Another go at the economics of climate change

Expect to hear a lot about this study just out from some Berkeley researchers.  The headline from the Washington Post:

Sweeping study claims that rising temperatures will sharply cut economic productivity 

The claim is simple, but interesting:

Culling together economic and temperature data for over 100 wealthy
and poorer countries alike over 50 years, the researchers assert that
the optimum temperature for human productivity is seems to be around 13
degrees Celsius or roughly 55 degrees Fahrenheit, as an annual average
for a particular place. Once things get a lot hotter than that, the
researchers add, economic productivity declines “strongly.”

“The relationship is globally generalizable, unchanged since 1960, and
apparent for agricultural and non-agricultural activity in both rich and
poor countries,” write the authors, led by Marshall Burke of Stanford’s
Department of Earth System Science, who call their study “the first
evidence that economic activity in all regions is coupled to the global
climate.” Burke published the study with Solomon Hsiang and Edward
Miguel, economists at the University of California, Berkeley.

If the findings are correct, they add, that means that unmitigated
global warming could lead to a more than 20 percent decline in incomes
around the world, compared with a world that does not feature climate
change. And this would also mean growing global inequality, since poorer
countries will be hit by worse temperature increases — simply because
“hot, poor countries will probably suffer the largest reduction in
growth.” Indeed, some already wealthier countries with cold weather,
like Canada or Sweden, will benefit greatly based on the study, moving
closer to the climatic optimum.

 But things start to sound a bit more shaky here:

Assuming this relationship between temperature and productivity is
correct, that naturally leads to deep questions about its cause. The
researchers locate them in two chief places: agriculture and people. In
relation to rising temperature, Burke says, “We see that agricultural
productivity declines, labor productivity declines, kids do worse on
tests, and we see more violence.”

Yes, not sure I'd be entirely confident of the heat and violence connection, but if we go over to the university press release on this study, there is more reason to question the accuracy of the new study:

Unmitigated climate change is likely to reduce the income of an average
person on Earth by roughly 23 percent in 2100, according to estimates
contained in research published today in the journal Nature that is co-authored by two University of California, Berkeley professors.

 So far, so disastrous.  But look:

The Nature paper focuses on effects of climate change via
temperature, and does not include impacts via other consequences of
climate change such as hurricanes or sea level rise. Detailed results
and figures for each country are available for download online.

Or, I might add, rainfall pattern changes, or ocean acidification and potential large scale changes to the food cycle there.  How the heck can you be confident of projections if you cannot be certain how many poor countries may be destined to longer droughts and/or more frequent ones, followed by larger floods?    And what about poor coastal countries where local fish is an important food source?

So, I think there are grounds to argue that this study is another example that accurate predictions of the economic consequences of global warming decades into the future are pretty much guesswork. But at least it notes that the uncertainty is no grounds for complacency, as techo-optimist libertarian types seem to think.

And it does support one thing that I reckon common sense suggests:     the poor nations will suffer disproportionately from climate change; and even if some pro-development-at-any-climate-cost proponents had their way and we had every poor country building coal burning power plants as fast as they could, they are not going to develop their way economically fast enough to outpace the damage from climate change.   They're not going to be able to aircondition their agricultural sectors, after all; nor are they all going to be manufacturing centres, or financial hubs making a living from mobile money.

Back to how bad some of the study's projections are (from the University link above):

They find climate change is likely to have global costs generally
2.5-100 times larger than predicted by current leading models. The
team’s best estimate is that climate change will reduce global economic
production by 23 percent in 2100.

“Historically, people have considered a 20 percent decline in global
Gross Domestic Product to be a black swan: a low-probability
catastrophe,” Hsiang warned. “We’re finding it’s more like the
middle-of-the-road forecast.”

Half of the simulation projections suggest larger losses. The hottest
countries in the world are hardest hit: in less optimistic scenarios,
the authors estimate that 43 percent of countries are likely to be
poorer in 2100 than today due to climate change, despite incorporating
standard projections of technological progress and other advances.

 Richard Tol is already bleating about this, I see.  Given that I consider him a discredited jerk, I'm not surprised, but it will still be interesting to read more coverage about this.

Update:  here's the abstract from Nature in full:

Growing evidence demonstrates that climatic conditions can have a profound impact on the functioning of modern human societies^{1, 2}, but effects on economic activity appear inconsistent. Fundamental productive elements of modern economies, such as workers and crops, exhibit highly non-linear responses to local temperature even in wealthy countries^{3, 4}. In contrast, aggregate macroeconomic productivity of entire wealthy countries is reported not to respond to temperature⁵, while poor countries respond only linearly^{5, 6}. Resolving this conflict between micro and macro observations is critical to understanding the role of wealth in coupled human–natural systems^{7, 8} and to anticipating the global impact of climate change^{9, 10}. Here we unify these seemingly contradictory results by accounting for non-linearity at the macro scale. We show that overall economic productivity is non-linear in temperature for all countries, with productivity peaking at an annual average temperature of 13 °C and declining strongly at higher temperatures. The relationship is globally generalizable, unchanged since 1960, and apparent for agricultural and non-agricultural activity in both rich and poor countries. These results provide the first evidence that economic activity in all regions is coupled to the global climate and establish a new empirical foundation for modelling economic loss in response to climate change^{11, 12}, with important implications. If future adaptation mimics past adaptation, unmitigated warming is expected to reshape the global economy by reducing average global incomes roughly 23% by 2100 and widening global income inequality, relative to scenarios without climate change. In contrast to prior estimates, expected global losses are approximately linear in global mean temperature, with median losses many times larger than leading models indicate.

Paranoia, probably

The average gun owner now owns 8 guns — double what it used to be - The Washington Post

The Right wing paranoia that's been on the rise in the US would have to play a significant part in this, surely.

Well, he does appear a lot on Fox News, so what do you expect?

Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu stirs trouble by linking Muslim leader to Holocaust

I can't even see any Right wing blog cite defending Netanyahu's history claims.  Not yet, anyway.

Something Back to the Future missed

Westmead Hospital to offer life-saving, stomach-churning, poo transplant cure

Yes, poo transplants are going mainstream.

It's pretty amazing, really, how no one seemed to see the importance of our gut microbiota until recently.

And for all you fans of a what's basically a new field of medicine, I see there is a website up with the great name Gut Microbiota Worldwatch, run by a bunch of European gastroenterologists, it seems.  (Which, come to think of it, is probably appropriate, since I think Germans have been a bit ahead of the field in having a keen interest in observing poop for health reasons.  Whether they truly have a national interest in all things poop related seems up for debate, however.)

Are you in a superposition?

Hey, I didn't know that we had a "Department of Quantum Science" in ANU.  But I do now, after reading this paper (.pdf link) from last month which deals with the following:

In this paper we address the question of whether it is possible to obtain evidence that we are in a superposition of different ‘worlds’, as suggested by the relative state interpretation of quantum mechanics. We find that it is impossible to find definitive proof, and that if one wishes to retain reliable memories of which ‘world’ one was in, no evidence at all can be found. We then show that even for completely linear quantum state evolution, there is a test that can be done to tell if you can be placed in a superposition.

Ok, so I don't quite understand their test, even if it sounds pretty simple.  I'm surprised Googling the author's names doesn't bring up any media press release from the university.

There is a report about the paper here, which also has a link to a rather odd website where people swear they are remembering alternative histories, rather than just having bad, malleable memories.

All rather odd.

Oh, diddums

Funny how the IPA thinks that governments shouldn't be funding research, but are convinced it's a matter of "censorship" when it backs out of funding research on which research should be funded.  (Well, that's how I interpret some of Lomborg's "consensus" wonkery.)

Anyway, it's obviously all because they see a useful delaying tactic ally in the 'Borg, as far as climate change is concerned. 

Krugman considers Denmark

Something Not Rotten in Denmark - The New York Times

As Krugman writes:

Describe these policies to any American conservative, and he would predict ruin.  Surely those generous benefits must destroy the incentive to work, while those high taxes drive job creators into hiding or exile.

Strange to say, however, Denmark doesn’t look like a set from “Mad Max.” On the
contrary, it’s a prosperous nation that does quite well on job creation. In fact, adults in their prime working years are substantially more likely to be employed in Denmark than they are in America. Labor productivity in Denmark is roughly the same as it is here, although G.D.P. per capita is lower, mainly because the Danes take a lot more vacation.

Nor are the Danes melancholy: Denmark ranks at or near the top on international comparisons of “life satisfaction.”

It’s hard to imagine a better refutation of anti-tax, anti-government economic doctrine, which insists that a system like Denmark’s would be completely unworkable.

It does make you wonder how some economists and politicians become obsessed with the idea that "anti-tax, anti-government" is the only  possible way to run a successful modern nation.

Early life, mistreated coral, the unhealthy rich, and the dubious figures of climate change damage

Phys.org is full of interesting stories today.  Here's one, saying that the start of life on Earth can (perhaps) be pushed back to 4.1 billion years ago. 

Given that the planet only formed at about the 4.5 billion mark, that's pretty quick.

And here's another, this one about how humans, with their use of sunscreens, may be loving some coral reefs to death. 

Then what about this - rich, urban medieval folk were arguably less healthy than those slaving away on farms, all because of lead glazing (and lead roof tiles.)

Finally:  the dubious methods of "normalising" economic damage from climate change (that is, the long running shtick of Roger Pielke Jnr) is probably a crock.   I always suspected that, and I think the lesson is: don't let economists get too involved in climate change policy - they can be a menace to good policy.

Lots of universe left to run

Most earth-like worlds have yet to be born, according to theoretical study

Earth came early to the party in the evolving universe. According to a new theoretical study,
when our solar system was born 4.6 billion years ago only eight percent of the potentially habitable planets that will ever form in the universe existed. And, the party won't be over when the sun burns out in another 6 billion years. The bulk of those planets—92 percent—have yet to be born.

The same story claims this:

The data show that the universe was making stars at a fast rate 10 billion years ago, but
the fraction of the universe's hydrogen and helium gas that was involved was very low. Today, star birth is happening at a much slower rate than long ago, but there is so much leftover gas available that the universe will keep cooking up stars and planets for a very long time to come.

"There is enough remaining material [after the big bang] to produce even more planets in the future, in the Milky Way and beyond," added co-investigator Molly Peeples of STScI.

Kepler's planet survey indicates that Earth-sized planets in a star's habitable zone, the perfect distance that could allow water to pool on the surface, are ubiquitous in our galaxy. Based on the survey, scientists predict that there should be 1 billion Earth-sized worlds in the Milky Way galaxy at present, a good portion of them presumed to be rocky. That estimate skyrockets when you include the other 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.

This leaves plenty of opportunity for untold more Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone to arise in the future. The last star isn't expected to burn out until 100 trillion years from now. That's plenty of time for literally anything to happen on the planet landscape.

Yes, Happy Back to the Future Day

The Back to the Future trilogy serves the surprising function of providing something upon which Sinclair Davidson, long term stuck-in-the-1950's-and-he-wasn't-even-born-then uber Catholic and Catallaxy fixture CL, and I, can agree.

I have a Coen brothers style fantasy vision of meeting them in a bar, and all nodding in agreement about the worthiness of the Future trilogy (yes, even the second one); then simultaneously saying  "But, jeez you're an idiot on every other topic" and a fistfight breaks out.   Jason Soon then makes an appearance, utilizing his boxing skills to stage an intervention.

Philippa Martyr can make a late entry, doing her Julia Flyte redeemed impersonation, tending to our wounds in her volunteer nurses uniform...

He's already on the backbench, but now it's time to....

Harsh, but it's the best "m" word I could come up with in the circumstances...

Not the sort of surprise I'm keen on...

From the report Asteroid making surprise flyby at an 'unusually high' velocity (my bold):

 A newly discovered asteroid (not pictured) will make Halloween more thrilling by passing within 1.3 lunar distances (310,000 miles) of Earth. The object, which measures between 300 and 600 meters (1,000 and 2,000 feet) across, was discovered last week by the asteroid-hunting Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii, according to NASA. It'll streak by on October 31st at an "unusually" high encounter velocity of 35 km/s, or around 78,000 mph. By contrast, the Russian meteorite caught by vehicle cameras in 2013 was 17 meters (55 feet) across and traveled at a top speed of 19 km/s, while the one that flattened a Russian forest in 1908 measured 40 meters (130 feet).

There's no danger of a collision, but the asteroid would pack an enormous punch if it did hit the Earth, given its size and especially its velocity. It's also a bit alarming that astronomers only found it nine days ago, considering how close it already is to our planet.

Well, this would suggest that it's still quite on the cards that one day, NASA will announce that a substantial disaster will be taking place somewhere on the Earth with (perhaps) all of 10 days notice for people to head for the hills, or dig a bunker, or whatever.

All a bit of a worry....

Dealing with the big issues

When is it socially acceptable to wear black tights? | Fashion | The Guardian

One of the best things about The Guardian is that when you see an article that is surely just a bit of space filling, inconsequential fluff,  the comments thread following is full of amusingly rabid attack on just those grounds. 

No wonder I'm confused

Backreaction: Book review: Spooky Action at a Distance by George Musser

Very careful readers of this most excellent blog (I'm craving appreciation again) may recall that I recently noted in a comment that I wasn't really sure what nonlocality in physics meant.

Seems I'm not alone, as my favourite blogging physicist Sabine H writes in this post reviewing a book on the topic:

 Locality and non-locality are topics as confusing as controversial, both
in- and outside the community, and George’s book is a great
introduction to an intriguing development in contemporary physics. It’s a
courageous book. I can only imagine how much headache writing it must
have been, after I once organized a workshop on nonlocality and realized
that no two people could agree on what they even meant with the word.

My confusion is therefore excused...

Yay! Some dissing of 1984

Goodbye to all that: Orwell's 1984 is a boot stamping on a human face no more

I've written before how much I disliked 1984 as a high school student, and yet felt compelled to write about it somewhat positively because of its near universal critical acclaim.

I think this academic's take on its mere transitory relevance as parable is just about right.  Why wasn't he around when I needed him in 1975?   

The Martian, spoiled

Went to see The Martian this evening.

Now, let me be clear: I deliberately did not want to be affected by the articles on the web with titles like "Just how accurate is the science in The Martian?"; so I didn't look at them, til now.  Nor did I read any reviews:  I just saw from Rottentomatoes and Metacritic that it had been generally well received.   So I didn't really go into it with any particular expectation as to why it was meant to be good.

And my verdict:  a mediocre, surprisingly scientifically inaccurate, film.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER ALERT

Look, I had my doubts about the strength of the dust storm at the start of the film, being aware that the atmosphere is incredibly thin, even though there are big, planet covering, dust storms from time to time.

But, yeah, turns out that this, a key element of the plot, is ludicrously overblown.  (Pun alert too.)  Here's long time Mar mission enthusiast Robert Zubrin's comment:

This is the only thing I noticed that was completely impossible, as opposed to improbable or sub-optimal. The Martian atmosphere is only 1% as thick as Earth’s, so a Mars wind of 100mph, which is possible although quite rare on the surface, would only have the same dynamic force as a 10mph wind on Earth. You could fly a kite in it, but it wouldn’t knock you down.

OK, but this was just a hunch on my part while watching the film.

No, the bit where the movie lost me on the science cred front was the ridiculous size of the main Ares Hermes spacecraft; and the spacious, apartment like setting of the living quarters in the rotating ring.

Come on Hollywood:  movies that are trying to be realistic about planetary missions need to be so  about the scale of spaceships likely within the next 50 years.  It perhaps wasn't as bad as the enormous spaceship out to re-light the sun (or whatever it was doing) in that horrible Sunshine movie, but that one wasn't really going for accuracy in the way The Martian was.

So why make living quarters with enormous, Star Wars battlecruiser-like windows?  It made the Jupiter bound spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey look hokey in comparison.  The movie never recovered for me after that.

And as for silly physics:  how have science types watching not have been upset by the "use the air in my spacesuit as a rocket" tactic at what is meant to be the dramatic climax of the film?   This was worse than anything in Gravity, if you ask me: far worse.

OK - so you get the message that the film lost me on the scientific plausibility front.

But it didn't grab me on the psychological front, either.  I don't really care for Matt Damon as an actor, but I would have thought the story should spend some time on the psychological strain of isolation on his character.  Instead, he's just relentlessly upbeat, pretty much.

In fact, people left in isolation often have hallucinations of someone (or something) unseen being present with them.  You would have thought there should be some incident of creepiness in the film, even if only in a scary dream sequence in which his fears are displayed.  But nope.   The film is too damn cheery to be effective.

I can understand why NASA scientists may like the film, for showing the organisation as comprising caring, "can-do" type people.  And the habitat on Mars setting looked pretty realistic.

But overall, it's not a great or memorable film. 

Update:  I've been reading up on Reddit some very nerd-centric comments about the film.  (They are mostly ecstatic about it, incidentally.)  But here are a few updates to my commentary in light of that:

* yes, I should have mentioned last night the use of an explosion on the Hermes to get its speed close enough to that of the just-launched Matt Damon.  Improbable, especially when the bomb is rigged up in (I think) about 30 minutes, but I'm not sure if it was in the book or not.  Certainly, the "Ironman" sequence is not:  it's apparently suggested, and rejected.  How un-wise of the film to make it happen.

* the author of the book freely admits that the opening, and critical, sandstorm is artistic licence, in that it could not topple the lander or hurl rocks and metal around.   Why use it, then?  It would be more impressive to come with a reason to abandon a crew member that was actually possible.

* a more minor but related point:  after Damon rigs up a plastic cover for the blown airlock, there's one scene where he is inside at night with the sounds of another fierce, pebble hurling, sandstorm outside.  Would the plastic really be capable of withstanding that?

* Yes, the explanation of the gravity assist slingshot to get the Hermes back to Mars was really poorly handled in the film.  Instead of treating the head of NASA as a dumbo who would never have heard of a gravity slingshot before, why not have it shown by him explaining to the a dumbo media person how it would work?

*  a very detailed and informed look at the trajectories used in the book and film are at this link.  Apparently, the book is based on a 2035 mission, making the size and sophistication of the Hermes spacecraft in the movie even more ridiculous!   And as someone in comments following it says:

However, forgiving all of those previous errors, the ones that I find utterly unforgivable are in the climax (spoilers!) where Watley is shot into space to rendezvous with the Hermes (slowed down by a jury-rigged explosion!???, oh please!!!) in a stripped down capsule with no windows and ultimately no steerable spacecraft, then using a self-made hole in the glove of his spacesuit to propel himself towards the awaiting MMU of his rescuers! Rendezvous is very, very, very, very, very, very difficult! It's not just hard, it's really, really, really hard. The relative velocities, the trajectories, the math! You don't just point two guns at each other and pull the triggers! Hollywood has a penchant for such shenanigans (Gravity, Mission to Mars, now The Martian).

Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the movie, but the rescue process in the 2nd half nearly ruined it. Just once, I'd like to see a scifi movie where they get the science right all the way through!

 Quite right, although I didn't exactly enjoy the movie the way that person did...

Update 2:   I can't stop thinking of things in the movie that didn't quite make sense.   Here's another:   Watney is a botanist?   Why take a botanist to Mars?   There's no sign of a plant anywhere on the spaceship or habitat.  Apparently, in the book he is an engineer (although perhaps also a botanist?)  In any event, noting him as having engineering qualifications of some sort in the movie would have helped understand his abilities at constructing stuff.

Two articles for weekend worrying

The AGU website, which I should probably visit more often, has two climate change articles of concern:

1.  Diatoms are not doing well:

The world’s oceans have seen significant declines in certain types of microscopic plant-life at the base of the marine food chain, according to a new study. The research, accepted for publication in Global Biogeochemical Cycles, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, is the first to look at global, long-term phytoplankton community trends based on a model driven by NASA satellite data.

Diatoms, the largest type of phytoplankton algae, have declined more than 1 percent per year from 1998 to 2012 globally, with significant losses occurring in the North Pacific, North Indian and Equatorial Indian oceans. The reduction in population may reduce the amount of carbon dioxide drawn out of the atmosphere and transferred to the deep ocean for long-term storage.

2. Methane blooms off the coast of Washington and Oregon seem to be related to warming waters:

Warming ocean temperatures a third of a mile below the surface, in a dark ocean in areas with little marine life, might attract scant attention. But this is precisely the depth where frozen pockets of methane ‘ice’ transition from a dormant solid to a powerful greenhouse gas.  New research suggests that subsurface warming could be causing more methane gas to bubble up off the Washington and Oregon coast.

The study shows that of 168 bubble plumes observed within the past decade, a disproportionate number were seen at a critical depth for the stability of methane hydrates. The study has been accepted for publication in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, a journal of the American Geophysical Union

Most of this methane is not making the surface, but it's increasing the acidity of the oceans anyway:

 If methane bubbles rise all the way to the surface, they enter the atmosphere and act as a powerful greenhouse gas. But most of the deep-sea methane seems to get consumed during the journey up. Marine microbes convert the methane into carbon dioxide, producing lower-oxygen, more-acidic conditions in the deeper offshore water, which eventually wells up along the coast and surges into coastal waterways.

Not very encouraging...

Climate whiplash

Why Winning the War on Climate Change Will Require a Technocratic Revolution - The Atlantic

If you ask me, there is a bit of a problem going on with "climate whiplash" at the moment.

On the one hand, you have a series of relatively optimist papers and reports about the rapid drop in price of renewables and the great potential for affordable battery storage to make it even more attractive; on the other hand you have stories like this one about how really, really hard the problem of a rapid reduction in global CO2 is.

Apart from the story linked above, here's Kevin Anderson being a pessimist, too:

The world’s top climate scientists are deliberately downplaying the challenge of avoiding warming above the 2C danger zone because of pressure from funders and politicians.

That’s the view of Kevin Anderson, professor of climate change at University of Manchester, in an article published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Wednesday.

He argues the rapid level of greenhouse gas cuts required to ensure the world does not blow what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) termed a “carbon budget” would mean a radical shift in consumption and energy use in rich countries.

“Delivering on such a 2C emission pathway cannot be reconciled with the repeated and
high-level claims that in transitioning to a low-carbon energy system global economic growth would not be strongly affected,” he says.

But instead of warning governments that they need to implement an energy revolution, Anderson argues many influential scientists continue to suggest warming above 2C can be avoided through a steady transition away from fossil fuels.

“We simply are not prepared to accept the revolutionary implications of our own findings, and even when we do we are reluctant to voice such thoughts openly,” he writes.

While Anderson may have a point to a degree, the real problem with too much pessimism is that it encourages the fools who have never wanted to do anything anyway, and may increase the political power they already richly do not deserve.

And I also suspect that the pessimists underestimate the power of  markets to make rapid changes if they have the right combination of market signals and regulation.   By being too pessimistic, they are not encouraging  the badly needed price signal.

Glueballs?

A particle purely made of nuclear force

For decades,scientists have been looking for so-called "glueballs". Now it seems
they have been found at last. A glueball is an exotic particle, made up
entirely of gluons – the "sticky" particles that keep nuclear particles
together. Glueballs are unstable and can only be detected indirectly, by
analysing their decay. This decay process, however, is not yet fully
understood.

Professor Anton Rebhan and Frederic Brünner from TU Wien (Vienna)
have now employed a new theoretical approach to calculate glueball
decay. Their results agree extremely well with data from particle
accelerator experiments. This is strong evidence that a resonance called
"f0(1710)", which has been found in various experiments, is in fact the
long-sought glueball. Further experimental results are to be expected
in the next few months.

The Standard Model is very messy....

What a difference

I was just watching a bit of Question Time of Federal Parliament under new PM Turnbull and Speaker Tony Smith.

What an incredible contrast it is to the embarrassment that it was under Bronwyn Bishop and failed PM Tony Abbott.   It's like its had an infusion of maturity that makes the former version look like a kindergarten. 

It's funny how Abbott's departure from the top job has made just about everyone in the Coalition look better (well, with the exception of the irredeemable Peter Dutton.)   They just seem all happier and more competent than before.   Perhaps it's having the yoke of Peta lifted from their shoulders that is helping, too.  Given Christopher Pyne's recent pointed comments about Turnbull being the kind of PM who actually considers questions and tries to answer them in detail (and how "refreshing" that is), I'm even feeling more kindly towards him!

And what about Hockey?  It's like people have forgotten he was ever there already.  Kind of humiliating, especially for a politician with famously thin skin.  (As for Abbott, I suspect he is too dumb to understand the depth of his own humiliation, although I was amused to read that he apparently is upset that John Howard wasn't supportive enough after his dumping.)

Of course, the public torment of Andrew Bolt* continues, as well as that of just about everyone at Catallaxy save for Sinclair Davidson.   I can't credit the Prof's judgement about Abbott needing to go too much, though; he was also the only commentator on the continent who thought Bronwyn was doing a  good job as speaker.  (Well, maybe ratbag Rowan Dean agreed.)  Anyway, seems Turnbull is reluctant to do any fiddling with s18C RDA, so we'll see how long the goodwill towards him continues. ...

*  Speaking of Bolt and his 3000 words a day of Muslim-ania since the teenage shooting a fortnight ago;  I think by far the best media coverage about the problem of youthful radicalisation in Australia has been on the ABC's 7.30.   Does Bolt give them credit for that?  I don't think so.  

Troublemaking cows

Why the humble cow is India's most polarising animal - BBC News

Gee.  I hadn't realised the trouble cow reverence causes in modern India:

More seriously, most states forbid cow slaughter, and the ban on beef has been criticised by many because the meat is cheaper than chicken and fish and is a staple for the poorer Muslim,
tribal and dalit (formerly untouchable) communities.

Last month, a 50-year-old man in northern Uttar Pradesh was killed in a mob lynching over rumours that his family had been storing and consuming beef at home. Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke his silence over the killing nearly two weeks later, members of his party thrashed an independent lawmaker in Kashmir for hosting a beef party.

Earlier this month, Hindus and Muslims clashed over rumours, again, of cow slaughter in Uttar Pradesh. A row over banning beef is threatening to stoke religious tensions in restive Kashmir..

There are worrying reports that supporters of the BJP and right-wing Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in the state have launched a virulent campaign against
cow slaughter and beef.

Although the government's own animal census shows that the cow and buffalo population has grown - a 6.75% increase between 2007 and 2012 - and cow slaughter is banned in most states, there is hysteria being whipped up that the bovine is under threat.

Vigilante cow protection groups have mushroomed. They claim to have a strong network of informers and say they "feel empowered" because of the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP
government in Delhi. One of these groups actually managed to get a court order against a beef and pork festival at a Delhi university in 2012.

That's not all. The BJP-ruled state of Rajasthan has a cow minister. There are campaigns going on demanding that the cow should replace the tiger as the national animal - a minister in Haryana, also ruled by the BJP, promptly began an online poll.

All of this makes me wonder about what they serve in Indian McDonalds.  The BBC handily has a story from 2014 on that very topic.

Not too late, apparently

Antarctic ice sheets face catastrophic collapse without deep emissions cuts | Environment | The Guardian

Studies like this, which suggest that the Antarctic ice sheets will start to melt (unless deep cuts to CO2 start very quickly) but take centuries to do so can't really take into account possible geo-engineering approaches that may develop in the intervening period.  Still, seems that it's a lot "safer" to do the achievable - reduce CO2 - than bet on unproven techniques with unclear consequences.

Nasty virus

Ebola lingers in semen for nine months - BBC News

All quite unexpected, too, it seems.   Does any other virus do something similar?

Update:  just to make readers uncomfortable, here's an article about all the various types of virus that can be in semen, and the list is longer than I expected.   I was more interested, though, in the ones which it seems the body has defeated, but they linger on.

Yet more El Nino discussion

El Nino could soon rank as the strongest event since 1950

It seems to summarise things pretty well.

Yes, sometimes they do impress

If you believe the account of her contact with a medium given in this really fascinating first person article in Elle, you will understand why mediums sometimes can still make deep impressions that are hard to explain away.

And Ross Douthat, inspired by the article, writes interestingly on ghosts in the secular age.

Higher sensitivity still quite possible

Most of the talk over the last couple of years has been about observational studies indicating that climate sensitivity to CO2 was perhaps on the lower side, rather than the high side.  Yet I see that in a paper that has just come out, some NASA based researchers give reason to think the high side is more likely:   

The large spread of model equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is mainly caused by the differences in the simulated marine boundary layer cloud (MBLC) radiative feedback. We examine the variations of MBLC fraction in response to the changes of sea surface temperature (SST) at seasonal and centennial timescales for 27 climate models that participated in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3 and Phase 5. We find that the inter-model spread in the seasonal variation of MBLC fraction with SST is strongly correlated with the inter-model spread in the centennial MBLC fraction change per degree of SST warming and that both are well correlated with ECS. Seven models that are consistent with the observed seasonal variation of MBLC fraction with SST at a rate −1.28±0.56 %/K all have ECS higher than the multi-model mean of 3.3 K yielding an ensemble-mean ECS of 3.9 K and a standard deviation of 0.45 K.

That seems important...

Birth order and consequences

This very long review of a couple of new books about the history of the Castrato contains a lot of information.  Here are a couple of paragraphs, noting which boys got to draw the short straw, so to speak:

It began, it seems, because women were not allowed to sing in church,
and, in the Papal States, were banned from singing at all. ‘It is
important to bear in mind,’ Feldman writes, ‘that castrations for
singing, beginning well before 1600, took place only in Italy,
geographic heartland of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.’
While London warmed to castrati, and paid them fortunes, the English did
not castrate their own. One contemporary of Handel’s commented on this:
‘You Englishmen complain that castrati are too costly, so that too much
money ends up in Italian lands, but if you want to make all this use of
them and [still] make savings, it’s amazing that for such a profit you
still can’t castrate there.’

Castrati, for Feldman, can be understood as the second sons of Italian families who, instead of goinginto the military or the church, took up singing, and in order to excel
had to make a sacrifice. She notes that castration arose at a time in
Italy when the eldest son got most or all of the inheritance. For one of
the others, getting castrated was a way to deal with the problem of
making a living. She writes rather well about this notion of sacrifice,
quoting Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, two late 19th-century writers on
the general subject of sacrifice. They wrote, according to Feldman, that
the victim ‘somehow has to be ravaged in a solemn but devastating way …
The end goal is to sanction the victim so as to authorise him for a
special purpose, removing him … from ordinary life … by radical
alteration that leads to a kind of rebirth. Thereafter the victim, now
improved, mediates between sacred and profane worlds.’

The start of an amusing series?

Beachcomber apparently intends to make this an occasional series - examples of "crazy couplings", being famous people who were wildly incompatible but nonetheless had sex.  The first - Simone de Beauvoir and Arthur Koestler.

[What a daggy haircut Arthur has in that photo, by the way.  And the one of Simone is in colour, which gives it that trick of making a scene look more contemporary than it really is.]

Re-visiting The Shining

I've no great interest in the Stephen King oeuvre - I've never read his books or watched the mini series based on them.  And as for the movies based on his novels - I am usually seriously underwhelmed, if I see them at all.

The one exception: The Shining, which I re-watched for the first time in 35 years last weekend.

I had forgotten how magnificently creepy and disturbing it could be.  I love the formalism and effectiveness of Kubrick's direction here - apart from following the cycling boy, the camera is often determinedly stationary, and the editing leisurely, in a way that itself feels otherworldly.  (Not sure if that was the intention - from memory, Kubrick did just like keeping the camera steady for long periods in whatever he was making.)  Jack Nicholson was at the peak of his career and simply couldn't have been better. 

I remember that the film did not win over everyone:  Pauline Kael was no great fan.   And it's true - I wouldn't call it a perfect film; but then again, I don't know that I ever categorise films that way.  In this case, sure I can understand criticism that Nicholson's descent into ghost addled madness and aggression started too quickly; and at some points the (largely) creepily effective score was being just too obvious.

But overall, I think it's a great film. 

Interestingly, I see that King never liked it, and didn't appreciate the underwriting of the wife's character (although I think Shelley Duvall does well with the material), as well as other substantial changes from the book.   But hey, if you had Kubrick writing and directing, you don't really expect warm, well-rounded characterisation on the screen; that's just a given.  But it is, I think, probably Kubrick's most accessible film, in the sense that it works at an emotional level, rather than being just coolly cerebral, like most of his other work. 

Tough days for the yakusa

Are Japan's crime clans going out of business? Tea with a yakuza. - CSMonitor.com

Lots of fascinating details in this report, but the key point is that legal actions are finally eating into the size and strength of the yakusa.  I found this bit rather amusing:

Japan's post-1980s economic swoon hasn't been all bad. Yakuza made
money from "cleaning up"  bad loans, distressed assets and bankrupt
companies. "Dispute resolution" remains a core activity, partly due to
Japan's notoriously slow and expensive legal system. "We can get things
done quicker," says Kumagai. 

"Dispute resolution"!  Ha.

Double slits and quantum gravity

Backreaction: A newly proposed table-top experiment might be able to demonstrate that gravity is quantized

This is one of Sabine Hossenfelder's more readily accessible posts about a major issue in quantum physics.

[Just this weekend, while driving, I was trying to give a verbal description of the twin slit experiment to my son, but this post reminds me that I stopped at photons, and didn't continue to make the important point about electrons doing the same.  No wonder he was underwhelmed.  Tonight over dinner, perhaps!]

A death noted

As much as I disliked, and puzzled over the popularity of, Sam de Brito's Fairfax career of over-sharing, I had noticed that he had started writing on topics other than himself, even though I had come to rarely read him.   But as it happens, I had read his last column about co-sleeping with his young daughter, and thought that he sounded like a very caring father.  So, of course it is sad for his family, and his daughter in particular, that he is gone.  (It's also been more than 4 years since I criticized him here, so I think it safe not to feel guilty about that.)

Oddly, the SMH report of his death specifically notes that it was not being treated as suicide or suspicious.    That seems an odd comment to make if there is to be a coroner's report, which I assume means they don't yet know the cause.

I see from another recent column (a lightweight one about on line dating - maybe he was still writing mainly about himself?)  that he referred to "swilling codeine and whiskey" at 2 am.   I wonder if that was serious, and will have anything to do with his death...*

Update:  the SMH says  "Sam de Brito was essentially a very private man."

Um, as far as I could make out, no.   It was exactly his lack of privacy which bothered me (at least in the context of making a living from it.  I once wrote if he wanted to be full of self disclosure, he could do it on Blogger - I couldn't understand why Fairfax would host it.)

*  just to be clear - I see that codeine and alcohol is definitely not a good idea.  Was it a joke, or a bit of confession that no one took seriously.

Uh oh

More Life, Less Death | MIT Technology Review

The article says the UN has revised its population growth projections to 10 billion in 2050, due to increased longevity outweighing reduced birthrates.  That's close to more than 3 billion extra compared to today.

Here's a bit more detail:

At the country level, much of the overall increase between now and 2050
is projected to occur either in high-fertility countries, mainly in
Africa, or in countries with large populations. During 2015-2050, half
of the world’s population growth is expected to be concentrated in nine
countries: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Ethiopia, United Republic of Tanzania, United States of America,
Indonesia and Uganda, listed according to the size of their contribution
to the total growth. 

 A bit of a worry...

Bald paranoia

Our bald, cat loving, infrasound fearing Senator appears to be right on side with stupid American Right wing paranoia about "gun control".   What an embarrassing twit to have fluked his way into the Australian Senate:

[People have been effectively disputing the "Nazis disarmed the populace" for well over a decade - see this 2004 paper  - but still it rolls on.]

Update:   a more quickly read summary of the history of the use of this claim by the NRA appears in this Mother Jones article.   This paragraph is particularly significant:

"But guns didn't play a particularly important part in any event," says Robert Spitzer, who chairs SUNY-Cortland's political science department and has extensively researched gun control politics. Gun ownership in Germany after World War I, even among Nazi Party members, was never widespread enough for a serious civilian resistance to the Nazis to have been anything more than a Tarantino revenge fantasy. If Jews had been better armed, Spitzer says, it would only have hastened their demise. Gun policy "wasn't the defining moment that marked the beginning of the end for Jewish people in Germany. It was because they were persecuted, were deprived of all of their rights, and they were a minority group."

Yep.  A large part of the problem with the common libertarian take on gun control is not only that they are paranoid;  they are also prone to fantasies about how guns would empower them in their "if only I had been there with my gun, I could've been a hero!" imaginings.  (Look at the disgusting things that Right wingers have been saying after the recent Oregon attack.)

And isn't it curious that, following the fall of Soviet communism - the only genuine post War international threat to the future of America - the paranoia has only intensified, not been reduced.  Congratulations on your tactics, gun makers of America.

Update:  I wrote this post before seeing that David Frum had weighed in on it:

The claim that the Jews of Europe could have stopped the Nazi Holocaust if only they’d possessed more rifles and pistols is a claim based on almost perfect ignorance of the events of 1933 to 1945. The mass murder of European Jews could proceed only after the Nazis had defeated or seized territory from three of the mightiest aggregations of armed force on earth: the armies of France, Poland, and the Soviet Union. The opponents of the Nazis not only possessed rifles and pistols, but also tanks, aircraft, artillery, modern fortifications, and massed infantry. And yes, Jews bore those weapons too: nearly 200,000 in the Polish armed forces, for example.

From 1941 until the end of the war, armed bands of Jewish partisans roamed through Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, just as they roam through the imaginations of American gun enthusiasts. That didn’t stop the Holocaust either.

Even before the war started, in the 1930s, Jews sometimes attempted armed resistance to the Nazis. It was the assassination of a German diplomat by a Jewish refugee that provided Adolf Hitler with the pretext for the Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews in 1938.

There’s really only one way in which gun control is at all relevant to the history of the Holocaust. As the late historian Henry Turner forcefully argued in Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power, the last clear chance to prevent the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 would have been a military coup at the end of 1932, followed by mass arrests of members of Nazi and communist militias, and the confiscation of their weapons. You might even say that stricter control of guns and gun-carrying political groups could have prevented the Holocaust.

The failed Prime Minister was worse than suspected

Why Glenn Stevens is breathing easier since Tony Abbott got rolled | afr.com

It's not as if this piece is written with much objectivity, but it does make it clear that Abbott was a bit more of an ideologically motivated twit as PM than may have been obvious (given that he would waiver and not implement things he really wanted to do, apparently.)

More magic water needed

Facing the rain deadline, in a world over which we have diminishing control

I see that Paul Sheehan manages to write about El Nino and the potential for lack of rainfall in Australia to wipe a lot of money from the value of crops, all without mentioning climate change.

I guess someone who was impressed with Ian Plimer's wildly inaccurate Heaven and Earth may not know that climate scientists have been worried about climate change causing more intense "super El Nino" events.  

Into the detail of the "many worlds"

Anyone who reads about quantum physics would know that the rather improbable sounding "many worlds" interpretation of it has actually become quite popular amongst physicists.

But there's a review paper on arXiv from earlier this year that has a good explanation of the uncertainty and debate as to what the interpretation really means in terms of the "multiplicity" of universes.  Starting from Everett down, it's not actually obvious how it's meant to work.  

I don't think I had really appreciated the extent of the problem with the idea before.  The paper is not always easy to follow in every detail, but it is generally understandable and is well worth reading.  Here's the abstract:

Everett's interpretation of quantum mechanics was proposed to avoid problems inherent in the prevailing interpretational frame. It assumes that quantum mechanics can be applied to any system and that the state vector always evolves unitarily. It then claims that whenever an observable is measured, all possible results of the measurement exist. This notion of multiplicity has been understood in different ways by proponents of Everett's theory. In fact the spectrum of opinions on various ontological questions raised by Everett's approach is rather large, as we attempt to document in this critical review. We conclude that much remains to be done to clarify and specify Everett's approach.

The old trolley problem

The Lifespan of a Thought Experiment: Do We Still Need the Trolley Problem? - The Atlantic

A nice article here looking at the history of the trolley problem in philosophy and ethics, and which notes it is getting a bit of a revival because of the prospect of driverless cars.  Cool.

Testing the medium

How Harry Houdini and Scientific American Fought the Fake Mediums of the 1920s

It's an extract from a book on the topic.   Sounds like a good read.

Can't last

These leaked records cast light on how ISIS makes its money - Vox

Interesting to note the long term frailty of the ISIS current financial "model".

What I want to know is - who's buying their oil, anyway?

How fathers pass on problems

Discovery of how environmental memories may be transmitted from a father to his grandchildren

It seems it's all in how certain proteins affect the DNA, not just the DNA itself.

Whiteford on tax and transfer

Who really benefits from Australia's tax and social security system?

I've always thought Peter Whiteford sounded very reasonable.  (I recall he has made occasional appearances over the years at Catallaxy in threads to challenge arguments put up by Sinclair Davidson.  He has seemingly given up on doing that, given the rabid threads as well as the evidence-resistant propaganda-ish nature of many of the posts.)  

The approach taken in this report is good and a necessary corrective to the over-simplified complaint of the "small government, less tax"  lobby:

A final issue that arises from this analysis relates to the question of whether people can be characterised as “lifters” or “leaners”and relates to the idea that it is only the rich that effectively pay (net) taxes. A lifecycle perspective shows that people whose lifetime annualised income is less than $25,000 actually pay more than 10% of their lifetime income in taxes (rather than near to zero), and this doesn’t include indirect taxes.

In contrast, middle income people over their lifetime receive far more in social security benefits than do people in these income brackets at a point in time. The implication is that a much wider range of people benefit from the welfare state and pay taxes to support it than is often acknowledged.

The war and wanton women

Sexually Active Women Were Quarantined During World War II - The Atlantic

Well, no, I hadn't heard about this before.  This bit in particular:

At first, health officials focused on sex workers who had been arrested
near military bases or factories. As the war progressed, however, the
focus widened from sex workers to “any women who were somehow viewed or
under suspicion as being delinquent,” Parascandola said. Some places
dispatched health workers to bars and dance halls to scout out women who
appeared too sexually forward; in other cases, officials would wait at
bus stops, questioning the women who came off the bus about their
reasons for traveling to the town.

Women who didn’t agree to submit to testing could still be quarantined
via court order if officials suspected her of having an STD—a caveat
that was interpreted liberally. “For example, they might arrest a woman
who they found hanging around the camps under vagrancy charges,” he
said, “and they might use some claim of suspicion for venereal disease
because this women was hanging around with all these men.”

Can't remember this aspect of the war being featured in a movie before...

The Cruz response

It was a bit slow coming, probably because people did not really like to been seen to be dissing the poorly performing Sierra Club guy who clearly wasn't expecting it, but here is Phil Plait's rebuttal (follow his many links) to the King of Fools Ted Cruz.

Cruz's performance has been greeted with acclaim by Right wing sites everywhere, from Andrew Bolt to Powerline.

As I have said recently, I think its time for gloves off as far as politicians, journalists (and scientists) who are properly informed on the matter of climate change - start calling out Cruz and his ilk as fools who are refusing to inform themselves on science.   By all means, they can still be pointed to the information to rebut their arguments, but call them fools for not reading or believing it.

It's really the arrogance mixed with ignorance that is getting to me - they genuinely believe that climate science, which has been becoming more certain and understood over the last couple of decades, is teetering on the edge of collapse, all because a mere handful of largely discredited scientists (4 or 5, tops) in the field lend support to the non-scientist advocates, politicians and conspiracy theorists such as Monckton, Watts, Steyn, Delingpole, Bolt, etc.  Guys, you're being fooled.   Your arrogance is entirely misplaced.   If you read more broadly, you might understand.  

Now having said that:  I will still make the observation that the last refuge of the denialists is the satellite temperature record, specifically honing in on the RSS one lately.   I am sure denialists do not know what the satellites are measuring, the history of the problems with this method and sometimes dramatic adjustments (see links I have previously provided), or that that one of the senior members of the RSS team wrote late last year:

A similar, but stronger case can be made using surface temperature datasets, which I consider to be more reliable than satellite datasets (they certainly agree with each other better than the various satellite datasets do!). 

However, the oft repeated line has been that the satellite method may be more sensitive to ENSO and the 1998 El Nino than the surface temperature record, in which case one would expect that the current El Nino may see a similar spike to that in 1998.

Such a spike is not yet appearing in the satellite figures.   If it does, and is of a similar magnitude to the the 1998 one, then the denialists will likely have a serious problem as to how they maintain their lines.
  
If it doesn't appear, then the matter of the method of how the satellite temperature is measured and the records compiled, and the issue of its comparison with radiosonde readings, will be in for some more consideration.

It would simpler for everyone if there is a spike.

But - whether there is or isn't a spike will not matter much to those enduring a temperature rise, and rainfall changes, on the surface.    That's where we live - not in the middle of the troposphere.

All a bit incestuous

Here's Why Samsung's Profits Are Up Nearly 80%

Samsung Electronics says its operating profits for the third quarter will hit $6.29 billion, up 80% year-over-year and smashing Wall Street expectations.

That forecast from the South Korean tech conglomerate exceeded analysts’ expectations of about $5.89 billion. It marks a surprise for a company that as recently as the previous quarter saw operating profits fall 4% from the same period last year.

What’s driving the comeback? It’s all about Samsung’s semiconductors division, the backbone of its third quarter success. And that’s partially thanks to smartphone rival Apple, which uses chips manufactured by Samsung in its latest iPhone 6 lineup (Samsung’s own phones also use Samsung-made chips). Samsung’s chip business saw revenues grow by around 24% to about $28 billion last year.

Aren't Samsung and South Korea generally  great examples of crony capitalism?    (Here's The Economist in 2010 briefly on the topic.) Doesn't their success send some sort of challenge to small government advocates that their approach isn't the only one that can succeed?

When the constitution stuffs it up

Umpqua: Is Jeb Bush right about 'stuff happens'? - CNN.com

Somewhat interesting to read about the way the interaction between State and Federal powers in the US makes creating an effective background check system in the US so difficult.

But never forget - the fundamental resistance to increased effectiveness of any such system is driven by a "they're coming to get our guns!" paranoia encouraged by the NRA and like bodies.

Lettuce eat

This Robot-Run Indoor Farm Can Grow 10 Million Heads Of Lettuce A Year | Co.Exist | ideas impact

That seems an awful lot of lettuce...

Rainfall will change - just not sure where

As I noted in a recent post, some climate scientists are warning that the current Californian drought may well be small compared to some ones that may be coming under climate change - lasting up to 35 years, perhaps.

Now it seems to me that for a State with a high population and a very big agricultural sector (which has presently been getting by on diminishing groundwater), a 35 year drought would be a very big problem indeed.  How are economists and their models on the effects on GDP dealing with that scenario?

More generally, a paper just out in Nature Climate Change explains that changes to tropical rainfall are shown under all modelling of the future climate under AGW, but the problem is working out where. As the abstract explains:

Many tropical countries are exceptionally vulnerable to changes in rainfall patterns, with floods or droughts often severely affecting human life and health, food and water supplies, ecosystems and infrastructure¹. There is widespread disagreement among climate model projections of how and where rainfall will change over tropical land at the regional scales relevant to impacts^{2, 3, 4}, with different models predicting the position of current tropical wet and dry regions to shift in different ways^{5, 6}. Here we show that despite uncertainty in the location of future rainfall shifts, climate models consistently project that large rainfall changes will occur for a considerable proportion of tropical land over the twenty-first century. The area of semi-arid land affected by large changes under a higher emissions scenario is likely to be greater than during even the most extreme regional wet or dry periods of the twentieth century, such as the Sahel drought of the late 1960s to 1990s. Substantial changes are projected to occur by mid-century—earlier than previously expected^{2, 7}—and to intensify in line with global temperature rise. Therefore, current climate projections contain quantitative, decision-relevant information on future regional rainfall changes, particularly with regard to climate change mitigation policy.

Again, I wonder how economic forecasts over the coming decades can take this uncertainty into account.

He has a point...

How school debating has ruined Australian politics

The unexpected

New The X-Files makes a dazzling debut as Cannes hosts world premiere

Given the show had become boring and not worth watching in the last couple of seasons, I wasn't expecting the re-boot to be good.  I hope this review is right, though.

When funny actors age

Jerry Lewis is 89 and frail, but still making public appearances:

I don't think he has many more left in him, though, by the sounds of the report.

I'm not sure what Chevy Chase does in his spare time now, but he has not physically aged well, at all:

He's an inspiration for dieters, though.

Doris Day, on the other hand, looks pretty much how I think she should (she's 91):

Last time I saw Billy Crystal on TV, I thought that his head was starting to look strange.  But in this photo, I think the beard makes him look more normal:

He's 67, and just had a TV series cancelled.

David Letterman, 68, on the other hand, looks positively ancient when he grows a beard:

Kirstie Alley turned up on The Middle this last season (still a funny sitcom, shamefully overlooked by the Australian market) and she is a good looking 64 (as long as she keeps the weight off):

Mind you, she would surely have had the best medical assistance Hollywood could buy.
 
The best preserved comedian of the modern era, however, has to be Bette White, who at 93 is still working and appears to have stopped aging 30 years ago:

Is there a reason for this post?   Not that I can tell.  It's strangely pointless...

Worse to come

10 Weather Extremes In October's First Week | Weather Underground

Given that there is a strong chance the El Nino's full effects are really just getting into gear, there is strong reason to believe we're in for a period of severe weather of different types around the world.

Mind you, I see that some economists have come out arguing that El Nino events are actually pretty good economically - the benefits outweigh the downside, globally.  Yet some of the examples given in the article seem  to be along the same lines that can be used to argue that earthquakes and war can be "good" for an economy.

Personally, I'd prefer that the economy improve without the death, destruction and pestilence along the way - but I'm not an economist.

One has one's doubts it will succeed...

New Quantum Cats game launches to build better understanding of quantum concepts

Good to see good Spielberg reviews

Bridge of Spies Reviews - Metacritic

I had been intending to note here that I was completely underwhelmed by the trailer for Spielberg's Bridge of Spies - it was a terrible, plodding example of trailer salesmanship, if you ask me.

Yet we all know a great trailer can be made from a bad or average movie, so it is always possible that it can work in the other direction, too.

That seems to be the case here, and I am pleased to see that the movie is generally getting solid reviews.

A detailed look at the Islamic State propaganda machine

BBC News - Fishing and ultraviolence

Interesting to read how the IS propaganda machine actually spends a lot of time on positive PR spin about the its economic and social future.   "Look! - a man growing melons.  Look! - a camel herder!  Look! - a homosexual being thrown off a building and the crowd below stoning his body."

[Apparently, the medieval period has a lot of allure to a certain subset of the population.   It's a bit like those who enjoy medieval dress up fairs - hey, I've been to one or two - but with the violence real.]

Longer droughts for California?

California agriculture weathers drought — at a cost

A bit of a worrying future in store for California:

A team led by climatologist Noah Diffenbaugh of Stanford University in California has used historical data and climate models to show that global warming is increasing the odds of the state seeing warm, dry conditions similar to those that spawned the current drought (N. S. Diffenbaugh et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112, 3931–3936; 2015).

The droughts could even last for many decades.  By incorporating palaeoclimate data into climate models, Benjamin Cook of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and two co-authors are predicting droughts that could last as long as 35 years (B. I. Cook et al. Sci. Adv. 1, e1400082; 2015).

“We’re in a new climate, and it’s a climate in which the probability of severe drought conditions is elevated,” Diffenbaugh says. “That recognition is really critical.”

The Xenophon solution

Plan to shake up Senate voting | Business Spectator

I find Nick Xenophon's proposed changes to the Senate voting system to be very reasonable.

They will upset Senator Leyonhjelm, who openly advocates gaming the voting system by the creation of microparties simply to direct preferences, so that people have no idea who they may get.  As we have seen in all other Senate or House of Reps election results, Leyonhjelm's party has a vanishingly small voter base, and he wants it to have a chance in future by the same devious tactic.   This deserves to be crushed.

Tempura noted

Been a while since I made a "just cooked this for the first time" post, but the weekend saw my first attempt at tempura.

The recipes for this on websites vary a lot - quite a few involve self raising flour, or baking powder added to plain flour; others recommend cornflower mixed in with it, or even potato starch.  The matter of using an egg (or just yolk) is not even settled.   The only universal thing is that the water used must be ice cold, and you do not want an over-mixed, smooth batter - lumps are good.

In any event, I found that plain flour, mixed with an equal quantity of iced water containing a lightly beaten whole egg, worked well.   And one cup of flour and one of water makes quite a lot of batter.   (Actually, I think I added a bit more water - I don't like thick batter.   But it basically seems hard to go wrong (as long as the oil temperature is pretty high too.)

As for the dipping sauce - 1 cup of dashi (powdered stock type, of course); 1/4 cup each of mirin and soy sauce, plus a couple of teaspoons of sugar, all heated in a saucepan and cooled  a bit for serving, worked well.

The history of tempura as a Japanese mainstay is interesting.  As the Kikkoman company's website explains:

China, which has long influenced Japan, has traditions rich in culinary techniques based on the use of oil. In fact, written Chinese includes an array of characters used to distinguish different types of frying, such as quick-frying over high heat, searing at low heat, and so on.

Yet Japan was unaffected by this particular culinary aspect of China: early Japanese cooking was more strongly influenced by the injunction against eating meat that arrived with the introduction of Buddhism in the sixth century. This meat-eating taboo came to Japan by way of China, but Buddhism was not the state religion of China, nor was it closely associated with the ruling classes, as it was in Japan. Pig lard was used to prepare some dishes in China, but pork fat was unavailable in Japan, once the eating of pork was prohibited. Vegetable oils were obtainable here, but they were used mainly as fuel for illumination and their quantity was limited; thus the use of oil in cooking was slow to catch on.

Tempura most likely made its first appearance in Japan via Spanish and Portuguese missionaries and traders, who introduced deep-frying in oil during the latter half of the sixteenth century. Gradually, the type of cooking we now know as tempura became firmly established during the eighteenth century. As if to endorse this history, I have encountered a deep-fried squid dish in Portugal. And to my surprise, I enjoyed something called “fritters” —deep-fried seafood or vegetables—which had an uncanny resemblance to tempura in Malacca in Malaysia. Malacca is a bustling coastal port where the descendants of Portuguese colonists, who arrived during the early sixteenth century, pursue fishing and other trades while conducting their lives in the local vernacular, a dialect of Portuguese....

What was early tempura like? The oldest extant records, dating from the late seventeenth century, indicate that it consisted of balls made of a paste of thrush meat, shrimp and ground walnuts, which were deep-fried in oil, then covered with a sauce thickened with kuzu (a perennial of the bean family) starch. No batter coating seems to have been applied.

In the mid-eighteenth century there are records of deep-frying with a coating, apparently fish dusted with flour or root vegetables like burdock, lotus and taro dipped in a thin mixture of flour, soy sauce and water. Considerable innovations then followed, creating the tempura we know today: the production of vegetable oil increased and its price stabilized, making it possible to use generous amounts in cooking; soy sauce manufacture became an established industry, and this seasoning became more widely available; it was also during this time that bonito-flake stock was more commonly used.

During the Edo period, tempura-style cooking first became popular at movable outdoor stalls. In those days, Edo was built entirely of wooden structures, and so was extremely vulnerable to fire. Cooking outdoors rather than in houses was encouraged, and outdoor stalls serving foods like tempura were very popular. Like sushi, tempura flourished as a snack enjoyed by the common townspeople, and went on to become an essential element in the “flavor hierarchy” of Japanese cuisine.

Thus ends today's culinary notes...

Quaint and distinctive

I don't know why, but a lot of my pleasant dreams lately seem to be about the memorable scenery.  Is it because the internet is serving up spectacular images of locations from all over the world - like a daily dose of National Geographic, instead of just a once a month (or once a dental visit) experience as it used to be when we relied on printed images?

In any event, my Zite feed has referred me to a short article at Country Living about Giethoorn, a
quaint Dutch village in which the houses are thatched and the streets are actually canals.  It certainly looks dream-worthy:

Here's the town's tourism website.   I would like to visit.

Extraordinary game

You can take as true, when it comes from someone like me who only invests about 5 hours a year in watching sport, that everyone saying that the Rugby League grand final tonight was stupendously good viewing is correct.  It showed everything that, even to my generally disinterested mind, makes this code the best to watch:  a scoring rate that is "just right"; genuine tension that comes from clear movement of team lines back and forth in relation to the try line; less risk of idiosyncratic umpiring decisions changing a game; and the ability to always see the ball in play. 

Good article on gun free zones

Commentary: Gun-Free Zones Don't Attract Mass Shootings