Judging what works in education

Another NPR story, this time about a researcher in education from Melbourne, yet I am not familiar with him.   As with all of education research, it may be that some of his claims are debatable, but I strongly suspect this one is right:

Many education reformers tout school choice as a tool for parent empowerment and school improvement through competitive pressure. But Hattie says his research shows that once you account for the economic background of students, private schools offer no significant advantages on average. As for charter schools? "The effect of charter schools, for example, across three meta-analyses based on 246 studies is a minuscule .07," he writes.

On the other hand, I don't quite understand how you study this at all:

Putting televisions in the classroom, on the other hand, has an average negative impact of -0.18. Holding students back a grade really does hold students back, with an effect of -0.16.

How do you judge how the child would have done if they had not been "held back"?  

Update:  I also note that Naplan results in Australia indicate that having a mother born overseas is a good way to stay above the average. Bit hard to address that in your education system, though....

A credible argument about Art?

People Love Art Museums — But Has The Art Itself Become Irrelevant? : NPR

As this guy argues about the success of "art museums":

They offer a titillating experience. Lively interaction with the people
around you, well-dressed people — it's exciting. But what has happened
is the art museum used to offer objects, works of art, the finest that
we have. And it's gone from offering objects to offering an experience.
...

There's the critical moment: 1978. I was in college at the time. It
was the King Tut exhibit at the Met: 1.8 million people lined up to see
that show. And that got the attention of the administrators — not just
of the Met but the trustees of every museum in the country.

This hadn't happened before. Museums tended to be doudy places run by
superannuated financiers who every year would write a personal check to
cover the deficit. They suddenly realized that, well, "I don't have to
cover the deficit if you can produce more of these blockbuster
exhibits."

I actually talk about this in the piece. It was almost 20 years to the day, 20 years after The Treasures of Tutankhamun, the Guggenheim did The Art of the Motorcycle.
And it was equally thrilling, equally successful, but it tells us that
our society can no longer distinguish — effectively distinguish —
between a Harley-Davidson Sportster and a 3,000-year-old golden mask
from Egyptian New Kingdom, can't make a qualitative judgment about
intrinsic value.

So, the museum seemed to be more and more successful, but there's been a little bit of a bait-and-switch that's going on behind the doors of many.

The argument is not inconsistent with what I wrote about modern art and my reaction to it in 2009.  (The post also remains the only time I have posted a photo of myself on the blog.)

Not exactly a true "space elevator", but may still be useful

Canadian firm patents inflatable space elevator

The dodgiest bit is the flywheel system for "dynamic stability".

I wonder if such a tower would be a good base from which to then grab onto an orbiting skyhook tether with which to get into orbit?   Maybe just need a short launch up, clear of the tower, to be snared by the hook...

Economists getting random

Can randomized trials eliminate global poverty? : Nature News & Comment

This is my bit of Soon-bait for the day.

Given my skepticism about the utility of economists' analysis of climate change, my first reaction is to be somewhat skeptical of some of the work of the "radomistas" too.

Why does the US presidential gene pool seem so shallow?

There seems something distinctly "off" about the US political system when it keeps throwing up Presidential candidates that seem so underwhelming to the rest of the world.   I don't really remember when I last felt  particularly impressed by the qualities of a candidate.   I didn't even think Obama was impressive; he certainly seemed under-qualified, and his promise of "hope and change" was very much like the shallow sloganeering of the Kevin Rudd ascendency.  (Although, as it happens, I think Obama has turned out to be a pretty good President, after all.   His recent interview with David Attenborough showed an intelligent and decent man, even if his image is assisted by the comparison with the dimwittery that has enveloped his opposition.  His legacy in terms of health care reform, getting serious about some action on climate change, and on dealing with difficult economic circumstance, will stand him well in future, I think.)

Dismissing the Trump clown show, as far as I can tell Jeb Bush still seems the most likely Republican candidate.   As many have noted, it's funny how Americans rebelled against dynastic rule a couple of hundreds years ago only to more or less endorse another form of it now. 

Of course, everyone knows I follow the Krugman line that the Republicans have gone mad, and is currently a lost party that needs some very dramatic changes before it becomes  credible again.   But even on the Democrat side - I have never followed the Clinton family story closely, but remember how vigorously Hitchens condemned them, and I worry when any politician seems prone to self-aggrandising flights of exaggeration such as Hilary has displayed in the past.   (Shades of Reagan telling movie anecdotes, apparently believing they were true, if you ask me.   And no, I never thought highly of Reagan, even before it was known he was well on his way to dementia while still President.)

As for the only other Democrat candidate I have heard mentioned - Joe Biden??   Really?  He may be a decent enough fellow, but I had the impression he was mainly notable for making silly gaffes and had a distinct "Dan Quayle" feel about his vice presidency.

The amount of money that anyone needs to run for President in that country seems truly ridiculous, but I still don't really understand why that results in candidate runs by people who fail to impress.    Or is it just me, feeling underwhelmed ever since the last Kennedy was shot?   I do feel a bit hypocritical, because with John Howard, I sort of liked the way he was underwhelming in physical presence and in oration, but thought he displayed relatively sound judgement and decency and that this is what matters at the end of the day.  Perhaps it is because of the charisma of the Kennedy family that I feel the US leader should be impressive not just in deed but in appearance and campaign rhetoric too. 

The more important story

While the political sideshow of an incompetent and rudderless government sucks up most coverage (as well as media sympathies on gay marriage as the greatest injustice the nation has ever seen, apparently), the truly important story of the government's actual punishment of those people detained in Nauru and Manus in order to stop others leaving Indonesia gets short shrift.

This should have been the lead story in the media this morning, and on  7.30 last night.

Still, they did a decent job, the ABC, and it's pretty disgraceful that there is not more attention paid to this issue.  (It doesn't even appear on The Australian's front web page, as far as I can see.  Fairfax and The Guardian feature it fairly prominently.)

LDP membership surges by about 50%, I see

Gay marriage: Liberal Party members deserting party over Abbott stance

.... up to 20 rank-and-file [Liberal] party members have torn up their membership
tickets in the last 24 hours and switched allegiances to rival party,
the Liberal Democrats.

About bicycle helmets

I'm not going to die in a ditch (allusion to not wearing a helmet not really intended) defending compulsory bicycle helmet laws, as I think that a more moderate legal line in use of bicycles generally in this country may be justifiable.  (For example, if, as in Japan, the population was polite enough that cyclists could be trusted to ride at moderate speed and cautiously on urban footpaths,  I wouldn't mind seeing that permitted, and for those who ride in such a manner not to be required to have helmets.  Those who use dedicated bicycle lanes that are on the road - they can be treated differently.)

But still, people who say things like this:

But critics claim that helmet laws put people off cycling, causing far wider weight-related health problems due to Australians favouring driving, or not moving at all. One study found that 16.5% of people say they would ride more often if they were not required to wear a helmet at all times. 

should at least exercise some skepticism about what people say they would do were it not for factor X, especially when it comes to health matters.   Just how many people would say, for example, that they know they should lose some weight, and will they take steps to do so, and then never quite get around to it?

In fact, let's look at the actual link at the claim, and here is what it says:

So what are the things that are preventing over 50% of the population from hopping on a bike, and what can our governments do to help the situation? Here’s what the they said was stopping them:

• Unsafe road conditions: 46.4%
• Speed/volume of traffic: 41.8%
• Don’t feel safe riding: 41.4%
• Lack of bicycle lanes/trails: 34.6%
• Destinations too far away: 29.9%
• No place to park/store bike: 23.5%
• Do not own a bike: 22.5%
• Weather conditions: 22.1%
• Not fit enough: 21.8%
• Too hilly: 19.6%
• Don’t feel confident riding: 18.6%
• Not enough time: 16.7%
• Don’t like wearing a helmet: 15.7%
• No place to change/shower: 14.6%
• Health problems: 14.4%

 Oh really?   Having to wear a helmet is just about the least of their reasons?  That's not the impression that article initially gave.

As for other reasons why the "never cycled as an adult in Australia" are not about to take it up now:  the professional amateur cyclist (by which I mean "anyone who has ever wore bicycle pants - while on a bicycle") has probably done a greater deal of harm in the last 25 years than helmet laws which, I suspect, most adults have come to accept as sensible precaution.  How?  By frequently acting like entitled jerks on the road, and even on cycleways.  

Can someone get this idiot off TV?

Michelle Rodriguez's urine breaks Bear Grylls

I just had to read the story, and it is as ridiculous as the headline indicates.  Grylls makes a living out of faking survival scenarios which are stupid and pointless exercises in degradation for public entertainment.  

Modern marriage

I don't write much about same sex marriage because:   it is, without doubt, the trickiest topic to address without feeling that you're hurting someone's feelings without actually wanting to; sexuality is actually a difficult matter theologically given that all types of relationships involving sex can be loving ones and God's supposed to be about love; and some of those on my side of the issue (against it, basically, while accepting that it appears virtually inevitable) are people:

1.  only too willing to use derisive and insulting language with respect to homosexuals;
2.  make it clear that they have a problem with homosexuality merely because they personally find the very idea of some forms of sex repulsive; and 
3. have the worst possible judgement on the matter of actual great significance to the future of the planet*;

and as such it's embarrassing to be on their side.

Nevertheless, here we go:

a.   I'm sorry, is this just an age related thing?, but whenever I see a same sex marriage ceremony on TV as part of their advocacy for a change in the law, I cannot help but feel it looks like a parody of what I, and (let's be truthful here) several billion other people both now and over history, have understood as a wedding.  I have my doubts I'll ever get over that feeling, especially when you see things such as female couples in bridal gowns, cutting of wedding cakes with same sex couples on top, etc.  

b.  While we're being frank here,  I've noticed what I think is an increasing strain of victimology coming in to some of the advocacy, particularly for those who claim that not being able to marry has made coping with their sexuality much harder psychologically.     This at first blush sounds very plausible, but I was just checking around again on the matter, and as far as I can tell, homosexual people even in remarkably gay endorsing countries such as England still seem to suffer about twice the rate of mental health issues compared to the general population.  Now, sure, I guess that no matter how many gay celebrities are on national television and how gay friendly your national laws are, being gay may well still cause tension and difficulties within families, and that can account for some incidence of depression and other mental health issues.

But....that being the case, and while fulling acknowledging that gay people were genuine victims of some appalling legal treatment via the criminalisation and medical definition of of their sexuality until quite recently, it seems near certain that gay marriage is not going to be a dramatic cure all for the increased rate of  mental health issues which gay people suffer from.

Of course, the argument could be made that, even if the "gay gene" carries with it a predisposition to greater susceptibility to things like depression, that's all the more reason to remove any possible social reason as to why they might feel left out and unhappy.   Maybe.   But I still think some SSM advocates are overselling the benefits of this law reform as a cure all for what makes them - OK, some of them - unhappy.    It reminds me a bit of the cases of the rich and ostensibly successful who find themselves puzzled because there is no longer any obvious reason why they still feel depressed much of the time.  (Stephan Fry might fit into that category.)

c.  I thought that Katy Faust last night on Lateline was actually not a bad advocate for the conservative position - but it's terribly unfortunate for the sake of the political and social argument that she is Christian.  I have never heard of her before, and maybe if I read some of her stuff I might not find her as good as she appeared last night, but it seemed to me that her argument was not religiously based, but SSM advocates will dismiss her views because she is religious.

d.  As Katy Faust would seem to agree, much of the issue that conservatives have with SSM is actually more to do with how SSM inter-relates with child bearing and child rearing.   But heterosexual use of reproductive technology broke the ground for that, so there is no doubt that there has been a "slippery slope" effect in social views.  Conservative Catholics would argue this started with modern contraception severing the natural connection between sex and child bearing, and as much as I disagree with them on the validity of trying to hold back the tide of improved methods of contraception, I have to admit it is a fair enough argument.   The problem is, by over-reaching on the matter of how proscriptive they could be on the matter of what sexual acts are automatically against God's will, they lost all credibility for drawing lines anywhere else on matters of sex and reproduction amongst everyone except Latin loving Mass types, who also invariably happen to be nuttily against science on climate change.

e.  On the matter of social attitudes towards reproductive technology and child rearing, people on the SSM side seem to always be inadequately acknowledging the degree to which they can change back to more conservative positions.   Use of anonymous donor sperm is a great example of this:  it was all the rage for a while there, and advocates for "anything goes" at the time never seemed to credit the importance with which the children from such a system could come in future to view knowledge of their biological parent.

It seems to me that with surrogacy, we could entirely face the same backlash in future, and all the gossip magazine current coo-ing over gay men happy with their adorable new baby pushed out by some well paid poor woman in India is not going to change that.  (I find it deeply ironic that it tends to be women's magazines that see to be so gushing over celebrity gay male families using surrogacy.   One commercial use of a woman's body is fine and dandy, apparently, yet a male celebrity using a prostitute doesn't get quite the same reaction.)

Even with lesbian couples, people seem blithely unwilling to question the matter of the relationship of the child with the biological father.  Now, unlike commercial surrogacy, it may be that some such couples will be on good terms with the father who the child may always know (and, in fact, he may be something of a father figure to them if he is with them enough.)   But it's clear that to a great many SSM advocates that this simply does not matter enough to even question - I'm thinking the case of Senator Penny Wong, for example - it's the fulfillment of the lesbian couple that counts.   As with those who were thinking 30 years ago that anonymous sperm donation would never matter to the kids resulting, this is just a patently shallow attitude that is, in effect,  the mere intellectual fashion of the moment. 

f.  Having said all of this, the popular tide of opinion, especially amongst the young, is strongly for gay marriage, and it appears socially inevitable and will not mean the downfall of civilization, so I don't quite understand why Tony Abbott, if going for a plebiscite on the matter, would not just bring it on for the next election.

I think it is pretty clear that however Abbott proceeds, it will come in, and any approach which is seen to be dragging out the inevitable only hurts him politically.

In order to keep face with his supporters, such that they are because, let's face it, he is a failure of a PM and you have to be nuts to disagree, the plebiscite idea is not a bad one.   But why delay it for 3 years?


*  global warming and climate change, as if you don't know...

Combining solar farms and agriculture

Japan Next-Generation Farmers Cultivate Crops and Solar Energy - Renewable Energy World

I had been wondering about this for some time:  lots of Australian farming land is flat, expansive fields in parts of the country where (I would have thought) the sunlight is of such intensity in summer that it's probably more than strictly necessary for most crops.   In fact, some shading in the height of summer might be useful for decreasing soil drying.

So, is it possible to successfully combine large scale solar panels with useful agriculture beneath them?

From the link above - yes, it would seem that it is.

Worth looking into for Australia, isn't it?

Update:   here's a paper from France looking at how some crops go under partial solar panel shade.  Seems it can be made to work OK.  

On finding other planets

Matt Ridley on filters | …and Then There's Physics

The astronomer who blogs about climate change has an interesting post up after the difficult work of finding other, potentially habitable, planets.   (And climate change still gets a mention, too.)

A PM with scant authority in his own party room

Given all of the turmoil that Gillard had to face with disunity, along with an opportunistic policy windvane of an Opposition Leader, it's quite ironic to see from this report by Phil Coorey that Abbott seems to be having a lot of trouble convincing his own backbenchers to follow his preferred tactics.

Even more amusing was the last bit:

The party room discussion comes amid growing unrest in the Coalition over Mr Abbott's leadership just six months after he survived a spill.

News of the push leaked while the party room meeting was underway. This caused angry scenes inside the party room as to who was leaking, according to further leaks.

I tell you what:  when Abbott goes, he's not going to be feted on the talk circuit by those on his side of politics as a basically good PM thwarted by circumstances, like Gillard.   He is, undoubtedly, going down in history as one of our worst Prime Ministers by the reckoning of all sides of politics.

Economic scare campaign considered

How to make sense of big, scary climate costs

Mad film noted

Hard to Be a God review – mud, blood and holy hell | Film | The Guardian

This film seems to be in the category of "so bizarre, it might be worth seeing":

This monochrome dream-epic of medieval cruelty and squalor is a
non-sci-fi sci-fi; a monumental, and monumentally mad film that the
Russian film-maker Alexei German began working on around 15 years ago.
It was completed by his son, Alexei German Jr, after the director’s
death in 2013. If ever a movie deserved the title folie de grandeur
it is this, placed before audiences on a take-it-or-leave-it basis:
maniacally vehement and strange, a slo-mo kaleidoscope of chaos and also
a relentless prose poem of fear, featuring three hours’ worth of
non-sequitur dialogue, where each line is an imagist stab with nothing
to do what has just been said....

It is set in what appears to be a horrendous central European village of
the middle ages, as imagined by Hieronymus Bosch, where grotesquely
ugly and wretched peasants are condemned to clamber over each other for
all eternity, smeared in mud and blood: a world beset with tyranny and
factional wars between groups called “Blacks” and “Greys”. In the midst
of this, what looks like an imperious baronial chieftain called Don
Rumata, played by Leonid Yarmolnik, walks with relative impunity: this
sovereignty is based on his claim to be descended from a god....

Each shot is a vision of pandemonium: a depthless chiaroscuro
composition in which dogs, chickens, owls and hedgehogs appear on
virtually equal terms with the bewildered humans, who themselves are
semi-bestial. The camera ranges lightly over this panorama of bedlam,
and characters both important and unimportant will occasionally peer
stunned into the camera lens, like passersby in some documentary. 

More atomic musings

The BBC has some pretty good material on the anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:  I thought this piece on "the man who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb" (apparently, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who had visited the city several times in the 1920's and may have honeymooned there) was interesting; as was this time line of the countdown to Hiroshima.   There was a popular book about the Enola Gay's mission some years ago which I think is still on my bookshelf somewhere - I may yet get around to reading it.

One thing that I thought about today was how long it may have taken for photographic evidence of the extent of the devastation in Hiroshima to reach the fractured government in Tokyo.  I mean, it's easy for us to look at the photos now and think it's amazing it took any more than a day or so to end the war after that scene of instant devastation, but visual communication then was not what it is now.

I guess someone has written about when the first photos of it were to be seen in Tokyo, but I haven't found the definitive answer. Certainly, Wikipedia indicates that at least eyewitness reports were being received pretty quickly:

On August 7, a day after Hiroshima was destroyed, Dr. Yoshio Nishina and other atomic physicists arrived at the city, and carefully examined the damage. They then went back to Tokyo and told the cabinet that Hiroshima was indeed destroyed by an atomic bomb. Admiral Soemu Toyoda, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, estimated that no more than one or two additional bombs could be readied, so they decided to endure the remaining attacks, acknowledging "there would be more destruction but the war would go on."^[164] American Magic codebreakers intercepted the cabinet's messages.^[165]

On that point about the limited number of bombs that the Japanese thought America might have, another Wikipedia entry notes this:

Admiral Soemu Toyoda, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, argued that even if the United States had made one, they could not have many more.^[78] American strategists, having anticipated a reaction like Toyoda's, planned to drop a second bomb shortly after the first, to convince the Japanese that the U.S. had a large supply.^[62][79]

 I hadn't heard before about this possibly influential lie told by a captured US pilot:

The full cabinet met on 14:30 on August 9, and spent most of the day debating surrender. As the Big Six had done, the cabinet split, with neither Tōgō's position nor Anami's attracting a majority.^[88] Anami told the other cabinet ministers that, under torture, a captured American P-51 fighter pilot had told his interrogators that the United States possessed 100 atom bombs and that Tokyo and Kyoto would be bombed "in the next few days". The pilot, Marcus McDilda, was lying. He knew nothing of the Manhattan Project and simply told his interrogators what he thought they wanted to hear to end the torture. The lie, which caused him to be classified as a high-priority prisoner, probably saved him from beheading.^[89] In reality, the United States would have had the third bomb ready for use around August 19, and a fourth in September 1945.^[90] The third bomb probably would have been used against Tokyo.^[91]

 The Atlantic had this story which gives some details of the attempted coup and efforts to protect the Emperor's recorded surrender broadcast.   Many military leaders were killing themselves, and unfortunately taking others with them:

In the days that followed the emperor’s radio address, at least eight generals killed themselves. On one afternoon, Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki, commander of the Fifth Air Fleet on the island of Kyushu, drank a farewell cup of sake with his staff and drove to an airfield where 11 D4Y Suisei dive-bombers were lined up, engines roaring. Before him stood 22 young men, each wearing a white headband emblazoned with a red rising sun.

Ugaki climbed onto a platform and, gazing down on them, asked, “Will all of you go with me?”
“Yes, sir!” they all shouted, raising their right hands in the air.

“Many thanks to all of you,” he said. He climbed down from the stand, got into his plane, and took off. The other planes followed him into the sky.

Aloft, he sent back a message: “I am going to proceed to Okinawa, where our men lost their lives like cherry blossoms, and ram into the arrogant American ships, displaying the real spirit of a Japanese warrior.”

Ugaki’s kamikazes flew off toward the expected location of the American fleet. They were never heard from again.

Well, for the airmen following him, I wonder if crashing pointlessly into an empty ocean might have felt a particularly embittering way to end their war.

Anyhow, back to the atomic bombings.  The Wikipedia entry spends a bit of time on the debate had at the time about whether a demonstration bomb should be attempted, which is good to see.  (Jon Stewart should have read about this.)   

While the great uncertainty around whether the airborne bombs would even work, and the very small number available, makes for a convincing argument as to why it would have been extremely risky to make the  first one an advertised demonstration,  I wonder if a decent case can be made for the second bomb being a demonstration: one (say) within obvious sight of Tokyo.   I suppose you would never be sure how many people would see it unless you warned them, and the mountain is not within easy sight of all parts of the city, but I speculate that seeing the spiritually important Mount Fuji under an atomic cloud (but at the relatively "safe" distance of 130 km) might have been psychologically very damaging.  (Whether the subsequent number of people sickened by radiation around Tokyo would have been worse than the number sickened at Nagasaki remains guesswork,  I suppose; but I presume there would have been comparatively few immediate casualties.)

Oh, and here's another thing I read about today - the extensive underground space known as the Matsushiro Underground Imperial Headquarters that was intended to be the last refuge of the Japanese government.  Now in the suburbs of Nagano, it was no small undertaking:

Construction began on November 11, 1944^[2] and continued until Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945. Construction was 75% completed at the end of the war, with 5,856.6 square meters (63,040 sq ft) of floor-space (59,635 cubic meters (2,106,000 cu ft) of volume) excavated. Between 7,000 and 10,000 Korean slave laborers were used to build the complex, and it is estimated that 1,500 of them died.^[3] Forty-six Koreans disappeared on August 15, 1945, when Japan surrendered. 

 It was supposed to house an underground Imperial Palace: 

The original purpose of the complex was to serve as an alternative headquarters for the Imperial General headquarters. However, in March 1945, secret orders were issued to add a palace to the complex.^[5] Yoshijirō Umezu informed Emperor Hirohito about construction of the complex in May, but did not tell him that it contained a palace. The plan was to relocate the Emperor to the complex in an armored train. When informed about the existence of the palace in July, Hirohito twice refused to relocate.^[5] It has been suggested that he refused because going to Matsushiro would have isolated the Emperor and allowed the army to rule in his name, effectively guaranteeing they would pursue the war to "suicidal extremes".^[6]

And finally, just as I linked the other day to photos taken of the resilient Hiroshima only two years after the bombing, here is a great series of photos from last year's The Atlantic of Japan in the 1950's, complete with its rapid industrialisation, Americanisation, and transistor TVs.   What an incredible transformation the country made in such a small time...

Update:   here's a lengthy article at Politico about the US's less than fully helpful research into the health effect of the victims of the bombings.    Makes it all the more remarkable that US popular culture took off in the country within a short space of time.   Here's some particularly sad information:

By the 1960s, long after Dr. Yamazaki had left Nagasaki, a study examining the effects of radiation exposure in utero in Nagasaki and Hiroshima grew to 3,600 children, including their control groups. As these children grew older, the ABCC’s outcomes confirmed radiation exposure as the cause of most of the children’s health conditions, including high incidences of microcephaly and neurological impairments. The studies revealed the particular vulnerabilities of timing as it related to in utero radiation exposure. Children who had been exposed at eight to 15 weeks after conception demonstrated significantly greater risk of developmental disabilities because fetal brain cells are more susceptible to radiation damage in this stage of pregnancy. In a Nagasaki substudy published in 1972, eight of nine children (89 percent) exposed before the 18^th week of pregnancy were diagnosed with microcephaly—compared to two of nine children (22 percent) exposed to the same levels of radiation later in their gestational development.

Update 2:   see here for a post about the important symbolism of Fuji, including information about the way Allied propaganda "targetted" the mountain in leaflets, and considered bombing it. 

Fascinating science

RealClimate: Ice-core dating corroborates tree ring chronologies

Here's an interesting story of work done to resolve apparent conflict between tree ring temperature chronologies and those from ice cores.

The one thing I would like to know more about is this part of the story:

In 2012, Miyaki et al. discovered a rapid increase of radiocarbon (14C) in Japanese cedar, precisely dated to AD 774-775. The cause of this increase was possibly due to a very high energy solar proton event (Usoskin et al., 2013), and its effect on radiocarbon has been observed in tree ring chronologies in both hemispheres (Güttler et al., 2015). Another rapid, slightly smaller (~60%), radiocarbon production event has been dated to AD 993-994 (Miyake et al., 2013).

Do we know what causes "very high energy solar proton events"?

A Richard Tol thread of note

Personal attacks on Met Office scientists | …and Then There's Physics

Wow.  Richard Tol gets involved in a thread and really takes a credibility battering at the link above.

Reality TV cooked

I'm not surprised that Restaurant Revolution has been a complete ratings failure.

The host is bland; the judging team is little better, although it is a little fun being scared of the Serious Asian Woman; and as the teams competing never spend much time together in the same spot, you just don't get the interest of face to face snide comments like you get in My Kitchen Rules. 

As for "Hotplates":  I've seen only 15 minutes, but it was during that time exactly identical in format to MKR.   Oh alright, there was one difference:  the teams wrote their scores on a piece of paper, as well as saying it out loud.  It's a shameless rip off, as far as I can see, but with charmless hosts and more intensely annoying contestants than MKR can manage to find.  It seems to me it should be liable for some form of breach of intellectual property....

Heat in the North

While (I think) much of Australia continues to have a colder winter than normal, I see that in the Northern Hemisphere, it's been hot in Japan, America (ironically, with Rick Perry's State perhaps about to set some records) and the Middle East.

As this story notes, Iraq has a huge number of displaced persons, many living in camps while the country hits highs of 51 degrees.  

I really wonder how people in temporary shelters (not sure, but are many tents?) survive in that heat.

Hiroshima not forgotten

7.30 last night did a good story about high school girls in Hiroshima taking part in recording the previously untold stories of survivors.   (The 88 and 90 year old sisters looked very sprightly, and sounded as sharp as a tack.)  

I've been trying to find some other, less well known, photos with which to remember the 70 year anniversary, and perhaps these will do - a series of photos taken for Life only a couple of years after the bomb, which show both the horrifying wounds on survivors, but also signs of the resilience with which the city was (surprisingly rapidly) re-establishing itself. 

Tracking down the conservative/liberal gene

Can genes make us liberal or conservative?

If Jason Soon doesn't tweet this story, I'll eat my metaphorical hat.

The one thing I don't quite understand about the apparent genetic component to political beliefs, however, is how it explains the not uncommon phenomena of former quite extreme Lefties who convert to being extreme Righties.  (It sort of happens in the reverse direction too, I suppose, but not as often.)  The ranks of Catallaxy threads are full of people who claim they made the conversion, for example.   Is there just a genetic element to "it doesn't matter what I believe, I just must believe it 100% percent"?

Update:  my "hat" is safe.  I spent a while yesterday wondering whether I had correctly referred to it as "metaphorical" or not, and found it hard to work out a definitive answer from Google.

Beautiful Antarctica

Readers will know I like photos of Antarctica, and there is a beautiful set of them up at The Atlantic, for some reason.

More care needed

Crucial ocean-acidification models come up short : Nature News & Comment

Interesting article here, noting that a lot of the uncertainty in working out the ecological effects of ocean acidification  comes from experimenters (especially those at the start of research into this) not being careful enough with the experimental set up. 

I had noticed myself that, over the years, after the initial flurry of reports about the dire effects on different organisms, there followed a lot of considerably more ambiguous reports from tank experiments.   And, yes, it had been noted before that how the water chemistry is altered is important.

But do the researchers writing this paper think this means there is not a serious problem for the oceans?  Nope:

Cornwall says that the “overwhelming evidence” from such studies of the
negative effects of ocean acidification still stands. For example,
more-acidic waters slow the growth and worsen the health of many species
that build structures such as shells from calcium carbonate. But the
pair’s discovery that many of the experiments are problematic makes it
difficult to assess accurately the magnitude of effects of ocean
acidification, and to combine results from individual experiments to
build overall predictions for how the ecosystem as a whole will behave,
he says.

 This article also notes that not enough experiments have looked at the combination of warming water and decreasing pH together.

Climate change, algal blooms, poison crabs

Toxic algae blooming in warm water from California to Alaska

This coastal ribbon of microscopic algae, up to 40 miles wide and 650 feet deep in places,
is flourishing amid unusually warm Pacific Ocean temperatures. It now stretches from at least California to Alaska and has shut down lucrative fisheries. Shellfish managers on Tuesday doubled the area off Washington's coast that is closed to Dungeness crab fishing, after
finding elevated levels of marine toxins in tested crab meat.

So-called "red tides" are cyclical and have happened many times before, but ocean researchers say this one is much larger and persisting much longer, with higher levels of neurotoxins bringing severe consequences for the Pacific seafood industry, coastal tourism and marine ecosystems.

Dan Ayres, coastal shellfish manager for the Washington Department of  Fish and Wildlife, said the area now closed to crab fishing includes more than half the state's 157-mile-long coast, and likely will bring a premature end to this year's crab season.

"We think it's just sitting and lingering out there," said Anthony Odell, a University of Washington research analyst who is part of a NOAA-led team surveying the harmful algae bloom, which was first detected in May. "It's farther offshore, but it's still there."

The survey data should provide a clearer picture of what is causing the bloom which is brownish in color, unlike the blue and green algae found in polluted freshwater lakes. Marine detectives already have a suspect: a large patch of water running as much as 3 degrees centigrade warmer than normal in the northeast Pacific Ocean, nicknamed "the blob."


"The question on everyone's mind is whether this is related to global climate change. The simple answer is that it could be, but at this point it's hard to separate the variations in these cycles," said Donald Boesch, professor of marine science at the University of Maryland who
is not involved in the survey. "Maybe the cycles are more extreme in the changing climate."

Come on.  It's hard to imagine how warming ocean waters won't lead to more extensive and longer lasting poison algal blooms.

"Classic liberal" and its modern, crypto meaning

If you ask me, "classic liberal" has become something of a cover for "short-sighted rich libertarian asshat primarily interested in increasing his or her own wealth and influence."

Here's Charles Koch, for example:

Q: How important is it to you to see a Republican in the White House?
A: It depends on the Republican. I am not a Republican. I consider myself a classical liberal. I believe in certain principles and I am looking for candidates who are advancing those principles....

Q: How is it fair that people who have more money have more of a voice in politics? Isn’t that an imbalance?
A: Well, voice, what does that mean? I mean, the government is largely influenced by people who advocate corporate welfare and advocate these policies that create this two-tiered society … So I mean, a voice, yeah, we get more press. You all are interested in what we say. But are we really having an influence?...

 Q: Are you worried about climate change?
A: Well, I mean I believe it’s been warming some. There’s a big debate on that, because it depends on whether you use satellite measurements, balloon, or you use ground ones that have been adjusted. But there has been warming. The CO2 goes up, the CO2 has probably contributed to that. But they say it’s going to be catastrophic. There is no evidence to that. They have these models that show it, but the models don’t work … To be scientific, it has to be testable and refutable. And so I mean, it has elements of science in it, and then of conjecture, ideology and politics. So do we want to create a catastrophe today in the economy because of some speculation based on models that don’t work? Those are my questions. But believe me, I spent my whole life studying science and the philosophy of science, and our whole company is committed to science.

Holding my breath

Day three, and yes, I'm still talking about things Mission Impossible 5 made me think about.

Today:  holding your breath.   It's not something I keep in my mind, the matter of how long those insane free divers can hold their breath.

So, from a story about them at the ABC:

The current men's world record holder is Stephane Mifsud of France with a time of 11 minutes and 35 seconds and the womens' world record is held by Natalia Molchanova of Russia with a static breath hold of just over nine minutes.

The sport doesn't allow pre-breathing of oxygen, I believe, but for divers who do that they can get up to 20 to 30 minutes, it seems. 

The claim that Cruise once held his breath underwater on set for 6 minutes is therefore not completely ridiculous, after all. 

Update:   Oh.  The female champion diver I mentioned here has been claimed by her nutty hobby.

The Senate stunt team is back

They're useless, being there mainly for the purpose of self-promotion:  Leyonhjelm/Day to introduce Bill to remove penalty rates.

And yes, I am aiding their "look at me" effort, but if I do so while pointing out that they are actually useless, I don't care.

Bolt backs the Republican intellectual wasteland

Cruz missile could save the US from Obama’s legacy | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Tragic.

Sounds complicated...

Panasonic moves closer to home energy self-sufficiency with fuel cells - AJW by The Asahi Shimbun

I'll just quote this story in full, and note again that Japan seems the most advanced country in terms of use of domestic fuel cells:

Panasonic Corp. said it has developed a catalyst that uses sunlight efficiently to extract hydrogen from water, a technology that could lead to energy self-sufficiency in homes powered by fuel cells.

The company said it tested photocatalysts consisting of niobium nitride that can absorb 57 percent of sunlight, a rate far more efficient than the titanium oxide photocatalysts used today that absorb only ultraviolet rays, which constitute 4 percent of sunlight.

Using this catalyst, Panasonic plans to develop products, such as panels similar to solar cells, for installation on rooftops.

These products in turn will create the hydrogen that fuel cells use to generate electricity.

“Commercial application will be 2020 at the earliest,” Panasonic Managing Director Yoshiyuki Miyabe said. “We want to achieve this as early as possible.”

Panasonic has already started selling home-use fuel cells to generate electricity from hydrogen.

Good cancer news

Pancreatic cancer urine test hope - BBC News

I've known at least two people who have died of pancreatic cancer in my life, and it is one of the worst ones for being undetected until it is too late.  So this is good news.

When conservatives with agendas fall out

It seems Andrew Bolt is very, very upset with Chris Mitchell, editor of the Australian.  Which is funny, given their mutual interest in mudslinging Julia Gillard over events 20 years old and which Bolt never thought important until she was PM; their disgraceful campaign against Gillian Triggs;  their mutual undying support of Abbott in his fascistic campaign to do anything he likes at sea and in offshore detention centres and keep it secret from the public under threat of criminal charges; and (of course) their mutual contempt and wilful ignorance of the science of climate change. 

Update:  I just remembered, isn't News Corp actually paying the production costs of Bolt's TV show?  I suppose that makes Bolt's attack "brave"; but then again, I guess Mitchell may well have no influence at all on whether Bolt's show maintains a budget.

Amusingly, I see that a few Catallaxy threadsters are saying they will end their Australian subscriptions over the paper's support of Adam Goodes, and the aboriginal constitution amendment.   They're very upset that the entire media universe has turned into leftists.    Hahahahahaha.

I also note that it seems to me that the only commentators on the web who supported Bronwyn Bishop were at Catallaxy.   Steve Kates, the lone economist in the world who understands it properly because he knows what Says Law really means, was adamant she should never resign.   Sinclair Davidson said she had been an excellent speaker (again, a view virtually unique on the World Wide Web.)   Alan Moran, banned from the IPA, still has a gig at Catallaxy claiming global economic catastrophe from reducing CO2. 

What an extreme and nutty corner of the interwebs it has become....

Two ocean acidification papers

1.  Ocean acidification measurements across an entire ocean indicate that pH is dropping in a way consistent with modelling.

2.   If you burn fossil fuels on a "business as usual" basis for another hundred years or so, even a future (improbably efficient) means of removing CO2 from the atmosphere is not going to help the oceans much.

I think I have summarised both of these correctly.

I've been thinking...

...about the next Mission Impossible movie.

Seeing they spend so much time on accessing encrypted information stored in places using the weirdest security systems, can't the writer look into something more realistically at the cutting edge, such as quantum cryptography?

Now, I guess the point of that is to make information genuinely impossible to break into, but there is nothing impossible to Ethan Hunt, as we were told in the last movie.  (Perhaps he can be split into a both dead and alive version in a Schrodinger's Cat upscaling.   Would that help with quantum cryptography?   Who cares?)

Candle viewing

How far away do you think the human eye can see a candle?   (I'm assuming we're talking some sort of average size one, too.)

I would have guessed about 1 km, but according to the paper reported here, it's more like 2.76 km.

Your day is now complete.   

Not sure it's how a drink with a buddy is supposed to end...

Viagra 'added to Chinese alcohol' - BBC News

Weekend roundup, with Mission Impossible 5

What a nice weekend:  beautiful warm late winter sunshine; out to Mulgowie farmer's market for lots of fresh vegetables, fruit juice and caramel popcorn (I did have a 12 year old in tow); a couple of craft beers at the Hoo Ha Bar near Southbank;  grilled kipper for dinner (why don't Australians eat more of them?).  Sunday I found myself looking in at what seemed to be a very Anglo Catholic Anglican mass in an old church in Fortitude Valley (the amount of incense they used created a cloud that never fully dissipated the rest of the service);  a fresh sandwich for lunch with steak slices and hot mustard; and a very successful coq au vin cooked by me for dinner.

Amongst all of that, the family went to see Mission Impossible 5.

It is very good.   While the Bond style opening was thrilling, I think the motorcycle/car chase was perhaps the best of its kind that I have seen.  (The editing is fast, but not Bourne fast with shaky cam, and it genuinely looks dangerous for Cruise and the stunt team.)   The night at the opera segment is, as others have noted, a bit Hitchcockian, but it's enjoyable and (what's the word?) sumptuously staged.

I have to admit that the other set piece is, fundamentally, silly (water and electronics are not known for their friendly intermingling); almost up there with the need for a secret gigantic radio telescope to communicate with a satellite in Goldeneye.   But there is still tension in how it is handled, and it is a spectacular setting, that entry point.   (What looked like some silly sci fi physics in the trailer wasn't after all.)  Yeah, it's true:  what I can't forgive in Bond I can forgive in Hunt.  

It does have a bit of a feel that it has been written as a series-summarising send off, but as all reviews have been saying, Cruise looks extremely fit and engaged, and it does have a hint of further story in there with the femme fatale, and Alec Baldwin, so that yet another outing still wouldn't seem self indulgent.

In fact, maybe it will go in a new direction, where the IMF being dysfunctional is not the key plot point, like it has been for most of the other movies.  (OK, maybe it wasn't in MI2, but I prefer not to think of that embarrassing entry.)

Update:   I missed that Cruise has already said that they are planning a sixth, and without as long a gap as with the other installments.   The movie seems to have already made more than $100 million worldwide in its first weekend.  Good.

Amusing myself....

Drinking and conception

Drinking at conception boosts diabetes risk for baby

This finding:

Babies conceived by women who drink alcohol around the time of conception face dramatically increased risks of type 2 diabetes and obesity in early middle age, a University of Queensland
study has found.

The discovery was made by School of Biomedical Sciences scientist Associate Professor Karen Moritz during research into how events – particularly alcohol consumption – before and during pregnancy affect the long-term health of offspring.

is only based on "laboratory rat model", but still, it does sound a potential worry for humans.

Sharks getting aggro?

Surfer mauled in shark attack at Evans Head

I'm sure I'm not the only person thinking that it seems sharks are getting more aggressive against humans lately, including, unfortunately, many of them around Australia.  Have a look at the recent list of attacks in this article, many of which have only given people a fright, but still there are quite a few incidents of aggression that I haven't heard of until now.

Adam Goodes noted

Of course, the Australian sport that I have the least possible interest in (well, apart from cage boxing, I suppose) is Aussie Rules Football, but it's impossible not to comment on the Adam Goodes story.

It seems to me that the on the "this boo-ing has gotten out of control" side is every current AFL player, the management of every AFL team, the AFL management itself, every single politician who has commented on it, including Coalition members such as the down-to-earth indigenous affairs minister Nigel Scullion,  the editorial team at The Australian, as well as everyone down to the cleaning staff at the ABC and The Guardian (but the latter is not unexpected, of course.)

On the "Adam Goodes is a sook and ought to suck it up and he started it all anyway" side is a newspaper columnist who lost a court case about race and has spent a decade or more downplaying racism as an issue to a silly extent; an ex AFL player or two; the intellectual giant of cricket Shane Warne; an economist from South Africa who had never even heard of "ape" being used in a racial context; and a group of right wing columnists who are most notable for despising Julia Gillard and not believing in climate change.

I don't know - I got a feeling in my bones about which side on this might have the better "cred".

Knickers

I was reading the Courier Mail review for Anything Goes from 14 March 1936, and noticed this ad on the page:

"Knickers" seems to have changed meaning over the years...

Update:  a post may be found here giving some details about the fashion for boy's knickers in the first half of the 20th century.   Yet I'm still not entirely sure as to what made "knickers" knickers.  It would seem to be the length as indicated in this photo:

  But the advertisement showing a "knicker suit" in Australia seems to have shorts that aren't below the knee in length.

Update 2:  just in case anyone thinks I'm easily confused - yes, I am aware of knickerboxers - which are what the pants in the photo in the update would be called, and (I presume) knickers is a contraction of that.  Maybe I'm just confused because the "knicker suit" and "knicker pants" in the Brisbane ad don't look long enough to count.

Herbal remedy with the opposite effect (for some)

Taking St. John's wort for depression carries risks: study

I didn't know this was possible (or at least, to this extent) with St John's wort:

Using reports filed with Australia's drug safety agency, the researchers found that adverse reactions to St. John's wort were similar to those reported for the antidepressant fluoxetine—better known by the brand name Prozac.

Those side effects included anxiety, panic attacks, dizziness, nausea and spikes in blood pressure, the researchers reported in the July issue of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology....

The researchers based their findings on doctors' reports to Australia's national agency on drug safety. Between 2000 and 2013, there were 84 reports of adverse reactions to St. John's wort, and 447 reports on Prozac.

But since those are voluntary reports, they do not reflect the actual rate of side effects from either therapy, according to the researchers.  And, Hoban said, bad reactions to St. John's wort are particularly likely to go unreported, since the herb is often not even considered a drug.

According to McCutcheon, it's important for people with depression symptoms to see a health professional before self-medicating with St. John's wort. "That will help ensure you have the right diagnosis," she said.

If your symptoms are actually part of a different disorder, St. John's wort may be ineffective—or possibly even risky. For example, McCutcheon said that in people with bipolar disorder, the herb might fuel a manic episode.

But possibly the biggest concern, she said, is the potential for St. John's wort to interact with commonly used medications.

The herb can dampen the effectiveness of birth control pills, blood thinners and heart disease drugs, along with some HIV and cancer drugs, according to the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative
Health.

Falling pregnant unintentionally due to taking it can't be good for depression!

Masculinity and nature

Cecil the lion: Jimmy Kimmel breaks down on air as he condemns animal's killing

Wow.  Jimmy Kimmel made his name on "The Man Show", didn't he?:  a low brow comedy that joked about masculinity in quite an un-PC, right wing sort of fashion.   (The co-host Adam Carolla appears to make a name for himself still by being the favourite comedian of sites like Breitbart.)

Yet Kimmel gets emotional talking about Cecil the lion.

It's pretty amazing how strongly most of the West has turned against trophy hunting, where what was once seen as something a strong man would naturally like to do (up to perhaps about the 1960's, I reckon) is now condemned as sign of inadequacy. 

Yet, as this Washington Post story notes, it is still big business in Africa, fed mostly by Americans, and includes those ridiculous cases where captive animals are bred and hunted for fun, or whatever the motivation is for this activity.

There's no doubt there is a very different view of our relationship with nature now, but there is still a strong cultural element about it all - it seems to me that the Chinese are far, far behind the West in having empathy  for animal suffering, and the reasons for that I do not know.  (I should Google it one day...)   

I suspect that this story is leading more people to cast a skeptical eye on the claim that trophy hunting is a good, or valid, way of raising money for animal conservation. 

Good. 

Catholics in retreat

The last Catholic priest in the Antarctic - BBC News

Interesting story about religious services in Antarctica.

I like the penguins on the wall at the back of the chapel:

For a special weekly dose of climate change pessimism

What Happens If We Don’t Mitigate?

I see that the Climate Change National Forum site, which seemingly had become quite inactive, has been re-formatted and has more recent posts finally up.

The one at the link is a good interview with 3 climate scientists, including one of my old favourites John Nielsen-Gammon.  He's always been fair:  too fair, in fact, given that he was prepared to help out Anthony Watts with his failed attempt to prove that poor weather station siting was really behind increasing temperatures.  

Anyhow, Nielsen-Gammon is well and truly a realist as to what is in store with temperature rises, and this interview is worth reading.

Peculiar Japanese headline of the day

Moss-viewing trips catching on among women | The Japan Times

Uncertain meters

Catastrophic Sea Level Rise: More and sooner – Greg Laden's Blog

Greg Laden talks generally about the new James Hansen paper that warns that sea level rise may be more rapid than most scientists think:

Let me rephrase that to make it clear. We have already caused
something like 14 meters of sea level rise. Like the horrifically sad
words uttered by a movie or TV character who has received a fatal wound
and turns to the killer, uttering “You’ve killed me” (then they die),
we’ve done this. It is just going to take some time to play out. But it
will play out.

A conservative estimate is that likely sea levels will rise 8 meters
or more, quite possibly considerably more. But generally, people who
talk about sea level tend to suggest that this will take centuries. Part
of the reason for that is that it takes a long(ish) time for the added
CO2 to heat up the surface, then it takes a while for that heat to melt
the ice sheets. However, there is no firm reason to put a time frame on
this melting.

A new paper that is making a great deal of news, and that is still in
peer review, suggests that the time frame may be shorter than man have
suggested. We may see several meters of sea level rise during the
lifetime of most people living today.

We don’t really how long this will take. Looking at the paleo record,
we are lucky to get two data points showing different ancient sea
levels that are less than a thousand years apart. There are a few
moments during the end of the last glaciation where we have data points
several centuries apart during which sea levels went up several meters.
We don’t have a good estimate for the maximum rate at which polar ice
caps and other ice can melt.

The current situation is, notably, very different from those periods
of rapid sea level rise. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is
approximately double the Pleistocene average, and the rate at which CO2
levels and temperatures have gone up has not been seen in tens of
millions of years. Whatever rate of sea level rise over the last several
tens of thousands of years must be regarded as a minimum, perhaps a
very low minimum.

Australian Libertarians, meanwhile, are fretting about not being able to get a drink at Kings Cross at 3.30 am after a day of riding their mountain bike without a helmet with their repeat action shotgun slung over their shoulder for killing feral cats with which to make a fur coat for their gay friend's wedding.

An odd therapy gains acceptance?

EMDR Eye Movement Therapy for Victims of Trauma and PTSD - The Atlantic

This short article doesn't really give much detail, but it is interesting to note that this odd sounding therapy hasn't disappeared, as I first suspected it might.

Bad news for salmon

Too bits of bad news for fish on the net lately:

*  Lakes are warming at a surprisingly fast rate.

And:

More than a quarter million sockeye salmon returning from the ocean to spawn are either dead or dying in the Columbia River and its tributaries due to warming water temperatures.Federal and state fisheries biologists say the warm water is lethal for the cold-water species and is wiping out at least half of this year's return of 500,000 fish.

Odd bit of publicity

I find this rather surprising:   The Daily Telegraph, not exactly known for doing any damage to the Abbott brand, runs a puff piece about the PM and his daughter and Peta Credlin having a weekend in the snow.

Given the past rumour mill, one would have thought the Tele would be keen to point out that Credlin was there with her husband or, if not, say something to clear up that this story was not hinting at anything untoward between Abbott and her.

Because, at the moment, those with suspicious minds may well be interpreting this as an exercise in "softening up" the public for a further revelation.  And if it is purely accidental that the story comes across that way, I presume  Peta has been on the 'phone to the Tele demanding some changes?

Update:  To confirm I'm not reading too much into this, I've looked at the story again and can't get over how much it looks exactly like the sort of celebrity are-they-dating-or-not gossip column entry you might see at the Daily Mail (or a women's magazine.)   I mean, even the heading:

Snow business as Prime Minister Tony Abbott hits the slopes with Peta Credlin and daughter Frances

makes it sound like the point of the weekend is to introduce Frances to Credlin as the new part of the household.

Now, given that no journalists are hinting at coming "Abbott bombshell" on twitter, I assume that this is an accident.  But it's a very weird one, about which I would have though Credlin/Abbott would be very annoyed. 

A detailed look at the cost of energy

FactCheck: does coal-fired power cost $79/kWh and wind power $1502/kWh?

How Anything went

I'm not sure, but I suspect the "modern" revival of Anything Goes must have been in Brisbane before, but I had not seen it until this weekend.

I went into it without reading up on its background, and couldn't even remember if it had been put together by Cole Porter himself, or was a later construct incorporating many of his songs.  I have been reading up on it today, which has had the unfortunate side effect of putting the title song well and truly into "earworm" mode, but it's been very interesting nonetheless.

First, the show was made by Cole Porter (and a team of other creative types of the day) in the early 30's.   In fact, the history of its creation as recounted in Wikipedia is so interestingly haphazard it bears repeating in whole:

The original idea for a musical set on board an ocean liner came from producer Vinton Freedley, who was living on a boat, having left the US to avoid his creditors.^[2] He selected the writing team, P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, and the star, Ethel Merman. The first draft of the show was called Crazy Week, which became Hard to Get, and finally Anything Goes. The original plot involved a bomb threat, a shipwreck, and hijinks on a desert island,^[3] but, just a few weeks before the show was due to open, a fire on board the passenger ship SS Morro Castle caused the deaths of 138 passengers and crew members. According to one version,^[4] Freedley judged that to proceed with a show on a similar subject would be in dubious taste, and he insisted on changes to the script. However, theatre historian Lee Davis maintains that Freedley wanted the script changed because it was "a hopeless mess."^[5] Bolton and Wodehouse were in England at the time and were thus no longer available, so Freedley turned to his director, Howard Lindsay, to write a new book.^[3] Lindsay recruited press agent Russel Crouse as his collaborator, beginning a lifelong writing partnership.^[3] The roles of Billy Crocker and Moonface Martin were written for the well-known comedy team William Gaxton and Victor Moore, and Gaxton's talent for assuming various disguises was featured in the libretto.

 I am not knowledgeable about Wodehouse, but I would hazard to guess there are only one or two jokes in the show which have his "air" about them.

As Wikipedia goes on to note, later versions of the show (it seems to get revived about every 25 years) have added or deleted songs, so it's not as if there is a canonical version.   But they all share the same silly story.

For me, the show comprises some spectacularly pleasing song and dance routines  interspersed by some spectacularly anachronistic, broad vaudevillian comedy of a kind that is not to my taste (by which I mean, rarely rises above "slightly amusing").   Perhaps the problem is partly this cast overacting (I found myself particularly irked by the Captain seemingly doing a Nathan Lane impersonation); but it just might be something inherent in  romantic farce when done in the theatre:  the medium leaves no room for subtlety, and what might be made to work on screen gets overblown on stage.  Still, it was very professionally done when it came to the music, singing and dancing, and I certainly didn't regret seeing it.

And to be clear:  for a curious person, some of the anachronisms* help make the show interesting.

For example, I was only recently posting about how Australian papers were reporting (what we might now call) the nudist moral panic of New York in the early 30's, but I didn't realise at the time that this gets a reference in the lyrics of Anything Goes:

When ev'ry night the set that's smart is in-
Truding in nudist parties in
Studios.
Anything goes.

The Wikipedia entry on the song gives explanation of many other then-current references to scandal and gossip in the lyrics.

I thought the bit about the cruise ships crossing the North Atlantic needing to have a celebrity on board was interesting; in fact, the short song "Public Enemy Number One" had a bit of Marx Brother's style satire to it which I wished more of the comedy shared.

But I was most interested in learning who the (female lead) role of Reno Sweeney was satirising.  Clearly, there must have been some female Christian evangelist type who had notoriety at the time, and it didn't take long to track down that it was Aimee Semple McPherson.  Her rather fascinating career as the 1920's equivalent of the modern tele-evangelist (and about whom I don't recall ever hearing about before now) is the subject of a fascinating, and not overly long, article at the BBC website, and she has many other articles devoted to her controversial life.   Here she is, looking quite the glamour preacher star:

And, oddly enough, the "Foursquare Church" she founded claims to still be active and widespread today.  I see I could even go to a service at the University of Queensland (?) if I wanted to.   Should I be highly embarrassed by having just admitted I knew nothing of her until now?

Of course, having seen the musical led to me reading up a bit on Cole Porter himself.

I think everyone with the barest knowledge of him now knows he was gay (or bisexual) but married to a woman who was he quite devoted to (as long as she didn't interfere in his sexual pursuits.)

It's funny how both autobiographical films were extremely misleading, but in entirely different ways.  The recent-ish Kevin Kline movie De-Lovely (which I haven't seen) gets marks for at least showing him as homosexual; but it sounds as if it twisted virtually everything else about his life to various minor or major degrees.    This article about him in the New Yorker from 2004 is perhaps the single best one I read, but his lengthy Wikipedia entry is good too.

One thing I was surprised about - he didn't have his first hit show until he was 36 - followed by some dud ones, and finally hit his mark in the 1930's when he would have been in his 40's.   He may have been rich and self indulgent as a young man (to put it mildly), but it sure appears he worked very hard on becoming a success in his chosen career.

(Here's one odd fact I stumbled upon by accident - David Cassidy of Partridge Family, um, fame, says in his autobiography that he only learnt after his death that his bisexual father Jack Cassidy had a long affair with Porter.  Shirley Jones apparently confirms it in an autobiography which is very sexually explicit, leading one review to comment:

Jones also shares a story Cassidy told her about seducing composer Cole Porter, a story so lewd and off-putting that I’m not going to repeat it here.

I'm sorry, this post started off all nice, but is ending a tad sordid...)

Anyhow, as you see, seeing this show has been an education. Now, if only I can stop the John Williams orchestration of the version of the song in Temple of Doom running through my brain, I will happy.

*  perhaps this isn't the right use of the word, since the play is still set in the 1930's.  Perhaps just "dated" is more apt, but it doesn't sound as sophisticated...

Welcome news

The first reviews of Mission Impossible 5 are mostly positive; some very much so.  (A couple seem to say it's the best in the series.)

This is cheering news...

El Nino as seen from California

El Nino could bring disaster and drought relief to California - LA Times

Have a look at this good graphic from the article, too:

They're pretty sure this winter will very "interesting" on that side of the world.

It's also quite likely that a fairly cold winter in Australia will turn around quickly to a warmer than usual summer.  Hope we don't then slip into a decade long drought, like we did after the last big one...

Creighton is not to be trusted

Labor’s renewable energy target policy would waste $100bn | The Australian

Another country not to visit

Iran executions see 'unprecedented spike' - Amnesty - BBC News

Arsenic, rice, coffee

The sub heading in this Nature News article raises an interesting question:

Preparing rice in a coffee machine can halve levels of the naturally occurring substance.

The substance being arsenic, and the question being "what type of coffee machine can you cook rice in?"   (I'm pretty sure filling used Nespresso pods with a teaspoon of rice is not going to work, and also take a hell of a long time to serve the dinner party.)

I think I've had a post about this before - rice is particularly prone to sucking up arsenic and getting it into your diet.   And it seems pretty unclear as to how dangerous it could be over a lifetime.

Renewables and energy costs

One thing has become pretty clear - the economics of government renewable energy targets are complicated, and modelling this type of policy's effects can be all over the shop, often seeming suspiciously prone to making assumptions that suit the interests of the modeller.

I would not trust any initial wildly negative reaction to Labor's apparent decision to increase the renewables target dramatically.   I don't even trust the Grattan Institute on this topic.  Wildly optimistic modelling is probably wrong too. 

ISIS and climate change

Is Martin O’Malley Right About ISIS, Climate Change, and the Syrian Civil War? - The Atlantic

A suggestion that drives conservatives into mocking meltdown is not so crazy, but I have a few comments to make:

*  it's funny how we don't always hear about dire, record breaking droughts if they are in parts of the world we don't care about;

* this part of the article makes sense:

Of course, scientists and security consultants get nervous when the media covers studies such as this one. They worry, in particular, about the impression that wars can be reduced to a single cause. (As one told The Guardian in May about the PNAS study, “I’ll  put this in a crude way: No amount of climate change is going to cause  civil violence in the state where I live (Massachusetts), or in Sweden or many other places around the world.”)

* I see that one of the most worrisome nations in the world for instability - Pakistan - has an ongoing drought issue, too.

Popular does not equate with quality

I see today that Jurassic World is now the third biggest grossing movie behind, ugh, Titanic and Avatar.

Odd, hey?   I've never finished Avatar - I lose interest after the shortest time of watching the fake blue aliens do fake flying and such.   (My mind also starts wondering about how 20th century the flying machines look.)
And as for Titanic - terrible script.  Just terrible.

Oddly enough, the success of these films is said to be about young women who became obsessed with their romantic elements.   Which is odd, given Cameron's reputation of jerk-like, uber masculine behaviour in real life.

James Cameron may be extremely rich, and has very peculiar hobbies (involving putting himself in capsules and sinking to the bottom of the deepest ocean), but there is no way his movies are going to be remembered as getting to where they are by virtue of their timeless quality.

(And as for Jurassic World - it's not an artistically important film either, but to me, getting to near the top by being merely fun is more credible than getting there by sucking in women with terrible romances.)

More Bishop meme-ery

I think I've identified the other actors (gee, they were young then):   Joe Hockey (to her immediate left), Henry Ergas (to our far left), and I think that might be Eric Abetz on the far right.

The very definition of Pyrrhic victory

Joe Hockey defamation trial: Treasurer to recover only small fraction of legal costs from Fairfax case - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Justice Richard White found that a poster headline and tweets reading "Treasurer for sale" were defamatory.

All other claims made by Mr Hockey were dismissed.

In the Federal Court today, Justice White ordered that Fairfax pay no more than 15 per cent of Mr Hockey's recoverable costs.

This means his legal bill is expected to be far in excess of the $200,000 he was awarded.

A source close to the case dismissed speculation Fairfax and Mr Hockey each incurred more than $1 million in legal bills.

However, the bill for both parties combined is expected to top $1 million.

If that is the case, Mr Hockey would net $250,000 from Fairfax in damages and costs but face a legal bill of about $500,000.

So, it seems virtually certain that, even if these figures are out a bit, Joe has probably lost a year's salary (at least) by virtue of his defamation "victory".

Thinking big

Mystery haze appears above Ceres' bright spots : Nature News & Comment

The article says Ceres is "at least" 1/4 water.   It's also about 1,000 km across.  If I had time, I'd work out the weight and volume of ice, then.  But I see a report from 2005 says it might be more fresh water than on all of Earth.

That could go a long way towards making the Moon a livable place.   Got to get Ceres there first, though.

But what's the diameter of the Moon?  Only 3,500 km?   I imagined it would be bigger than that.  Well, I wouldn't recommend smashing Ceres into it, then.  Although I guess it could be a way of making some nice, ice rings around the planet.