Quiet companionship, indeed

Silicone love: Guys and dolls - ABC News

Gosh. What inspired the ABC to have a long article about Australian men who are having happy, contented, but rather weird, lives with their silicone life-like girlfriends.

I wonder if some of them have thought to do wills providing for their "quiet" companions. I would like to see a funeral with the silicone girlfriend seated in the front row, dressed in black. Maybe she could be thrown onto the coffin in an uncontrollable outbreak of grief, and someone else has to slap her hard in the face to get her to pull herself together.

Yes, I can imagine a lot of entertainment value in this.

Hard to disagree

Intelligent discussion all but extinct

Barry Jones complains about the dumbing down of political debate, and it is hard to disagree.

In terms of the reasons why, I find it hard not to blame the internet for the ease with which ideologically motivated attacks on climate science have spread in the echo chamber that most people are happy to reside in.

And if you thought blogs were bad in this regard, I think that the Twitter is making it even worse. I'm sure blogging has taken a downturn in popularity as people have turned to the instant gratification of live, short jokey comments that seem to me to be the sole reason for the existence of that medium. When I have looked at Twitter feeds, I can't really understand the appeal of watching (or participating in) a knotted spaghetti of snippets of conversations from all over the place. Sure, the occasional witticism is there to be seen; but it drowns in a sea mundane connectedness.

There was probably a better informed level of debate when paper pamphlets were the only way to go about it.

The real puzzle is: how to get better detail in debate going again. TV panel shows such as Q&A are certainly not the way to go about it - I have always disliked that format too for its dumbing down of complex issues into one liners.

I am not sure what the answer is. Less electricity with which to use the internet might help though! (Just kidding.)

Does this sound like such a good idea?

Transgenic grass skirts regulators : Nature News

GM plants have been in the news lately, what with Greenpeace (literally) cutting down CSIRO work on GM wheat.

While I certainly don't support this Greenpeace action, I've always had reservations about GM technology, for many of the reasons you would no doubt find on a Greenpeace website. (Is it necessary in the first place, will genes inadvertently spread into the wild, it's not a precise science at all, is it putting too much control over farming into profit driven corporations, etc. Yes, I sound a regular Lefty, but I can see the reason people worry about it, and there are real life examples of how the technology has not worked out well.)

But GM proponents have often argued that the work is really important for helping the world feed itself in future. I'm yet to be convinced of that, but in any event one of the big GM controversies has been about GM cotton in India; hardly a crop with a vital importance for humanity's well being. (Well, a world only of polyester clothes would be a disaster of a kind, I suppose.)

Today I see from the link above that GM to do with herbicide resistence is also being done for lawn grass. You see, it'll just let you spray the weeds in your lawn instead of having to bend over and pull them up.

Is this something that is really in humanity's interest to develop? Do we really need to run the risk of transferring resistance to herbicides to other grasses?

What's more, there seems to be less regulatory control of this due to the way it's being made:

The grass can evade control because the regulations for GM plants derive from the Federal Plant Pest Act, a decades-old law intended to safeguard against plant pathogens from overseas. Previous types of GM plants are covered because they they were made using plant pathogens. The bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens — which can cause tumours on plants — shuttled foreign genes into plant genomes. Developers then used genetic control elements derived from pathogenic plant viruses such as the cauliflower mosaic virus to switch on the genes.

By revealing similar elements in plants' DNA, genome sequencing has liberated developers from having to borrow the viral sequences. And Agrobacterium is not essential either; foreign genes can be fired into plant cells on metal particles shot from a 'gene gun'. Scotts took advantage of both techniques to construct the herbicide-resistant Kentucky bluegrass that put the USDA's regulatory powers to the test.

"The Plant Pest Act was completely inappropriate for regulating biotech crops, but the USDA jury-rigged it," says Bill Freese, science-policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety in Washington DC. "Now we can foresee this loophole getting wider and wider as companies turn more to plants and away from bacteria and other plant-pest organisms." The USDA has not made public any plans to close the loophole and has also indicated that it will not broaden its definition of noxious weeds, a class of plants that falls under its regulatory purview, to facilitate the regulation of GM crops.

Let me just say: this does nothing to reduce my cynicism towards GM work on plants.

Life imitates art

Some journalist has already noted the Murdoch double act before the committee the other day as having a bit of a Montgomery Burns/Smithers vibe about it, but the connection I kept thinking about was this:

To this:

It’s the hair. I find it very off putting.

UPDATE: Thank goodness: I'm not alone in wondering why on earth she has such an in-your-face 'do.

And this man is the preferred Prime Minister

'Weathervane' Abbott targeted over support for price on carbon | The Australian

From the Tony Abbott "Just Say Anything" tour of Australia (it has the asterisked subtitle "Consistency and logic are for mugs") we get the following story:

The Opposition Leader made the claim on Gippsland's Star FM yesterday, saying: “I've never been in favour of a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme.”

But in October 2009 Mr Abbott, under then-opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, publicly backed an emissions trading scheme in an interview on the ABC's Lateline program.

“We don't want to play games with the planet. So we are taking this issue seriously and we would like to see an ETS,” he said at the time.

He made a similar comment on radio 2UE in November that year. “You can't have a climate change policy without supporting this ETS at this time,” he said.

Earlier this week, Mr Abbott criticised a proposed 5 per cent carbon emissions cut as “crazy”, even though the Coalition supports the target.

UPDATE: Tony Abbott says he forgot to add "as leader" to the end of his claim that he has never supported an ETS. I'm sure he'll allow Julia to explain that she forgot to add "no majority Labor government I lead will have a carbon tax".

But Tony Abbott's career of just making it up as he goes along continues with this:

TONY Abbott now says he does not want any of Victoria's brown-coal-fired power stations to close or switch to cleaner fuels, despite the Coalition having repeatedly said it expects to pay for one of the generators to shut and convert to gas under its $10.5 billion Direct Action policy.

''I know that burning brown coal is a high emissions form of energy production, but I think the smart way forward is not to fail to use brown coal. It's not to close down these power stations, it's to try to ensure that we use technology better to reduce the emissions,'' Mr Abbott said yesterday as he prepared to visit the Hazelwood brown coal plant....

But as recently as Tuesday, Coalition Finance spokesman Andrew Robb had claimed Labor's proposal to pay to close a brown coal generator had been stolen from the Coalition.

''Despite all the fevered claims that Direct Action won't work, the single biggest abatement measure in the Government's scheme happens to be a Direct Action proposal - namely, the closure of Hazelwood power station.''

And after last year's election, the Coalition climate spokesman Greg Hunt said: ''One of the ironies of the election is that if the Coalition had formed government, we would be negotiating with the owners of Hazelwood and Yallourn power stations about converting either or both from brown coal to gas.''

But yesterday Mr Abbott said: ''There will be no act of policy from the next Coalition government or from any Coalition government that I'm associated with that artificially foreshortens the life of these power stations.''

A taxing success?

Calls for new tax on alcohol after success of alcopop tax stopping teen drinking | News.com.au

I haven't read the study reported here, and it is written by bodies who want to push a strong public health barrow, but still:

Research by the groups found that the alcopops tax, introduced in 2008, pushed the sale of the popular drinks down by more than 30 per cent in a year.

While sales of other spirits rose in the same period, the increase accounted for less than half the fall in alcopop sales.

The groups also pointed to the 2008 alcohol and drug survey of teenagers which showed that while the tax had not changed their preference for alcopops, the number of teen drinkers fell 27 per cent in three years.

Why hasn't the Gillard government pointed to this as a public health policy success story? Too caught up in the carbon pricing war? Or maybe it's because the same bodies praising the success want alcohol to be more expensive for everyone, and that's not a palatable message to be passing on to a hysterical public at the moment.

Never trust a teenage insect

Asexual ants are actually having sex: study

The BBC sums it up

BBC News - Murdochs hearing: A day of high drama and farce:

Murdoch Sr had got off to a shaky start. We knew he was 80, but he seemed more frail - and certainly more human - than the figure of legend.

Not so much a titan before whom all must tremble, as an elderly man on a day trip to the coast, mistakenly arrested for shoplifting.

Of course, Murdoch employed columnists are having a hard time seeing it this way. Can Andrew Bolt really say this with a straight face?:

The incident [the pie in the face] was a reminder to the committee that bad things can happen - like lax security - to the most august of institutions.

The Murdochs’ testimony was reassuringly impressive, after so many stumbles in dealing with this scandal...

A dignified refusal to comment might have been wiser, Andrew.

Sort of like a spoon full of sugar

Molasses help lose weight (Science Alert)

Molasses usually end up as a waste-product of sugar refining. However, they are rich in polyphenols, says Dr Weisinger, chemicals found in plants known for their antioxidant properties....

Researchers supplemented the high-fat diet of a group of laboratory mice with molasses for 12 weeks. They found that these mice had lower body weight, reduced body fat and decreased blood levels of leptin – a hormone involved in energy regulation, appetite and metabolism – than the control group.

Further analyses, says Dr Weisinger, revealed that molasses supplements led to increased energy excretion, i.e, more calories were lost in faeces. They also found increased gene expression for several liver and fat cell biomarkers of energy metabolism....

Clinical trials are scheduled to begin next year to evaluate the molasses extract for weight control in humans.

Nothing personal at all

Media Watch: Personal or policy? You be the judge (18/07/2011)

Media Watch last night was very good at pointing out the lengths to which right wing talk back radio in Australia has gone to make criticism of Julia Gillard (and anyone supporting carbon pricing) personal, extreme and offensive. Look at these extracts from callers who Chris Smith and Alan Jones have let go to air:

'Bonita': Look I can say this, but you can't: she's a menopausal monster, and she needs to resign.

Chris Smith: Ok. Good on you, Bonita. Thank you.

'Tony': The Australian taxpayer even pays for the toilet paper she uses.
Does she go down to the chemist to buy her tampons? Or is the Australian taxpayer paying for those as well? ...
In my opinion Julia Gillard is a piece of crap ...

Alan Jones: Ok, well you made a lot of valid points there. We've just got to avoid in our criticism the personal. We stick to the policy; we never deal with the personal.

The extracts that follow then go on to show how ridiculous is Jones' claim that he never gets "personal". He has used the "chaff bag" line more than once:

Alan Jones: Put her in the same chaff bag as Julia Gillard and throw them both out to sea.

I saw on Andrew Bolt's TV show on Sunday a passing comment by him that he doesn't approve of Alan Bond's personal attacks. Might be nice if he would actually do a post on his own blog about this; but then, that would involve acknowledging his own role in creating a hysterical atmosphere about the carbon tax debate in the country at the moment.

Speaking of poor taste, that's also how I found yesterday's post at Catallaxy by Sinclair Davidson headed "Roadkill", which featured a photo of the PM with a startled look, and talked about the bad, bad polls she is receiving at the moment.

That heading and attempt at humour really sounds to me like something you'd hear on a late night host on the Macquarie Network, rather than from a Professor of Economics.

Sometimes I get noticed

Recently, I have posted a couple of times about Texas State climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, including about his Counterpoint interview.

Even allowing for the fact that he almost certainly only found my comments via Deltoid, it's pleasing to see that my observations are sometimes noted on the other side of the world.

It's worthwhile reading my comment and Dr John's response on the thread, too.

Unusual comparison of the week

Cold-blooded cunning | The Economist

This article suggests that no one has ever spent much time testing the intelligence of reptiles. Unfortunately, they are smarter than we knew:

In a paper published in Biology Letters Dr Leal and Dr Powell suggest that lizards are at least as intelligent as tits, a group of birds that has been well examined in this respect.

Ah well: I suppose that as I never feared being outsmarted by a tit, I shouldn't fear reptiles doing it either.

Cultural nuttiness

Last week's article in Slate "A Bad Case of the Brain Fags" by Jesse Bering, was a pretty interesting short survey of culture specific mental illnesses.

The first one he mentions, though, "old hag syndrome" he indicates as being specific to Newfoundland. I thought that it was common throughout the world as part of sleep paralysis that people could wake up with the sensation of being pressed down on the bed by a ghost or phantom figure. Maybe it is only in Newfoundland that folklore says it is specifically an ugly, witch like woman doing it?

I did recently see the famous physicist/author Paul Davies on Lawrence Leung's Unbelievable talking about he suffered from waking sleep paralysis as a child or teenager, and used to interpret the pressure on his chest as feeling like a cat walking on him. Unhelpfully, he didn't explain if there was actually a cat in the house at the time.

(I can also mention, as an aside, that while sleeping in an unusual location once as teenager, I also woke up with the feeling of pressure on my chest, which really did turn out to be a cat.)

Anyway, Bering also mentions koro (the fear of the penis disappearing into the body), and although I knew about that already from Fortean Times magazine, he does add some interesting details.

As I have usually avoided gyms, I didn't really know this about body builders:

One that's not in the manual but could be, argue psychiatrists Gen Kanayama and Harrison Pope in a short paper published earlier this year in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry, is "muscle dysmorphia." The condition is limited to Western males, who suffer the delusion that they are insufficiently ripped. "As a result," write the authors, "they may lift weights compulsively in the gym, often gain large amounts of muscle mass, yet still perceive themselves as too small." Within body-building circles, in fact, muscle dysmorphia has long been recognized as a sort of reverse anorexia nervosa. But it's almost entirely unheard of among Asian men. Unlike hypermasculine Western heroes such as Hercules, Thor, and the chiseled Arnold of yesteryear, the Japanese and Chinese have tended to prefer their heroes fully clothed, mentally acute, and lithe, argue Kanayama and Pope. In fact, they say anabolic steroid use is virtually nonexistent in Asian countries, even though the drugs are considerably easier to obtain, being available without a prescription at most neighborhood drugstores.

I'm in no danger of needing treatment for this condition.

All your bases

As I’ve been reading about Antarctica lately, I’ve been browsing around looking at information on the current bases down there.

There are more than I expected; some from rather unexpected countries. (With the relatively recent arrival of India, I suppose you can get a curry on any night, as well as shop at a discount variety store if you left something at home.) I was curious to see what they look like, as I was hoping national architectural flare might show up, even on the icy continent.

Well, it was an interesting exercise.

At the South Pole itself, the base was formerly noteworthy for its geodesic dome. Very space age looking in its day, I was a little sad to see that it has recently been dismantled. (As far as I can tell, its disadvantage was that it was too easily covered with snow.) Here’s a photo of it at the start of its disassembly:

In the background, you can see the new, somewhat boring in comparison, building. A better picture is here:

It’s built on legs that can be raised to keep it above the increasing snow. This is a common feature of most new bases on the higher parts of the continent.

So, what about other stations? The French-Italian one has a bit more space age flair:

The German one looks like the top part of a ship on stilts:

Norway’s Troll Station (great name) is disappointingly boring by comparison – it looks like a collection of shipping containers, no?:

A Bulgarian base on the South Shetland Islands (this counts as an Antarctic base, apparently) has all the architectural flair and impressive scale of a scout den:

They do, however, have an Eastern Orthodox chapel, which from the outside looks very much like a fruit shop cold room with a cross on top:

Inside it still looks like a refrigerator, but I guess it's nice that it's there at all.

The Chapel has its own Wikipedia entry, which also leads me to the more remarkable in style Russian Orthodox Trinity Church on King George Island:

I wonder if for much of the year if you can to the door through the snow. I see that there are chapels further south (including specifically Catholic ones) on the main continent itself. You can see nice photos of them here.

The Argentineans, on the Antarctic Peninsula, have gone for a homier, village style:

Mind you, Australia does not do Antarctic stations with any architectural value at all. Davis Station looks a complete, multi-coloured mess:

And Mawson is not much better:

OK, this is getting boring now, but not before my favourite station, Belgium's Princess Elizabeth base:

So that’s where the Jupiter 2 ended up.

Break

I have a lot of work to catch up on.

The right wing blogs are also going to be unbearable for quite a while on the carbon tax, and there will be no point in commenting at them.

I therefore should try to avoid the blogs for a week or so.

I am tempted to shift any stupid doodling or videos I do to a separate blog, and I'll note that here if I do.