Prostitution pays well in Sydney

The Australian: Hooker keeps house sold by client [June 22, 2005]

Aw, don't you feel at least a little sorry for this guy? Usually its the woman who accidentally falls in love. And note that Ms Lin, age 31, now owns "several" investment properties in Sydney with its astronomical real estate prices. Just how much money does she earn?

But while we are on the topic of strange and sad legal cases involving chinese men in Sydney, this one from a few weeks ago takes a beating. (Summary: 59 yr old married chinese guy has gay love affair with much younger african guy who goes crazy and kills chinese guy's wife and 2 adult kids.) I don't mean to sound flippant, but this would have to be some sort of world benchmark for a guilt- inducing illicit affair.

Life is stranger than fiction, sometimes.

In Defence of the Yuck Factor

Human Cloning: In Defence of the Yuck Factor

I link to the above article because the news story about the potential to use stem cells to grow ovaries and eggs (or sperm cells) for an infertile couple crosses over the boundary of my personal "yuck factor". And I think it is worthwhile defending having such a "factor" in the first place.

Peter Singer, and his ilk, for example, can appear to be perfectly rational and reasonable in their logic as to how they come to their radical positions, which to my mind shows there is a fundamental flaw in the whole process by which they got to the conclusion. (And one other thing that bothers me is the way that Peter Singer can appear in interviews to really be not so radical or crazy, a pretty nice guy in fact. It seems typical of interviews with him that the interviewer rarely directly quotes his most controversial statements back at him and challenges him to re-justify them. Especially, in his case, his view that a new born baby - healthy or not- does not really have any additional "right to life" over a fetus. Of course, he logically can have no problem with late term abortion, when even the feminists now seem to be giving ground on that.)

On infertility generally, at the risk of sounding heartless, I really wonder sometimes why there is so much research money spent on it. (Disclosure: I am blessed with 2 kids, and having married late in life, count myself very lucky in that there was no problem with their conception.) It just seems to me that priorities on medical spending have to be made, and going to such extremes as even thinking about "growing ovaries" as a way to overcome infertility is really hard to justify when they are so many life threatening illnesses and medical conditions calling out for a cure or alleviation.

The modern concentration on trying to cure infertility seems directly related to adoption falling out of fashion in the West. (And I do appreciate that adoption can be very hard on the mother.) What I would prefer to see, however, would be some relaxation of the rules relating to international adoption, as it seems cruel that there are countries with an excess of unwanted little ones, but their overseas adoption is frequently difficult and very expensive.

Japan and Whales

I'm with Currency Lad on this one. Good luck to you big blubbery blue things.

But out of interest, the Japan Times, trying to be even handed, has 2 columns recently, one pro and one anti whaling (both written by westerners it would seem.) The anti whaling one seems pretty common sensical to me. The pro whaling one is full of very spurious arguments, including this interesting bit:

'At Koganji temple in Yamaguchi Prefecture, the souls of over 1,000 whales are interred, along with 75 whale fetuses on the top of a hill, where he says, they can "command a view of their ocean home." He goes on to point out, "An approach where the Japanese accord the whale (the) status of a person because of its integral role in sustaining human life can clearly be contrasted with the view of cattle in the West, where no such status or respect is conferred."'

Sounds like an argument for being allowed to harpoon people too. (Or for cows being accorded the status of people - which reminds me of a lot of Gary Larson cartoons.) Vote 1 Daisy.

A funny line

Anthony Lane, reviewing "Bewitched" in the New Yorker, doesn't like Will Ferrell in the role of Darrin. Then he adds:

"So who would make a decent Darrin? We know the fixings: a little slowness, a lot of chin ’n’ grin, and a tendency to arrive at his own jokes thirty seconds after they leave his mouth. I hear Senator Kerry is none too busy these days."

Good line...:)

Dirty Doctors

So, the media today is all over the evidence from the Dr Death inquiry that Dr Patel had very poor hand washing habits while he was at Bundaberg.

All well and good, but does the general public realise what a scandal the hand washing habits of doctors has been for decades? It is pretty clear to even the casual reader of medical journals that, despite attempts to introduce easier ways of getting doctors to clean their hands, compliance is still pathetic. Don't take my word for it, read this recent article from the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Look at the table on page 4: compliance amongst surgeons was worse than most other doctors! 36%!! What is it about surgeons that makes them so careless about this? A superiority complex? Just too busy to prevent cross infection?

An easier to read commentary on this study is the editorial from the same journal linked here: editorial A couple of quotes:

"How are we doing? It is too early to tell in the United States, where hand hygiene rates average 40% to 60% on a good day. However, European hospitals have been using alcohol-based rubs for many years, so it seems reasonable to look to Europe for evidence of success of the alcohol hand-rub strategy.....[in Europe] the good news is an increase in hand hygiene rates when physicians were aware of being observed; therefore, we can say that we respond to peer pressure, at least when evaluated as a group. The bad news is that the rates were only 61% when physicians thought someone was watching; when physicians did not think anyone was watching, rates averaged 44%.

In conclusion, after more than 150 years of prodding, cajoling, educating, observing, and surveying physicians, hand hygiene adherence rates remain disgracefully low."

Australian doctors are no different (see 1996 study here.) Which would indicate that at any given time there is about a 50/50 chance that your hospital doctor has not washed his or her hands before seeing you from his last patient. If a surgeon, the risk seems likely to be higher.

This is very, very bad.

Shock - Back to the Future not so scientific!

New Scientist Breaking News - No paradox for time travellers

What an interesting snippet from New Scientist on time travel this is. Actually, I recommend you at least read the conclusion section of the paper too, here. Nah, it's too good, let's just quote it now:

"According to our model, if you travel into the past quantum mechanically, you would only see
those alternatives consistent with the world you left behind you. In other words, while you are
aware of the past, you cannot change it. No matter how unlikely the events are that could have led
to your present circumstances, once they have actually occurred, they cannot be changed. Your
trip would set up resonances that are consistent with the future that has already unfolded.

This also has enormous consequences on the paradoxes of free will. It shows that it is perfectly
logical to assume that one has many choices and that one is free to take any one of them. Until
a choice is taken, the future is not determined. However, once a choice is taken, and it leads to
a particular future, it was inevitable. It could not have been otherwise. The boundary conditions
that the future events happen as they already have, guarantees that they must have been prepared
for in the past. So, looking backwards, the world is deterministic. However, looking forwards, the
future is probabilistic.

This completely explains the classical paradox. In fact, it serves as a kind
of indirect evidence that such feedback must actually take place in nature, in the sense that without
it, a paradox exists, while with it, the paradox is resolved. (Of course, there is an equally likely
explanation, namely that going backward in time is impossible. This also solves the paradox by
avoiding it.)"

So I think that means Marty McFly never should have started fading from view when his Dad looked like missing out on meeting his mother.

Believe it, or not

Tim Blair points out what a dill Terry Lane (ABC National Radio presenter, and Age columnist) is, linking us to his Age column which seems to positively lament the fact that the West is rather unlikely to go through a violent communist uprising any day soon.

Well yesterday I happened to catch some of Terry's radio show "The National Interest" and heard some of an interview with one John Perkins. From what I heard, this was a typically "soft" left leaning Radio National host interview, in which not even the slightist probe or scepticism is raised because, well, he agrees with the interviewer's world view and we wouldn't want to question that pretty anti-Amercian/anti-capitalism story would we?

John Perkins is author of a book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" which is all about his previous career as an economist in which he helped the USA economically enslave and ruin 3rd world countries. ( His claim, not mine.) As he said himself to Mr Lane, although selling well now, the book has not attracted much media attention, and I must admit some quick Google searching does have trouble turning up "serious" reviews from journals or newspapers.

The Amazon link here gives you an idea of what the book is about.

But the bit I love is the links to his other books. Mr Perkins gave up economics for Shamanism, it would seem, and written a lot about it. Have a look at his own website, and this positive reader review of one of his books:

"SHAPESHIFTING is a real gem! Author John Perkins takes us with him on an amazing journey to comprehend the methods used by shamen around the world to vanish and reappear, transform into plants and animals, heal seemingly inoperable medical conditions, and travel through space and time. He tells fascinating stories of how he overcame his initial skepticism and doubt to became one with a chair, transform herbs into a newspaper, and travel through time and space as a blue ball of light."

Gee, I wonder if he turned up in the ABC radio studio as a ball of light, or changed The Age back into some herbs for Terry's edification.

Now to be fair, going nutty in a New Age way does not necessarily mean that what he wrote about his past life is unreliable. However, if some of his Confessions appear a bit, well, fictional, some questions about this later career path might be worthwhile don't you think Terry? Did you fail to Google his name?

Terry is notoriously atheist, and I can't imagine he has much time for New Age shapeshifting either.

(And I have not listened to the whole program, available at the RN link above, only the last 15 min or so. Hope I am not wrong, cos I don't have time to listen to it today.)

Money for nothing for Jim Soorley

Australian readers may well be aware of the irksome Jim Soorley, big mouth former Labor Lord Mayor of Brisbane (which of itself is no small job, given Brisbane City Council's extremely large size by Australian standards.) A former priest, he's now a decidedly anti-Catholic atheist (or agnostic perhaps?) friend of Phillip Adams.

I recall reading some years ago that as a priest he upset some of his suburban flock (I think it was in Brisbane) by insisting on displaying an "aboriginal" flag in his church. The regular flying of same flag took place in front of city hall all during his reign as Lord Mayor.

Always willing to shoot his mouth off, and irritating State and Federal Labor politicians no end, he somehow swung a job on his retirement from the council as a regular columnist on Brisbane's magazine style Sunday Mail newspaper.

What he does is something like blogging, just commenting on whatever he wants , but with nothing like the links to let anyone read the source or check facts. In other words, it's easier than most commentary orientated blogging. By far.

Just look at today's column here.

I would summaries its stories as follows:

* a piece of fluff commentary about Russell Crowe;

* a recommendation of a novel he is reading;

* pure speculation that ye olde weather forecasters were better than the Weather Bureau today;

* an unequivocal repeat of the line that "at least" 100,000 Iraqi deaths were caused by the war;

* a stunningly broad brush comment about Global Warming, but against even considering nuclear power as an option. This I have to show in full:

"WE NOW know that continued use of fossil fuels is causing global warming with all the associated problems of drought, salination, floods and tsunamis.

Arguments are building for nuclear power to be the new green energy source for the world. I struggle to take this argument seriously and to believe that intelligent people can overlook the downsides.

I never thought we'd forget the horrors of the Cold War and the threat of extinction from nuclear bombs in the wrong hands, to say nothing of Chernobyl and the human misery caused by that industrial accident. Yet all that seems forgotten as the marketing of nuclear energy begins big time.

Be afraid, this is a world-wide PR campaign to con us that nuclear energy is clean, green and safe. The waste will kill for hundreds of millions of years. We must resist those who say that "we'll find a way to dispose of it ? don't worry"."

Tsunami's!! Caused by global warming!

* a comment on the Dr Death inquiry which seems to pick up a bit of news talk that some College of Surgeons audit of the doctor is going to suggest that the overall death rate was "within the norm". Here's Jim's commentary:

"WELL, the first substantive analysis on Dr Jayant Patel's surgery has taken place. It shows that both his death rate and transferrals to other hospitals were about the norm.

In other words, an independent audit shows a medical error rate within acceptable limits. While this won't provide any comfort to patients who feel badly treated, it should send a message to the Premier to stop his grandstanding and concentrate on fixing the problems in Queensland Health."

Here, as far as I can see, is what this commentary is based on (from ABC Online, for 16 June):

"Meanwhile the Australasian College of Surgeons says it is premature to comment about a report into Dr Patel's performance.

A team of medical experts has been auditing surgical outcomes at the Bundaberg hospital.

Newspaper reports suggest the draft study shows the medical error rate of Dr Patel may be within acceptable limits.

College president Russell Stitz says the full analysis is yet to be done.

"We understand that it's imminent but it's not yet out and to make statements before the full analysis is obviously inappropriate," Dr Stitz said.

"So we're all looking forward to the full report, which is by committee chairman Peter Woodruff, who's a vascular surgeon and a previous vice-president of the College of Surgeons."

The State Health Minister has asked for the final report to be completed by the end of the month."

(I don't think it takes a genius to work out that the averages won't particularly matter anyway if there is clear and compelling evidence, as there already seems to be, that he was grossly negligent or incompetent in some of the particular cases. )

Jim never liked Peter Beattie; his wildly unjustified commentary is done just to be able to have another jibe at him.

I trust you can see why this annoys me. He's just jots down whatever comes into his head, sticking to old figures, old leftie/ greenie beliefs, old political rivalries, (but not his old religious beliefs,) without any care for subtle things likes facts.

I hate to dignify his activity with publicity, and part of the problem is that the more people complain in letters to the editor about a columnist like this, the more the paper thinks he is worth keeping. I stopped buying the paper years ago, but my mum likes it for the weekly TV guide and gives it to me.

By the way, if you want a fact-free speech from his, seems it will set you back $3,500 to $5,000.

Advice on wife beating

If you haven't seen this, have a look at this funny/not funny post on Mufti advice on wife beating/hitting/whatever.

The Islamic advice websites are often inadvertently funny/disturbing.

I like the Gore Vidal quote (upper right) on Its a Matter of Opinion too.

Safer nuclear power for all

With the recent revival of talk of nuclear power for Australia, it seems to me that there is surprisingly little coverage given to a "new" design for safer reactors that basically can't meltdown. I am talking of modular pebble bed reactors. Links of interest are:
Wired magazine
PBMR Pty Ltd ( I guess don't expect this to be entirely objective)
An astronomy website article (why discuss it there, I dunno. Actually, this looks like it is just cut from Wikipedia)

Anyway, sounds rather promising, don't you think?

Update: I'm having problems making the PBMR link work for some reason. Just go to the Wikipedia article and find its link to it at the end.

Now for some science

This articleScience & Technology at Scientific American.com: Inconstant Constants -- [ COSMOLOGY ] -- Do the inner workings of nature change with time? is a full length free one on the Scientific American website, and is not too bad.

I dip into Scientific American every now and then, but find its articles often have a bit of a readability issue. I think it is because they are often written by the researchers themselves, not journalists or specialist science writers. The articles therefore come across as, well, stodgy, for want of a better word.

New Scientist has a lively, often humorous, style, but seems to perhaps run too many "wacky" ideas by loner scientists. And (from what I can gather) they also seem to have a bit of an accuracy issue in that mag too.

I used to like "Discover" a lot, and bought it regularly for well over a decade. It was never very newsy as such, but had some good writers. I think it changed ownership, the style changed a bit, and besides, with any magazine, I think you eventually tire of them and need a break. Maybe I should try it again.

Back to the Scientific American article, it contains this curious bit of trivia:

"One ratio of particular interest combines the velocity of light, c, the electric charge on a single electron, e, Planck's constant, h, and the so-called vacuum permittivity, 0. This famous quantity, = e2/20hc, called the fine-structure constant, was first introduced in 1916 by Arnold Sommerfeld, a pioneer in applying the theory of quantum mechanics to electromagnetism. It quantifies the relativistic (c) and quantum (h) qualities of electromagnetic (e) interactions involving charged particles in empty space (0). Measured to be equal to 1/137.03599976, or approximately 1/137, has endowed the number 137 with a legendary status among physicists (it usually opens the combination locks on their briefcases)."

Care for a vinegar aperitif?

The Japan Times Online
The link is to a Japan Times story on the increasing popularity of drinking vinegar. I'm not sure that it'll catch on here somehow.

As the article indicates, a lot of this is about the Japanese being into trendy health products. I believe that was a large reason for the increase in the sales of Western red wine there last decade. I just drink it for fun.

Oh, and for all you sake fans out there...try the Australian one Go-Shu. It's good.

Dr Patel inquiry site

Bundaberg Hospital Commission of Inquiry homepage

For those of you with too much time on your hands, here's the home page for the "Dr Death" inquiry in Queensland. Has any other inquiry of this nature had such an open and Web friendly approach?

As for the scandal itself - it is almost delightfully appalling, assuming of course you or a near and dear one was not its victim. I just love that a Courier Mail journalist found out the Dr's overseas problems though a Google search. Pity no one at the hospital thought of doing that too when they first starting getting worried.

Transcripts are available - several days old - on the website. And like all inquiries, much of it is taken up by lawyering amongst themselves. Still, seems like a lot of interesting stuff in there.

Media Watch does story about nothing..nothing new

For those of you who missed Media Watch last night, the main story went something like this:

a. the ABC buys doco on suicide for Compass
b. Compass host watches it and is very worried that one segment gives viewers too much idea on how to do it. Wants it cut.
c. ABC asks outside expert (a Professor in mental health) what he thinks. He agrees. May encourage viewers with the inclination to try the method.
d. Program airs with one minute cut.
e. Doco producer (or director) is not so happy. Says it didn't show how to use the plastic bag.
f. Media Watch points out that the decision to cut is consistent with ABC editorial guidelines
g. Media Watch seems slightly miffed that it also was not allowed to show the missing minute as part of its story
h. Media Watch says ABC didn't really do anything wrong, but Liz finishes with:

"We're in favour of responsible reporting of suicide so understand the ABC's decision to err on the side of caution, but there has to be some space left for the full and frank views of people like Lisette Nigot."

Well she got a bloody doco shown on national TV about it didn't she!!

In my books, this is called A NON STORY.

The last comment by Liz (quoted above) meant next to nothing. Why did they bother with this story at all? Where exactly was the
"debate and controversy about the decision to cut or censor, depending on how you see it, a documentary shown on ABC TV's Compass last week." Just in the corridors of the ABC, I suspect. I don't think it raised a blip anywhere else.

I look forward to more non stories to come.

An old article about Robert A. Heinlein's house!

site: Robert A. Heinlein - Archives - PM 6/52 Article

For those of you who used to like Heinlein before his books became full of windbaggery. Here, via Jerry Pournelle's website, an old Popular mechanics article on the long gone sci-fi authors home.

It's a lot smaller than I imagined. And you can't open any window.