Sad news

Wayne Goss, former Queensland premier, dies at 63 | Australia news | theguardian.com

I think Wayne Goss is widely regarded as an unworthy victim of the weird local politics of Queensland, having lost the premiership prematurely for no good reason at all.  Even my late, permanently rusted on Coalition supporting mother never bore him ill will, as I recall.  The only downside that I know of is that he did help bring on the rise of Kevin Rudd in politics.   No one's perfect...

Interstellar noted by Mr Soon

I'm never sure lately if some tweets by Jason Soon are out to deliberately goad me, even though I trust he knows that some of my posts are written knowing they will annoy him.   (Yes, my readership is so small, I can write posts with one person in mind!)

This latest one, on his reaction to Interstellar, seems designed to annoy:

Saw Interstellar on Sun – unapologetic celebration of exploration & progress, vs the ‘caretaker’ spirit of the new Green religion.

"New Green religion" - the line beloved of climate change denying, Andrew Bolt readers and Catallaxy??  Bah, humbug.

I note that one of the more improbable things that Phil Plait (I think) found about the movie was that NASA survives as some secret underground organisation capable of mounting interstellar exploration while the world crumbles around it in environmental catastrophe.

I would have thought that the long term interest in having a global economy strong enough to fund humanity eventually moving off planet actually points to serious action now to limit the potential effects of global warming by urgently reducing CO2.  This would help reduce the chance of environmental catastrophe that, unlike in Hollywood, I would not be surprised may prove dire enough economically to delay human expansion indefinitely.

But of course, I haven't seen the movie....

Update:   family friendly animation wins at the box office.  (And Nolan's movie opens worse than Inception.)  

Taking the Right personally

I like watching Kitchen Cabinet for the opportunity it gives to view politicians in what is meant to be a more relaxed atmosphere, talking to the very congenial Annabel Crabbe over a meal.

I know that people will say that it is simply a part of my complaint that the Right side of politics has been badly damaged here due to the poisonous influence to the ideologically motivated side of the American Right that has lost interest in both evidence based science and economics, but I have to say, I now find that nearly all Coalition politicians compare very poorly to Labor ones, even at a personality level.

Coalition politicians nearly always come across as being nervous ninnies.  Tony Abbott and his "ha...ha...ha;"  Christopher Pyne and his career mother Amanda Vanstone didn't impress me (even though Vanstone is from the moderate wing of the spectrum); and while Andrew Robb might be admired for his gumption despite suffering long term depression, he does appear to now be a permanently glum robot incapable of pleasure (perhaps?) because of medication, and I was dismayed to be reminded that it was a man suffering long term mental illness who roused himself out of his sick bed to convince his fellow politicians to dump support for an ETS, leading to the current hopeless Prime Minister we endure.   I don't remember much about Joe Hockey's episode, except that he was another male politician who has an almost child like inability to cook anything other than a steak.  Yet he has so comprehensively stuffed up the Budget, and come out as an obsessive about wind power to the extent that a wind mill on the horizon 15 km away upsets him, he's turned out to be a pretty comprehensive embarrassment to the party.

There are exceptions, I suppose:  I certainly don't consider Barnaby Joyce to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I can see why people like him anyway.   Nigel Scullion from the Northern Territory also has a certain pleasant air of frankness about him.

But in comparison, I usually find myself pleasantly surprised by the relaxed air of intelligence of your average Labor politician on the show.

I know Bill Shorten was just a bit too lovely dovey on screen with his wife for comfort, but I still felt better about him after the show than before.  (I have always felt relatively neutral towards him.  I think it was painful watching him suffer by the way he was caught up in the Rudd/Gillard battles.)   I am strongly against lesbian couples using some donor semen to make their own baby, but again, after watching Penny Wong I found myself liking her a lot more than before.   Craig Emerson presented as living in extremely modest circumstances, and really, what was he thinking with his little song and dance routine while he was still in power?   Still, I found it hard not to warm more to him as a result of Annabel's show.

And let's broaden this out a bit:  in commentary terms, Andrew Bolt has evolved into a self satisfied ugly caricature of  moderate Right wing analysis with his self pity and obsession with race and portraying Islam in the worst possible light.  As for climate change - he is a complete gullible joke, of course, never showing a scintilla of skepticism towards anything he reads from Watts Up With That or Professors Jonova and  Monckton.  His disingenuous enthusiasm for endorsing all of the Michael Smith sliming of Gillard (while always adding the disclaimer that "Gillard denies ever having knowledge of the matters") was really appalling.

Tim Blair doesn't seem to realise that the "frightbat" thing just carried too much Young Liberal style undergraduate sexism to be funny, and while he doesn't put the same enthusiasm into climate change denial as does Bolt, his reading list on the topic is clearly limited to denial sites.  It's hard to stay enthusiastic for his brand of lightweight critique of the silly elements of Left wing culture and attitudes when he so proudly wears his intellectual laziness on the key environmental issue of our day on his sleeve.

They both like Mark Steyn, of course, who thinks he can call a scientist a fraud, despite no support amongst other scientist in the field for such a view, and then defend it as free speech, while using his corner of the climate change culture war to get more money from his deluded readers.   

And as for News Corp Right wing female commentators and their attitude towards "feminism" (Miranda Devine, Albrechtsen, Sloan) gee, its got pretty ugly when they spent all their time criticising Gillard for "playing the feminism card" instead of  noting the appalling treatment she got from Right wing broadcasters and the patronising and offensive lines Abbott used.  

So it's remarkable how unlikeable I find so many on the Right have become.   And while I have been saying for a long time that attitude to climate change seems to have become an incredibly good bellwether on political judgement generally, it seems to give a good indication of  unpleasant aspects of personality too.

There are, of course, exceptions to this, even on the Left.   Step up, K Rudd, and take a bow...

About those old temperatures

I meant to link last week to a good explanation at The Conversation about the problem with old Australian temperature records from before 1910.   There, done.

Phil says sorry

Interstellar follow-up: Movie science mistake was mine.

Phil Plait at Slate says he got some of his science critique of Interstellar wrong, and apologises.   He still thinks it was a crook movie, though.   

Review of a show I don't watch anymore

OK, so the post title is not quite right.   You see, after giving Dr Who a big miss this season (and even my 14 yr old son agreed after the season opener that it is now unwatchable) I did, out of idle curiosity,  happen to see most of the two part season end.  Promising premise - Steven Moffat deals with "heaven" and the afterlife.  The result:  the show is now just incredibly awful.   Not so awful that it is worth watching, like some shows are.  Just mind numbingly, self referentially, spectacularly poorly written and unengaging dross.

The number of people agreeing with me at the obsessive fanboy comments threads at The Guardian is on the rise, too, I reckon.

Surely its ratings must be suffering?  I think a strong case could be made out that thinking the show is still quality story telling is a sign of some form of brain damage.

The show badly needs to go away for 5 years or so.  And don't let Moffat anywhere near its return.

Ideological triumph? Yeah, sure...

I see that Sinclair Davidson goes with the "Americans finally coming to their senses" interpretation of the Republican wins, as he quotes an over the top column by bow tied cultural warrior Roger Kimball with evident approval:

Over the past six years, the American people have watched as Obama swept nearly 20 per cent of the nation’s economy under the arm of the federal government in the name of “reforming” healthcare. Obamacare, which passed into law without a single Republican vote, is the most unpopular piece of legislation since Prohibition. In a moment of quiet candour, candidate Obama noted that, under his plan, the price of energy would “necessarily skyrocket”, while the coal industry would be regulated out of existence. How’s that working out? About as well as things on our southern border. The United States already spends more on education per pupil than any other country, but we get far worse results because “investing in education” for Democrats means shovelling money into the troughs of teachers’ unions, diminishing parental authority and forcing a politically correct, multicultural agenda on schools.

The truth is that Obama is merely the latest spokesman for the Democrats’ agenda of dependency, the big-government, socialistically inclined welfare establishment that, since the 1960s, has colluded with public sector unions to substitute tax-funded entitlements for individual initiative and personal responsibility. More and more people have come to understand that the “fundamental transformation” that Obama promised was not the path to Shangri-La, but a new road to serfdom. At issue is the relationship between the individual and the coercive power of the state, economic freedom and, ultimately, our national security.

Never mind the fact that wins by the other side during Presidencies on the way out are not unusual, or that several commentators noted that quite a few Republicans were giving out a more moderate position, and I can find no one who claims that it is any sort of emphatic win for the Tea Party wing. 

Oddly enough, more reasonable commentary from a Right wing perspective can sometimes be found at American Conservative, which Jason Soon links to sometimes.  This article, for example:  Obama is a Republican made many valid points, including one about the nuttiness of the Republicans carrying on in such an ideological sense about "Obamacare" when it was modelled on what was formerly a Republican idea.

I see that there is also a very good cautionary post up at the site about why the Republican win means exactly not what Professor Stagflation thinks it does:

Here are six reasons for caution:

1. The president’s party usually loses seats in midterm elections.
2. Obama’s approval, while low, is higher than Bush’s at the same point in his presidency.
3. We’ve seen this movie before. Remember the “permanent majority” of 2004? How about the “thumping” of 2006? Then there was the “new majority” of 2008. Of course, that was followed by the “Tea Party wave” of 2010. Which didn’t stop Obama from becoming the first president since Eisenhower to win a majority of the vote for a second time in 2012.
4. The midterm electorate skews older, whiter, and richer than in presidential years. These are Republican demographics, so Republicans tend to do better. The 2016 electorate, on the other hand, will probably look more like 2008 than 2010. Republicans probably won’t ever win many votes from blacks or single women, but they need to continue doing better among the young and Hispanics (as several candidates did last night).
5. The standard explanation of the results is that the election was a referendum on Obama’s policies. That’s not true for the simple reason that most voters have only the foggiest notion of what Obama’s policies are. (Polls on these matters can be misleading because they often ask respondents to choose from a predetermined set of responses to a leading question, which encourages unrepresentative, off-the-cuff answers.) Rather than voting on the success or failure of specific programs, many voters rely on a vague sense that things are going well or badly for the country.
6. The biggest factor in voters’ assessment of the direction of the country is the condition of the economy. Right now it’s pretty lousy, despite relatively favorable growth and employment trends. But if these trends continue over the next two years—and they’re far less dependent on Washington that either party likes to admit—they may start to pay off for ordinary people. Should that occur, many will discover that they liked Democrats more than they thought.

Krugman looks at the Republican win, and grinds his teeth

Triumph of the Wrong - NYTimes.com

Lots of good links in his column to back up his claims, too.

Animation wins

I see that Big Hero 6, the new Disney animated film with some Marvel roots, has scored a high 90% at Rottentomatoes, compared to 72% for Interstellar.   Certainly, the trailers for Big Hero indicated the film has considerable charm.  

Meanwhile on At the Movies, David loved Interstellar, Margaret didn't.   I never find myself agreeing consistently with either of them, so I don't know what that means.   Oh that's right - probably that I'll dislike it. 

I certainly hope that my prejudgement is irritating some reader out there.  :)

  

El nino confusion, again

I see that Eric Holthaus is waving the white flag about the prediction earlier this year that we were likely looking at a strong El Nino.   He now says it looks like we'll get a very weak one, if any.

Yet he notes that parts of the world's weather have been looking El Nino like for a while:

In essence, a gradually warming Pacific Ocean is at once be reducing our ability to predict Earth’s single most important seasonal climate phenomenon, and tampering with it as well. For forecasters, that means this year’s El Niño tease has been “rather frustrating.” It mirrors another flash-in-the-pan-and-fizzle just two years ago.

Still, that doesn’t mean El Niño-like changes haven’t happened. “Borderline” El Niño conditions, depending on your definition, have persisted for months now. El Niño-like effects have already been felt around the globe—including the ongoing mega-drought in Brazil, a lackluster monsoon season in India, a whimper of an Atlantic hurricane season, and the opposing tropical storm fest in Hawaii. Oh, and the world is also on track for its warmest year on record, boosted by near-El Niño.

There were studies (including a recent one) indicating that global warming may result in more, damaging, strong El Nino's.   (And this year's failure does nothing to disprove that.)  But a strong El Nino right now would have been a handy thing to help convince politicians in 2015 to start talking CO2 reduction seriously.   Once again Nature is not working to a convenient timetable for convincing stupid politicians.   I suggest throwing a few libertarians and at least a couple of News Corp columnists into a volcano to get things back on track again.

Phil didn't like Interstellar

Interstellar science review: The movie’s black holes, wormholes, relativity, and special effects.

The Slate main page headline for this Phil Plait article is actually worse:

Interstellar is a bad movie.  Its science is even worse.

Well, I think this is getting me all prepared to really dislike it. 

Update:  I wrote the post without reading the review, for fear of spoilers. Well, now that I have read it, I must say it is absolutely chock full of spoiler, and the odds of my disliking it on similar grounds to Plait appear astronomically high.  (Heh)

Ghosts in the news

So there's a lot of publicity in the news today about a pretty simple experimental set up which seems to give at least some (actually, I am not sure how many of the 12 subjects) the impression of having one or more invisible presences in the room.   Some subjects found it very disturbing.

It's sort of hard to believe that this set up had that strong an effect.   It's also hard to believe that it has much relevance to visual ghosts, although it is probably more relevant to the "third man" factor that is commonly reported by people who are in isolation, especially at times of crisis.

As for visual ghosts, there was an article in the New York Times about the suggestion that ghosts have changed from solid to semi transparent over history.  Here are some extracts:

We think of ghosts as wispy and translucent — a vaporous woman, perhaps, who floats down the stairs, her dress trailing in the languid air behind her. But in early modern Europe, ghosts were often perceived as solid persons. The viewer discovered that they weren’t when they did something that ordinary humans could not, like bypassing a locked door to enter a room.

By the 19th century, people had begun to think of ghosts predominantly as spectral forms — ephemeral, elusive, evanescent. When the ghost of Marley appeared to Scrooge in Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” (1843), and Scrooge looked his transparent body “through and through,” he illustrated a shift in the ways ghosts became real to people, how ghosts were seen and remembered.

In “Spectres of the Self,” the cultural historian Shane McCorristine points to two reasons for this transmutation. The first was skepticism about the supernatural, generated by the new developments in science. The concept of hallucination emerged to explain experiences like seeing an apparition. As the seeing of ghosts became a psychological phenomenon, it also became a pathological one. In 1848, the British skeptic Charles Ollier spoke for many when he wrote that “anyone who thinks he has seen a ghost, may take the vision as a symptom that his bodily health is deranged.” As a result, Dr. McCorristine writes, the ghost was gradually relocated “from the external, objective and theological structured world to the internal, subjective and psychological haunted world of personal experience.”

That's interesting, except that I thought that when the Society for Psychical Research did an extensive survey of ghost experiences back in the 1880s, one of the surprise findings was that ghosts often did appear solid.  (Especially, if I recall correctly, the "crisis apparition"  style of incident, where someone who had died miles away makes an unexpected appearance before loved ones or others at about the time of death.)

I'd certainly be checking the floorboards for weight bearing ability...

So Brisbane seems popular as a home for overweight mining billionaires?   OK, well we will have two now, it seems, at least, with a big splurge of publicity given to Gina Rinehart buying these fancy digs:

and The Australian writing:

GINA Rinehart has wasted no time making her new multi-­million dollar Brisbane house her home, applying to renovate the riverside property with more ­verandas and a lift.

To be honest, if I were a billionaire with vast coal interests, I'm not at all sure that I would be pleased with the media publicity about the location of my new mansion just before an event well known for its street demonstrations against capitalism.   I don't think she's living there, yet, though. 

The ridiculous Republicans

They weren't always the party of science nonsense, but they are now.  Talking about climate change, and the recent IPCC report:

So, if there’s one issue that should not be a partisan issue, this is it. After all, we’re talking about saving the planet. Surely Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree on that. John McCain and Barack Obama did in 2008. But, sadly, that’s not the case today. Congress remains hopelessly deadlocked on climate change because Republicans, for whatever strange reason — be it ignorance or campaign contributions — either deny it’s happening, deny human activity is responsible or deny it’s serious enough to worry about.

California Gov. Jerry Brown, in fact, stirred up a little trouble back in May when he asserted there was “virtually no Republican” in Washington who accepted the science about climate change. As it turns out, he was right on target. Politifact tested his claim and rated it “Mostly True.” Out of 278 Republicans currently in Congress, they found only eight — or 3 percent — who believe in climate change. For the record, they are Sens. Bob Corker (Tenn.), Susan Collins (Maine), Mark Kirk (Ill.), John Thune (S.D.) and Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), and Reps. Chris Smith (N.J.), Michael Grimm (N.Y.) and Rodney Frelinghuysen (N.J.). 

Sadly, the other 270 Republicans follow the lead of know-nothing Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who denies any link between human activity and climate change. On May 11, Rubio told ABC’s Jonathan Karl: “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.”

The extraordinary pizza price of England

The preferred weekend takeaway evening meal for our family for the last year or so has been Domino's pizza.   They've improved their product and gone somewhat upmarket with the range of toppings, and although they are starting to share the McDonalds annoying habit of changing the menu a bit too often, they are usually of remarkably good value.  Last Sunday, for example, we had two of the rectangular "Chef's Best" ( I can recommend the chilli lime pulled pork) and one simple pepperoni.   Total cost, from memory, with an on line deal, was about $22 - $24.  There are always on line deals.

But the basic menu price ranges from $4.95 (value pizza) to $7.95 (value plus) to $11.95 (traditional pizza) to $10.95 (chef's best) and top of the range are those with prawns for $14.95.

Last night, I was talking to a friend who has moved to England, and somehow the topic of pizza cost came up.   Extraordinarily, these are examples of the cost of Domino's in that country:

The cheapest, with nothing on it bar cheese and sauce - is £13.50!!   A Hawaiian is £17!!!!   That's $31.70 in Australian!!!!! - for a Hawaiian pizza!!!!!!!.

I remember thinking back in about 1989 that the cost of pizza in London in £ was about the same as the price in AUD, and how expensive that was.  If anything, the British pizza price has worsened.

What is wrong with that country?

Update:   petrol I see is currently 125p per litre.    That's $2.27.   Australians freak out if petrol breaks over the $1.60 mark. 

So what about salaries?   Let's pick something easy to compare - a new teacher outside of London can expect to earn £22,000 as a minimum.   $40,000 here, roughly.   Looks like our starting salary is the same.

It's just a jump to the left...?

I think I have seen headlines around the net to similar effect:  the claim that that the Republicans succeeded in this mid term election by playing up to "lefty" issues.   William Salatan writes:

Republicans won big in the 2014 elections. They captured the Senate and gained seats in the House. But they didn’t do it by running to the right. They did it, to a surprising extent, by embracing ideas and standards that came from the left. I’m not talking about gay marriage, on which Republicans have caved, or birth control, on which they’ve made over-the-counter access a national talking point. I’m talking about the core of the liberal agenda: economic equality.

I'm not sure that how correct this is, but as I wrote earlier today, I certainly didn't have the impression that it was Tea Party ascendancy that had helped the Republicans this election.   Which means a particularly interesting time for fights within the GOP as to how far they use their congressional control.

And to be snide for a moment:  it's many a year since I can remember a less physically impressive politician than the turtle-like Mitch McConnell.

Update:  Someone in The Atlantic agrees with Salatan, so it must be right:

This year has been different: GOP activists have given their candidates more space to craft the centrist personas they need to win. First, in senate races in North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Alaska, Tennessee, Georgia, Kansas and Texas, comparatively moderate Republicans triumphed over Tea Party-backed challengers. Then many of those Republicans downplayed their opposition to gay marriage and highlighted their support for greater access to contraception in an effort to win over the young and women voters who in past elections spurned the GOP as too extreme. “On social issues,” wrote Slate’s Will Saletan, “Republicans are mumbling, cringing, and ducking. They don’t want the election to be about these issues, even in red states.”

What are the research benefits of Virgin Galactic?

Those who are against criticisms of Virgin Galactic - you know I'm looking at you, JTFS, but you have a lot of friends out there - seem to have accepted some vague claims by Branson that his project is not just about making the world's longest rollercoaster ride, but involves doing research which will be generally helpful to humanity and transport in the future.

Now, while I accept that rich men are free to spend their money on vanity projects if they want, I detect a distinct lack of skepticism about Branson's claims.

Here, in this 2011 interview, he says that he hopes it will lead to very cheap small satellite launches, and superfast intercontinental airline travel.

Yet, as I've learnt from Googling after this crash, the height the SpaceShipTwo could reach has been downgraded somewhat because of engine issues (and the weight, I think, of carrying additional passengers compared to Rutan's SpaceShipOne.)  I know there was a new engine being tested, but it seems very unclear if it will get to the old, advertised height, too.

It might be that an unmanned future version of the SpaceshipTwo may truly be able to launch small satelittes into orbit, but has anyone looked at its likely cost compared to more regular rockets?   In fact, we already have an air launched small satellite system, and if you wanted to build an alternative one, surely you can get to that end a lot faster than via  mucking around with designing a spaceplane for passengers.   

And as for superfast intercontinental flight - as far as I'm aware, no one has ever seriously considered that rocket engines would be practical for that.  Scramjets, yes.   Does Branson's project have any relevance at all to scramjet research?  I doubt it.  

Being skeptical of Branson seems well worth the effort...

American politics is complicated and weird

That's really all you can say about it.  Well, no, there is a bit more you can add...

The amount of effort needed to just get people to vote; the mid week timing of voting; the staggeringly enormous amount of money put into advertising; the racial divide in those who actually vote and the effort put into limiting the number who can vote; the routine claims of fraud in voting, particularly electronic voting:  to an outsider, these all appear as signs of a pretty damn dysfunctional system.   Yet, in the name of "freedom", the Right in particular seems to put much effort into preserving the aspects which make the rest of the world say "Jeez, can't you run a political system  better than that, America?"

The only potential up side to large wins (as seems to be expected) by Republicans is that I haven't noticed that the Tea Party side of the Right as being particularly prominent in the lead up to the election.  But I could be wrong on that...

Certainly, Phil Plait fears that a Republican win in the Senate will result in some ludicrous appointments which may affect climate change policy:

Nowhere is this more important than the Environment and Public Works Committee. A Republican win will almost certainly make James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, chairman. This committee controls the Environmental Protection Agency, which is charged with addressing climate change and what to do about it. Inhofe is probably the most ludicrously adamant global warming denier in the Senate; he has called it a hoax and denies it to levels that would make the frothiest conspiracy theorists shake their heads in wonder.

Inhofe has indicated he will attack greenhouse gas regulators, so giving him control of this committee puts the "fox in charge of the henhouse" simile to shame.

Other committees will fare no better; as just one example Ted Cruz, R-Texas, could be chairman of the committee on science and space, and he also denies global warming. The irony is as excruciating as it is familiar.

What nauseating results they would be.

But on the upside, conservative over reach may well work in favour of the Democrats next time around:

Republican control of Congress could provide the stage for the next phase of the civil war in the GOP, with both wings jockeying for position ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Establishment and moderate figures like Senator Rob Portman want to improve the party's image—which, despite their projected success, remains awful—through constructive work. Hardliners like Representative Steve King and Senator Ted Cruz want to lay down a marker for an uncompromising conservatism, which they think will set the party up for victory in the presidential race, by obstructing any progress and investigating the administration. Many Democrats, as it happens, hope for the same thing. As their chances to hold on in the Senate have dimmed, many liberals' new fond hope is that Republicans will overreach and turn off voters, setting up a Democrat sweep of the White House, Senate, and perhaps even the House—an echo of what happened in 2012, following the GOP victories in 2010.

Coq au vin (future reference)

I usually do these recipe posts on a weekend, but as I'm heating up leftovers for lunch today, here we go:

There are few things more fun and satisfying to cook than coq au vin, given that nearly all recipes involve burning brandy on the stove top, and well as using copious amounts of red wine which (of course) you can also enjoy directly while cooking.

But there are quite a few variations on how to do the dish; some involving soaking the chicken in wine first, others with different components cooked separately and joined at the end.

Here's the simple recipe which I've settled on, recorded here in case I ever lose the book:

For four:

One chicken cut up however you like (but 8 pieces makes it easy)
about 6 bacon rashers
1/4 cup well seasoned flour (about a teaspoon of salt, and fair bit of pepper)
100 ml brandy (the book actually called for more, but that is plenty, I think)
2 cups red wine
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
small mushrooms in whatever quantity you like
dozen or so small onions

In the cast iron casserole thing, cut up and fry the bacon in a tablespoon or so of olive oil.   Til it's nearly crispy is OK.  Remove and drain

Using the flour in a bag method, coat all chicken pieces well and brown on all sides in two batches.

Put all chicken pieces back in, and turn the heat off while you get the brandy ready.  Pour brandy all over the pieces, turn heat on low and ignite.    Watch blue flames with pleasure.

When all burnt off, add the garlic, two cups of red wine and tomato paste.   If the flour was seasoned strongly, no need for more salt.

I also added the bacon back at that time, but the recipe didn't actually mention if that was the right time to do so.  It works OK doing it as I did. 

Stir well and cover and cook on low heat for 50 minutes in total.

In a fry pan, with a bit of oil, fry off the peeled whole onions til they start to caramelise on the outside.  Take them out and fry the mushrooms.

As the whole onions are tricky to cook the whole way through in a fry pan, I added them in to the casserole about half into the 50 minute cooking time.  Added the mushrooms a bit later, so they still have some texture in the final meal too.

You can add peas in to cook with it in the last ten minutes too, but I just went with beans as a side, with mashed potato too.   (Incidentally, I do better mashed potato than my wife.  This is a truth widely acknowledged - by the kids.)

The ingredients are pretty simple, but the sauce works out fine.

Future may be worse than thought for coral reefs

Well, what a depressing abstract in Nature Climate Change about the way scientists have been thinking about how acidification may affect coral reefs:

Changes in CaCO3 dissolution due to ocean acidification are potentially more important than changes in calcification to the future accretion and survival of coral reef ecosystems. As most CaCO3 in coral reefs is stored in old permeable sediments, increasing sediment dissolution due to ocean acidification will result in reef loss even if calcification remains unchanged. Previous studies indicate that CaCO3 dissolution could be more sensitive to ocean acidification than calcification by reef organisms. Observed changes in net ecosystem calcification owing to ocean acidification could therefore be due mainly to increased dissolution rather than decreased calcification. In addition, biologically mediated calcification could potentially adapt, at least partially, to future ocean acidification, while dissolution, which is mostly a geochemical response to changes in seawater chemistry, will not adapt. Here, we review the current knowledge of shallow-water CaCO3 dissolution and demonstrate that dissolution in the context of ocean acidification has been largely overlooked compared with calcification.

Aerodynamic prescience noted

Hey, what was I writing on Sunday (when everyone - including me - first thought that the Virgin spaceplane rocket engine had exploded?)  See update 3 in the post below.

(I also opined about this in a time stamped comment at Club Troppo,  just for anyone who doubts.)

And today:

Virgin Galactic’s space plane broke apart in mid-air seconds after its re-entry system deployed prematurely in an accident on Friday that killed one of its pilots and left another seriously injured, US crash investigators have said.

Christopher Hart, the acting chairman of the US National Transportation Safety Board, told a press conference on Sunday night that the co-pilot, Michael Alsbury, had unlocked the feathering system, but that the second stage of the process, which moves the wings into the feathering position, happened “without being commanded”. 

OK, I'll admit, I was thinking more along the lines that the first accident would be caused by the wings not locking back into place properly after the "feathering" process.  But hey, I was close enough.

For once, I prefer The Australian over Fairfax...

Goodness me.   Newspoll has Labor at 54% TPP over the Coalition.  That's quite a welcome corrective to the gushing coverage over the new Fairfax poll saying Abbott has become vastly more popular, and giving a "only just ahead" TPP of 51% to Labor.

The best thing about the poll is the drop in the primary vote for the Coalition:  down from 45.6 at the election to 38% now.  Labor's primary is also showing a bit of a jump from the figure its been stuck on for some time (up to 36 from 34%.)  

Other welcome poll news this week:  the unpopularity of the Coalition's deregulation of Uni fees.  As I expected, this seems to be unpopular widely, probably because not just uni students don't like the idea, but nor do their parents.

Sensitive about their beards...

Another gob smacking story of life in Saudi Arabia from Gulf News:

A Saudi activist who has been reportedly arrested for a tweet she posted last year told investigators her words should be understood within their context and not misinterpreted.

Squad Al Shammari was apprehended on Tuesday in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah following formal complaints by religious figures over a tweet they found offensive to Islam and Prophet Mohammad (PBuH).

However, Suad said she was not targeting Islam claiming earlier tweets supported her argument, local daily Makkah reported on Sunday, citing ‘a well-informed’ source.

The activist waded into controversy last year when she said on the microblog that the Islamic saying that men should have beards to distinguish them from non-believers did not make sense.

“Several atheists, Jews and Communists in the past had, and in the present have, beards, and even Abu Jahl [a polytheist pagan leader] had a beard that was longer than that of Prophet Mohammad (PBuH),” she reportedly said.

Several senior religious figures in the Saudi kingdom condemned her tweet, accusing her of denigrating Islam and targeting the Prophet, and calling for severe action against her, including putting her on trial.

According to local news site Sabq, a commission to support Prophet Mohammad (PBuH) had repeatedly requested Suad to put an end to her ‘misleading and misinformed’ tweets that were offensive to Islam. The commission had also called the telecommunication authorities in the Saudi kingdom to shut down her accounts on social networks.

Richard's rocket problems

As I have written before, it will likely only take one fatal crash (perhaps of a passenger, if not a test pilot) of Richard Branson's rocket planes and that will be it for his business model.  

I had forgotten until I was searching for my past posts about this that I had written in 2007:  How to Make Space Tourists Nervous.    The late pilot is not the first person to die in Branson's project:

Three people have been killed in an explosion, during a test of rocket systems to be used in Richard Branson's proposed space tourism ventures. 

I remain of the view that this is a vanity project that is not worth the effort.

If tourists want to see the edge of space, a high altitude balloon would surely be a safer way of achieving it (see the first link above).   And a "vomit comet" can give a good enough sensation of weightlessness.

Update:   seems to me it is starting to look like this fatality may indeed kill off Virgin Galactic.  The British press is full of bad PR:

Sir Richard Branson's space tourism company Virgin Galactic has been accused of ignoring a series of warnings that its $500 million rocket was unsafe for flight.

A number of senior aerospace engineers repeatedly voiced fears over the design of Sir Richard’s SpaceShipTwo and the safety protocols surrounding its testing.

The Telegraph has seen emails and other documents in the public domain — dating back several years, and as recently as last year — in which the engineers warned of the dangers of Virgin Galactic’s rocket engine system.

It also emerged on Saturday that three senior Virgin Galactic executives — the vice-president in charge of propulsion, the vice-president in charge of safety, and the chief aerodynamics engineer — had all quit the company in recent months.

Update 2:  David Walker at Club Troppo has a rather good post about the problem of getting into space.   (Very, very rarely does science of this kind get a run there, but it sure beats the chess posts!)

Update 3:  apart from the rocket engines, the thing about the Virgin rocket that I always thought looked ridiculously dangerous was the "feathering" wing.   (See how it moves on this video.)   As a design, my common sense suggested that this looked like an accident waiting to happen, and I was expecting that this would be the cause of the first crash. But I have never noticed any expert make this comment, so what do I know?  (Apart from the fact that I wouldn't fly in it.)

Update 4:   Oh look, maybe my common sense was not far off the mark after all:

In September 2011, the safety of SpaceShipTwo's feathered reentry system was tested when the crew briefly lost control of the craft during a gliding test flight. Control was reestablished after the spaceplane entered its feathered configuration, and it landed safely after a 7-minute flight.^[24]

I don't recall hearing about that at the time.  

Update 5:  cynicism from earlier this year on the poor performance of Spaceship Two.

Update 6:   I am reminded by this accident that Burt Rutan was the designer of SpaceShipTwo, and although he is now retired, he is notable for being a climate change denier.  He writes:

 Specifically, the theory of CAGW is not supported by any of the climate data and none of the predictions of IPCC since their first report in 1991 have been supported by measured data. The scare is merely a computer modeled theory that has been flawed from the beginning, and in spite of its failure to predict, many of the climate scientists cling to it.

My rule of thumb for trusting experts in any field still applies:   if they don't believe in CO2 causing potentially dangerous climate change, be very careful of  what they say or do on any topic. 

Romanticising the microbiome

There's a really good Ed Yong piece at the New York Times which argues convincingly that there is a lot of premature excitement about the possibilities of influencing health by deliberately altering the gut microbiome.  Sure, fecal transplants work for one particular problem, but the fact that  gut bacteria are changing rapidly all the time anyway means it's no simple task to fix other problems.

You should read the whole thing, but I found this section particularly interesting:

Take the Hadza. Their microbial roll call is longer than a Western one, with both omissions and additions. They are the only adult humans thus far sequenced who are devoid of Bifidobacteria — a supposedly “healthy” group that accounts for up to 10 percent of the microbes in Western guts. But they do carry unexpectedly high levels of Treponema, a group that includes the cause of syphilis.

Is this menagerie worse than a Western one? Better? I suspect the answer is neither. It is simply theirs. It is adapted to the food they eat, the dirt they walk upon, the parasites that plague them. Our lifestyles are very different, and our microbes have probably adapted accordingly. Generations of bacteria can be measured in minutes; our genomes have had little time to adapt to modern life, but our microbiomes have had plenty.

It may be that a Hadza microbiome would work equally well in an American gut, but incompatibilities are also possible. The conquistadors proved as much. As they colonized South America, they brought with them European strains of Helicobacter pylori, a stomach bacterium that infrequently causes ulcers and stomach cancer, and these European strains also displaced native American ones. This legacy persists in Colombia, where some communities face a 25-fold higher risk of stomach cancer, most likely due to mismatches between their ancestral genomes and their H. pylori strains.

 Yong mentions earlier in the article who the Hadza are:

In September, the archaeology writer Jeff Leach used a turkey baster to infuse his guts with the feces of a Hadza tribesman from Tanzania.....

 He experimented on himself because he views the Western microbiome as “a hot microbial mess,” he wrote on his blog. Poor diets, antibiotics and overly sanitized environments have gentrified the Western gut, he wrote, “potentially dragging us closer to ill health.” The Hadza, with their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle, carry diverse microbial communities that are presumably closer to a healthier and disappearing ideal. Hence the stunt with the turkey baster. Mr. Leach billed it as “(re)becoming human.”

This reasoning is faulty. It romanticizes our relationships with our microbes, painting them as happy partnerships that were better off in the good old days.

Yong's a fine science writer.

The Seat of the Antipope to come

Andrew Brown wrote in the Guardian this week:

Until this weekend, I had largely believed in the liberal narrative which holds that Pope Francis’s reforms of the Catholic church are unstoppable. But the conservative backlash has been so fierce and so far-reaching that for the first time a split looks a real, if distant, possibility.

One leading conservative, the Australian Cardinal George Pell, published over the weekend a homily he had prepared for the traditional Latin mass at which he started ruminating on papal authority. Pope Francis, he said, was the 266th pope, “and history has seen 37 false or antipopes”.
 
Why mention them, except to raise the possibility that Francis might turn out to be the 38th false pope, rather than the 266th real one?

Wow.  I only read that after I made my comment in my previous post about the coming schism, and Tim mentioned his desire to be an Antipope in comments.   I didn't realise Pell had been "thinking out loud" about it.

Brown's column continues:

This is a fascinating nudge in the direction of an established strain of conservative fringe belief: that liberalising popes are not in fact real popes, but imposters, sent by the devil. The explanation has an attractively deranged logic: if the pope is always right, as traditionalists would like to believe, and if this particular pope is clearly wrong, as traditionalists also believe, then obviously this pope is not the real pope. Splinter groups have held this view ever since the liberalising papacy of Pope John XXIII at the start of the 1960s. I don’t think that’s what Pell meant, but it was odd and threatening to bring the subject up at all.

You should go read the rest of Brown, too, where he attacks Douthat's take on Henry VIII.

So, all this Antipopery is something I have to start paying attention to.  

I haven't read anything about them for a long time, and the Wikipedia entry indicates that there have been a lot more Antipopes than I remembered.   In fact, about the only thing about Antipopery that had stuck in my mind was how Avignon was the centre of it for quite some time. 

This always sounded like a lovely place for an Antipope.  I've never been there (sadly, only ever Paris, for me) but my goodness, it does look lovely:

Anyhow, it's far too Eurocentric for a new Antipope to take up as his (or her) seat of power.  Given Pope Francis' concern about poverty and social justice (and the conservatives' embrace of cut throat free markets, destroying the planet, bugger the poor, they've always been with us, and as long as the divorced can't take communion everything will OK), clearly the new Antipope will need a location that reflects the First World/Third World divide.

After giving it much thought last night, in the shower, I think the obvious answer is:

Copacabana!

Philippa condemns scary dress ups

I see that Philippa Martyr, the Latin mass loving, contraception condemning, uber Catholic writer for Quadrant (the "conservative" magazine that is now unsuited for service even in an ablution block) has low regard for the increasingly locally popular day:

I’m going to Mass tonight, so I look forward to the church being attacked with eggs.

Not that Halloween is anti-Christian or nuffink. I mean just because it’s now a Pagan and Wiccan festival, and just because it’s an opportunity for people to celebrate everything that is connected with darkness and evil in human legend and myth (and occasionally reality), shouldn’t upset anyone.

The only 40 something year old Catholic man alive today who still thinks it's 1954 joins in:

It has always surprised me that the supposedly churched and conservative Americans ‘celebrate’ evil once a year. It’s no good for children, any of it. And let’s be honest – it’s not about Da Children anyway. It’s for creepy adults who like dressing up.

It's a very precious little group of Catholics that they evidently believe have the right way of thinking about this.

I'm starting to think the Catholic schism is too slow coming... 

Interesting detail easy to miss

Catcalling video: Hollaback's look at street harassment in NYC edited out the white guys.

I was pretty surprised by the video - I really thought male conduct of this kind had reduced since (say) the 70's and 80's.  Obviously, not so much, at least in New York.

I wonder what conservatives have been saying about it. Here's Hot Air:

Well, two minutes of catcalls over 10 hours. Still, you get the point —
in America’s biggest city, a young woman is never without unwanted
attention for very long. Most of this is boorish but seemingly benign,
just loudmouths shouting “smile” or “damn” etc. as they pass, but watch
for the creep who sidles up next to her and walks along, saying nothing,
for five full minutes. Two words, ladies: Concealed carry. (Which, by
the way, is basically illegal in NYC.)

Um, yeah.  Seems the the problem is not cast as "how do we get men to respect women" but rather, "every woman should be ready to kill - men are just like that."  

The American Right remains as nutty as ever.

China getting hot - good

I didn't notice any media reports earlier this month about this study in Nature Climate Change indicating that Eastern China has had a very clear increase in temperature since the 1950's.   This is good, if it means that anyone in the Chinese government is left with little room for climate change denial.  (Mind you, the article talks about adaptation at the end, not reducing CO2.  Still....)

Here's the synopsis:

The summer of 2013 was the hottest on record in Eastern China. Severe extended heatwaves affected the most populous and economically developed part of China and caused substantial economic and societal impacts¹. The estimated direct economic losses from the accompanying drought alone total 59 billion RMB (ref. 2). Summer (June–August) mean temperature in the region has increased by 0.82 °C since reliable observations were established in the 1950s, with the five hottest summers all occurring in the twenty-first century. It is challenging to attribute extreme events to causes^{3, 4, 5, 6}. Nevertheless, quantifying the causes of such extreme summer heat and projecting its future likelihood is necessary to develop climate adaptation strategies⁷. We estimate that anthropogenic influence has caused a more than 60-fold increase in the likelihood of the extreme warm 2013 summer since the early 1950s, and project that similarly hot summers will become even more frequent in the future, with fully 50% of summers being hotter than the 2013 summer in two decades even under the moderate RCP4.5 emissions scenario. Without adaptation to reduce vulnerability to the effects of extreme heat, this would imply a rapid increase in risks from extreme summer heat to Eastern China.

Splitting wave functions

For once, here's a pretty clear report of an experiment about quantum mechanics which remains  understandable all the way through.  The implications, though, remain unclear.

It appears that shooting electrons into helium gives rise to bubbles, some of which (so it is argued) are just partial bits of a wavefunction:

In the case of electrons and helium, it works like this: When an electron hits the surface of the liquid helium, there's some chance that it will cross into the liquid, and some chance that it will bounce off and carom away. In quantum mechanics, those possibilities are expressed as part of the wave function crossing the barrier, and part of it being reflected. Perhaps the small electron bubbles are formed by the portion of the wave function that goes through the surface. The size of the bubble depends on how much wave function goes through, which would explain the continuous distribution of small electron bubble sizes detected in the experiments.

The idea that part of the wave function is reflected at a barrier is standard quantum mechanics, Cooper said. "I don't think anyone would argue with that," he said. "The non-standard part is that the piece of the wave function that goes through can have a physical effect by influencing the size of the bubble. That is what is radically new here."

The background is well explained in further detail in the article.  As for the odd implications:

But it does raise some interesting questions that sit on the border of science and philosophy. For example, it's necessary to assume that the helium does not make a measurement of the actual position of the electron. If it did, any bubble found not to contain the electron would, in theory, simply disappear. And that, Maris says, points to one of the deepest mysteries of quantum theory.

"No one is sure what actually constitutes a measurement. Perhaps physicists can agree that someone with a Ph.D. wearing a white coat sitting in the lab of a famous university can make measurements. But what about somebody who really isn't sure what they are doing? Is consciousness required? We don't really know."

A general call out for emails

So now that a News Ltd paper has started a "tit for tat" story going on about Nova Peris, here's some politicians whose private emails I would be particularly keen to read:

Those between Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin
Christopher Pyne (and especially those to James Ashby or anyone concerned with the Slipper affair)
Anything from Mal Brough at the same time
Anything at all from Kevin Rudd with excessive sweary bits (just for fun)

Come on, people with access to politician's email accounts - give us better stuff than this piffle.

As for Andrew Bolt - what a drama queen when it suits him.   Feels "queasy" after reading Peris's emails. 


Didn't notice him mentioning any "queasiness" after reading Spurr's "she should have her mouth sewn shut" commentary on a rape story.  

If Coalition politicians are sensible, they'll leave this story well alone.   Athletics Australia was "thrilled" with Boldon's trip - it clearly was a success as far as they were concerned.  

And as if people like Peris haven't sought funding before for something in which there was personal benefit as part of the mix.  

So, if Coalition politicians are going to thrill to what's in Peris' emails, they had better watch their step for some further embarrassing leaks against them.  

And suddenly, magic happens!

You know a Coalition idea is fanciful when it is immediately ridiculed in readers' comments in The Australian.   I mean, seriously?:

UNEMPLOYED ­Aborigines in remote communities will be forced into work for the dole five days a week, with tough new sanctions for failing to participate, under changes that have in-principle cabinet agreement.
Under the new policy, un­employed people with full work capacity would be forced into 25 hours of “work-like” dole activities spread over the week. Sources said there would not be any activities that allowed people to spend their time “painting rocks”. Instead the activities would replicate real work to ensure unemployed Aborigines were “work ready”.
The scheme will force all ­remote Aborigines into work for the dole but there will be people who will be allowed to do less than 25 hours a week based on their ­“assessed capacity”, which will ­acknowledge that some ­people who are on the general ­unemployment benefit, Newstart Allowance, are parents or disabled.
Sources said the joint cabinet submission by Employment Minister Eric Abetz, Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews and Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion greatly increased the sanctions placed on unemployed Aborigines in remote areas who failed to meet their new mutual obligations.
The larger package, including new spending to pay for the massively expanded scheme, must still go back to cabinet for final endorsement.

The big question is:  why does this government think it can make such a scheme work when it sounds like exactly the same thing that has been tried with but minor variations for decades?  Wave a magic wand?   

Someone in comments notes this from the NSW Aboriginal Board in 1941:

‘Self-help. For many years the aborigines have been regarded as people needing protection and not capable of meeting successfully the economic stress of our more civilised daily life, and a system has grown up whereby aborigines have been provided with the necessities of life at the hand of the Government .The free distribution of benefits, however, has resulted in a tendency by a section of the aboriginal community to lean almost entirely upon the Government, without making any serious attempt to provide for themselves.The Board will continue to supply needy aborgines with sustenance and other social benefits, but those who are capable of working are, and will be, urged to become proficient and to obtain employment, thus enabling them to support themselves and their families.’

 But suddenly, 73 years later, the Abbott government can make it happen?  Colour me unconvinced.

By the way: one thing I don't quite understand about issues with remote aboriginal communities is this.  In old footage we see of mission settlements back in the mid 20th century, it seems that some (or many, or all, I don't know) had community farms which grew at least some of the food they relied on.   One gets the impression that this doesn't happen now.   If the impression is right, why isn't there more emphasis on local employment and training based around local self sufficiency in food and meat?   It would seem obvious that it would be a useful, meaningful thing for locals to be engaged in. I guess water supply is in an issue in some places, but not all, surely.

A rather odd idea for a quantum internet

Why Quantum "Clippers" Will Distribute Entanglement Across The Oceans | MIT Technology Review

I sense a one term government

The AFR is saying this:

An international competition will be staged to buy new submarines for Australia with the fleet to be largely built offshore confirming a blow to South Australian jobs.

This is (apparently) what the defence minister said before the election:

“We will deliver those submarines from right here at ASC in South Australia. The Coalition today is committed to building 12 new submarines here in Adelaide.”

Senator Johnston, Press Conference, 8 May 2013.

Given the departure of other manufacturing in South Australia, I would like to know what industries the Abbott government thinks are likely to fill the void in an already financially moribund State; given they are doing their best to also kill renewable energy.   

Rupert instructs the world

Well, I'm sure someone will be out soon with a more detailed take on this than I have time to do, but Rupert's message to the G20 is quite a shermozzle, isn't it?

First of all, credit for acknowledging the issue of rising inequality and calling it bad.  You'll have to get on the phone and convince your libertarian mates about that, though.  Same with your criticism of global companies which pay inadequate tax too, although I'm not sure how your own companies look in that regard...

But no credit for adopting the libertarian/dumb American Right  "solution".   Yes, I can just see how labour market deregulation (which, for the most part, wants lower wages, certainly low minimum wages) will help out with the inequality issues, especially in the States.   Oh yeah, and your faith in lower taxes is touching too.  Care to explain to Kansas how that works?  

And of course, lower energy costs, with no care as to carbon.  'Cos nothing helps global inequality like having entire, poor nations hit hardest by global warming in 30 years time.   (If it takes that long...)

Update:  OK, here's Alan Kohler, giving the sort of commentary on this that I was looking for.

New movie review

Hey, I see that the first reviews of Interstellar are out, and it's not convincing everyone. 

Given it's a Matthew McConaughy vehicle, I'm primed to dislike it; and I suspect that Nolan is like a more intellectually upmarket Tarantino - a director with a following whose enthusiasm is so excessive it makes me just way more inclined to see an emperor with few clothes*; but maybe I will see it so I can confirm my prejudgement.

On Nolan, I see that in the comments following this very so-so review in The Guardian, quite a few people are coming out to diss Nolan to a greater or lesser extent.   A lot of people didn't care for Dark Knight Rises, apparently...

* OK, in the case of Tarantino, an outright ugly nude dude.**

**  with a micropenis, if there is any justice...   

Late movie review

I never got around to seeing The Lone Ranger at the cinema, but caught up with it on the weekend.   You know, this one:

As I suspected, I liked it a lot more than most critics did, and so did my son.  In fact, we both enjoyed it, with a couple of reservations.

Given that (as my son said) it has the same DNA as the Pirates films, if  you liked all of them well enough,  you should almost certainly like this too.  For my money Gore Verbinski does physical, large scale comedy very well; and Depp is the man for eccentric comedy characters.

Sure it's not perfect:  it's at its best for the first half (in fact, it's really great, which means it's impressive for quite a long time, given its total length), but it does take too long in the second half to establish what is going on before the climatic action sequence.   (Unfortunately, this train chase too  often looks a little bit too reliant on CGI, if you ask me - but I liked the way it ends with poetic justice).

The Tonto-centric story contains a couple of jokes which are genuinely surprising and absolutely hilarious for it - almost worth the admission alone, as they say.  And it is a film which, like the Pirates movies, is so full of incident that it could be rewatched on DVD with some pleasure.   My son wanted to watch it again the next day, so that's a sign of its quality, if you are 14.

One credit I noted at the end said that the odd Tonto makeup was inspired by a painting.   An article showing it, which was only painted in 2006, and an interview with the artist, is here.   (Yes, there is a magazine called "Cowboys and Indians".)   It's not meant to be historically based on anyone, so it was a brave decision to use it throughout the movie. 

No matter, it's a largely enjoyable movie which deserved to do better.

And if you get the DVD, make sure you watch the short blooper scenes in the bonus features.  It gives an insight into how certain stunts were done.

Springtime garden activities

All taken in the backyard:

Temperatures rising

After the recent news that NOAA considers September was globally the warmest on record, it appears that its been hot in quite a few parts of the world in October, including Australia. It may reach 40 degrees today at Ispwich, and it's been terribly dry for many months in Brisbane.

It almost seems as if el nino weather has started already, at least in Australia.   (Not in other parts of the world, though, where California is still in a severe drought which an el nino might relieve.)   I see that they are now saying a weak el nino may be officially declared with a month or two.

Hey I see my feeling is right - here's the SMH a few days ago:

Australia is already experiencing unusually warm temperatures and rainfall deficiencies typical for an El Nino year. Clear night skies in inland areas are also leading to frost – another symptom, Dr Watkins said.
Adelaide's maximum reached 37.3 degrees on Tuesday, its warmest October day in eight years and the city's fourth day in a row of 30-plus weather.
Melbourne warmed to a top of 28 degrees while Sydney's cool patch will end with a string of warm days reaching into next week.
The real heat, though, will be on show over outback Australia with "very high temperatures" predicted for Friday to Monday, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

If a proper el nino does develop soon, it will be interesting to see what happens to the global average temperature, given where we are now.

Kindly stop eating the wild life

I'm rather surprised to find that, despite being a pretty regular viewer of David Attenborough over the decades, there's a creature that I don't recall ever seeing before, and it is rather weird:
It's a very scaly mammal, called a pangolin, and apparently rich Chinese are eating it to excess.   Very unfortunate.

There's a line you don't often read in a paper

UTS gives pees a chance with urine-diverting toilet trial | The Saturday Paper

From this somewhat interesting article about urine collecting toilets, which I have blogged about in the past:

I found it exhilarating to wee in that toilet, contributing in a tiny way to solving a huge problem.

Getting real on new dams

Dam hard: water storage is a historic headache for Australia

I see John Quiggin is a co-author of this article that puts some perspective on the the familiar (and always dubious) right wing claim that goes "If only it weren't for those damned environmentalists - we'd have double the dams and development everywhere in Australia." 

The future seems to be here

Hard not to feel that you were looking at something from science fiction when watching the beating "heart in a box" video this week, when the news was about how they can now revive for transplant hearts that have stopped:

What can I say? Just very watchable

I think this must be the third year that we've watched X Factor (which ended last Sunday), and while it didn't have quite the same excitement as watching Dami Im last year knock songs completely out of the ballpark each week, it was better than the year before that.

For the record:  like probably half of Australia, I reckon Marlisa was too young to be a winner, even though she is obviously a strong singer for her age.  Whether she is a success will all depend on the songwriters and producers who latch onto her - speaking of which, I have been pretty unimpressed thus far with Dami's song choice so far, but I think she said that she does actually write or co-write them.  That's a worry.   Dami, there is no shame in powerful singers using other writer's songs.  Please do so...

I take it from conversations at my office that everyone warmed to Dean once he stopped doing the silly "I'm a very serious rock star" act that was notable for his early appearances.  Or was it the X Factor producers who told him to exaggerate his seriousness early on.  There's a fair chance of that - it is "reality" TV show after all.  I would have been more comfortable with him winning, though, seeing he's already got an idea of a show biz life.

I tend to agree with those who say that he version of Budapest is better than the original:



The show does tend to do staging of songs very, very well, doesn't it?  And the most watchable of all this season was probably that by a certain young guest whose work I am only vaguely familiar with (being over 50 and all).  She's kinda skinny, but very hard to look away from:



I will now resume normal transmission....

Update:  Gee, even The Guardian gets excited about the new Taylor Swift album.  It must therefore be respectable for me to post about her...

Ocean acidification worries noted, yet again

This BBC report paints a worrying picture of some recent research on ocean acidification.  First the UK's chief scientist:

“If we carry on emitting CO2 at the same rate, ocean acidification will create substantial risks to complex marine food webs and ecosystems.”

He said the current rate of acidification is believed to be unprecedented within the last 65 million years – and may threaten fisheries in future.

The consequences of acidification are likely to be made worse by the warming of the ocean expected with climate change, a process which is also driven by CO2.

Sir Mark’s comments come as recent British research suggests the effects of acidification may be even more pervasive than previously estimated.

Until now studies have identified species with calcium-based shells as most in danger from changing chemistry.

But researchers in Exeter have found that other creatures will also be affected because as acidity increases it creates conditions for animals to take up more coastal pollutants like copper.

The angler’s favourite bait – the humble lugworm – suffers DNA damage as a result of the extra copper. The pollutant harms their sperm, and their offspring don’t develop properly.

“It’s a bit of a shock, frankly,” said biologist Ceri Lewis from Exeter University, one of the report’s authors. “It means the effects of ocean acidification may be even more serious than we previously thought. We need to look with new eyes at things which we thought were not vulnerable.”

The lugworm study was published in Environmental Science and Technology. Another study from Dr Lewis not yet peer-reviewed suggests that sea urchins are also harmed by uptake of copper. This adds to the damage they will suffer from increasing acidity as it takes them more and more energy to calcify their shells and spines.

This is significant because sea urchins, which can live up to 100 years, are a keystone species - grazing algae off rocks that would otherwise be covered in green slime.

The article does go on to make this comment, too, but I think it is actually too optimistic a take on some recent, but still very limited, studies:

At the bottom end of the marine animal chain, tiny creatures like plankton and coccolithophores reproduce so fast that their future offspring are likely to evolve to cope with lower pH.

A new quantum interpretation - Hurrah

An appealing idea is being worked on that may make for a whole new understanding of what is going on with quantum phenomena:

Theorists have tried to explain quantum behaviour through various mathematical frameworks. One of the older interpretations envisages the classical world as stemming from the existence of many simultaneous quantum ones. But that ‘many worlds’ approach, pioneered by the US theorist Hugh Everett III in the 1950s, relies on the worlds branching out independently from one another, and not interacting at all (see 'Many worlds: See me here, see me there').

By contrast, Wiseman’s team envisages many worlds bumping into one another, calling it the 'many interacting worlds' approach. On its own, each world is ruled by classical Newtonian physics. But together, the interacting motion of these worlds gives rise to phenomena that physicists typically ascribe to the quantum world.

Read more explanation via Howard Wiseman himself at The Conversation.

But the weirdest idea is that a dramatic breakthrough in understanding the universe could come via Griffith University.  [Heh].