Cute

Short Sharp Science: To boldly go where no Lego man has gone before

The shuttle programme may be over, but NASA has not stopped taking passengers into space. Three Lego figurines - the Roman god Jupiter, his wife Juno and Galileo Galilei, who discovered Jupiter's biggest moons four centuries ago - will be hitching a ride to the solar system's largest planet aboard the Juno space probe, set to launch tomorrow. The probe is carrying the unusual passengers as part of a bid to help engage more children with science.

There is a photo at the link.

What did Howard want?

Carbon Tax

The above piece by Labor's Mark Dreyfus does a pretty good job of finding quotes from John Howard that indicate he was prepared to have an ETS ahead of what other countries would do.

Previously, I had thought Howard was ambiguous on the point in his pre-election statements.

So, it looks more and more like a full blown Coalition retreat.

Something I didn't know about rats

I think most people (well, people with rodent interests) have heard that rats can't vomit, but I didn't know this:

...rats do still need a strategy to cope with ingested toxins. Rat food avoidance isn't foolproof. Rats do experience nausea and have evolved an alternative to vomiting: pica, the consumption of non-nutritive substances. When rats feel nauseous they eat things like clay, kaolin (a type of clay), dirt and even hardwood bedding (eating clay and dirt is a type of pica called geophagia). Their consumption isn't random, though: rats offered a mixture of pebbles, soil and clay after being given poison prefer to eat the clay (Mitchell 1976).

Rats engage in pica in response to motion-sickness (Mitchell et al. 1977a, b, Morita et al. 1988b), nausea-inducing drugs (Mitchell et al. 1977c, Clark et al. 1997), radiation (Yamamoto et al. 2002b), and after consuming poisons (Mitchell 1976), or emetic drugs (Takeda et al. 1993). The incidence of pica decreases in response to anti-emetics (Takeda et al. 1993) and anti-motion sickness drugs (Morita et al. 1988a). Pica in rats is therefore analogous to vomiting in other species.

Playing at superhero

TV's Superheroes of Suburbia shows secret lives of citizens who patrol streets | UK news | The Guardian

By day he is a mild-mannered financial adviser from Devon. But at night he dons an outfit that makes him look like a cross between a riot cop and a gladiator to become "the Dark Spartan", roaming the mean streets of Torquay on Friday and Saturday nights trying to keep the good people of the English Riviera safe.

The Dark Spartan – aka 27-year-old Will – is the star of a Channel 4 programme, First Cut: Superheroes of Suburbia. According to the programme, there is a growing band of upstanding citizens such as Will to be found trying to clean up the streets of Britain. As well as the Dark Spartan, there is a former soldier called Ken who operates as "the Shadow" and uses "ninjutsu" techniques and smoke bombs to tackle boy racers in Yeovil, Somerset. In Yorkshire, Keiran, a 17-year-old comic-book obsessive, takes on the persona of "Noir" to target muggers.

Everyone needs a (stupid) hobby, I suppose...

Bubble prints?

BBC News - 'Multiverse' theory suggested by microwave background

It gets worse

'Ugly' Tasmanian town upset over Lonely Planet rating

Apparently Burnie is cited as a very ugly Tasmanian town by Lonely Planet.

I'm sure it has nothing on the old mining town of Zeehan near the West coast. There does not seem to be a decent looking house in the place - it all looks like cheap as chips mining houses thrown up in 50's or 60's.

But it does have a pretty good museum, in a couple of grand old buildings left in the middle of small town decay.

Pictures not worth a 1000 words

Philosophical Wednesday

Downward Causation | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

Sean Carroll at Cosmic Varience delves into science and philosopher again with an interesting post talking about whether higher levels of emergent phenomena can properly be said to have "downward causation" on the lower levels of physical reality.

Because this is used as an "anti-reductionist" argument by some, Carroll, strongly atheist, reacts against it, and tries to explain why.

The comments that follow are just as interesting. It is, of course, a question that has been addressed by many philosophers of the mind.

This is a topic that I often find crossing my mind. I am tempted to add a comment there that anyone who has had a strong reaction to hearing the words "I love you" knows that downward causation happens. But, probably, serious physicists would say it doesn't.

Parasite strikes again?

A Common Parasite May be Linked to Brain Cancers

According to a latest geographic analysis led by the U.S. Geological Survey and French infectious disease research institute MIVEGEC, countries where Toxoplasma gondii is common had higher incidences of adult brain cancers than in those countries where the organism is not common.

Toxoplasma gondii is a single-celled organism found worldwide in at least one-third of the human population, researchers said.

Bad figures

Anorexic at five in Britain

Nearly 100 children aged between five and seven in Britain have been treated for anorexia or bulimia in the past three years, according to figures released on Monday.

The statistics show that 197 children aged between five and nine were treated in hospital in England for eating disorders, fuelling campaigners' fears that young children are being influenced by photographs in celebrity magazines.

The figures from 35 hospitals showed 98 children were aged between five and seven at the time of treatment and 99 aged eight or nine. Almost 400 were between the ages of 10 and 12, with more than 1,500 between 13 and 15 years old.

Hansen as renewables realist

James Hansen may promote the worst predictions of global warming, but when it comes to finding solutions, he appears very much a realist about the limited potential for renewable energy to rapidly replace carbon fuels.

He has a new essay up about this, and it is attracting some attention. Basically, he thinks new generation nuclear is the way to go, but his present analysis of its promise is definitely on the shallow side.

Important overlooked climate change correlations

Reading a certain right wing blog has taught me the following relationships:

I'm hoping for a burqa version

BBC News - India 'Slutwalk' sex harassment protest held in Delhi

Most of the marchers in Delhi were soberly dressed in jeans and T-shirts or traditional shalwar kameez.

That bad

Did Amy Winehouse die from going cold turkey? - By Jeremy Singer-Vine - Slate Magazine

Slate's explainer column says you really can risk death by going cold turkey if you are an alcoholic.

Didn't know that.

Republicans will pretend they didn't notice

July heat in Washington was unprecedented - The Washington Post

Relentless and punishing, July’s heat was unrivaled in 140 years of Washington, D.C., weather record-keeping. The July temperature averaged 84.5 degrees at Reagan National Airport — Washington’s official weather station — more than a degree above July 2010 and July 1993, which previously held the mark for hottest month.