Weasel watch

Weasels are sometimes very cute.  But not always. 

More to come.

Dream knowledge

Shortly before I woke up, I was having a dream which was set in a sort of fantasy RNA Show (the Ekka, if you're from Brisbane.)  I think it was Dick Smith who was walking around with me.   (Don't ask me why - apart from the fact he was recently on some TV promo for a current affairs program giving away money to people.)

It ended up at a table where Bob Geldorf and, I think, some other famous person, were drinking with Dick Smith and me.  There were nuts on the table being eaten as a snack (I remember walnuts in particular - toasted walnuts are perhaps my favourite nut) and Bob made the comment that he used to lead an unhealthy lifestyle in which the only thing he ate was nuts.  I asked whether he knew that peanuts were not actually a nut.   Then the person sitting next to Geldorf said "that's right, they're a legume."

When I woke up, I couldn't quite recall whether that was right (the bit about being a legume, I mean.)  The Peanut Institute confirms it is.

Some people dream of winning lottery numbers, or solve scientific puzzles.  My subconscious is quite a bit more useless.

The dangerous tub

The Japan Times has an editorial on an unusual topic:

An investigation into one of Japan's favorite pastimes — bathing — has found a startling statistic: 14,000 people a year die during bath time. That's nearly three times more deaths than from car accidents, 4,612 people....

Bathing seems such a comforting and pleasant activity that it is hard to associate it with danger. However, the deaths come from several different problems. Some deaths resulted from drowning when bathers fell asleep. Other causes were heart attacks, subarachnoid hemorrhages or strokes from the sudden shift in temperatures. Dehydration and injuries resulting from slipping were also among the causes.

Researchers at Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine found last year that the danger of heart attacks is nearly 10 times greater in winter than in summer — and much higher than the risk of cardiac arrest during exercise. The rapid blood pressure drop that happens when getting in the bath stresses the heart more on a cold day, which can lead to a number of complications.

Trying out the macro

My wife bought a new little digital, and readers would know I love how digital cameras, even the cheapies, do macro pretty well:

Not bad.  I must try and track down a bug now...

An interesting analysis

We need to talk about energy, not rates - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Alan Kohler is upset that badly needed investment in electricity in Australia is being stalled due to uncertainty, caused in large part by the Tony Abbott "must revoke the carbon tax" policy.

I'm sure Kohler is not alone in this view.   But where are the economists who feel this way?   Are they just going to sit on their hands, or wait until an election is looming and then say that dismantling the governments carbon pricing scheme, and replacing it with Abbott's second rate "direct action" really doesn't make sense?

Anyway, here is Kohler's depressing conclusion:

If they're all thrown out, as promised, then the new minister will have to start the process all over again. By the way, the shadow minister is Ian Macfarlane, who came within a bee's willy of negotiating an emissions trading scheme in 2009 with the then minister, Penny Wong.

Presumably he no longer believes in that crazy stuff.

Anyway, aside from whatever carbon abatement costs are imposed by either political party (they both have the same reduction target of 5 per cent by 2020), electricity prices are already set to double by 2017 because of chronic under-investment in east coast transmission and distribution over previous decades.

This price increase cannot be avoided – it is already locked in. In fact, it will be greater than that if the 20 per cent renewable energy target is to be met because renewable generation is always further away, so that transmission costs more.

The only antidote to the huge, looming increase in the price of electricity, not to mention the possibility of brownouts caused by the lack of investment in base load power, including nuclear, is energy efficiency.

Unless urgent action is taken, the rising price of power will destroy manufacturing and retail businesses far more effectively than the internet and the currency, which has a tendency to go down as well as up.

Japanese tornado

God really seems to have it in for Japan at the moment. 

A compilation video of yesterday's tornado, looking very much like footage we more commonly see from the middle of America, can be see here.

Of course, people interested in climate change will be curious as to how rare this is.  As the Wikipedia knows all, it indicates that tornadoes are indeed pretty rare, but not unknown, in Japan.  Other odd places that have had tornadoes on that list include Moscow in 1904.  I guess that wherever you can get a storm, a tornado may be possible.

Moogerah Dam

Enhanced version at Dodopathy. 

Good movies

First, Addams Family Values. The original Addams Family movie was on TV a couple of weeks ago, and went over well with the kids, so I went looking for the second at the DVD rental place. (Does everyone feel a bit of melancholy like I do for this slowly dying line of business which will probably be gone completely in 5 years?)

Both Addams Family movies are based almost entirely on the funny one-liner, but so many of them are terrific. I think the best from the second movie would have to be when Joan Cusack, playing Uncle Fester's conniving love interest, says "Isn't he a ladykiller", to get the cheery response from Gomez "Acquitted!"

Watching these movies made me realize how much I like the sense of humour of director Barry Sonnenfeld. He did the Men in Black movies too, and has a third one coming out soon. I will be there early unless it has catastrophic reviews: even though the second MIB was not thought of highly by many, and I found it to be better than I remembered when I re-watched it recently.

Second movie from yesterday: Charade. I'm not sure, but I think I had only seen this once, as a teenager on TV. I remembered liking it very much, but only recalled a rooftop fight and the ending. Re-watching it 30 something years later therefore was a relatively fresh experience, and I have to say, the only wonder is why it isn't more often talked about as the classic bit of entertainment it truly is. In my books, it was Audrey Hepburn at her peak: a screen presence who (as we all know) was impossible to dislike in anything. But give her a script full of funny one-liners, and a role that let her do her vulnerable/playfully assertive act with Cary Grant as her love interest: well, what can go wrong? (Don't worry, nothing does.).

For those who don't know, it is like a funnier Hitchcock movie, and set in Paris in the early 1960's.  (JFK's photo is seen on the wall of the US Embassy, and the movie was released just a couple of weeks after his assassination.  I wonder if that unfortunate timing, when I imagine lots of Americans were too shell shocked to be seeking out lightweight entertainment, partly accounts for it not being as well known as it deserves.)  

 I see that Jonathan Demme did a remake which I have never heard of: why does anyone ever think it a good idea to remake movies which worked fantastically well in their first incarnation?

Anyway, a good viewing day was had by all.

Liking hospitals

I've been at hospitals on and off a fair bit in the last few years, but never for anything too dramatic - it's just what happens when you have kids and an elderly mother.  Getting my Mum to one over the last few days is why I haven't been posting much.

It almost feels like this is something that one shouldn't say - but I really like hospitals.   I like them architecturally - the way they grow and expand, usually with walkways joining different wings and buildings.  (Doesn't everyone like elevated walkways?)   I think being an architect working on a hospital re-vamp must be one of the most interesting jobs around.  I like the challenge of finding your way around these complexes. I like the way beds get pushed around and up and down different floors. 

I like buildings with helipads and red flashing lights on the roof.   I like high technology of all types, and x ray and medical imaging technology is some of the fanciest and cleverest stuff you are ever likely to see.

I usually like the staff:  working odd hours, usually with good cheer.  I like how hospitals are much more convenient places than they used to be - the car parks are usually not too expensive; there may be a Starbucks in the foyer, or a sushi place just outside, even in public hospitals.    During the day they'll probably be a volunteer at a desk to help find you something.  

I don't really care for waiting for 5 hours to see a doctor, but hey, it's a free service and I don't feel I can complain too much as long as the person I am with is not in pain.  Besides, waiting there is a bit like a free drama show - trying to overhear what the drug addicted or mentally ill person is complaining about at the admissions counter, or wondering what sort of illness the guy clutching his abdomen might be suffering.  It also gives me the opportunity to understand how boring and regrettably enduring is reality TV, because I will not sit at home to watch 4 couples arguing with each other about their designs and accidents while doing a renovation of a row of old terrace houses. 

I'm not sure how many people feel this way.  The Yahoo Questions page asking "Is it strange that I like hospitals"  has few responses.  Hospital fans need their own support group, perhaps.  I'm here to help.

Something you've never thought about before

YKK zippers: Why so many designers use them. - Slate Magazine

Exactly

What an excellent bit of video which was not shown on the ABC's fairly forgettable climate change documentary last week "I can change your mind about climate."



I think Nick Minchin (the skeptic ex-politician), obviously liked Anna Rose (the young climate change "believer"), so much so that by the end he tried to come up with a compromise, along the lines of saying that as all fossil fuel sources are finite, he could support a move towards renewable energy now.

It's a pity this position doesn't make much sense, as far as doing anything about emissions - especially in Australia, where we have enough coal to burn for hundreds of years.   There is no urgent imperative to implement clean electricity at all out of concern for running out of dirty ways to make it.  (The argument might have a chance of working if it restricted to finding a way to make good electric cars, given oil will presumably start running out sooner than coal.)

As someone wrote about Minchin:

In all, five of Minchin’s seven experts appeared in the documentary, but only three of Rose’s. While this might sound unfair to Rose, I think that Minchin’s experts did more harm to his cause than good.

That said, I was concerned to read Minchin being quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday as saying that the documentary was a “terrific opportunity to convey to an ABC audience that there remains a significant debate”. If Minchin had any insight he would realise that the documentary simply exposes his gullibility.

 Quite true, I think, and all the more galling that the documentary left out the video above.

Sounds like an important paper

From Science:

Fundamental thermodynamics and climate models suggest that dry regions will become drier and wet regions will become wetter in response to warming. Efforts to detect this long-term response in sparse surface observations of rainfall and evaporation remain ambiguous. We show that ocean salinity patterns express an identifiable fingerprint of an intensifying water cycle. Our 50-year observed global surface salinity changes, combined with changes from global climate models, present robust evidence of an intensified global water cycle at a rate of 8 ± 5% per degree of surface warming. This rate is double the response projected by current-generation climate models and suggests that a substantial (16 to 24%) intensification of the global water cycle will occur in a future 2° to 3° warmer world. 

Still busy...

For ANZAC Day

Prisoner of war: my father's story - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Barrie Cassidy tells at length the story of his father's war.  A good read.

A bit busy....