Drugs and harm

FactCheck: is ice more dangerous and addictive than any other illegal drug?

I made a complaint recently that there is a lot of dubious rhetoric floating around when it comes to drug reform advocates talking about comparative risk for drugs.

This article does provide some useful figures, some of which are surprising:

 Fewer people use ice than alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, ecstasy and pharmaceuticals
for non-medical purposes; 2.1% of Australians are methamphetamine users
(1% use ice), while 80% are alcohol users and 10% are cannabis users.

That's fewer meth users than media attention to the problem might suggest, but as the article goes to note, the "ice" phenomena is about the growth of it as the preferred type of methamphetamine, and its increase in frequency of use:

The same data show that about half of methamphetamine users prefer
ice over other forms. The proportion of users who use ice as their main
form of methamphetamine has doubled since 2010 - from 22% of users to
50% of users. This suggests that regular users are switching from speed
to ice.

In addition, these data show that existing users are using more
frequently, with a larger percentage of users reporting using weekly or
daily, but a lower quantity. As a result of these changes, we have seen
an increase in harms associated with methamphetamine use.

The part that surprised me more, however, is the one about the number of ambulance attendances for cannabis use.  Don't hear that bandied about much in drug reform circles:

 In Victoria, there are an average of 4.7 methaphetamine-related ambulance attendances
a day (3.4 of those for ice) and about 87% of those cases are transported to hospital. This is less than alcohol (34 attendances per day), benzodiazepines (8.3 attendances per day) and heroin (5.1attendances per day). And it is similar to cannabis, with 4.4 attendances a day and around 86% transported to hospital.

Perhaps the article doesn't contain enough accurate information to be sure, but if alcohol is used by 80% of people versus 10% cannabis, it would seem the ambulance attendance figures for alcohol compared to cannabis are about the same.    Very interesting...

As for a valid comparison between the "danger" of different drugs, the article goes squishy at the end:

 While we certainly need to address the harms associated with methamphetamine use, we should keep in mind that our most widely used drug – alcohol - still results in more harms to individuals and the community, and other illicit drugs are also associated with more harms.

Of course alcohol causes more harms "to individual in the community" - it's used by 80 times more people.

And the article does link to a 2007 study by former UK drug policy adviser David Nutt. But as another article shows, the exercise Nutt went through with drug experts to rank drugs in terms of their danger is fraught with difficulties:

Nutt's analysis measures two different issues related to drug use in the UK: the risk to an individual, and the damage to society as a whole.

The individual scores account for a host of variables, including mortality, dependence, drug-related family adversities, environmental damage, and effect on crime.

Even if two drugs score similarly in Nutt's analysis, the underlying variables behind the scores can be completely different. For instance, heroin and crack cocaine are fairly close in the rankings. But heroin scores much higher for mortality risk, while crack poses a much bigger risk for mental impairment.

There's also some divergence within the specific categories of harm. Alcohol and heroin both score high for crime. But alcohol's crime risk is due to its tendency to make people more aggressive (and more prone to committing crime), while heroin's crime risk is based on the massive criminal trafficking network behind it.

The analysis doesn't fully account for a drug's legality or accessibility. If heroin and crack were legal and more accessible, they would very likely rank higher than alcohol. The harm score for marijuana would also likely rise after legalization, but probably not too much since pot use is already widespread....

"You can always create some composite, but composites are fraught with problems," Caulkins said. "I think it's more misleading than useful."

The blunt measures of drug harms present similar issues. Alcohol, tobacco, and prescription painkillers are likely deadlier than other drugs because they are legal, so comparing their aggregate effects to illegal drugs is difficult. Some drugs are very harmful to individuals, but they're so rarely used that they may not be a major public health threat. A few drugs are enormously dangerous in the short-term but not the long-term (heroin), or vice versa (tobacco). And looking at deaths or other harms caused by certain drugs doesn't always account for substances, such as prescription medications, that are often mixed with others, making them more deadly or harmful than they would be alone.

Excellent.  Backs up the skepticism I've had about comparative "drugs harms" claims for years.


 

More "something about the eyes"

Staring into someone’s eyes for 10 minutes induces an altered state of consciousness - ScienceAlert

It was a bit odd this week to read about an experiment indicating that staring into someone's eyes can induce hallucinations, when earlier in the year the big story was how staring into your partner's eyes could be a key part of falling in love, if you do it right.

As I wrote at the time "what is it about the eyes?".   Since then, I have wondered if it is to do with bonding with babies.  Seems as good an explanation as any.

Anyhow, the link at the top notes that the same Italian psychologist who did this recent experiment also wrote back in 2010 about how staring at your own face in the mirror in a dimly lit room is a good way for a lot of people to have some weird, face changing, hallucinations.   This discussed in detail at the time at the Mind Hacks blog, and the very long thread that follows indicates that anyone with a susceptibility to mental illness is well advised not to try it.

Given my brain's dogged reluctance to experience weirdness, even though I find the paranormal and unusual perceptions very interesting topics, I pretty much expect my face would not morph a bit if I tried it.  Perhaps I should give it a go and report back.  (If the blog ends abruptly, someone send around the men in white coats, please.)

Secret thoughts of a Royal Commissioner

For a while now, everytime I see Dyson Heydon's picture, I've been thinking "Gawd, he's got a high forehead."   I associate high foreheads with large brains, and large brains remind me of brains the size of a planet (that is, Marvin the glum, paranoid android), and Dyson does look sort of glum to me all the time too.  Hence, the following:

Even if he's right, he's wrong

It's funny how Sinclair Davidson's posts at Catallaxy about poring over government figures to try to work out if "tobacco clearances" really went up or down after plain packing laws attract so little attention in comments at the site.   Maybe the meta message he's not getting is this - people are over it.  And the true sign of the success of the policy was never going to be instantaneous anyway.

But while I can't judge whether his claim in the post above is accurate or not (it's a complicated argument in which we're invited to never believe the bona fides of the Treasury, but to trust the analysis of a member of a think tank that has done the policy PR of big tobacco for years)  even if he's right, he then goes on to obvious wrong over-reach in his next barely read tobacco post.  Here:

 The fact is we now know the plain packaging policy is based on fabricated evidence.

This links back to his own post, the one I linked to first, in which he disputes that tobacco clearances went down in the first 12 months after the introduction of the policy.

Given that he was talking about trying to judge the effectiveness of the policy by evidence collated after it's introduction, how can he claim that the policy is "based on fabricated evidence"?   (His entire post is also about looking at one 12 month period - the one with confounding factors involved - and ignores the tobacco clearance rates for subsequent periods.  It's a desperate, nitpicky argument that refuses to look at the big picture, just like he did with the "climategate" emails and  statistic significance of the global temperature record.)

The policy was and is based on it's anticipated long term effect on helping continue the downward trend of tobacco consumption.  It certainly was not introduced based on "fabricated evidence" that didn't exist at the time.  And tobacco clearances are not the only evidence, in any case.

As with stagflation, and climate change, he's on a long term losing argument here, and the longer we go the sillier he'll look.   Neat.

The giant cannabis experiment

There's a lengthy, cautious and sensible sounding article over at Nature News about the giant experiment in public health that cannabis legalisation is going to represent.  

There are so many complicating factors when trying to judge what may happen (or even in working out which other countries' present experience make for a good comparison) that prediction seems little more than guesswork.

Still, I lean towards the "it'll all end in tears" side, as you may expect.

Update:   as I have noted before, it's actually pretty astoundingly weird how drug problems differ from country to country.    Russia has virtually always been off its face on alcohol; China has had its opium and now meth and heroin problems on quite a vast scale;  I'm not sure for how long Japan has been drinking heavily, yet they barely touch anything else (apart from tobacco);  apparently some small Pacific Islands are actually way at the top of the table of heavy marijuana users (beating the Caribbean, surprisingly); Sweden, while famously relaxed about sex, is an outstanding drug free country, although their controlled use of alcohol is no doubt partly due to a system (a State monopoly on the sale of any above 3.5%) which would horrify a  libertarian; and who would have thought 20 years ago that ice would become a chronic problem in rural Australia, more so than in the inner cities, it seems?   (As it happens, I was today talking to someone from Western Queensland whose family had been devastated by it.) 

My point being - given the curious lack of any clear pattern about which country develops overuse problems with which drugs, it wouldn't be surprising if full legalisation of cannabis in one nation did not lead to any great problem, while in another place it sent the country into a sort of stoner lead economic decline. 

It may sound like I'm just giving myself an "out" if, in 10 years time, everyone declares cannabis legalisation in the States a great success.   But honestly, I think I am making a valid point.

So, Trump apologists now, hey?

Wow.  The American Right is flaying around not knowing what to do until Trump crashes and burns.  "What if he doesn't?" is their concern.

Now, true, some are not giving up the attack, particularly after his announced immigration policy which had huge slabs of the patently absurd:

Mr. Trump wants to remove all illegal aliens from the United States. This is, of course, impossible and, even if it were possible, an outrageous waste of tens or hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. When asked by Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press if he would split up families in which one or more of the parents is an illegal alien but their children are U.S. citizens, Trump said no, clarifying in one of the most reprehensible statements I have ever heard from an American candidate for public office, “We’re going to keep the families together, but they have to go.” Yes, Trump would try to deport American citizens. Did I mention how ignorant of history Donald Trump sounds to this Jewish columnist?

What amazes me most is not that Trump would say such a thing, proposing something obviously both immoral and illegal, but that so many Americans still support a man bursting with hatred and idiocy. Donald Trump is to politicians what P.T. Barnum was to entertainers, knowing that you can reach great success by pandering to the many suckers out there. (Actually, the attribution of “there’s a sucker born every minute” to Mr. Barnum is probably both erroneous and unfair, but it remains a powerful piece of American lore.)

By contrast, look at the heading for this editorial at National Review:

Trumps' Immigration Plan is a Good Start - for all GOP Candidates. 

Hahahaha.

Apparently:

It is sensible in its basic outline and better in many respects than the ideas presented by his rivals.

Sure, the column goes on to note that key parts of the policy are "obviously illegal" and never going to withstand the Supreme Court, even if they could be enacted, but you know, it's like they want to write "he has his heart in the right place."  

I find it impossible to read that piece without getting a distinct whiff of some 1920's apologists for Hitler.  "Sure, he seems a bit of a hot head, but who can doubt his basic good intentions for his country?"

Glass apartments

Something you would have noticed if you watched the ABC report on Tianjin linked in my last post (not seen it? - well go back and do so now) was how many apartment tower blocks in the area lost every window in the blast.

I have been noticing in my wanderings around Brisbane lately that quite a lot of the new high rise apartments are being build with full length glass walls to the street, at least in some of the rooms.   Blinds provide privacy as needed.

I don't care for this trend.  Apart from glass being problematic from a heat regulation point of view (well, sometimes it works well if you want to warm a room in winter, but let's face it, for most of the year in Brisbane you are trying to keep a room cool), it just makes for what looks to me like a structurally insubstantial building.    I like bricks and concrete to provide shelter to me from the outside elements, and don't other people feel this way too?   (As well as not particularly wanting to feel like their block look like one of those kid's ant farms from the outside?) 

And, of course, you never really know when your building might be subject to a destructive air blast of human or celestial cause, and having your entire bedroom or living room wall blown over you is not an optimal outcome.

No, give me apartments with some external solid concrete walls, any day.

The ABC earning its keep, again

After Tianjin explosions, angry families return to toxic wasteland - 19/08/2015

The single best report I've seen on the Tianjin disaster was on the ABC last night by its resident foreign correspondent Stephen McDonell.

Excellent work which you just don't see from commercial networks.   

Dirty work

I would assume that someone, somewhere, is presently doing a word search through this enormous file for Australian parliamentarians' names. 

As discussed on Saudi social media...

Well, they don't have cinemas or pubs, and while spectacularly stupid things happening on their roads provides some entertainment, mostly it seems the Saudis amuse themselves by discussing the big topics on social media:

Manama: Saudi social media users have poured scorn on a fatwa that allowed young men married to ugly women to take drugs before intimate relations in order to have the delusion they are as beautiful as houris.
The fatwa said that hallucinogenic drugs can be taken for 30 minutes during sexual intercourse and only by men who are less than 40 years old. The drugs can be used only in the evening, it added.
“This is the ideal men who are unfortunately married with ugly-looking wives so that they can see them, under the effects of the drugs, as beautiful women, like Houris or lovely nymphs,” the fatwa said.
Houri is a Quranic term referring to “to be beautifully dark-eyed” women in heaven.
The origin of the religious edict is not known, although some users attributed it to a Moroccan figure, but it went viral on the Internet and sparked a huge debate in which most people expressed shock and sarcasm

Sounds nutty, but you should read more

Apollo Astronaut Says UFOs Came to Prevent Nuclear War

Edgar Mitchell, who has long believed in ESP and the paranormal, is turning up sounding like a nutter for talking about UFOs and nuclear war.

But - before you dismiss him entirely, you should read the surprisingly good Wikipedia entry explaining the very real controversy and concern in the late 1940's that mysterious green fireballs were indeed spying on the American nuclear program.

While I had read a short account of this before in some UFO book or other, the Wiki explanation makes it pretty clear that many people had seen them, including the scientists and technicians in New Mexico, and many genuinely thought they were so odd that were not a mere natural phenomena.

It does appear to be one of the greatest UFO style mysteries still around. 

Update:   Ooh.  This report, which I don't think I read at the time, contains a suggestion from a physicist in Brisbane that sometimes meteors might cause a ball lightning effect close to the ground.   I have a feeling that there was at least one case of what looked like ground following ball lighting in New Mexico at the time of the green fireball panic, so that idea does sound half plausible:

"A transient electrical link between the ionosphere and ground, created by meteors or some other means, could help to solve the mystery of many UFO sightings," Hughes told LiveScience. "Since such balls would be very insubstantial they would be able to move and change direction very fast as has often been observed."

Hughes detailed his findings online Nov. 30 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

El Nino and La Nina from an Australian viewpoint discussed

2015-16 is shaping up to deliver a rollercoaster from strong El Nino to La Nina

A good explanation here of how these things usually pan out.  (Short answer - not good for Australia.)

Abbott, Heydon and the self inflicted wounds

I dunno, maybe I'm just reflecting my own judgement about this appalling government, but with all the TURC controversy going on, I strongly suspect that the public view of the Royal Commission has turned in a serious political negative for Abbott.   I think the Labor movement has succeeded in its PR to cast it as a political witch hunt, and that voters are thinking it is a sign of a government that is politically self indulgent and has no idea about getting on with more important priorities.   That the Abbott commissioned enquiries could backfire as political revenge over-reach was always on the cards, and I think it has indeed worked out that way.

And why does Tony Abbott even answer questions about bias of the Commissioner by praising him?  By doing so, he makes it sound all the more to the public that he has (or wants) the Commissioner in his pocket.  Surely the wise politician (yes, I know, we're talking Abbott) would take more a line of expressing confidence in the Commissioner making appropriate decisions regarding the conduct of the Commission, and leave it at that.  But Abbott goes further - much further - and hence worsens the self inflicted wound.

Much the same can be said about the Abbott approach to same sex marriage.   It seems that people really like the idea of a plebiscite (about 80% in favour in this morning's Newspoll of Canning), and that doesn't surprise me.  But Abbott wanting to not hold it until 2 or 3 years time? - as with the Royal Commission, this will all too obviously come across as mere playing politics.   Isn't that clear to Abbott's political advisers, especially when an election in 12 month's time is the obvious opportunity when the plebiscite could be conducted, at minimal cost?

PS:  having viewed a bit of Heydon's conduct of the commission yesterday, I think his skill and talent for this type of work may well have been (actually no, has been)  over-estimated.   Telling the ACTU barrister that he had an hour to decide whether to apply to disqualify himself?   It was a tactic that could only make Heydon look more biased.   He backed down, but it was a bad look that could only hurt himself.  Again, wasn't that kind of obvious?    He may have been great in other forms of jurisprudence, but I see no clear sign that he has a talent for this line of legal work.

Judith does a Steyn

I assume that Judith Sloan assumes she will never have another government or government authority job in which she professionally has to interact with any economist in the Productivity Commission, or indeed any economist who has ever so much as hinted at believing that climate change is real, and hence she can spend her early semi retirement in slagging off others to her heart's content, especially at Catallaxy.

In her latest outburst of note, I see she has followed the Mark Steyn route, using the "f" word:

As the Cats realise, the long march through the institutions continues.  But when it comes to the Climate Change Authority, no marching was required – it was set up with all the required poseurs and frauds in place from the getgo....

But how could chair of the CCA, Bernie Fraser, think it appropriate to give a running commentary on government policy, opposition policy and the wild estimates the CCA puts on these policies?

This is serious weird – nay outrageous – stuff and Bernie knows it (given his history in the bureaucracy).  But I guess he is on a mission, in part to help his mates in the industry super funds which are still overweight renewables.

The CCA comprises Bernie Fraser, Ian Chubb, David Karoly, Clive Hamilton and John Quiggin.

I wonder if Judith could expand upon which of them are the "frauds".   I note the use of the plural.

I also wonder why economists and academics on the receiving end of her condescending, and now (in my view) clearly defamatory vitriol never call her out for it. 

And not for the first time, I wonder why Sinclair Davidson never seems very worried about his potential legal liability for what the blog under his control says?   Maybe he can claim ignorance of some thread content, but he certainly can't do that very credibility for what one of his "star" contributors writes.

The Economist goes multiverse

From an article in The Economist.

Carbon capture was always a pipe dream

Over at ATTP, someone in a recent thread posted this 2011 video of Vaclav Smil explaining why carbon capture just never looked credible.  It's great, and it's a sign of the dissembling that has gone on in climate change policy (even amongst the well intentioned) that it was given credence for so long:

 

Varieties of weirdness viewers

Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog is a continual delight, and I was amused by this paragraph in a recent post which was, initially, about the number of people who have hallucinations:

Beach has had some experience with collecting fairy reports: that is children, men and women who believe they have seen an entity that they would describe as a fairy, here is a little (ahem) ‘wisdom’. Those who see fairies split neatly into two groups: there are the shamanic mystics and the Joe Publics. Mystics are individuals who have recurrent visionary events throughout their lives: the lady who is presently cleaning the Beach family kitchen has spotted fairies in the garden; she has encountered ghosts and she has ‘feelings’ and ‘instincts’ that she chooses to act upon. In short, she would have been burnt alive in the sixteenth century, whereas today she is pleasantly eccentric company and a bad influence on the kids. Joe Publics, on the other hand, are those who have never had these experiences prior to a one off bizarre event. Some will absorb it, some will ignore it, some will eventually discount it. Back in the sixteenth century they were doing the burning, and if they did see aliens with tin-foil helmets descending from the sky they shut the hell up or blamed their neighbours.

The second category is more interesting than the first, because their experiences demand more of an explanation.

More photos noted

The Atlantic has an extraordinarily good set of weekly photos up at this link.  (Hope it's a permanent one.)

It includes this one, from China, the viewing of which alone makes me nervous:

On squeezing a teat

At this year's RNA Show, I forced the initially reluctant family into watching the very kid-centric milking and dairy display, but it was worth it all because we (wife, daughter and me - my son was too teenage to try) got to squeeze a cow's teat.  Never done that before.

I asked the high school student (from Nambour State High, where they keep cows) who was supervising my handiwork closely "how many litres can you get from one milking", and after some consultation, I was given the answer - 25 litres (!).

I said that seemed an awful lot, but I was assured that a cow's milk producing parts extend way, way up inside her.  I was given the impression that the tank, so to speak, extends well beyond the udder.

But, while not wanting to question the standards of Kevin Rudd's alma mater, I think the student was a bit misleading.

As far as I can tell, from this detailed slide show from the University of Wisconsin, where they seem to know a thing or two about cows, there are bits that help suspend the weighty udder that extend way up the internals of a cow:

 but the parts that produce the milk are pretty much in the udder area:

In any event, on the question of how much milk you can get from a cow in a single milking, given that there are normally two milkings a day, and there are sites saying that an average cow can produce 35 to 50 litres a day, 25 litres at once seems certainly a possibility, if on the high side of the range.    It's remarkable to think that, at a generous household consumption of 2 litres a day, one cow could make enough to keep 25 families happy.

While looking into this, I discovered that the Israelis are actually world leaders in coaxing high yields out of cows:

The average cow in Israel produces 12,000 litres of milk a year, double what Australian dairy cows produce, at 5,500 litres a year (Dairy Australia 2014).

It could provide useful lessons for Australia, with our similar climate.

"The Israeli dairy industry is cutting edge technology for dairying," said Dr Ephraim Maltz, of the Institute of Agricultural Engineering at Israel's Volcani Centre.

Israel has pushed the boundaries of what dairy cows can do.

Now, 12,000 litres a year is about 33 litres a day, if you count every single day of the year.  But as I think they are "rested" before being pregnant again, this isn't inconsistent with a higher yield when they are milked.   One animal's rights site says cows on average are milked 10 months of the year, so in Israel, that would indicate an average of 40 lives per milking day.   Why is the Australian figure in the ABC report above much lower than that?  Do they have more rest periods per year?

As just mentioned, the amount of milk cows are now enticed to produce is the subject of criticism from animal's rights groups.  It is a pity that unwanted calves are killed at a very young age - something I have noted here before.  In fact, it seems we don't even eat the meat ourselves:

Most will be destined for the slaughterhouse within days of birth. Bobby calf meat is considered to be of low value and is predominantly exported as ground beef and offal to Japan and the US.

Hence there is an ethical reason for the search to make a genetically engineered, yeast based, milk equivalent. Good thing I handled a teat while there was still time... 

Supersymmetry and the scale problem

To Avoid the Multiverse, Physicists Propose a Symmetry of Scales | Quanta Magazine

For some reason, this year old article turned up on my Zite feed, but I've decided it's blogworthy.

It's not a super easy article about supersymmetry (ha!), but it deals with an alternative idea that's being explored.

I see that multiverse cynic Peter Woit was quoting Joe Lykken (one of the physicists mentioned in the article) back in 2013 at Not Even Wrong with approval, so perhaps I should pay more attention...

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....