Here’s a good article on the very surprising (apparent) finding that solar neutrinos – or another mystery particle from the sun - affect radioactive decay on Earth. (I’m sure I mentioned this here before a long time ago.) Much work remains to be done, though.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Contrainception
I went and saw Inception yesterday, partly for the rare treat of seeing a well reviewed adult movie, and partly to see whether my hunch was right that the weekend election was a dream within a dream. I'm leaning to the theory that soon Malcolm Turnbull will wake up and resume his rightful place as Prime Minister.
Anyhow, I have to say I was pretty disappointed.
Christopher Nolan's career has coincided with my young child raising years, so I still haven't seen his well regarded Momento or even The Dark Knight. But if Inception is any guide, it certainly appears he doesn't do ordinary human emotion very well. It's flashy film making with money and CGI effects galore, but its over-riding fault is how very cold [update: probably more accurate to say "unengaging", as did the WSJ review] it feels at an emotional level. In that respect, it seemed rather like a Kubrick effort, but lacking that director's more careful pacing and powerful set piece imagery which usually more than compensated for the artificial quality of much of the acting.
There was one element that came close to feeling emotionally real and being an interesting plot point - the DiCaprio character's unresolved guilt over the fate of his wife - but the details of it were revealed far too late in the film, and not resolved in any especially memorable way.
Here's a list of other problems I had with it:
* no wonder it's said to have taken 10 years to write. It's supposed to be an adage of good filming making that it is better to show character and story rather than have protagonists explaining it, yet this would have to be the most "explained" cinema event since An Inconvenient Truth.
* talk about your cursory attempts to portray a new technology. Group dreaming involved a briefcase sized device with what seemed to be intravenous lines into the wrist, although even that was not so clear. The drugs involved seemed to come from a backyard operation. Come on, if the participants had a least a electronic mind wave reading skull cap on, it would have had some vague plausibility, but just linking up via the wrist?
* the action scenes were, by and large, just poorly directed, with editing that was too choppy to tell what was really going on, and who was in danger. And because a lot of the figures being shot or crushed were merely dream characters, there was not the same sense of danger that you get from "real life" action.
* the near climatic action around a snow bound fortress looked extremely similar to the snow chases and gunfights we've seen many times in James Bond films. Why did Nolan think this would look particularly interesting? It was actually hard to tell who was who during parts of this segment.
I would guess that Nolan was heavily influenced by Jungian ideas on the subconscious and dreaming, which makes his lack of emotional involvement all the more puzzling, given my impression that Jung was a "warmer" character with less of the cool intellectual approach of Freud.
This is a film that would have been better served by a lighter touch, a shorter length, and director better with emotion. People like to complain about Spielberg's sentimentality, but the way he dealt with adult emotional material in the very serious science fiction of AI and Minority Report left you feeling something at least, unlike this effort.
It also reminded me of another film dealing with fights inside dreams - Dreamscape from the 1980s. I remember very little of its plot now, but do recall enjoying it as a bit of a romp, and that's about as much as you should expect from this implausible type of science fiction. (Amusingly, on the question of originality of Inception, I have just read the Wikipedia entry I linked to above, which notes that the central idea is very similar to the plot of an Uncle Scrooge comic! I see the Kubrick similarity has been noted by others too.)
Gee, now that I have put down my issues with it, it sounds like I really hated it. That's not quite true either, but as you can see I spent a fair bit of time thinking about why it wasn't working for me. I also tend to react more strongly against a very big budget film that I consider a failure than a more modestly scaled one, for the obvious reason that it feels more of a waste when it has sucked money away from (say) 3 smaller scale examples of science fiction which could well have been more enjoyable.
So maybe that's it for my adult movie viewing for another year. I'm half tempted by "Salt," but it's hard to believe I could really like an Angelina Jolie film.
Update: It's me, from the future, finding that I enjoyed it more on the second viewing. Huh.
Anyhow, I have to say I was pretty disappointed.
Christopher Nolan's career has coincided with my young child raising years, so I still haven't seen his well regarded Momento or even The Dark Knight. But if Inception is any guide, it certainly appears he doesn't do ordinary human emotion very well. It's flashy film making with money and CGI effects galore, but its over-riding fault is how very cold [update: probably more accurate to say "unengaging", as did the WSJ review] it feels at an emotional level. In that respect, it seemed rather like a Kubrick effort, but lacking that director's more careful pacing and powerful set piece imagery which usually more than compensated for the artificial quality of much of the acting.
There was one element that came close to feeling emotionally real and being an interesting plot point - the DiCaprio character's unresolved guilt over the fate of his wife - but the details of it were revealed far too late in the film, and not resolved in any especially memorable way.
Here's a list of other problems I had with it:
* no wonder it's said to have taken 10 years to write. It's supposed to be an adage of good filming making that it is better to show character and story rather than have protagonists explaining it, yet this would have to be the most "explained" cinema event since An Inconvenient Truth.
* talk about your cursory attempts to portray a new technology. Group dreaming involved a briefcase sized device with what seemed to be intravenous lines into the wrist, although even that was not so clear. The drugs involved seemed to come from a backyard operation. Come on, if the participants had a least a electronic mind wave reading skull cap on, it would have had some vague plausibility, but just linking up via the wrist?
* the action scenes were, by and large, just poorly directed, with editing that was too choppy to tell what was really going on, and who was in danger. And because a lot of the figures being shot or crushed were merely dream characters, there was not the same sense of danger that you get from "real life" action.
* the near climatic action around a snow bound fortress looked extremely similar to the snow chases and gunfights we've seen many times in James Bond films. Why did Nolan think this would look particularly interesting? It was actually hard to tell who was who during parts of this segment.
I would guess that Nolan was heavily influenced by Jungian ideas on the subconscious and dreaming, which makes his lack of emotional involvement all the more puzzling, given my impression that Jung was a "warmer" character with less of the cool intellectual approach of Freud.
This is a film that would have been better served by a lighter touch, a shorter length, and director better with emotion. People like to complain about Spielberg's sentimentality, but the way he dealt with adult emotional material in the very serious science fiction of AI and Minority Report left you feeling something at least, unlike this effort.
It also reminded me of another film dealing with fights inside dreams - Dreamscape from the 1980s. I remember very little of its plot now, but do recall enjoying it as a bit of a romp, and that's about as much as you should expect from this implausible type of science fiction. (Amusingly, on the question of originality of Inception, I have just read the Wikipedia entry I linked to above, which notes that the central idea is very similar to the plot of an Uncle Scrooge comic! I see the Kubrick similarity has been noted by others too.)
Gee, now that I have put down my issues with it, it sounds like I really hated it. That's not quite true either, but as you can see I spent a fair bit of time thinking about why it wasn't working for me. I also tend to react more strongly against a very big budget film that I consider a failure than a more modestly scaled one, for the obvious reason that it feels more of a waste when it has sucked money away from (say) 3 smaller scale examples of science fiction which could well have been more enjoyable.
So maybe that's it for my adult movie viewing for another year. I'm half tempted by "Salt," but it's hard to believe I could really like an Angelina Jolie film.
Update: It's me, from the future, finding that I enjoyed it more on the second viewing. Huh.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Sad accident
As far as horrible hospital accidents go, this one is spectacularly bad:
Grace Wang's spinal canal was injected with powerful antiseptic instead of anaesthetic, in what should have been a routine epidural to ease the pain of her first child's birth.
The Herald understand the two substances had been transferred to separate metal dishes on the sterile table, contravening the standard practice of drawing them directly from their packaging into a syringe to avoid confusion.
The devastating medical mistake - inconceivable in its magnitude - has poisoned her nervous system, leaving the 32-year-old distressed, confused, in shocking pain and unable to walk or even sit.
Friday, August 20, 2010
How inconvenient
Nature reports:
The capacity of plants to act as a carbon sink could be on the decline.
As global temperatures have risen in recent decades, the amount of atmospheric carbon being converted into plant biomass has increased in step. However, in a paper published today in Science, ecologists Maosheng Zhao and Steve Running at the University of Montana in Missoula report a surprising reversal of this trend over the last decade, despite its having been the warmest on record.
The reason appears to be drier conditions in the Southern Hemisphere.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Limited responsibility
Well that's good. Due to a change in my electorate's boundaries, I am now living in what appears to be one of the safest Labor seats in Brisbane. Previously, I was in a seat that swung from side to side, and my vote actually mattered. Given the appalling choices this election, I kind of like the sensation of irrelevancy, at least for the moment.
The Senate remains a problem. The Greens have exactly one policy I support, but it's an important one - a carbon tax.
Both Labor and Liberal say there will be no carbon tax. Brown thinks he can force one through, and he supports a mining tax, but wants to increase the amount that can be gained from it. I generally support the mining profits tax, but don't really trust Brown's fiddle with it.
The Coalition really can't be trusted on environmental issues while there are under the sway of Abbott and his supporters.
The likely line up of independents seems very up in the air, except I think everyone expects the slightly loopy Fielding to go. I don't know anything about independents running in Queensland.
I think it is looking like, in the mix, I would probably be best off supporting Labor in the Senate, while at the same time hoping Brown wins eventually on the carbon tax.
UPDATE: courtesy of Antony Green's election site, I now have a good idea of what's going on in the Senate at Queensland level. Hey, Barnaby Joyce is up for re-election. As well as George Brandis.
Joe Ludwig is also on the card for Labor.
The game of who to put last is always a challenge. This time, it looks like a contest between both of them in the Climate Sceptics Party and the perpetual protester Sam Watson of the Socialist Alliance.
What do you know: the Australian Democrats still exist! I expect they hold their conferences in one of the meeting rooms at the local Council library.
Well, this is going to take some studying.
The Senate remains a problem. The Greens have exactly one policy I support, but it's an important one - a carbon tax.
Both Labor and Liberal say there will be no carbon tax. Brown thinks he can force one through, and he supports a mining tax, but wants to increase the amount that can be gained from it. I generally support the mining profits tax, but don't really trust Brown's fiddle with it.
The Coalition really can't be trusted on environmental issues while there are under the sway of Abbott and his supporters.
The likely line up of independents seems very up in the air, except I think everyone expects the slightly loopy Fielding to go. I don't know anything about independents running in Queensland.
I think it is looking like, in the mix, I would probably be best off supporting Labor in the Senate, while at the same time hoping Brown wins eventually on the carbon tax.
UPDATE: courtesy of Antony Green's election site, I now have a good idea of what's going on in the Senate at Queensland level. Hey, Barnaby Joyce is up for re-election. As well as George Brandis.
Joe Ludwig is also on the card for Labor.
The game of who to put last is always a challenge. This time, it looks like a contest between both of them in the Climate Sceptics Party and the perpetual protester Sam Watson of the Socialist Alliance.
What do you know: the Australian Democrats still exist! I expect they hold their conferences in one of the meeting rooms at the local Council library.
Well, this is going to take some studying.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Rat dad research
The Brains of Our Fathers: Does Parenting Rewire Dads?: Scientific American
Just in time for Father's Day, here's talk about some research into rat fathers which might indicate why human fathers are important too:
Just in time for Father's Day, here's talk about some research into rat fathers which might indicate why human fathers are important too:
While it appears the seed of the father-child bond is planted by supplemental neurons in a new dad, it seems a child, on the other hand, may be born with a brain that expects this bond to form in the first place.All quite interesting. And you can also expect people who don't give a toss about who gets to make babies via reproductive technology to have a problem with it.To prove this, a few recent studies turned to a rodent that employs a remarkably familiar nest structure. Degu rats are biparental animals, which means parenting duties are split between the mothers and father. Degu fathers behave just like human fathers. They spend the early days of their pups’ lives helping with basic care, like warming and grooming. And as the pups get older, the degu fathers begin actively playing with their toddler offspring.
Researchers reasoned that absent fathers in the degu nests would create a true social and emotional void for the offspring, just as a missing dad would impact the dynamic of a human family. They found that if a rodent father remained in the nest with his pups – presumably due to the newfound bond with his offspring – his babies’ brains developed normally. But if the father was removed from the nest shortly after the birth of his pups, his newborns’ brains started to break down at the level of synapses, which are short chemical junctions in the brain that allow brain cells to communicate with each other.
How does it smell?
Garlic good for blood pressure
Research trials by Dr Karin Ried and her colleagues from the University of Adelaide's Discipline of General Practice show that garlic could be used as an adjunct to conventional drugs for hypertension.Sounds like a pretty good result. But how does aged garlic extract make me smell?However, raw or cooked garlic, and garlic powder are not as effective in treating high blood pressure as aged garlic extract.
In a 12-week trial involving 50 people, Dr Karin Ried's team found that those with systolic blood pressure above 140 who took aged garlic extract capsules experienced an average systolic blood pressure 10.2mmHg lower than the control group, who took a placebo.
Cheer up, doc
Story here.A study on mental health issues shows suicide and depression are more prevalent in the medical profession than in the general public.
Research commissioned by the national depression initiative Beyond Blue has found women in the profession are two-and-a-half times more likely to commit suicide.
The study - to be presented in Adelaide today - also suggests rates of suicide for men in the medical professional are 25 per cent higher than the general public.
Dangerous days
While in Sydney last week, we visited the Maritime Museum for the first time, and paid the extra to go on board the replica Endeavour. The photo a few posts back was of one of the windows into the (relatively large and well appointed) "Great cabin".
This proved to very interesting, and what I found most remarkable about it was the lack of headroom in the rear midshipmen mess/officers cabins. This leaflet from the museum doesn't make it clear how low it is, although it does mention that one area the marines slept in was 1.2 m high. I think the area I am talking about is a little higher, but believe me it's cramped, especially given my aversion to spending time in areas where I can't stand up straight. It was due to the ship having an extra deck built into it to accommodate the large crew to be taken on his expedition.
I was also surprised to be reminded of the large body count that Cook's most famous voyage racked up. Looking over the Wikipedia entry, we find:
* a sailor dragged overboard when he got entangled in the anchor chain
* two of Bank's servants freeze to death while trying to return to the ship in a snowstorm after rounding Cape Horn
* after stopping in Batavia, 30 (in a crew of 94) died from dysentery or malaria (including the ship's surgeon, and his brother)
* the museum leaflet linked above also mentions a marine who committed suicide by jumping overboard
Life was quite different in the 18 th century, hey? A wife saying goodbye to her husband at the dock when he set off on a long expedition seemingly had a pretty good chance of never seeing him again.
This proved to very interesting, and what I found most remarkable about it was the lack of headroom in the rear midshipmen mess/officers cabins. This leaflet from the museum doesn't make it clear how low it is, although it does mention that one area the marines slept in was 1.2 m high. I think the area I am talking about is a little higher, but believe me it's cramped, especially given my aversion to spending time in areas where I can't stand up straight. It was due to the ship having an extra deck built into it to accommodate the large crew to be taken on his expedition.
I was also surprised to be reminded of the large body count that Cook's most famous voyage racked up. Looking over the Wikipedia entry, we find:
* a sailor dragged overboard when he got entangled in the anchor chain
* two of Bank's servants freeze to death while trying to return to the ship in a snowstorm after rounding Cape Horn
* after stopping in Batavia, 30 (in a crew of 94) died from dysentery or malaria (including the ship's surgeon, and his brother)
* the museum leaflet linked above also mentions a marine who committed suicide by jumping overboard
Life was quite different in the 18 th century, hey? A wife saying goodbye to her husband at the dock when he set off on a long expedition seemingly had a pretty good chance of never seeing him again.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Torture not required
Reading terrorists minds about imminent attack: Brain waves correlate to guilty knowledge in mock terrorism scenarios
Yeah, the story's been out for a couple of weeks and maybe you've already read it, but I want to note it here for my own records.
It was pretty fascinating, if you missed it.
Yeah, the story's been out for a couple of weeks and maybe you've already read it, but I want to note it here for my own records.
It was pretty fascinating, if you missed it.
Both sides of the fence
I didn't get to see Four Corners last night, but I see from this report that Abbott is still trying to walk both sides of the fence, by making statements that will appeal to climate skeptics, but still making out that he is satisfied enough to spend money on reducing carbon.
If you ask me, as with his "I'm not a tech head" attitude to selling his broadband policy, Abbott comes across as lazy on detail. He'll grab a "big idea" of his own, such as his parental leave plan, and run with that as far as he can, but when it comes to anything with science content, it's all a shrug of the shoulders and admissions that he hasn't read much about it. (He said he started Plimer's disreputable book but didn't finish it. That in fact might be a good thing, but there is no indication that he has read material on the other side of the fence.)
If you ask me, as with his "I'm not a tech head" attitude to selling his broadband policy, Abbott comes across as lazy on detail. He'll grab a "big idea" of his own, such as his parental leave plan, and run with that as far as he can, but when it comes to anything with science content, it's all a shrug of the shoulders and admissions that he hasn't read much about it. (He said he started Plimer's disreputable book but didn't finish it. That in fact might be a good thing, but there is no indication that he has read material on the other side of the fence.)
Out there physics
Here's a paper on arXiv that I haven't had time to try and read yet, but I like the title:
Born in an Infinite Universe: a Cosmological Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
Max Tegmark is one of the authors, and I certainly recognize his name.
Born in an Infinite Universe: a Cosmological Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
Max Tegmark is one of the authors, and I certainly recognize his name.
Why I like the Tiger
Last week's trip to Sydney was taken on Tiger Airways again. This is at least the third time I've flown them: once to Adelaide, Melbourne and now Sydney.
The reason I fly them is, of course, the incredibly cheap fares you can find by subscribing to their email sale notifications. Apart from that, their generally bad reputation for reliability and service gives me a perverse thrill every time I take a successful trip on them.
I don't think any other airline in Australia is as ruthless with weight limits for both check-in baggage and carry on. What's more, the explanation of their rules in this regard on the internet is incredibly complicated. In some respects it seems to me that their website is positively misleading (referring to having to check baggage in 2 hours before the flight. In fact, no one will be at the counter in many of their terminals until 2 hours before the flight.) Telephoning them seems to end up putting you in contact with an overseas call centre, and the "telephone tree" didn't seem to recognize my number selections. Checking my reservation on line to make sure that I had paid for 15 kg of luggage when I booked the trip 9 months ago did not make it clear whether I had or not. (Hence the need for the lengthy call to the call centre.)
When you check in, there is normally some passengers at the desk having to do a rushed re-arrangement of the contents of their check in luggage to keep within the weight limits, or arguing over the fees they have paid.
Yet, all this means that when one successfully manages to book, pay for, and get on board a flight without drama (well, my wife had to give me some books from her carry on luggage to keep hers under 7 kg) there is the pleasant sensation of triumph over adversity, having dodged a bullet yet again, and flown this bus in the sky for a ridiculously cheap price.
Yes, I quite like Tiger Airways.
The reason I fly them is, of course, the incredibly cheap fares you can find by subscribing to their email sale notifications. Apart from that, their generally bad reputation for reliability and service gives me a perverse thrill every time I take a successful trip on them.
I don't think any other airline in Australia is as ruthless with weight limits for both check-in baggage and carry on. What's more, the explanation of their rules in this regard on the internet is incredibly complicated. In some respects it seems to me that their website is positively misleading (referring to having to check baggage in 2 hours before the flight. In fact, no one will be at the counter in many of their terminals until 2 hours before the flight.) Telephoning them seems to end up putting you in contact with an overseas call centre, and the "telephone tree" didn't seem to recognize my number selections. Checking my reservation on line to make sure that I had paid for 15 kg of luggage when I booked the trip 9 months ago did not make it clear whether I had or not. (Hence the need for the lengthy call to the call centre.)
When you check in, there is normally some passengers at the desk having to do a rushed re-arrangement of the contents of their check in luggage to keep within the weight limits, or arguing over the fees they have paid.
Yet, all this means that when one successfully manages to book, pay for, and get on board a flight without drama (well, my wife had to give me some books from her carry on luggage to keep hers under 7 kg) there is the pleasant sensation of triumph over adversity, having dodged a bullet yet again, and flown this bus in the sky for a ridiculously cheap price.
Yes, I quite like Tiger Airways.
Monday, August 16, 2010
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