational causation cannot change the physical basis of information realized in the present, but it can change the physical basis of information that may be realized in the immediate future. This gets around the standard argument against free will centered on the impossibility of self-causation. Tse explores the ways that mental causation and qualia might be realized in this kind of neuronal and associated information-processing architecture, and considers the psychological and philosophical implications of having such an architecture realized in our brains.

My brain is not sure what to think of this yet.  Rewiring is currently in progress....