Science Day Report

As I foreshadowed here late last week, I announced to the household on Friday night that I had declared that Saturday would be Science Day, and tried (with very limited success) to muster excitement about making a cloud chamber, crushing cans with air pressure, and (possibly) a secret evening fire act.  

So, how did it go?  Not too bad, really.  I can report as follows:

1.  Building a  mini cloud chamber:   I tried two containers, one an old round (and small) gold fish bowl, and the other a plastic container.  The design problem was how to seal the bottom.  I used plasticine like on one of the Youtube videos I had watched, but it doesn't seal so well when it is attached to a dry ice cooled metal plate.   It seemed that I could only get the right supersaturated (with isopropanol) layer to be just above the plate (perhaps less than a centimetre high) so that did limit the amount and length of trails you could see.  But yes! - we did watch vapour trails and I tried to explain about muons and cosmic rays and fusion in stars and stuff like that, to some glazed face reactions. I think I am going to have to make my own slideshow presentation about this and force them to watch it.  ("There will be a test afterwards", I like to keep threatening my kids after I try to explain something.  I actually did administer a written test once after the visit to the Macarthur Museum in Brisbane.)

I'm also happy to confirm that isopropanol is sold at Bunnings and costs about $8.  A kilo of dry ice was $10, and the plasticene $2.50. I think it is very cool that for $20 I was able to demonstrate at home  the invisible rain of muons and other particles.  The only trick is convincing children how impressive that is - a task that is beyond mere science!

I took a video of the second container, which did not work very well compared to the first, but you can see one little vapour trail.  Will post it tomorrow.

Update:



 2.  Crushing a beer can with air pressure.  There are many Youtube videos showing this,and it does work as advertised and makes a somewhat surprising crunch.  Everyone should try it.   We also did an olive oil can, but the seal wasn't perfect and while it did crush, it was less satisfying.

3.   Fun with CO2.  We had lots of dry ice left, and so did the usual bubbling water, but also put out flames by pouring it over the candle, etc.  But the trick that most impressed the household was floating soap bubbles on it. It does look odd:



4.  Firebreathing with cornflower.  Works well, and that was just using a couple of bar b que matches to light it.   I secretly showed one child, then the other, and then decided I would risk matrimonial disapproval and showed all three together.  She was OK with it, thankfully.

Here's the video, edited to remove me:

 

So, success all round, pretty much.  I'm available for parties for nerdy kids, you know. 

Gerard's "carbon pricing" jihad

The increasingly tedious Gerard Henderson has taken to task journalists who have written or said that Julia Gillard qualified her "no carbon tax" promise by saying she would put a price on carbon.  "Prove it!" he says, "she never did".

Curiously, there is a post by Brian on the old Larvatus Prodeo blog (which, in truth, was often nearly as boring and tedious to read as Henderson) which deals with this very same issue, and concludes that there are claims she specifically said she would "price carbon" on a Channel 7 video, but the station claimed copyright and the video is nowhere available.

Brian is somewhat skeptical of that, and concludes "we just don't know".

But read on.   In the comments to Brian's post, Jules usefully points out that the debate seems rather academic when you note that someone at The Australian thought that Gillard had not ruled out "pricing" carbon, because the election eve report on her interview with Paul Kelly  reads:

Julia Gillard says she is prepared to legislate a carbon price in the next term.

This was their reading of her statement to Kelly:  "I don't rule out the possibility of legislating a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a market-based mechanism. I rule out a carbon tax."

I wouldn't mind betting here that Gerard Henderson has not understood that an Emissions Trading Scheme is a way of pricing carbon.  

The Australian understood Gillard's promise to mean she could still legislate an ETS, and that this would involve a "carbon price".   Why has Gerard not got his y fronts in a tangle about how The Australian reported this?

As for Gillard's support for carbon pricing, from her first speech as PM in Parliament:

I believe human beings contribute to climate change and it is most disappointing to me, as it is to millions of Australians, that we do not have a price on carbon, and in the future we will need one. If elected as Prime Minister, I will re-prosecute the case for a carbon price at home and abroad.

Of course you can argue that she she broke a promise by introducing her scheme during her term of government before getting the silly "community consensus"; but it remains abundantly clear that she never ruled out "pricing carbon", and personally had always supported it.

She had much more consistency on this and other issues than the flaky professional windvane of a Prime Minister we presently have.

Australia Network stupidity

The Abbott government's decision to shut down the Australia Network is looking more and more like the triumph of petty, personal politics over good sense:

May should have been a milestone month for Australian international broadcasting, and arguably the most celebratory in the 13-year history of the Australia Network. ABC executives were due to sign a prized deal with the Shanghai Media Group, giving the ABC the most extensive access to Chinese audiences of any Western broadcaster, with a more expansive reach even than the BBC or CNN. 'Most importantly, the agreement will provide opportunities for promotion of Australian business, tourism, entertainment, culture and education', said Lynley Marshall, the chief executive of ABC International.

Instead, the DFAT-funded network is to be shut down. On the eve of its greatest triumph, the Australia Network has been told it can no longer compete.

In an ever more cutthroat field of international broadcasters that includes the BBC, CCTV, RT, Deutsche Welle, France 24, Iran's Press TV and al-Jazeera, the Australia Network had been making major strides. The Shanghai Media Group deal meant Australia was about to join the UK and US as the only countries with broadcasting rights in China.

Has anyone suggested this?

An article in the SMH argues that increasing the pension age to 70 is the fair thing to do, but gives short shrift to the question everyone asks - "what about manual workers who really can't be expected to cope with their line of work to that age?"  (The writer mentions that in Greece there used to be a large number of job categories allowing for very early retirement - down to 50!  But that approach seems bound to be open to all sorts of rorting.)

And I thought - isn't it possible to craft some sort of solution that involves an elective part pension (one half the normal rate, perhaps?) if you want to take it at 65, or perhaps 67 now that the decision to go to that age has already been made?   Maybe the argument against that is that it would encourage people to blow all their savings and superannuation early, and then maximise their government pension later.  But surely there would be some ways of giving incentives not to do that?  Maybe get a permanently lower pension if you take it earlier rather than later?   Get greater concessions in other ways if you hold off starting the pension until 70?  Maybe a free travel voucher for a $5000 holiday at 70 would be enough for some, and it could save the Commonwealth $60,000 between 67 and 70.  (Voucher only redeemable using Qantas would help that company too.)  Don't say I'm not giving this some deep and meaningful thought...

Yes, it may be extremely hard to live on half (or 3/4?) the current pension, but if it is limited to a few years before you go on the full rate, savings and family help (and a very short reverse mortgage?) may be able to help.

Someone's probably already thought about this, but if not, I claim credit.

Rundle on the budget

I quite like Guy Rundle's Crikey column on the Budget, although I think it goes off the rails on the Labor despair aspect at the end.  (He clearly wrote it before last night's Shorten speech, which I expect has left the party feeling the best about itself since about 2006.)   But from the first page, here's his key point, which I think even some of the Catallaxy group of economists might agree with:

For the weird thing about this budget is that it seems punitive to no great purpose. Howard and Costello did a lot of their cutting in the background — either programs which were amorphous but vital (such as R&D) or hidden from most but vital (such as indigenous health), while leaving the front end alone. This budget appears to go out of its way to hurt and affront people, without using the money to make any significant dent in the debt. Its significant frontline savings features seem designed to shape politically engaged sub-classes where none existed before.

Prime Minister Credlin has spoken

Don’t dismiss the double dissolution theatrics

According to Laura Tingle, Abbott's talk of double dissolution over the budget shouldn't be dismissed:

Coalition staffers may have been gobsmacked to hear Abbott’s chief of staff Peta Credlin declare that this was a budget she would take to an election. But this is really just the first shot across the bow of the Palmer juggernaut.

I plan on watching subatomic particles

Inspired by the segment in his show where Brian Cox made his own little cloud chamber out in the African bush,  I've checked out instructions on several web sites about how to make them, and want to make one this weekend.  I know where I can get dry ice not far from my home.  Not sure about the isopropanol of strong enough solution*, but I am inclined to try Isocol rubbing alcohol first even though it is only 64%.  (They recommend using 90% concentration if you can get it.)

I also have a large empty olive can which I want to use boil water, seal and pour cold water onto it.  (Actually, just doing it this way with an aluminium can looks pretty impressive too.)

For the evening, I might even try cornflower firebreathing.  

Yes, it is a weekend of science coming up.  It's a good thing I have children to do this with, otherwise my wife would think I am rather odd.  (Too late to worry about that, perhaps.)

* Update:  it looks like I can get a small bottle from Bunnings. 

A serious African problem

"Homophobia" gets thrown around as an accusation too lightly in the West, but when it comes to Africa, it seems to be increasingly becoming an entirely appropriate description for many of its governments and religious.

This article in Nature News  Homophobia and HIV research: Under siege paints a really bleak picture of what's going on, and not just in Uganda, which recently brought in severe punishments for homosexual activity.  For example:

On the morning of Saturday 12 April, ten police officers raided Maaygo, a men's health and HIV/AIDS advocacy organization in a residential area of Kisumu in western Kenya. Staff watched helplessly as the officers confiscated information leaflets and even the model penis used in condom demonstrations. The police arrested the organization's director and finance officer, as well as one of its members, for “illegally practising sexual orientation information”.

Another bad example:

Similar problems are plaguing research in Ethiopia, where same-sex encounters are punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Researchers are kept from studying MSM and HIV by the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, which must approve medical research in the country.

A programme run by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Ethiopian Public Health Association managed to pass the screening process in 2011 because it used terms such as 'most at-risk populations' rather than MSM or gay, says an Ethiopian advocate for gay and transgender health and human rights, who lives in exile in the United States and asked not to be named because of concerns about the safety of his family and friends. Once the government found out that the project would target MSM and related groups, the research was stopped, he says.

And how about this story from 2010 (even though the article says the situation in that town has improved a lot since then):

The trouble at Mtwapa centred on an HIV clinic run by the Kenyan Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), which conducted risk-group studies at the facility. On 12 February 2010, a mob of several hundred people charged the clinic, incited by two religious leaders — a Christian bishop and a Muslim imam.

The riot was based on misinformation. “It started with a rumour that two gay men were
getting married in the town,” says Eduard Sanders, an epidemiologist with the University of Oxford, UK, who has studied MSM in Mtwapa since 2005, and who witnessed the riot. “But when the mob couldn't find any hint of the wedding, it descended on the clinic because of its well-known research on MSM.”

Armed with sticks, stones and other weapons, the crowd surrounded the clinic,
demanding that the gay men come out. Police arrested people accused of being gay — possibly as a way of saving them from mob justice — and later released them. One KEMRI volunteer was severely beaten, according to the international group Human Rights Watch.

An article in The Guardian in January discussed Africa as being the most homophobic continent, which doesn't seem to be an exaggeration.  It opens with a quote from the Ugandan "ethics and integrity" minister.  He clearly would not appreciate that gay NFL player's kiss that was all over the internet this week:

Simon Lokodo cannot imagine kissing a man. "I think I shall die," he said last week.
"I would not exist. It is inhuman. I would be mad. Just imagine eating your faeces."

Chill, Simon.  Chill.  

Even South Africa, with strong legal recognition of homosexuality (same sex marriage has been in place since 2006), still seems to have a serious problem.  This study, which looked at "internalised homophobia" amongst men who had sex with men, notes at the end that such men are widely considered "un-African" and even amongst sexual health clinic workers are often considered to have caught HIV as God's punishment.

Although it seems there are plenty of left leaning gay rights advocates who blame this on colonialism and the imposition of Christian (or now, Muslim) mores on Africans who were formerly not so hung up about sex, I'm guessing that it would often have a cultural element too, quite independent of that.

In any event, it is obviously extreme, and to be regretted.

A strong budget reply

Bill Shorten and his enthusiastic cheer squad in the gallery certainly delivered impassioned and (pretty much) principled opposition to the Abbott budget.  Labor should be feeling justifiably heartened, and the government looked pained and uncomfortable.

I'm sure everyone with an interest in politics can't wait for some reliable polling to appear after this week.

Over him

It seems to me that trendoids have lost interest in Chris Lilley, as I haven't noticed much prominence being given to discussion of Jonah from Tonga on the usual suspects, like The Guardian. 

I've always been something of a Lilley skeptic - for every character that works there is one that doesn't, and his satirical targeting is often of very unclear purpose.   I see that News Corp is running a story about the Pacific Islander community backlash against the show.  I'm glad that's happening.  As far as I can tell, it's pretty insulting towards them.

Solar wind and lightning

High-speed solar winds increase lightning strikes on Earth

This interesting report begins:

Scientists have discovered new evidence to suggest that lightning on Earth is triggered
not only by cosmic rays from space, but also by energetic particles from the Sun.

Somewhat interesting to think that for religions which thought the Sun was a god, and lightning his or her vengeance, may have been a bit closer to the mark than previously expected. 

The unimpressive Hockey, and university policy from out of the blue

I'm starting to get the feeling that Joe Hockey has been rehearsing and retelling the line that the government hasn't broken promises that he's starting to believe it;  a sad example of the psychological trick of pretending a lie is the truth for long enough that you start to believe it.

He gave a woeful interview on the radio just now in which he tried to pretend the GP co-payment idea was an example of extra funding needed for health.  His problem is, of course, that it is destined for this medical research fund instead, so he had to pretend that it really does fund health because it may find a cure for cancer!

He also will not be honest and say flat out what everyone knows - he expects the States to ask for GST to be increased if they are to be the ones holding the can for long term hospital funding.

In other Budget commentary, I note that on The Drum last night, Judith Sloan made brief mention of the Budget being "really mean" towards "youth" - which is up to the age of 30.

This aspect of the Budget is (so far) attracting less attention than I expected.   I am rather surprised that Shorten and Labor have not yet come and condemned that change already as clearly too draconian and must be modified.

I was also listening to Christopher Pyne on the university deregulation idea.  He seems to think the youth will like it because they can go get a diploma easier which will then the basis for entry to an undergraduate course.  Just rather sounds like adding a rather unnecessary step if you ask me - at greater expense.

These changes seem to have come pretty much out of the blue, and have serious long term effects on students.   If he can come within 1 km of a university gate without risking getting egged, I'll be surprised.

I will also be very surprised if the youth vote does not collapse entirely for the Coalition.

Update:    thought I would see if I could quickly Google up the Coalition's election 2013 policies on tertiary education.  Here it is:

•We will ensure the continuation of the current arrangements of university funding.

•We will work with the sector to reduce the burden of red tape, regulation and reporting,freeing up the sector to concentrate on delivering results and services.

•We will review and restructure government research funding to make sure each dollar is spent as effectively as possible.

•We will ensure the sector has a stable, long-term source of infrastructure funding.

•We will work with the sector to grow higher education as an export industry and to support international students studying in Australia.

 Yep, nothing in there about doubling the cost of a university degree.  As one Professor from UQ says:

The 2014 budget is taking the higher education sector into uncharted territory. One imagines that a deregulated market for university fees cannot be good for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds but, as Bruce Chapman says, no-one really knows what the social effects of this will be. It is certainly true, however, that this will bring us much closer to a privatised higher education sector where those with the greatest ability to pay will receive the greatest benefit. It would be surprising if there was not a serious political objection to the implications of this initiative; there is every reason to see it as a measure which will increase inequities of opportunity.

Update:   Go back further to 2012, in an article in The Age, and you get Christopher Pyne claiming this:

Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne said reports the Coalition was considering raising fees were "wrong".
"While we welcome debate over the quality and standards in our universities, we have no plans to increase fees or cap places," Mr Pyne said.
But Mr Pyne's spokesman declined to comment on whether the party had plans to deregulate the capped fees universities can charge for courses.
"Our higher education policy will be released at the appropriate time before the next election," he said.

I don't believe it was.

Someone who thinks Abbott is toast

Adieu Mr Abbott! 10 super ways to lose the next election - SuperGuide.com.au

I don't know who Trish Power is, but Mr Denmore reckons she knows a lot about retirees' sentiments, so her views on  Abbott being toast may be worth listening to.  (In fact I was talking to a financial adviser this morning who also said there are changes that haven't been fully understood by most retirees yet that are going to be very unpopular.)  

Measuring neutron life

Neutron death mystery has physicists stymied : Nature News & Comment

As if on TV

Hotel guest thought drowning couple were part of murder mystery prank, inquest told - Telegraph

An unfortunate assumption made by a hotel guest, but given the "murder mystery" weekend, perhaps not unreasonable.

What really strikes me is that the whole incident sounds so unlikely - rather like something you might see on Jonathan Creek, or some such.

Priorities wrong and petty (and - again - Abbott is a complete policy flake)

Again, I find myself pretty much in agreement with Bernard Keane's take on the Budget.

The Budget represents a re-arrangement of priorities which end up doing nothing much different in terms of getting to balanced budget any faster than Labor could have.

What few deserved things it does achieve in terms of welfare and revenue reform (regarding the indexing of pensions, for example, and indexing petrol excise) are outweighed by some clearly undeserved hits on the poor, youth in search of education, science, clean energy, health and public broadcasting; a lifting of existing taxes on many companies, and giving city road construction priority (with no real assessment as to which projects are most economically deserved) over public transport.

It is, in fact, when you look at that list, a right wing ideologically driven set of priorities which is  stuck in the past.  And no, an increase in tax on the relatively comfortable wage earners does not make it alright.  I am also not so impressed with the medical research fund, when there is evidence that even a modest co-payment will make the poor get treatment at less than optimum times for some conditions, as well as cost shift to State run hospital outpatients departments who are having their funding cut by the Commonwealth as well.   Medical research should always be funded at some level, but not at the expense of existing good use of money for treating the presently ill.

Have a look at what St Vincent de Paul says about the budget (he's livid):

ST Vincent de Paul Society Chief Executive, Dr John Falzon, says this Budget is deeply offensive to the people for whom every day is already a battle.

"The government would like us to believe that this Budget is tough but fair but for the people who struggle to make ends meet it can only be described as being tough but cruel.

"There are measures in this Budget that rip the guts out of what remains of a fair and egalitarian Australia.These measures will not help people into jobs but they will force people into deeper poverty.

"You don't help young people or older people or people with a disability or single mums into jobs by making them poor. You don't build people up by putting them down.

"And as even the OECD acknowledges, you don't build a strong economy by increasing the level of inequality.You don't create a strong country on the backs of the already poor.

"There's nothing human or humane about humiliating people because they are outside the labour market or on its low-paid fringes. There's nothing smart about making it unaffordable for people to see a doctor.

"We are not in the throes of a fiscal crisis but if we embark on this treacherous path of US-style austerity we will be staring down the barrel of a social crisis."

Let us remember - it's only a couple of years ago that even Judith Sloan was suggesting that Newstart should be increased, using words Falzon would endorse:

If we are to expect the unemployed to search for employment with confidence, there is no point pushing them into grinding poverty.  

The Abbott government is not even following her advice, then.  Not Tea Party enough?

And as for Abbott being a complete and utter policy flake:  I was reminded on Radio National this morning that under Howard, Health Minister Abbott was pushing hard for the Commonwealth to take over all funding for State hospitals.   Now it's "well, it's up to you States", with the pretty obvious agenda that this will mean the States beg for GST to be increased.  OK, so I have said before GST almost certainly needs to be increased, but that doesn't mean that I have to be happy about the crappy tactics that Abbott engages in to get there.

I expect the budget (and the government generally) to be deeply unpopular with youth, especially when you have Christopher Pyne as education minister developing a sudden interest in changing universities.   But it will also not be popular with their parents, or pensioners, drivers, welfare workers, hospital staff, CSIRO scientists, the Catholic Church, or (of course) Canberra real estate agents.  On the other hand, I expect miners, banks and road construction companies will be quite OK with it.

I wonder if we can have a double dissolution by virtue of Clive Palmer?

Update:  Lenore Taylor on the "sharing the burden" line:

First, the pain is not really shared, not in the long term anyway. We are not actually all schlepping this economic burden in equal measure, no matter what the sound grabs say.

A young person who can’t get a job will no longer get any unemployment benefits for six months and will still have to pay $7 to go to a doctor and an extra $5 for medicine. That’s pretty painful.

A single income family on $110,000 with a couple of school aged kids will from next year lose more than $120 a week in family payments, more than 5% of their current income. There may be good reasons to try to encourage the stay at home parent into the workforce, but that kind of cut also has to count as painful.

But a backbench MP, by contrast, earning $200,000, would pay $400 extra year because of the deficit levy, or 0.2% of their annual income. Even with a few $7 hits as they visit the doctor, that’s not much more than a graze. And the government is promising the levy will be gone in three years anyway.

By contrast the freezing of the rate of thresholds for a whole range of government benefits has a compounding impact over time.

Second, the proceeds of the “pain” are not entirely directed at budget repair. They go to roads funding and the new medical research fund and the new emissions reduction fund.

My prediction for the effect of the Budget on the youth vote

Before the budget*:

Post budget**:

*  Graph from the Whitlam Institute.  I am surprised the 18-34 year old voting intention result has been as high as it is for the Coalition recently, to be honest.

** Coalition vote to be even lower if Rupert gets Alzheimers and makes Catherine Deveny editor of the Australian and Daily Tele.

An effect of white hair

I see that the climate change skeptics/deniers/do-nothing-even-if-it's-happening proponents are celebrating some alleged abandonment of climate science by a Swedish "famous scientist" who has worked a lot in meteorology.   Lennart Bengtsson is his name, and he's clearly not so famous that I recognised who he was.

Anyhow, the excitement is over his joining the "Global Warming Policy Foundation",  a British rogue's gallery of "skepticism."

As a rule of thumb, I find the first thing to check in these stories of (alleged) scientific "conversions" against the climate change consensus is the age of the scientist involved.   There is no doubt at all that the climate change skeptic field is heavily weighed down by white, male hair.   Someone ought to actually work out the mean age of those scientists prominent in that movement - but you really just have to have seen the photos.  Lindzen, Spencer, Carter, Plimer, Dyson, Happer, Paltridge.   All past their prime.  (Actually, I think Spencer might just have prematurely white hair - it looks like he finished his science degree in the 1970's.  But he's become silly and shrill on his blog lately because no one is listening to him.)

Even James Lovelock - he went all apocalyptic about climate change a book or two ago in a way that most climate scientists thought was just a wee bit hysterical, only to now, at the age of 94, to be sounding all "well, we don't really know what's going on after all" in his latest.   As George Monbiot noted, he's also picked up credulously other anti-environmental furphies like the one about (alleged) DDT bans, and as George's piece summariese "genius is no defence against being wrong."   Especially, I would add, when you're north of age  75.  (Actually, 70 might be more accurate.  Worrying signs usually appear when your hair has turned white, regardless of chronological age.)

So, how old is Lennart anyway?  Born 1935.  Aged 79.  Right in the ballpark of the commencement of age related unreliability.

Of course, Judith Curry is lapping him up.. How old is she, by the way?   To my surprise, she finished her first science degree in 1974, which would indicate (I guess) a birth year in the mid fifties.  She's must be at least 60 this year, and I'm pretty sure the glamour shot from Scientific American:

must involve hair colouring.   She's almost certainly got a lot of grey underneath.

Krugman on "Marxism!"

Crazy Climate Economics - NYTimes.com

Was I sounding too Right wing in the last post?  Time for a corrective, then.

An excellent column yesterday by Paul Krugman on the craziness of the ideological rhetorical (much of) the American Right has adopted in the last decade.   A taste:

Everywhere you look these days, you see Marxism on the rise. Well, O.K., maybe you don’t — but conservatives do. If you so much as mention income inequality, you’ll be denounced as the second coming of Joseph Stalin; Rick Santorum has declared that any use of the word “class” is “Marxism talk.” In the right’s eyes, sinister motives lurk everywhere — for example, George Will says the only reason progressives favor trains is their goal of “diminishing
Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.”

Ha!  Didn't Atlas Shrugged indicate that a certain author who had a fetish about individualism thought trains were OK?  (Actually, at Slate, they looked at this question in detail a few years ago.  Libertarians apparently still like trains - as long as they are privately owned trains.)

Krugman predicts that the Right's reaction to Obama using the EPA to address CO2 (because they won't let him use market based methods) will again be to claim "Marxism":

You can already get a taste of what’s coming in the dissenting opinions from a recent Supreme Court ruling on power-plant pollution. A majority of the justices agreed that the E.P.A. has the right to regulate smog from coal-fired power plants, which drifts across state lines. But
Justice Scalia didn’t just dissent; he suggested that the E.P.A.’s proposed rule — which would tie the size of required smog reductions to cost — reflected the Marxist concept of “from each
according to his ability.” Taking cost into consideration is Marxist? Who knew?

As he goes on to argue, very reasonably:

Why is this crazy? Normally, conservatives extol the magic of markets and the adaptability of the private sector, which is supposedly able to transcend with ease any constraints posed by, say, limited supplies of natural resources. But as soon as anyone proposes adding a few limits to reflect environmental issues — such as a cap on carbon emissions — those all-capable corporations supposedly lose any ability to cope with change.

Now, the rules the E.P.A. is likely to impose won’t give the private sector as much flexibility as it would have had in dealing with an economywide carbon cap or emissions tax. But Republicans have only themselves to blame: Their scorched-earth opposition to any kind of climate policy has left executive action by the White House as the only route forward.

The Right in the US has (in large part) become an intellectual embarrassment, and we are all waiting for the recovery.
 

Islam as a disastrous religion

Looking back over the last few decades, I guess you could say that modern concerns with Islam and its interaction with the West really kicked off with Iran, both with the 1979 hostage crisis, but more particularly (because of its actual outreach into the West itself),  the 1989 Salman Rushdie fatwa. (A good 25 year anniversary article is here.)

Then of course you get 9-11, and everyone worried about radical Islam.   As for me, I read some of the more right wing anti-Islamic blogs, but (as with Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs) it became clear that some of the push back was becoming far too Tea Party right wing nutty and racist, and a less hyperbolic approach to the issue was appropriate.  I even read one of Karen Armstrong's books on the religion, and it did (even though I was aware of her excuse making tendencies) make me more sympathetic to the idea that Islam did not have to be viewed as always being nutty and reactionary, and in fact originally had a social philosophy which was (in today's terms) progressive.

But come to the present day, and man, is Islam having a massive PR crisis again, or what?

I mean, where ever you look now, its influence just seems to be disastrous, and if it's not the centuries old branches having it out with massive death and destruction on the battlefield (Syria) or streets (Iraq, Egypt), it's the influence it has on maintaining a positively anti-modernist system of education and social structures.

On Syria, a conflict about which I have not exactly been bothering to understand in detail, Reuters had an article last week on the influence of the apocalyptic prophecies in attracting combatants:

The power of those prophecies for many fighters on the ground means that the three-year-old conflict is more deeply rooted - and far tougher to resolve - than a simple power struggle between President Bashar al-Assad and his rebel foes.

Syria's war has killed more than 140,000 people, driven millions from their homes and left many more dependent on aid. Diplomatic efforts, focused on the political rather than religious factors driving the conflict, have made no headway.

"If you think all these mujahideen came from across the world to fight Assad, you're mistaken," said a Sunni Muslim jihadi who uses the name Abu Omar and fights in one of the many anti-Assad Islamist brigades in Aleppo.

"They are all here as promised by the Prophet. This is the war he promised - it is the Grand Battle," he told Reuters, using a word which can also be translated as slaughter.

On the other side, many Shi'ites from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran are drawn to the war because they believe it paves the way for the return of Imam Mahdi - a descendent of the Prophet who vanished 1,000 years ago and who will re-emerge at a time of war to establish global Islamic rule before the end of the world.

Well that's great.  Some people used to worry about fundamentalist Christian "End Times" views leading an American President into some Middle East nuclear war scenario, but fortunately, the American system always seems to work as a filter so that we only end up with Presidents who have a faith that is strongly kept in control by pragmatism.  (The extent to which they are genuinely, deeply religious, rather than doing it for show, is always a matter of speculation as well.)   

But in Islam, you really do have apocalyptic views directly involved in war and mayhem.

What's more, the anti modernism streak in Islam just makes for some really rotten countries.   As I noted last week, Afghanistan looks completely hopeless, with a primarily rural based population that barely gets educated and whose only concession to modernity seems to be in wanting modern weapons.  (And the freedom to export drug addiction around the world as a way of making a living.)  Saudi Arabia still executes people for using black magic.  Here's a 2013 article in The Atlantic about that country's "war on witchcraft".
That country's list of scientific innovations - despite having squillons of dollars that could be put into science - seems limited to intensive studies of what camel's milk (and urine!)  is good for, yet it turns out that camels are probably spreading the deadly MERS virus.

And as for sexual politics - well, apart from the general plight of women, last night's Four Corners looked at the extensive problem of male child sexual abuse in Pakistan.    Not only that, but I liked [/sarc] the irony of how many homeless kids are also addicted to heroin from the Taliban in the country next door.

And then, of course, you have Nigeria and the kidnapping of girls, but apparently that is just part of their plan for creating an Islamic State.

And while one might think that modern communications means that there should be a natural tide towards vaguely modern ideas of how communities can successfully live - Sharia law is coming to Brunei, and strengthening in those parts of Indonesia where it is allowed. 

So, as I say, it is extremely difficult to find positive things to say about Islam at the moment.   Sure, Christianity has its centuries of conflict, witch burning, attempted social control and sexual abuse to point the finger at as well, but any social problems it causes have (by and large - still tidying up going on in the sex abuse and homosexuality side) been sorted. 

The thing that's depressing about Islam is that you can't really see how it is going to improve.  I guess a resolution to Israel/Palestine matter would help - and Israel's present leadership is not helping there - but at a more fundamental level and long term scale, Islamist TV still telling its kids (as it has for years) that its good to shoot the Jews is actually the bigger problem.

The only good thing you can really say (and, in a way, the only grounds on which to still not too deeply regret the way the West got into the Iraq and Afghani wars) from "our" point of view is that while ever Islam is fighting itself, it's not concentrating on fighting the West.  Yet, I want to feel better about the world as a whole - to see progress towards peace everywhere and better and fairer societies.

So, someone who can tell me why I should revert to a more optimistic view for how Islam will improve, please let me know.

Bernard's on the money

Bernard Keane is a bit of an odd fish, but sometimes he seems right on the money.  His column yesterday is just excellent, and here are some extracts:

...this dissonance between what the Coalition said in opposition and what it now says isn’t merely about being mugged by reality, or even about breaking promises. The weekend’s silliness about freezing MPs’ pay, announced triumphantly in a drop to News Corp papers, was highly symbolic. The Rudd government had done precisely the same thing — but who should have railed against that but Tony Abbott himself, who labelled it a “populist stunt” while, apparently, living hand-to-mouth on his post-2007 salary. It demonstrated how, on virtually any issue, from climate change to paid parental leave to the economy to taxation to political consistency itself, it is straightforward to find a quote in which Tony Abbott has declared, hand on heart, entirely the opposite to his current position.

And:

“I’m not playing word games,” Hockey averred, hilariously, to Laurie Oakes during one such discussion. Indeed, it’s less like playing word games and more like waterboarding the English language. It’s beyond casuistry; it makes John Howard’s legendary parsing of his own statements look epistemologically rigorous.

 And this, which is, I think, a fair summary of the state of modern politics:

Some, like John Quiggin, argue that a lack of interest in facts is increasingly a characteristic of the Right — that it’s in the Liberals’ DNA, so to speak — which overlooks that relativism has been a defining characteristic of much of the scholarship from the cultural Left from the 1970s onward and is still to be found adorning identity politics. It is true, however, that progressive parties like Labor, especially, in Australia, and the Democrats in the US, have struggled to find a way to counter how politicians of the Right have freed themselves from the shackles of consistency and evidence. But for now, the most sound analytical approach is to ignore what the Coalition says and focus entirely on who benefits from its use of power. That will provide the most basic test of its first budget.

Talk about your interruptions to the in flight movie

A curious story appears in today's article in the Fairfax press about how Pope Francis has been emphasising the reality of the Devil:

During the conference, the Reverend Cesar Truqui, an exorcist now based in Switzerland, recounted one experience he had aboard a Swissair flight. "Two lesbians," he said, had sat behind him on the plane. Soon afterward, he said, he felt Satan's presence. As he silently sought to repel the evil spirit through prayer, one of the women, he said, began growling demonically and threw chocolates at his head.

Asked how he knew the woman was possessed, he said that "once you hear a Satanic growl, you never forget it. It's like smelling Margherita pizza for the first time. It's something you never forget."

Mostly rubbish

Jason Soon on twitter points with some approval to a column by the "hey, we only win by pretending we're the Liberal Party party" Senator elect David Leyhonhjelm.

Yet what's the first sign this is a column by an ideological goose?  This:

It is noticeable that advocates for big government are only Keynesians on the way down (when recession equals budget deficit) but they refuse to follow their own rules and advocate a budget surplus when growth rates have recovered. Economic growth has followed long term trend for the last few years so by any standard (Keynesian, Classical, Austrian) we should not now have a budget deficit.

That is flagrantly dishonest if he is suggesting (and I reckon he is) that Labor was not seeking to return to surplus.  The problem with getting there as promised was some out of kilter forecasts of Treasury; not the view that returning to surplus did not matter.

And then we go into the details:

the LDP proposed budget provides a modest drop in tax revenue along with nearly $40 billion in spending cuts, so that the 2014-15 budget moves from a $33.9 billion deficit to a predicted $3.1 billion surplus. It can be done, and it should be done.

Yeah, sure.  Government spending can be turned off like a tap and it's "hey, no big deal" only if you come from an ideological commitment that government always should be tiny.

But look at some of the things included in the table in the article as to where the savings are coming from:

$5 billion in savings from including the family home in the pension assets test!

That is ludicrous - to suggest that such a change could be implemented in one hit.  Just how many houses owned by pensioners does he want to see hit the market in an immediate effort to downsize?   Where does he think all the people who need to do this are going to move?  I don't see the capital cities having a hell of lot of $200,000 properties for sale, last time I looked.  Reverse mortgages?   Yeah, the LDP hates governments taking people's money in taxes - they would prefer they lose it instead on interest to the banks to be able to keep buying bread.  (And note - I am not suggesting that there is no scope for some adjustment of current pension policy on this - what I am objecting to is the ridiculous suggestion that you can do it and raise $5 billion immediately without dire disruption.) 

And then there's the immediate $5 billion dollar reduction to the higher education subsidy.  Yeah, sure, no disruption to the system there...

And there is a lot more, including some ideological driven points on taxes and how they are bad, bad, bad, but I can't go on right now - I got to do some other things.

It's clear enough, though, that the LDP "budget" is pure fantasy land.

Jason - stop getting into the boxing ring.  It's knocking some of the common sense out of you.

Update:  I am amused by monty's savage takedown of the bald one's "budget", too.

So that's why we're getting more road spending

Tony Abbott's grand infrastructure plan may be an expensive road to nowhere | World news | theguardian.com

Lenore Taylor casts a (justifiably) jaundiced eye over why the Abbott government is talking up road building, whether or not anyone has worked out if it is worth it.

It comes down to this, does it?:

Abbott is convinced of the voter, as well as economic, appeal of road
funding. He wrote in his book, Battlelines, that even the "humblest
person is king in his own car."

Uhuh.

About an animation studio

DreamWorks Animation at 20 - Los Angeles Times

This article takes the usual LA Times industry insider look at how Dreamworks operates, and there were a couple of things of particular interest:

DreamWorks is also making strides overseas, with much of the focus on China, where
the "Kung Fu Panda" films have been very popular. Katzenberg has been at the forefront of Hollywood's push into China, visiting the country once a month for the last two years.

The studio is working with local partners to build an entertainment and cultural district in
Shanghai called DreamCenter. The center, set to open in 2017, will include a 500-seat Imax cinema, multiple performance venues and Broadway style-theaters. The area also will house Oriental DreamWorks, an animation studio that currently has 200 employees and will hire 150 more by the end of this year to work on various film and TV projects,
including "Kung Fu Panda 3."

"China in three or four years will be the No. 1 movie market in the world,"
Katzenberg said. " I just look at it as a place of opportunity."

Gee.  I would not have been sure at all that Kung Fu Panda would have worked in China.   But there you go.

DreamWorks also is one of those companies where the benefits are good:

The studio's perks include a full-time doctor's office, free meals, game rooms and a college-campus-style environment with waterfalls and koi ponds.

There are yoga and sculpture classes, and an art show that enables employees to express themselves freely in ways not permitted in their everyday work. A profit-sharing plan pays bonuses to employees based on the studio's financial performance.

Such benefits have made DreamWorks a regular on Fortune magazine's annual list of 100 best employers. Last year it was the only Hollywood studio to make the list,
ranking 12th.

I think the studio has put out some fine films over the years, so I hope it does continue to exist for a long time yet.

John Oliver reads a letter

John Oliver was always one of the funniest parts of Jon Stewart's show, and I see that quite a few official clips from his own show are being put on Youtube.   The writing is clearly in the same style as that for The Daily Show, but that's not a problem.  Here is one of the less sweary clips I could find, as I still have standards as to what you can hear from this blog, you know:

Things that please me

*  Firefox has been updated to 29.0.1, and I find the new look very attractive.  Not a huge change, I guess, but pleasing none the less.  There's something about new tab pages carrying ads, though, which I don't quite follow.  Guess I will have to wait and see.  Firefox has been my preferred browsers for more years than I can remember.  It's the vast library of add ons that make it great, I reckon.

* I just watched The World This Week, a summary of reports by the ABC on international issues (from their international correspondents) over the last week.  It's great, and makes the effort privately owned media puts into TV journalism on international issues look truly pathetic.  (Of course, I have often praised the ABC's Foreign Correspondent too.)  Can anyone explain why you seem to need a national broadcaster in order to do really good, informative reporting on international issues?

* I think Melbourne and Adelaide have long had small local smallgoods manufacturing that meant that good, fermented style smallgoods (like salamis, etc) in a wide range similar to what you may get in Europe were always available.  Local manufacturing of these in Brisbane has (it seems to me) finally taken off in the last 10 to 20 years, and we now can get a similar range of products, but you still tend to have to seek them out, often at the weekend farmer's markets.  (The somewhat slow moving redevelopment of the Brisbane showgrounds is supposed to include a permanent farmer's market - something that is sorely missed in this city.)   For the moment, Adam's Continental Smallgoods in Brisbane's west is pretty good, and sells an extensive range of meats too, but it is a bit far to go for people on the other side of the city. 

On Saturday we went to the Kelvin Grove Saturday farmers' market again.  We hadn't been for a while, but it is always good for cheap (and a big range of) fruit and veges, and some specialty meats and snacks.  It has one permanent smallgoods vendor, and we tried their chorizo and (what was called) a French style salami-ish sausage.  Both were very good.  The company's name is Backa Gourmet Foods.  They seem to be based in Beenleigh and just sell in Queensland local markets.  This is pleasing.

An unpleasant parasite, and HIV in Africa

A Simple Theory, and a Proposal, on H.I.V. in Africa - NYTimes.com

Call me a big wuss, if you want, but the number of nasty parasites that lurk in the middle of Africa makes me rather disinterested in visiting at least that part of the continent.  (That and a sense of over-familiarity inspired by decades of David Attenborough, I think.)    

Gerard and the rack

My oh my, Gerard Henderson has become a tedious and silly bore. 

After his extraordinary performance on Lateline, where he attacked ICAC because of his deep resentment that detailed denials make under oath to it (and to the media) by a politician could lead to a resignation,  he's writing yesterday that the ABC has to know that they are not getting balanced audiences to Q&A:

As MWD has explained on numerous occasions, the political allegiance of the audience which Q&A depicts at the beginning of each program is wilfully misleading. See MWD passim, ad nauseam.

As MWD has documented, political identification is by way of self-identification. Since Q&A is filmed in the ABC’s inner-city studio in Sydney’s Ultimo, it tends to be stacked by members of the Green Left who hang out nearby and from the neighbouring University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and the University of Sydney.

So the best way for a follower of Vladimir Lenin or Leon Trotsky to obtain admission to Q&A is to take off his/her sandals and Che Guevara tee-shirt, put on sensible shoes and a shirt – and present themselves as Tony Abbott supporters. Then it’s “Welcome” in order to seemingly make up a representative audience.

How, pray tell, does Gerard propose the ABC ensure that entrants to the audience are not lying about their political allegiance?  Install a torture rack at the entrance?  Throw them in a pond and see if the float or sink?    

Here, let's give Gerard something to stop whining about and put him in charge of selecting studio audience and see how his hit rate goes.   I can just imagine him sitting po faced while each audience member appears, and he gives a thumbs up or down, perhaps depending on the hair length of the males, and whether he can sniff out patchouli on a female.   When he fails to get a Coalition quota, it'll be "This won't do, Mark. I'm ordering a bus for a pickup of white men over 50 from the Penrith RSL.  That'll fix it."

A trend missed

I noticed this on an episode or two of the "home restaurants" on My Kitchen Rules - diners drinking something out of what looked like a jar, with straws.   Here is it on Fairfax this morning. 


What is this about?  By coincidence, I did see "mason jars" on sale at some nick nack sort of outlet shop, and that's what they appear to be.

And yes, Googling, I see that people have been asking for nearly a year now:  why are people drinking out of mason jars.   (And that is almost certainly the only time I will be posting a link to a site called Lipstick Alley.)

Elsewhere, the question has been more specific:  why do hipsters like to drink things out of mason jars.

It seems there is no satisfactory explanation, and it is, in my opinion, the silliest trend for quite a few years.