The problems with immortality

Do You Really Want to Live Forever? - Reason.com

It's rare that I recommend something from Reason.com (as far as I can tell, everything is always a government's fault), but this lengthy review of a book talking about the technical and philosophical problems with imagining how immortality would work is very good.   

Crazy Mel

Heaven and Mel review: Joe Eszterhas's e-book makes the anti-Semitic star sound worse than ever.

Slate looks at a whole book Joe Eszterhas has written about the breakdown of his working relationship with Gibson, which was recently detailed when he (Joe) released a recording of Mel going berserk about why he hadn't finished a movie script yet.  

Apart from some further details about how dangerous Gibson sounds when he is upset (Eszterhas says he has a "pornographic snuff film" that plays inside his head), here's one novel theory that Mel's Dad apparently believes:

“Did you know that Cardinal Ottaviani sat on Pope John Paul I’s face and suffocated him so they could get the Pope they wanted, Pope John Paul II?” the elder Gibson asks Ezsterhas during a visit to a church built with the profits from The Passion.

I wonder if Mel believes that too...

Have my doubts

Science fiction review: Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312. - Slate Magazine

Go to the link for a gushing review of a new book by a pretty well known science fiction writer.  Personally, I didn't find the first novel in his Mars trilogy to be all that great, although there are parts of it which have stuck in my memory.  I didn't go on to try the next two books.

The review gives enough plot details to make me think the new book suffers at least one of the problems I had with the Mars novel - he seems wildly optimist about the speed of technological change in a way that just feels rather improbable.   It always seems safer to me for science fiction writers to not be so specific about their future chronology, and leave the reader guessing a bit as to how far in the future we are talking.

The Great Soda Crisis of 2012

Here's The Colbert Reports funny take on the Bloomberg restriction on the sale of huge size sweetened soda:

Great criminal trials of Dubai

gulfnews : Businessman and sister-in-law in court over alleged public indecency

A businessman and his sister-in-law were in court for allegedly exchanging kisses in public while the man taught the woman how to use chopsticks in a restaurant.

They were later acquitted.

Prosecutors had charged the 35-year-old Egyptian businessman and the 39-year-old Emirati woman of committing a lewd act in public when they allegedly kissed on the cheeks and lips in a Chinese restaurant.

An Emirati, who was dining with his family at the same restaurant, reported to police that he had spotted the businessman moving from one side of the bench to the other. He sat beside the woman and kissed her while teaching her how to use chopsticks.

The suspects, 35-year-old M.M. and 39-year-old L.H., denied the accusations before the Dubai Misdemeanour Court. They said the charges were ridiculous and impossibile because they are related.
“It is impossible for me to kiss my sister-in-law and especially in front of my wife [L.H.’s sister]. I am innocent,” said M.M.

L.H. also said she could not have kissed her brother-in-law in public and in front of her sister.
The claimant testified that the incident happened when he was dining along with his wife and mother-in-law. “He started teaching her how to eat with chopsticks. He hugged her and kissed her neck. Then he kissed her cheeks and to my surprise he kissed her lips in front of all the diners. My wife informed the restaurant management, who said he could not do anything. My wife then called the police. They were seated just four metres from us and nothing was blocking our vision. They hugged and kissed in front of everyone,” said the claimant.

 All very odd.

I'm on a roll with bad news this week...

Climate change: Arctic passes 400 parts per million milestone - CSMonitor.com

More depressing news

Global economic crisis: China, India, Brazil are slowing down, plunging world into possible recession. - Slate Magazine

ABC viewing recommendations

Two TV stories that I recently found well worth watching on the ABC:

*  Foreign Correspondent did the story of the real Great Escape.   (That is, the true story that was behind the famous movie.)

*  Catalyst last a long science story on the earthquake devastation in Christchurch.  

As usual, top quality product from these shows.

Big solar thermal

In Pictures: The World’s Largest Solar Thermal Power Plant - Technology Review

Have a look here for some interesting photos showing the construction of a large solar thermal power plant near Las Vegas.

They do require an enormous, flat area.   Australia  does have quite a lot of those, but not always near where most people live.

Safe for the moment

Volcanic super-eruptions may have surprisingly short fuses

While the article's heading may sound like a bit of a worry, the story indicates that there might be at hundreds of years warning of a truly massive super-eruption:

These eruptions are known as super-eruptions because they are more than 100 times the size of ordinary volcanic eruptions like Mount St. Helens. They spew out tremendous flows of super-heated gas, ash and rock capable of blanketing entire continents and inject enough particulate into the stratosphere to throw the global climate into decade-long volcanic winters. In fact, there is evidence that one super-eruption, which took place in Indonesia 74,000 years ago, may have come remarkably close to wiping out the entire human species.

Geologists generally believe that a super-eruption is produced by a giant pool of magma that forms a couple of miles below the surface and then simmers for 100,000 to 200,000 years before erupting. But a new study suggests that once they form, these giant magma bodies may only exist for a few thousand years, perhaps only a few hundred years, before erupting.

But the better news:

As far as geologists can tell, no such giant crystal-poor magma body currently exists that is capable of producing a super-eruption. The research team believes this may be because these magma bodies exist for a relatively short time rather than persisting for hundreds of thousands of years as previously thought.

Depressed about coal

EPA Coal Rule: Why the fuel won’t be replaced anytime soon. - Slate Magazine

A really quite depressing read about the international increase in the use of coal:

Coal use is soaring because demand for electricity is soaring. Between 1990 and 2010, global electricity production increased by about 450 terawatt-hours per year. That’s the equivalent of adding one Brazil (which used 485 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2010) to the electricity sector every year. And the International Energy Agency expects global electricity use to continue growing by about one Brazil per year through 2035.

Perhaps the best example of growing electricity demand can be seen in Vietnam. Between 2001 and 2010, electricity use and coal use in the country increased by 227 percent and 175 percent, respectively. And more coal is on the way. Last September, Virginia-based AES Corp. finalized a deal to build a $1.5 billion, 1,200-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Vietnam’s Quang Ninh province.

Or consider China, which uses more than three times as much coal as the United States. About 70,000 megawatts of new coal-fired electric generation capacity will likely come online in China over the next two years. And the world’s most populous country has plans to build another 270,000 megawatts of coal-fired capacity. Over the next two decades, India will likely add another 72,000 megawatts of coal-fired capacity. For comparison, the total of all U.S. coal-fired electric capacity is about 317,000 megawatts, and that capacity is declining as generators switch to natural gas, which, in some regions of the country, is now cheaper than coal.

But we needn’t look only at developing countries. Germany may lead the world in solar-photovoltaic capacity with some 25,000 megawatts of installed panels, but RWE, the German utility, will soon begin operating the world’s largest lignite-burning power plant, a new 2,100-megawatt facility located south of Dusseldorf. Over the next two years or so, Germany will add 8,400 megawatts of new coal-fired generation capacity. And another 5,500 megawatts of coal-fired capacity is awaiting approval.

In fact, thanks to the slumping European economy, electricity producers in the region are already ramping up their use of coal. On May 8, Reuters reported that German utilities are likely to produce about 12 percent more electricity from coal this year than they did in 2011 thanks to abundance of cheap permits issued under the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme.

Colebatch on bonds and debt

Here's the key passage from Tim Colebatch's column today, again attacking the idea that Australia is in trouble because of too much debt:

Since 1998, our bond yields have usually ranged between 5 and 6 per cent. But in recent days, the Office of Financial Management issued a new 10-year bond at a yield of just 3.15 per cent, a five-year bond at 2.65 per cent, and a three-year bond at just 2.52 per cent. Yields have fallen by half in a year.

Why? Because global investors have flocked in to buy Australian government debt. Their concern is not that we have too much debt, but too little. IMF figures show that of the 34 advanced economies, Australia has the third smallest ratio of gross debt to GDP: including state and municipal debt, it's just 24 per cent of GDP. By comparison, Germany has a debt-to-GDP ratio of 79 per cent, the United States 110 per cent, and Japan 241 per cent.

The Coalition and its allies are like a broken record warning that Australia is swimming in debt and putting itself in danger. That is simply untrue. Ask yourself: if Labor's borrowing has put us in danger, why is Australia one of only eight countries rated AAA by all three global ratings agencies? Sure, ratings agencies make mistakes, as we all do, but are they that incompetent?

He really is Labor's best friend - he has a dispassionate way of writing that I always find pretty convincing.

Weekend reviews

*  Men in Black 3:   it's pretty good, but to be honest does not contain all that many laughs.  It really is more of an science fiction action adventure movie (where the science is unimportant, like on Dr Who), and as such it works well.  I did not see the twist coming near the end that many reviewers noted is surprisingly moving.  (It is, and a great idea for the plot.  In fact, what is also surprising is that the movie was reported to have started filming without a finished script.  You would never guess it from the final product.) 

*  The McDonald's Sydney Stack burger:  features pineapple, tomato, bacon and (I think) beetroot.   I liked it a lot.  Another damned "limited time only" burger though, d'oh.

*  Picked up a flea market for $1 a dvd set of the complete second season of Scrubs (now 10 years old!).   Was very amused listening to some of the audio commentary (they don't do it for every episode, but still).  The creator Bill Lawrence and actors involved in the show come across as very down to earth types, and as they were doing commentary for shows they had made a couple of years previously, it was funny listening to them laughing at some stuff they had half forgotten.  And talking about trivia like their previous haircuts, etc.

Apparently, Neil Flynn (as Janitor) after the first season just improvised as huge number of his lines. 

It remains an enormously likeable show.

More on Australia's changing climate

Droughts & flooding rains: what is due to climate change?

This is the second article by Karl Braganza from the BOM on the topic.  It's good and clear. 

Influencing quantum

Entangled Minds: Consciousness and the double-slit interference pattern

Go to the link and have a look at the very detailed and interesting paper by Dean Radin and others about experiments in which subjects were trying to influence twin slit experiment interference patterns.

I wonder when some journalist is going to notice this.