Numbers and behaviour

There's an article on The Conversation by a health researcher John de Witt entitled To curb rising HIV rates, we must target our human flaws, talking about the vexed issue of the increasing rate of HIV.

Every year now, it seems there is angst about the number of new cases of HIV, and how the education methods are clearly not working.   de Witt notes:

Much of what we currently do is based on common sense and past experience, which is problematic because people do not necessarily behave in their own best interests. People are, in fact, often motivated, well intentioned and well informed but suffer from the common so-called “new year’s resolution” effect; they do genuinely want to change but just don’t quite manage to get started or fail to maintain new behaviour.

We are also, rightly, reluctant to lecture or play on people’s fears because we want them to make their own informed choices. So we assume that if we give people all the information they need they will put it together and act accordingly. But most people have more on their minds than staying healthy, and most assume they are healthy anyway.

He suggests a couple of things, such as "opt out" inclusion of HIV testing at sexual health clinics (seems odd that this is not already the case for anyone who turns up worried about an STD.)  He also talks about  "simple action plans" which sound like people being reminded on their phone to get tested, etc.

These may be well and good, but he still seems to be reluctant to go to the obvious place - telling gay men to stop having so much casual sex.   Here's a novel idea:  tell guys that if they meet someone, get to know them over dinner, talk about if they ever get tested for HIV, then decide if you want to have sex with them.   The same thing could be applied to heterosexuals too - after all, a recent study on the rate of chlamydia showed how high it is getting too, particularly amongst younger people:

Prevalence of chlamydia was 5.2 per cent in men and 4.4 per cent in women. Among men, prevalence was highest in those aged 20-24 years (6.6 per cent) and in women, it was highest in those aged 16-19 years (8.0 per cent).

One figure which I realised I had no idea about when reading the article was the proportion of gay men who are HIV positive.  Just reading about 1,000 new cases every year (or talking about a 10% rise in the rate of new diagnoses) gives readers no idea about that.

But Google being our friend, it appears de Witt himself has estimated that for Australia about 10% of gay men are HIV positive, but with many of them not knowing.

Why is that figure not more widely discussed in education to the gay community?    Have ten casual lovers in a year, and there's a pretty good chance one of them will be HIV positive.  The figure is, I'm pretty sure, not often featured in the media, but then do they talk about it in their sexual health campaigns aimed at gay men?

de Witt will probably argue that this is an attempt to scare people, which doesn't work.  And certainly, as I have wondered before in this blog, it would appear that knowledge of the risk of syphilis (when it was untreatable even) did not deter men from having sex with prostitutes for hundreds of years.  Or is it thought that the figure is not high enough to scare people?   Has any research ever been done on that, I wonder, in both the gay or heterosexual community of people who have lots of partners in any given year? 

But the thing that I thought is obvious, is that if you don't talk about the rate of HIV amongst your target population, so to speak, you aren't helping at least some people who can take a rational approach to their sex life.   

An addendum:   de Witt, along with everyone else who ever writes about the increasing rate of new HIV cases, talks about  part of the problem is the fact that anti viral treatments mean people are not scared of HIV in the way they used to be.  But he notes:

Every new infection comes with a lifetime of medical treatment, significant risk of medical complications and considerable lifelong costs; about A$18,000 each year for ARTs for one person in Australia.

Again, I really wonder whether in their education attempts, how much effort do they put in to explaining why HIV is not a good thing to have even when treated?   And certainly, regardless of life expectancy (and some reports of studies might be giving exactly the wrong impression on this), the government has got fantastic financial motive to make education work.  

And you thought Russia was a worry...

With anti-gay law, Uganda says it is defending 'morals' | The Japan Times

Veteran President Yoweri Museveni has announced he would sign into law a
controversial bill that will see homosexuals jailed for life, despite
warnings from key allies, including the United States.

Officials also said Museveni had last week signed into law
anti-pornography and dress code legislation that outlaws “provocative”
clothing, bans scantily clad performers from Ugandan television and
closely monitors what individuals watch on the Internet.

 I like the understatement in this next sentence:

The anti-gay bill cruised through parliament in December after its
architects agreed to drop an extremely controversial death penalty
clause.

The legislation still stipulates that repeat homosexuals should be
jailed for life, outlaws the promotion of homosexuality and requires
people to denounce gays.

Gee.  The people who comment at Catallaxy will have no problem-o with that last bit.   But it's good to see that this is all scientifically based:

But another presidential spokesman said Monday that Muzeveni had
decided to support the bill after seeking advice from a team of domestic
scientists who were asked to “study homosexuality and genetics in human
beings.”

The spokesman said the scientists concluded that “there is no
definitive gene responsible for homosexuality,” meaning that
“homosexuality is not a disease but merely an abnormal behavior” that
needed to be banned.

Nice of the scientists of Uganda to have saved the rest of the world the bother of research.  (Some of which was recently noted here.)

I see that Uganda is 42% Catholic.  I wonder what the Church has had to say about this?  It seems the Ugandan bishops criticised the death penalty aspect from the start, but this article indicates they distinctly softened towards it when the death sentence was dropped.  Charming.

Update:  mind you, the broader Catholic Church, including the Pope's representative, have been against the law.  But it still seems the local bishops aren't saying much anymore (as far as I can see.)

This morning, I read more about the related law, to do with public decency, that has been signed into law.  From a Ugandan paper (from which I learn that imported second hand Japanese cars are very big  in that country):

Henceforth, women have been forbidden from wearing clothes like miniskirts and cleavage-revealing blouses ('tops') that excite sexual cravings in public, unless for educational and medical purposes or during sports or cultural events.
Addressing the press at the Media Centre in Kampala on Tuesday, ethics and integrity state minister, Rev. Fr. Simon Lokodo said the President signed the bill into law on February 6, two months after its passing by the House.
Parliament passed the piece of legislation December last year.
The law creates a national anti-pornography committee responsible for its implementation by ensuring early detection, collection and destroying of pornographic materials.
The committee, whose representatives will be drawn from various sectors including the media and entertainment industries, will also offer rehabilitation services to victims of pornography.

Will the police be issued rulers to measure hemlines? 

Coincidence noted

Lincoln and Darwin, born hours apart, February 12, 1809 | Millard Fillmore's Bathtub

Dark energy in plain language

What is dark energy? Vacuum energy, braneworlds, string theory, gravity, quantum physics.

A pretty good, pretty comprehensible, article on the mystery of dark energy.

(Interestingly, though, the author says dark matter is an arguably bigger mystery.) 

Feeling vaguely depressed

Columnists like talking about aluminium as "congealed electricity":  all the better for some of them to huff and puff about how pricing carbon makes that industry uncompetitive in the long run in Australia (if you keep carbon pricing.)

Funny how then they can keep blaming carbon pricing for Alcoa closing down a smelter now, when there is a government that says it is determined to end it, and even Judith Sloan has to admit that it was sheltered from its full effects for years yet.

A broader picture of what has happened with aluminium comes from (surprise) the Fairfax press, which notes:

 Four decades ago, the United States, the USSR and Japan accounted for almost 60 per cent of aluminium production. Today, China accounts for more than half the global total. The big four producers from 40 years ago have a share of just over 10 per cent.

China is in effect subsidising its aluminium production. The industry is a means to an end: smelters and electricity generating capacity have been developed in tandem, locking in cheap power for the smelters, but also extending China's power grid, and opening up new parts of the economy for industrialisation and economic development.

The shift in aluminium production away from the developed world to the developing world and to China and particular kept a lid on aluminium prices as energy costs rose, however. Profits on aluminium smelting have been squeezed, forcing smelter closures around the developed world: Point Henry is only the latest, and it will not be the last.

Anyhow, I figure a good name for the Tea Party-ish Right, both in the US and Australia is "congealed stupidity".

Honest to God, I have never known the Right of politics to contain so many annoying, rude, over-simplying and intellectually vacuous people as it does at the moment.   What on earth has caused this?  (And no, it's not me moving to the Left - it's a large part of the Right positively moving towards anti-intellectualism and ignoring evidence for ideological reasons, both on science and economics.)  Is it because a fair slab of the Left has moved somewhat to the centre, compared to (say) the decades of the 60's to the 80's?   I honestly do not understand what has gone on here culturally, but something has.

So, to cheer me up, here's something you don't see every day (found via Rabbett Run):



Update:   Alcoa specifically denies the carbon tax was behind its decision to close Point Henry. 

Why should they disbelieved when they may have profited from the free permits?

Now, to make me happier:  rat tricks.  (I never knew they were as trainable as they obviously are.)

I don't know...

Can scientists know that they do not know?

Imagine you knew everything about the current universe – the state of every single
particle – and all the laws governing the universe's evolution. Endowed
with such knowledge, you could then predict the future, right? French
mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace thought so.

Not so, according to an analysis by SFI Professor David Wolpert – not even for the non-chaotic, non-quantum-mechanical universe that Laplace assumed.

The explanation in the article is not at all clear, but it seems an interesting argument worth following up.

UPDATE:   here's a short .pdf report from Nature in 2008 on Wolpert's idea.     

Are people comfortable with this?

Australia spied on Indonesia talks with US law firm in 2013 | World news | theguardian.com

Look, I've always assumed that mobile telephone systems were not super secure, even when they moved from analogue to digital.

So I've always assumed that politicians who talked about sensitive stuff on their mobile phones were being careless.

But even so, I am surprised at the purpose for which intelligence is being used by Australia and the US, according to the Snowden leaks. This, for example:

Australia listened in on the communications of an unnamed American
law firm which was representing Indonesia in the discussions and passed
the information to the National Security Agency, according to a document
obtained by the New York Times.

It is unclear what the discussions were about - but two trade disputes
around that time were about the importation of clove cigarettes and
shrimp, says the paper.

A monthly bulletin from the NSA’s liaison office in Canberra said the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) was monitoring the talks and offered to share any information with the US. It offered up that “information covered by attorney-client privilege may be included”.

I am also a bit puzzled that the issue is getting a bit of a soft run in the media here.

I mean, the bugging of the East Timor government operations when commercial matters were underway seems to be half forgotten by the public already.

Now evidence of bugging legal advice on the vital issue of clove cigarettes and shrimp?

I expected that certain industries might carry on their own intelligence gathering, but to have governments so fully involved in matters of commercial benefit - this seems to me to be something the public should be talking about, but it isn't. 

UPDATE:   an article in the Christian Science Monitor accuses the NYT of over dramatising the story, and points out that in the fact the US could have told Australia to not provide them with the advice the US lawyers were giving.

But but but:   what the article doesn't address is whether anyone should be surprised or question that Australia was collecting intelligence on Indonesia trade talks and offering to hand that to the US. 

The article says that the NYT times story, if stripped of  "spin, drama and adjectives" is this:

A 2013 memo leaked by Edward Snowden shows that Australia's version of the NSA, while engaged in electronic surveillance of an Indonesian trade delegation, came across communications between the Indonesian officials and a US law firm the country had hired for help with trade talks.  

Isn't that controversial enough??

Gut bacteria and milk

How Breast Milk Engineers a Baby’s Gut (and Gut Microbes) 

It seems quite a complicated story that is being sorted out - how mother's milk both encourages some of the right bacteria for the gut, and inhibits others.  In fact, it appears it passes on microbes within the milk itself, too:

And, of course, their study highlights yet another benefit to
breastfeeding. It’s unique in isolating the effect of a single (major)
ingredient of milk, but Kaetzel notes that breastfed infants also get a
wide spectrum of other helpful substances.

For example, it contains its own microbes. Lisa Funkhouser and Seth Bordenstein have speculated that the lymphatic system conveys bacteria from a mother’s guts into her mammary glands, where they can be taken up by suckling infants.

If pups that don’t get SIgA from their mothers have weird bacteria in
their lymph nodes, could they then pass on different microbes to their own offspring,
when the time comes for them to produce milk? “There could be some
really exciting transgenerational consequences from not ingesting sIgA
in mother’s milk,” says Hinde.

Typical

Climate sceptic to head Abbott review into renewable energy target

The Abbott government has launched a formal review of Australia's 20 per
cent renewable energy target, choosing senior business figure Dick
Warburton – who has been sceptical about mainstream climate change
science in the past – to head it.

More pathetically poor judgement from this lousy PM.

More bodily functions

The Lowy Institute blog notes a Youtube video that is part of a UNICEF campaign to encourage the good people of India not to do their business outdoors.  "Poo2Loo" is the catchy theme.

I see that there is in fact an entire Youtube channel devoted to this campaign.  Amongst a dozen or so videos, it features one with a musician  (presumably well known in India?) who has signed "the pledge against Open Defecation".  (Yes, they put in the capital letters there, not me.)

Sadly, although these videos appear relatively new, they don't have high view numbers yet. 

Here, I'll do my bit - this is a short one involving an apparently common occurrence in Indian parks:




It's all a bit odd, in that the campaign seems to suggest that it is a matter of personal responsibility as to where they go; whereas I thought it was mainly a matter of poor people not having toilets to go to in the first place.

In any event, they make the country sound like such an enticing place for the Western tourist.

Out of the way, stupid

I see that Judith Sloan, whose living now seems to comprise of:

a.  putting a veneer of polite reason on her right wing economic and political views when writing in the Australian and appearing on ABC TV, while

b. mouthing off at a blog that everyone who disagrees with her is pretty much a socialist idiot

wrote over the weekend in reference to Christine Lagarde (head of the IMF):

Honestly.  Surely the times of insisting that the IMF top job goes to some European socialist should end? 

Now I don't follow European politics closely, but as far as I can tell, Lagarde, a former conservative politician, is a socialist in Sloan's eyes because she takes climate change, and its future effects on economies, seriously. 

Yet she faced criticism in The Guardian for doing things of which one would think Sloan would approve:

It is, indeed, astonishing that one the major architects of the punitive and ineffective bailouts in Greece, Ireland and Portugal, should now found herself at the helm of the IMF. The European Union has proved incapable of designing a proper anti-crisis policy for the eurozone. Both the US administration and the IMF had to intervene to prompt a Franco-German led eurozone to take steps to prevent an impending catastrophe. In May 2010, the EU eventually launched the €700bn Financial Stability Mechanism. Not only did the funds prove insufficient to reach their stabilising objective, but a lack of leadership was also blatantly exposed. While Germany urged more austerity measures on Greece, Ireland and Portugal, Christine Lagarde warned Greece that it was at risk of default if "it didn't do more to bring its public finances into order". No doubt that the quasi-bankrupt Greek government will have found it helpful.

First, Lagarde sided with the European Central Bank in opposing any form of restructuring of the Greek debt. Then, she softened her stance and agreed to a new bailout along the same austerity lines that made the previous bailout fail. In true neoliberal fashion, the candidate to the IMF directorship supported the idea that Greece should privatise state assets, to be sold to Chinese buyers. These failed policies have inflicted nothing but unnecessary suffering on European peoples, and have largely contributed to boosting a resurgent far right across Europe. Lagarde was one of their main instigators.

 And I also note it was the Socialists in France who got her into a bit of legal trouble regarding a claimed financial scandal. 

Funny old socialist she is, then.

But apart from Lagarde believing in that well known socialist conspiracy, climate change;  Sloan probably finds outrageously outrageous Lagarde's recent comments on inequality:

“Business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum should remember that in far too many countries the benefits of growth are being enjoyed by far too few people. This is not a recipe for stability and sustainability,” she told the Financial Times. 

We'll have to see what other things come from Sloan World in the next few months.

Flatulence noted

As Jason's twitter account might be the only one in the world that pretty regularly mentions this blog, it's time for another bit of cross referencing.  It was via his re-tweet that I learnt about the amazing Edo scroll of a Japanese fart battle.   Not exactly the Bayeux tapestry, but funnier.

Harmless recreational drug news

James Delingpole, the science commentator who freely admits knowing nothing about science, wrote about the recreational use of drugs, particularly cocaine, last Christmas:

It makes people happy; by and large it doesn’t do anyone any serious physical or mental harm.

(To be fair, as much he doesn't deserve it, he did also list the negatives of cocaine snorting too - but they had nothing to do with health, apart from noting that it "ruined sex".)

Recent news from the US:

In the 24 hours after using cocaine, a young adult's risk of a stroke increases almost sevenfold, according to a new study.

The risk for stroke associated with cocaine use is much higher than with other stroke risk factors, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and smoking, said the researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

"Cocaine is not only addictive, but it can also lead to disability or death from stroke," said lead researcher Yu-Ching Cheng, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

And yes, I am aware that 7 times a small number is still a small number, but it's not insignificant:

It is estimated that about 13,000 Americans aged 15 to 44 suffer a stroke each year, Cheng said.  "Based on the data in our study, we estimated that about 300 young stroke cases are associated with acute cocaine use each year, but the estimate may vary depending on the prevalence of cocaine use in different sub-populations," she said....

 "Cocaine comes up over and over as being implicated in stroke in people of all ages," said Dr. Richard Libman, vice chairman of neurology at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y.

The peculiar matter of decreasing psi

Looking back at parapsychology over my lifetime, in the late 60's and the whole of the 70's there was  a pretty popular idea that scientific proof of things such as ESP or other psi powers would be soon established, and likely understood as a part of nature that had just not been properly recognised before.  (And/or, a part of human evolutionary progress.)  Science fiction by Larry Niven, and to a degree, Arthur C Clarke, incorporated this theme, as did some TV shows.  And I doubt that non fiction books on the paranormal have ever sold as well as they did in the 1970's, and perhaps into the early 80's. 

In reality, though, the investigation of psi seemed to progress in haphazard fashion, with promising early experiments and studies fizzling out.   Ganzfeld experiments for ESP testing seemed to be finally be a potential repeatable demonstration of ESP, but there is now doubt about that.

Given the slipperiness of the evidence in the field, I have often wondered whether anyone had written science fiction in which alien or supernatural operatives actively interfered with parapsychology research in order to keep humans in the dark about the true nature of reality.  I suspect its already been done (you could say it's been done for UFO's with the Men in Black.)

But I didn't realise until this weekend when I read this essay "The Capricious, Actively Evasive, Unsustainable Nature of Psi"that in fact there had been a a lot of pondering within parapsychological circles over the last couple of decades about the mysterious way psi has often seemed to dissipate after early successes.

The .pdf article at the link, which appeared in the Journal of Parapsychology ten years ago (I found it via comments at Michael Prescott's blog) is a good read.   The author (James Kennedy, who I had not heard of before) did some work in parapsychology himself, and some autobiographical detail appears in this other paper.

He fully acknowledges that many people will go to the obvious explanation - that declining positive results are simply because of of improved experimental rigour - but notes (if briefly) that there are circumstances where this cannot really explain it.  This example seems odd:

Targ described another case:
[W]e did a series of trials some time ago where we had nine successes in a row forecasting silver futures changes, and then I triedto replicate that . . . and got eight out of nine hits. . . . I then sought for replication to take advantage of this mechanical psi machine we had created and I got eight out of nine failures. That has really stopped my personal psi investigation for a couple of years while I have tried to meditate on what the problem is here.  (Targ, Braud, Stanford, Schlitz, & Honorton, 1991, pp. 76–77)

Kennedy seems to be sympathetic to the view that something very personal goes on with psi, and it sounds as if believes in some type of external higher consciousness being involved.

While this may sound too "spiritual" for hard nosed skeptics to take him seriously, he nonetheless seems to write well on the topic, and to be an interesting character. There are links to many of his papers here.  

Modern Japanese ghosts

 Ghosts of the Tsunami 
The link is to a lengthy essay in the London Review of Books about the Japanese experience of ghosts and possession in the aftermath of the tsunami.

It gives a pretty good description of the Japanese attitude towards religion and spiritual beliefs, I think, and I had never read before about how they came to the fore in some people after the disaster.

Made me happy

Last weekend, I caught a bit of Rage on Saturday morning, and once again was surprised that so much effort goes into making good quality video clips to go with songs that are today's pop music. 

As I think I have written here before, it really feels as if  there should be an audience for music video clip shows again, but I assume it's the audience fragmentation of the music market that prevents this.  A bit sad in a way - I remember it as sort of fun watching such shows with other people when they were big in the 1980's.  (Not Countdown though - it was, of course,  routinely cringeworthy.) 

Anyhow, this is all by way of introduction to the pleasing video for a song that I would otherwise just consider a bit of an annoying earworm after a while:

Made me laugh

(Found on Boing Boing.)

Oh, diddums

Ha!  [Some of] the freeloading libertarians of Catallaxy threads, who believe in property rights and are pretty big on laws enforcement (but only if it doesn't stop them doing what they like - see their attitude to speeding tickets and random breath testing) are a bit upset that George Brandis is indicating a crack down on illegal downloading of TV and media.

They are the same people who want to put physical retail out of business by only buying on line from overseas.

What a bunch of selfish gits who want expensive stuff to be made for them for free, or next to nothing.

Silkworms to the rescue

Scientists create powerful flu vaccines from silkworm DNA

Researchers said they have developed a new method of creating large
amounts of flu vaccine by using the genetic code of silkworms.

They said the new procedure is quicker and less costly than conventional methods.

The major component of flu vaccines is a special protein that exists on the surface of flu viruses.

Led by Kuniaki Nerome, director of a biological resources center in Nago, the team of researchers synthesized DNA that helps enable the protein based on the genetic information of a flu virus. The scientists then introduced the synthesized DNA into the genetic code of
silkworms.

After the silkworms turned into chrysalides, Nerome and his colleagues crushed the insect pupae and purified the resulting powder. They then found the special proteins with exceptional high purity on the surface of the powder particles.

It's surprising that anyone would come up with this idea for silkworms, isn't it?

And the Award this year for outstanding hypocrisy goes to....

Former Howard minister Nick Minchin to replace former Labor premier Steve Bracks as Consul General to New York Oddly, this was mentioned by Michelle Grattan and Fran Kelly on Radio National this morning without either of them remarking on the breathtaking hypocrisy of this act by a government that was indicating it was sick of these "jobs for the boys" appointments. If I recall correctly, even some of the numbskulls on Catallaxy threads were saying when Bracks was sacked that it would be a bad look to put Minchin in his place. What an annoying government.

Old time swimsuits and swimming

My recent post about the odd American history of nude (male) swimming made me realise I didn't know anything significant about men's bathing fashions, apart from the vague idea that Speedos where invented in Australia.    I was sort of right about the Speedo brand, although I am still not sure where the design for brief, modern male speedos (as beloved by European men over 60) came from.

One of the best single sources on this topic of men's bathing fashions generally is probably this photohistory page about the Brighton Swimming Club, which is headed by this photo which did the rounds of the internet last year:

 Apparently taken in 1863, I suppose it suggests that the triangular, brief-ish swimwear has been around for quite a while.  (Many have also noted that it offers proof that Stephen Colbert is a time traveller - see the man in the dead centre.)

The article says that prior to the mid 1800's, English men did just generally swim separately nude, but from the second part  half of that century bathing costumes become enforced.  The French seem to have a classier design of swimming shorts, if these illustrations are anything to go by:


 Or perhaps they're just swimming in their underwear?  I don't know.

Incidentally, the painting on the left may feature men modestly clad, but there nonetheless does seem to be a awful lot of gazing and posing going on.

 


Back in England, here's a photo of how incredibly unhealthy English bathing male specimens could be.  (Actually, he looks not long for this world, but seems cheery enough.)    

 
English men have come a long way since the 19th century in terms of healthy body development, I'm sure.   But then again:






Oh look, it's professional ignoramus and spindle body James Delingpole.  The insubstantial musculature is a good match for the intellectual weight of his opinions on matters of which he freely admits knowing nothing.  In his sign off from blogging at the Telegraph today, he says:

And thank you most of all to those of you who have supported me through thick and thin. Thanks for your technical expertise and advice (it prevented anyone ever noticing that I'm an English graduate and know NOTHING about science apart from, maybe, how to grow copper sulphate crystals)

As with Andrew Bolt, this does nothing to stop climate change denying twits from hanging on every word of his assessment of the state of the science.


Anyway, I digress.

It would seem that the increase in mixed bathing at the beach might have been behind men going for the neck to knee design.  But it can't just have been Queen Victoria's influence:  the link I am copying most of these illustrations from has a couple from France with the guys in the old, horizontal stripped neck to knees.

And onto Australia.  Things look very English-like in the early 20th century.  This shot is at Redciffe in 1910.  Shirtless boys seem acceptable, but I'd like to know how many females drowned from the incredible wet weight of their attire.  And is that the Queen Mum on the far left?:

But swimming carnival types do seem to be in pretty lightweight looking attire:



 Yes, that man's got one leg.  This is from 1914, and he's all round fit guy Charles Olsen.  You can read all about him here.

Well, it's getting late, but there are a heap of somewhat interesting photos of swimmers and pools available through the Queensland State Library.





I like this photo for the contrast between the well dressed, we're-out- for-the-day attire of some of the spectators, and the amazingly primitive swimming venue.  It's from 1910, but the location is not disclosed.  Country Queensland, perhaps:

Brisbane used to do a lot of its swimming in the Brisbane River in enclosures, but there don't seem to be a lot of  photos of what people wore.  I guess it was just generally the same gist as what's above.

But move forward to 1935 and it looks like at least some men were brazenly going topless, so to speak, at Shorncliffe in Brisbane:

Anyway, fast forward to post war, and apparently the 1956 Melbourne Olympics had a swimwear impact:

But it wasn’t until the 1956 Melbourne Summer Games that the ‘classic’ men’s swimming briefs made their first appearance. The new swimming trunks were made of nylon for the first time, and were worn proudly by the Australian swimming team, who took home eight gold medals. This exposure solidified Speedo’s hold over the market, and led to Speedo becoming the sole manufacturer and distributor of Jockey-branded underwear in Australia.

 So there you have it.  I'll keep looking at photo archives for swimming in Australia.  You can find great things like this 1900 photo of Bondi Beach:

It's amazing to think that until at least last year, there was a guy alive who could have been a toddler in that photo.  Well, if he weren't living in Japan, that is.

That's it for now...

Scandinavia may be an odder place than I thought

From a review of the book "The Almost Nearly Perfect People - The Truth about the Nordic Miracle":

Booth starts with Denmark because he lives there - his wife is Danish and their children study at Danish schools. That gives him an insight into the country that doesn't quite extend to the others, which he has merely visited and researched, his views of them perhaps coloured by his experiences of Denmark. (I would have the same problem. I live in Sweden; when I visit the other Nordic countries I see them through Swedish eyes, and behind them British ones.) He is at pains to point out how different they all are, and how scathing each nation is of the others. I can vouch for that. You should hear my partner on the Danes. She's going to love some of the ammunition provided here. Can it really be true that 'seven per cent of Danish men have had sex with an animal'? (Not the same one, surely.)

One of the major problems with this book is that it provides no sources or references, so we can't rely on everything Booth writes. Much of it is impressionistic, and I have to say that many of its impressions of the Swedes don't accord with mine. On the other hand, Booth is absolutely right to be angry about Sweden's record in the Second World War, which still ought to be a source of shame to Swedes, but which most of them seem blithely unaware of. This may be one of the things that fuels the arrogance that their neighbours detect in them. In Finland, which Sweden refused to help in its Winter War of 1939-40 against the Soviets, it is also apparently seen as evidence of Swedish men's 'gayness' - that and the hairnets that were ordered for the Swedish military in the 1960s, when long hair was fashionable. (Booth is good on Finnish 'macho' culture.)

It's been an exhausting century

German burnout | TLS

At the link  is an interesting review of a couple of books that look at the particularly German interest in modern life causing "exhaustion" or "burnout".  The funny thing is, "modern" life has been causing this for a very long time, apparently:

Martynkewicz marshals an impressive range of evidence to establish that
numerous German bourgeois and bohemians living around the turn of the
twentieth century felt physically and emotionally drained by the demands of
what they perceived as an ever more complex modernity. Perceptive case
studies include the “tired colossus” Otto von Bismarck, the diet-obsessed
Friedrich Nietzsche, the sharp and ascetic Cosima Wagner, the depressed
Protestant Max Weber, and the fitness fanatic Franz Kafka, as well as Gustav
Meyrink, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke and many other key figures of
German modernism.

Rilke’s famous dictum “Du mußt dein Leben ändern” neatly sums up the resolute
attempts of these characters to counter their exhaustion-related disease by
subscribing to various tenets of Lebensreform (lifestyle reform). It
is one of the many strengths of this fine study that the intricate
connection between these salvation-promising reform movements and exhaustion
is so cogently demonstrated: Martynkewicz shows that the fin de siècle
did not just produce exhaustion, but also saw the advent of numerous
strategies to counter and even to prevent its effects. “In times of weakness
and illness”, he writes, “the longing for salvation and redemption, as well
as for saviours, spiritual guides, prophets, trainers and dieticians,
multiplies.” Among the prophets we encounter are the naturopath Ernst
Schweninger, whose allegedly miraculous regime was said to have transformed
the “obese and miserable dotard” Bismarck into a strong and “elastic” young
man; the raw food advocate and deviser of Bircher muesli, Max
Bircher-Benner; his colleague Heinrich Lahmann; and the endocrinologist
Eugen Steinach, who performed and popularized dubious and later discredited
rejuvenation operations.

Other practices that were frequently mobilized to counter exhaustion include
nudism, vegetarianism, macrobiotics, gymnastics, yoga, gardening and
expressive dancing.

 Rather a pity they weren't too exhausted for World War 2, though....

This story will be like catnip for Andrew Bolt

In The Guardian:

The Church of England has said that it will, as a last resort, pull its investments from companies that fail to do enough to fight the "great demon" of climate change and ignore the church's theological, moral and social priorities.

Although the church's Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG) has resisted calls for the church to pull its money from fossil fuel companies, insisting that engagement is the best way to effect change, its deputy chairman told the General Synod that it was considering "all options" when it came to developing future investment policy.

Chinese TV noted

An bit of a blackly amusing opening in this NYT column on the "China's Television War on Japan":

Iron Palm Du Dapeng’s eyes are burning with rage. The Chinese martial arts expert strikes a Japanese soldier with his fist and then, using his supernatural powers, tears the soldier in half. Blood splatters, but not a drop lands on the kung fu master.

This is one of many violent scenes in the Chinese television series “The Anti-Japanese Knight,” a recent action drama set during the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s. Like many Chinese television dramas, the “Anti-Japanese Knight” promotes patriotism and praises the Communist Party for defeating the Japanese, while conveniently leaving out mention of the decisive role played by the Chinese Nationalists in that war. The violence and anti-Japanese tone send a clear message that killing is acceptable — as long as the targets are “Japanese devils.”

More about this show from a report last year:

In the television series "Anti-Japanese Knight," an unarmed Chinese martial art expert tears a Japanese soldier in half from head to crotch, the divided corpse suspended in the air with a skein of blood connecting the pieces. In another scene from the same series, a Japanese soldier's intestines are wrenched out of his abdomen in a fight sequence.

[Jason, are you ordering the DVD?]

Balmy Sochi

I didn't realise that Sochi was not such a good place to rely on cold weather for winter Olympics:

Weather challenges are no surprise in Sochi or the adjacent mountains — this is one of Russia's few regions with a subtropical climate. Warm, rainy days forced the cancellation of several international test events last winter.

The Russians prepared for the Games by installing a massive snow-making system and stockpiling snowfall beneath thermal blankets over the summer. They also got lucky with early winter storms that provided ample coverage.

But none of that could entirely counteract the nearly balmy weather that arrived here this week.

The forecast today:  18 degrees!

On jobs lost when industries close

I find this commentary on what happens, and what governments can do about it, when the car industry shuts down in Australia to sound pretty credible.   Certainly much more credible than Sinclair Davidson's vague take on "not forgetting" the retrenched workers which ended with the oh-so-predictable line that the best thing the government could do would be to promote more more industry by reducing taxes and reforming industrial relations.

[I can write the ending for the script of any Davidson/Sloan/Novak/Moran interview regardless of the issue.  An asteroid about the hit the greater Melbourne area?:  "Well, if true, and scientists haven't had a good record at predication lately, look at climate change; government needs to immediately reduce the cost of rebuilding by cutting taxes and easing up on the building code, and revising IR laws." ]

I note this part from The Conversation piece with interest:

Some commentators have characterised the car industry closures as unleashing a round of creative destruction that will drive the growth of new industries and create new jobs. For that to be true, it is necessary to assume that existing investments in the car industry somehow inhibit the growth of other “better” opportunities. This is bunkum: if there were investment opportunities in these other sectors, the investments would have happened regardless of the automotive sector. In fact, spillover arguments would suggest such investments are now less likely without the critical mass of the automotive sector.

There is currently no obvious new job generator in the Australian economy except for domestic construction and infrastructure projects. This does not bode well for the future in Victoria and South Australia.

Dangerous (?) particle colliders re-considered

What are the chances that a particle collider's strangelets will destroy the Earth?

Well, this is surprising.  Given that it has been years since I have noticed any advance on the issue of whether micro black holds from CERN could be dangerous, some are suggesting that its time to look at RHIC's risk assessment again.

Curiously, the claim is:

Johnson and Baram are calling for the new commission to look into the risks of RHIC destroying the Earth in addition to evaluating the financial aspects. A large part
of the motivation for their appeal is because of the ongoing upgrades
to RHIC. The collider is preparing for its 14th run,
where it will be operating at 18 times the luminosity for which it was
originally designed. The high luminosity will enable scientists to
conduct more detailed studies of the quark-gluon plasma's properties and
investigate how it transitions into the normal matter that we see in
the universe today.

Another area that Johnson and Baram argue begs some scrutiny is that RHIC is now running at lower energies than in the past. Somewhat counterintuitively, lower energies may pose a higher risk than higher energies. In the original risk assessment report in 1999, the scientists stated that "Elementary theoretical considerations suggest that the most dangerous type of collision is that at considerably lower energy than RHIC." That assessment referenced RHIC's original design energy of 100 GeV. Over the years, lower-energy experiments were performed, and the 2014 run will include three weeks at 7.3 GeV.

Silly old Americans

Report: U.S. failing to protect kids from HPV

We were filling in consent forms for vaccinations which will be given to our son, free of charge, at his high school this March.  (He's just started year 8.)  There were 3 forms, one of them for HPV.  I mentioned to my wife that maybe some very conservative parents object to this one.  We have no objection whatsoever.

I see that the vaccination rate in Australia for girls is pretty high:

Notified vaccination coverage for girls aged 12–17 years nationally was 83% for dose 1, 78% for dose 2 and 70% for dose 3.

So, how's it going in America?:

Although a safe and effective HPV vaccine has been available for
eight years, only one-third of girls have been fully immunized with all
three recommended doses, according to a report from the President's
Cancer Panel, which has advised the White House on cancer since 1971.
HPV, or human papillomavirus, is a family of viruses that causes cancer
throughout the body, including cancers that predominantly affect men,
such as a type of throat cancer. Only 7% of boys are fully vaccinated,
although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended
the shots for them since 2011.

Raising vaccination rates to atleast 80% of teen girls could prevent 53,000 future cases of cervicalcancer in girls alive today, according to the CDC.

 The reason appears to be partly the cost, and squeamishness amongst doctors (as well as parents, I bet):

And at a total cost of $400 for three shots, the HPV vaccine is also
more expensive than other vaccinations, although it's often covered by
insurance, Jackson says.

The real problem, research shows, is that doctors are treating HPV vaccinations differently than other shotsrecommended for kids at that age, such as meningitis and whooping coughboosters, Jackson says.

All too often, doctors offer HPV shots,giving parents the option to vaccinate, without strongly recommendingthem, says Debbie Saslow of the American Cancer Society, who served asan adviser on the report. That could be because doctors are leery of
initiating a discussion about sexual activity, which is how HPV spreads,
Saslow says. Doctors recommend giving HPV shots to kids at a young age,
when they're most effective.

 I find it hard to believe that parents could really feel that their kid will be led into early sexual debauchery because they now have a vaccine that will prevent an older age disease that has never stopped any teenager in history from having sex.

I would also bet that a huge number of boys and girls in the 12 to 14 year range would not even know or care which disease the jab is for.  As for the cost, thank heavens for our "socialised" medicine.  The Tea Party would prefer cervical cancer to that.

Americans have their quaint, and deadly, quirks.   (Pistols in cinemas, anyone.) 

Olympic sized openings

On Saturday night, I watched some of the replay of the Sochi Winter Olympic opening, although I did take the opportunity to doze through the athletes entry part.  (Always the most tedious part, isn't it?)

It was all on a very spectacular scale; in fact, these host country promoting spectacles have become so elaborate they're becoming almost unattractively elephantine and wasteful.

As for specific elements of it, I have to say that, not having read War and Peace, I was not assisted in my understanding of the story by watching an arty quasi re-enactment of it by hundreds of ballet dancers.   My main thought while watching this was that one of male leads in a key sequence with a heroine (she's torn between a few different men, is she?) had quite a "Robert Helpmann" look about him.  (But are Russian ballet dancers allowed to be gay?)   Yes, if ever there was an art form that is highly unsuited to a realistic depiction of romantic, heterosexual love, it's ballet.  (Women who go watch it will probably disagree - I suspect I have 95% of the male population on my side.)

I didn't make it to the end - the Russian Revolution occurred (portrayed in a kind of neutral way) then industrialisation started happening and Russians started having babies (I was moving in and out of the room by that stage and was having trouble following.)   I assume they didn't get to the modern part where about 40% of Russian working age men die of alcohol related illness:  an enormous bottle of vodka emerging from the stadium floor and hosing liquid from the top over the happy crowd of male ballet dancers falling over pretend-drunk might have been seen to be sending the wrong message.  

Come to think of it, the country might have done better by pouring billions of dollars into Alcoholics Anonymous style programs. 

I'm sure I'm not the only person to suggest it, but can't the Olympics go back to something less elaborate?   A few songs, a bunch of dancers, perhaps a 10 minute re-enactment of the original nude version (with the addition of women for the benefit of the modern viewer) would keep the ratings up games after games.  Then on with the athletes and a quirky lighting ceremony.   Fireworks display.  Done.  No more than 90 minutes all up (athletes should jog on if necessary.)   That's my suggestion.

Bigger chances of El Nino

Researchers suggest controversial approach to forecasting El Nino

This group is predicting a 75% chance of a return to El Nino this year.  We'll see.

We see it in Australia too

The conservative man-crush on Putin.

There's a very similar thing to be seen in threads at Catallaxy, where the mere "manliness" of Tony Abbott has been a matter of admiration for years, and they never recognize the Putin like PR techniques that were deployed by the Liberals during the election campaign and afterwards.  

A good question

Can Spinning Habs Solve the Zero g Health Issues? Can Humans Live in Mars or Lunar g? - So far, Nobody Knows

Mutliverse levels considered

Are Parallel Universes Unscientific Nonsense? Insider Tips for Criticizing the Multiverse | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network

Here's a pretty good column by maths fan Max Tegmark, in which he provides a useful table and short explanation of the different types of multiverse.

Mark Steyn insists on wearing his "So sue me (for lots and lots of money!)" t shirt

It's hard to credit the lack of common sense on display in the Steyn-o-sphere.

A recent post of his is incredible for a couple of reasons:

a.  it makes it sound as if he really has taken but a passing interest in the details of the entire Mann "hockey stick" issue before making his "fraud" claim; even more spectacularly unbelievable - he is making it clear that he is learning more about it from blogger Steve Goddard.   Yes, the blogger with severe credibility issues who no longer appears at Watts up With That. 

b. Steyn deliberately, when involved in a court case in which a judge has commented that it certainly appears Mann has grounds for defamation, takes the opportunity to again make a comment discrediting the bona fides of Mann in his work:

So why not just do a straight tree-ring graph of the last millennium? Ah, well. Because that doesn't tell the story that Mann & Co wanted to sell, and certainly doesn't make a hockey stick.

Wow.   "Make hole; keep digging; attempt bogus justification that freedom to dig holes anywhere is a right" appears to be the Steynian theory here.

c.  Apparently, lots of people are buying "gift certificates" to fund Steyn's self represented attempted defence of the defamation action.  Well, good luck with that folks.   Your hero appreciates your generosity in helping fund the damages to Mann that Steyn appears determined to send his way.

And here I was thinking the Japanese do some pretty odd things...

Can someone explain to me why the killing and butchering of an inbred giraffe in a Copenhagen zoo was a public event?   There are kids in the photo too, which seems a very odd choice of education by their parents.  (OK, so an argument can be made that kids these days are too isolated from the reality of life and death - cutting the head off a chook in the backyard was a family spectator event when I was a kid in suburban Australia.  But still, a giraffe is a big mammal, and this seems just a bit weird to me.)

Two climate notes

*  Here's a good summary of a report from the UK Met Office which thinks climate change really is behind this winter's record English floods (although admits it is currently hard to do attribution studies that confirm it definitively.)

*  Despite the cold weather in (parts of) North America, even the UAH satellite temperatures show that, globally, as with December, January was not exceptionally cool.  (David Appell also does a bit of graphing that puts a different on the UAH record, as well as pointing out that Roy Spencer is making stupid, unhelpful claims in his basically political stance on climate change.) 

Reputation confirmed

What a smart aleck way to start his commentary in the Conversation on the Toyota closure.  Sinclair Davidson opens:

Immediately after the Toyota announcement that it will be ceasing its Australian manufacturing in 2017 isn’t the time to be saying, “I told you so”. Rather we should consider the hurt and confusion of the employees. To a large extent the investment they have made in their careers, their human capital, has just depreciated. This is a cost that we don’t fully consider when advocating industry policy.

Shorter version: " it would be inappropriate for me to say 'I told you so' so I'll just link to where I said "I told you" before."

As for industry policy:  have the economists at Catallaxy (a blog with intellectual credentials that continue in freefall) ever had one at all?  I don't think "tax businesses less, cut red tape, and the market will fix it" actually counts as industry policy.

Poor judgement noted

I see this in a post by John Quiggin, regarding the Abbott government:

... in political terms, the Abbott government’s toughminded attitude on the end of manufacturing represents a striking contrast with its eagerness to help favored groups like the financial sector (including the salary packaging industry) and primary industry. This produces bizarre contradictions. For example, as Peter Touhey of the Victorian Farmers Federation recently noted, the Coalition government is spending more than $1 billion to upgrade privately owned irrigation infrastructure in the Goulburn valley region, but is then unwilling to come up with $25 million to keep the processing end of the industry open.

What the Abbott government is interested in

As far as I can tell, on this afternoon when the end of the Australian car manufacturing industry has been announced, the Abbott government has a very limited range of interests:

a.  counting its money, and keeping it; except in the case of -

b.  politically motivated inquiries into political enemies, for which there is always a pile of spare cash to be found to pay for these expensive exercises that they plan on lasting up to the next election;

c.  treating the military as if it is a part of government which it is treasonous to question;

d.  claiming secrecy for military tasks even when it is clearly not needed;

e.   towing people in boats around the ocean and forcing them into other boats - an action of highly questionable legality which, one suspects, is bound to end up with a lethal accident;

f.  trying to re-start culture wars which most people have already moved past.

It is certainly completely uninterested in:

1.  science (not even a Science minister, for crying out loud);

2.  climate science (lining up a climate denialist into a top advisory position, for example)

3.  industry policy that is more nuanced than "let the market work it out".

This combination in its own way is a perfect storm of government uselessness.   Sure, manufacturing of cars has been problematic for years due to a variety of reasons, but one sector (energy) where you might have thought Australian manufacturing might try to find a niche market is more than likely going to be hit by change in government policy soon too.

This is a really appalling government led by a Prime Minister with poor, poor judgement.

It is hard to find a Minister who is not equally embarrassing and currently compromising their better sense by having to stick with the team.  Yes, I'm looking at you, Turnbull.

I actually didn't expect them to be quite this bad, and I hope their polling continues to go down. 

Update:   I see they are in an election losing position still, across all polls I think, although the 3 point swing from Labor to the Greens looks very odd to me.   I think Shorten's loss of points is partly due to his being absent overseas recently.    I wouldn't be in a panic over it.

Abbott's approval rating, while a net negative, is higher than it deserves to be.

I can't emphasise enough how creepy I find the way this government is using the military, not just operationally, but in a PR sense.  (And then going completely over the top in attacking media for reporting possible misbehaviour of members.  That performance by David Johnston was worthy of a full blown totalitarian state.) 

In fact, I am surprised that they seem to have found a current crop of top brass who seem to be happy to be used a part of government PR this way.  During the Howard era, the Navy's unhappiness with its role in dealing with boats was palpable.   This seems not to be the case now, and you have to wonder why.  And has Angus Campbell always been known as a bit of a government suck up?  He sure comes across that way.

I still predict it will all end abruptly and not in a way of the government's choosing.

Service will be resumed, sometime

We've got a technical problem waiting to be fixed on the landline at home, so posting will be light for a little while.

Weight loss, hooray

I find this hard to credit, but I started the 5:2 diet thing with my first "fast" day Tuesday last week.  (I do Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I completed my 4th fast day yesterday.)  Weight loss seems to definitely be over 2 kg, as I started on 89.something (I think it .5 or above, as the rapidly approaching 90 kg line is what finally convinced me I have to stop putting on weight.  But I didn't write it down.)   This morning:  87.1, after breakfast.

I have taken no exercise of note in the period.

A weight of 83.5 would get me into a BMI a shade under 25.   (I am currently 26).  My wife tells me I was 82kg when we married, although I honestly can't remember.

82 or 83 probably sounds a reasonable goal, and then I might watch what happens if I only do one day a week on 600 cal (as Michael Mosley says he found that was all that was necessary after taking off the weight.) 

This does seem a very impressive way to lose weight...

Just get married and have a kid, George

Look, George Clooney as an actor can be great.   He also, by and large, has his heart in the right place politically.   But surely I can't be the only person in the world who rolls his eyes every time I see another "Clooney pranks his friends - again!" story in the press?   I just don't bother reading them, and don't understand why he apparently does this so much, anyway.

Time to stop and reproduce, George.   That usually puts a stop to "pranks".

The Davidson rules noted...

The link, which I don't recommend be followed.

Talk about a meeting of disparate characters

BBC News - Steve Coogan and Philomena Lee meet Pope Francis

I see there was a good reason for the meeting (the report notes "They are campaigning for the release of 60,000 adoption files held by the Irish state, churches and private agencies.")

That's good, because I could not imagine any social reason Coogan (who I regard as talented in his way, but with a brand of comedy that is psychologically too claustrophobic to watch for long) would be meeting the Pope.

I haven't seen his Philomena film yet, but it has such good reviews I would like to.

I'm glad somebody else has noticed

At the end of a Guardian book review about a killing psychopath in a dystopian future New York (which he quite likes), Adam Roberts makes this observation:

Still, Sternbergh has created a memorable main character here. He is an unvarnished, murderous psychopath, happy to kill for money, no questions asked. On occasion, when the whim takes him, he'll even kill without getting paid. Yet it doesn't take long for us to warm to him, and by the end of the book I was keen to read the second Spademan novel (which Sternbergh is currently writing). A big film deal has already been signed. What's the appeal?

It's a question with larger resonance. Think of some of the biggest TV serials of the last few years: The Sopranos; Breaking Bad; Dexter; Game of Thrones. These are all shows with psychopaths at their centre, not as baddies, but as the heroes. Dracula used to be a straightforward villain; nowadays vampires are our heroes even though their stock-in-trade is still (of course) killing people. When Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes boasts that he is a "high-functioning sociopath" and executes press barons in cold blood, we are not appalled. On the contrary, we lap it up. So what's with all the lovable murderers? Shovel Ready suggests, in an oblique kind of way, that the issue is one of a broader social disengagement, but I think there's something more designedly amoral going on. Sternbergh's thriller whisks us along so effortlessly we may miss the point at which we start to think: "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if I could just break the bonds of all those petty frustrations of my day-to-day with a little bit of the old ultraviolence?" This may not be an entirely morally healthy thing to be doing.

I have been up front about my distrust and dislike of the "loveable murderer" theme ever since it started to appear in movies (I would say) in the early 1990's.   (Perhaps with Silence of the Lambs, I would guess.  Pulp Fiction didn't help.)   Are other people finally starting to notice there is something "off" about it?

What is going on, Paul

I was talking to my daughter over dinner last night about her school camp experiences while Paul Howes was on 7.30 in the background, so I could only vaguely get the gist of what he was on about, but my main impression was that it was rambling, confusing performance of highly unclear purpose.

Mark Kenny in Fairfax this morning says that Howe's intervention is helpful to Abbott, and I suppose it might be, except that I find it hard to believe that anyone watching Paul will think it anything other than positioning for his own future benefit in politics, somewhere.   As Kenny says, Howes seems to be alluding to some potential for a re-visiting something like the Hawke era wages accord, but the difference is that there is no potential for a "trade off"in higher social wage under the Abbott government.

Howes should just go away for a while.  Like 3 years or so.  Dissent within Labor is that last thing they need. 

Still, I doubt it is going to lead to any improvement to the Abbott government's popularity.  Pollbludger has its poll of polls at 52.6 to 47.4 in favour of Labor, with possibly the first Newspoll for the year being done over the next weekend.  As Newspoll has been lagging a bit in its assessment of the decline of Abbott popularity, if it joins the other polls and shows Labor in front, Coalition members will not be all that happy with the prospect of a West Australian Senate election.

The Bible and epilepsy

Tim in comments yesterday noted that he hadn't heard of the theory that St Paul's conversion experience was perhaps medically explained by epilepsy.  So, just for Tim, whose poetry is dictated to him by ethereal voices after he has enough home brew*, here's a link to the abstract of the 1987 article which presumably first dealt with the theory in detail.

I see at the side of that page, there are further medical articles suggesting Ezekiel may have also had epilepsy, or that St Paul was struck by lightning on the road.   (The latter theory has a bit more potential for divine involvement, I guess...)

*  I may be making that part up.  The voices come after he eats his home made cheese.

Record heat news

Astute readers will know about the remarkably warm winter Alaska is experiencing, but down in Brazil the summer has been dire, and record temperatures appear to be causing concern on all sorts of fronts:  for agriculture, power and industry generally.

This is all pretty remarkable, given that we are in neutral ENSO conditions.

Although the consensus forecast is that it won't appear in the 2014 northern summer, it does seem that the probability of El Nino returning soon-ish, with its expected effect of increased global temperature, is on the up.  See the information in this post, towards the end. 

Back and forth: just go buy some SPC Ardmona products

In all of the politically motivated back and forth going on about whether SPC Ardmona really are too generous to their workers, I thought it interesting to note the submission the company made last year disputing the Productivity Commission's decision to not offer any assistance.  (Go to the second link here - it's a .pdf that is hard to link to directly.)

The company sounds really annoyed with the PC, and I have to say, it reads as if they have good reason.

In the meantime, one would hope the publicity might lead Australians to go out and buy some of their product.  I certainly did last week - the 60c premium to buy a can of diced tomatoes from them instead of the Coles Italian sourced brand seemed the least I could do.

And perhaps it's also time for SPC to wheel out Margaret Fulton for a new edition of her "Canned Fruit and Meat Recipe Book" which appears to have come out in 1971, possibly as part of newspaper or magazine one suspects.  (It was apparently only 15 pages long.)

I sound as if I am being sarcastic.  But honestly, canned peaches are pretty nice, and we should eat more of them. 

Obamacare not failing

It appears from this Krugman post, and an article in the LA Times, that "Obamacare" is not destined to fail after all. 

The nutty Right in the US will need to move on.   As they will have to, eventually, on climate change.

Data as old as the universe

Optical data storage has virtually unlimited lifetime

I don't know why, but I always find stories about developments in technology for long term data storage interesting. Perhaps it's because I feel there is science fiction potential there: if you came across alien data storage, it would be good to be able to recognize it.

So, from the link, you can read about an optical system that writes on quartz and should last a very, very long time:

The researchers calculated that the decay time of the nanogratings, and thus the lifetime of the data storage system, is about 3 x 1020 years at room temperature, indicating unprecedented high stability. The lifetime decreases at elevated temperatures, but even at temperatures of 462 K (189° C, 372° F), the extrapolated decay time is 13.8 billion years, comparable to the age of the Universe.

Wow.

Old mental illnesses

Elsewhere in the Atlantic, there was a recent shortish article looking at Greek and Roman understandings of mental illness.  Nothing too startling in there, I guess, although I don't think I had read before that Socrates heard voices:

Socrates seems to have had recurrent hallucinations of one particular type: A voice spoke to him, usually advising him not to do things. His disciples were in awe of this phenomenon, but some of his later admirers thought they needed to explain it away—they thought it suggested that he was slightly cracked.

Strange stories of American nudity

There's an article at The Atlantic with the somewhat unusual title Men, Manliness, and Being Naked Around Other Men.

It's a sympathetic look at the men (and boys) who do not care to be naked around other men, even if they be doctors.  While Europeans, and probably Australians, generally regard Americans as being unduly uptight about nudity generally (the Huffington Post just ran an article "Why Janet Jackson's Nipple Still Matters" to mark the faked wardrobe malfunction's ten year anniversary,) this article at first sounds as if it might be an example of American prudishness.   But it does deal with two rather odd aspects of the history of American, ahem, exposure.

The first is that, across many parts of America, and in some cases right up to the 1970's, schools, colleges and YMCAs enforced male nudity for pool swimming and swimming classes.  The article links to an NPR story about men who do not remember this fondly, particularly as they were not given any choice in the matter during the years of puberty in high school.

It seems that even most Americans under 50 have trouble believing this was so ubiquitous in their own country through most of the 20th century.   Apparently, it started as an alleged hygiene requirement, before chlorination of pools was even available*.   (Seems a dubious position right from the start, particularly as the rule was never rigorously applied to girls and women.)  Some public broadcaster has done a show on the history of this, available through this link.  It's not salaciously handled, although he does sound as if he is personally pretty keen on skinny dipping.  One of the more interesting things he talks about is how it has become forgotten so quickly.  (Part of the answer is that some states never believed in it - but a large number did.) 

It also perhaps helps to explain the reason the YMCA was the subject of  gay double entendre in the famous song.

Given that England sort of has a reputation for public school gay experiences and creepy teachers, one wouldn't be so surprised to hear of a history of this in that country.  But the fact that is it America makes it all the more surprising.  (I don't know that it was ever the practice in Australia either.)

So, the other odd thing in the Atlantic article, or at least in the comments following, is the number of people who talk about their schools having no doors on the toilet stalls.   In fact, this reminded me of hearing one of the Johns from They Might be Giants in an interview in the 80's or 90's mentioning having to go to hospital in Brooklyn, and the toilets had no doors so as to prevent patients shooting up (!)

I cannot, in all my life, ever remember any toilet stall anywhere deliberately not having a door.  Even in Japan, where people are by no means shy in onsen and women cleaners in mens toilets are unremarkable, when it comes to a toilet for defecation, I have never seen one that did not allow privacy.   (Which is a particularly good thing in Asia when it comes to the uncertain arrangements with pants and positioning when having to use a squat toilet.)  Yet this seems to have been an accepted precautionary practice in American schools and hospitals, at least up to the 1980's in the case of the latter.

I think I find the idea of being on the bowl in a semi public environment more disconcerting than having to shower occasionally without privacy.   (Sure, the Romans used to poop communally  and No Time for Sergeants made it clear that some US military barracks followed the same design - presumably it was thought to help "bonding".  But if you have always had privacy while so engaged since the age of 4 or so, it's a very odd idea.)

Update:  a columnist in Houston wrote back in 2008 about the nude school swimming policy he experienced (unhappily) in the early 1960's.  He spends time on the issue of why attitudes changed abruptly around the mid 60's, and thinks it is just to do with increased affluence meaning increased desire for privacy.  Not sure that this really makes sense - Japanese and Scandinavian countries are pretty affluent, and social nudity in the right circumstances is routine.  But then again,  I don't know that they would have ever had the  oddball American view that schools should teach boys only to swim in the nude.

* I wrote a bit about the history of pool chlorination in my post about a visit to Brisbane's old pool at Spring Hill.

Stupid, stupid piece

Philip Seymour Hoffman and a double standard over drugs | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free |

What an air headed piece of writing from Simon Jenkins in The Guardian.

An actor dies of (apparently) heroin overdose, and he takes this as an opportunity to lament drugs being criminalised.

Hey, Simon, here's a few points:

*  how would legalisation of heroin have helped Hoffman?   The rich appear to be able to be buy good quality heroin in large quantities.  (If there is any evidence of contamination in Hoffman's heroin, get back to us.)

*  Hoffman's drug addiction was already being treated as a health problem for him, not a criminal one.   He had been into rehabilitation - he had not been referred to police by the staff there.

*  What do you want?  That the rich only inject themselves in safe injecting rooms, like at Kings Cross in Sydney?  You think if there was one of those in New York or LA that rich actors would make their way there daily to shoot up safely?

The fact is, as I have repeated endlessly, for heroin addicts who want help overcoming a dangerous addiction, the addiction has already been treated as a health problem in Australia, and (I am betting) in many Western countries for decades.

Drug reformers are always exaggerating the benefits of their hypothetical legalisation schemes, even for cases for this where the change would seem to make no difference whatsoever.

Economics isn't everything

Economists in reverse over our car industry

I think the sentiments expressed in this column are quite valid.

In particular, I want to hear from small government, uber free market types, where they think Australian economic future lies.  (I bet they shrug their shoulders and say something like "it's not up to me to decide, let the market work it out.")

The problems with letting long standing industries in manufacturing and food growing and processing die because of present difficulties not entirely within the industries' control are surely how quickly they can be replaced with alternatives, how viable the alternatives are in the long run, and whether you are allowing too much of a "monoculture" of economic activity to develop.
  
It seems to me that free marketeers have fanciful ideas that lowering wages enough, and de regulation, just magically leads to a wonderful diverse economic health, no matter which corner of the world you live in.   I am very skeptical.

Thirsty solar thermal

California Faces Solar Thermal Power’s Drinking Problem | MIT Technology Review

I didn't know that some current designs for solar thermal power plants were so thirsty:

The drawbacks are that solar thermal plants generate large amounts of waste heat, and they consume a lot of water for cooling, which is usually done by evaporating water. Solar thermal plants can consume twice as much water as fossil fuel power plants, and one recently proposed solar thermal project would have consumed about 500 million gallons of water a year.

A technology called dry cooling, which has started appearing in power plants in the last 10 years or so, can cut that water consumption by 90 percent. Instead of evaporating water to cool the plant, the technology keeps the water contained in a closed system. As it cools the power plant, the water heats up and is then circulated through huge, eight-story cooling towers that work much like the radiator in a car.

Dry cooling technology costs from two and a half to five times more than conventional evaporative cooling systems. And it doesn’t work well on hot days, sometimes forcing power plant operators to cut back on power production. In the summer, this can decrease power production by 10 to 15 percent, says Jessica Shi, a technical program manager at the Electric Power Research Institute. On extremely hot days, power production might be reduced even more than that