Not sure if this is a good idea...

QA: Michael Nesmith on His Surprising Return to the Monkees | Music News | Rolling Stone

One thing I do know:  having Michael Nesmith looking like a grandpa makes me feel rather old.

Complicated evolution

BBC News - Many human 'prototypes' coexisted in Africa

The story of the evolution of humans seems to always be getting more complicated.  For whatever reason, though, I just don't find it all that interesting.  

In defence of renewable targets

Here's a defence of government enforced renewable energy targets even when you have carbon pricing.

Sounds relatively convincing to me.

One other energy fact that I have heard a couple of time this week in the discussion about Australian electricity cost is that demand for electricity is falling quite significantly.   Climate Spectator has run some articles about this, but I hadn't been paying attention. 

Gender mix up kids

What’s So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress? - NYTimes.com

This magazine length article looks at the issue of kids, particularly boys, who from a young age are attracted to feminine dress and interests.   Not a problem in my household, but you can see how it must be a difficult issue for parents to know how to react to.

A look at the Mormons

Adam Gopnik: Mormonism’s History and Meanings : The New Yorker

Gopnik has a good article here about the history of Mormonism.  I don't think it contains many surprises, but I just note these paragraphs about some of the religion's more curious ideas:

 Smith held (especially in the sermons he preached toward the end of his life) that God and angels and men were all members of the same species. “God that sits enthroned is a man like one of you” and “God Himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man” were two of his most emphatic aphorisms on the subject. (People who were “exalted,” in Smith’s language, were men moving toward godhood, as God himself had once been a man who achieved it.) Although in many other respects, as Fluhman and Bowman point out, Mormonism was orthodox in its outlook—Jesus is the sole Messiah, and his history as told in the Gospels is taken to be true, if incomplete—the doctrine of God-as-Man divided Smith’s cult from the others, and scared the pants off even charismatic Protestantism: the Protestants were willing to accept that we are made in his image, but not that we are made of the same flesh.

This doctrine led in turn to various theological niceties, which seem to have risen and receded in the faith’s theology over the years: one is that the birth of Jesus had to have been the consequence of a “natural action”—i.e., that God the Father knew Mary in a carnal way, in order to produce the Messiah. (This doctrine is currently in disfavor, but it had a long life.) Another is that God, being an exalted man, must have a wife, or several wives, as men do; she is known as the Heavenly Mother, and is a being distinct from Mary. (Smith’s belief in exaltation evolved into the belief that other planets were inhabited by men even more exalted than we are; Smith taught that the truly exalted will get not just entry into Heaven but a planet of their own to run. This is now taken, or taught, metaphorically, the way conventional Christians often think of Hell, but it was part of the story.)

Libet re-considered, again

Brain might not stand in the way of free will - life - 06 August 2012 - New Scientist

An interesting report here on a new experiment revisiting the matter of the brain's "readiness potential" and whether it really means free will is an illusion.

Lovely planet

Found via Bad Astronomy, have a look at this pretty picture of Earth from a new weather satellite.  There doesn't seem to be all much green in Africa, does there?

Site meter mystery

Site Meter has been acting crazy for a week or more;  all due to a server move apparently.   Now it doesn't seem to be working at all, and I can't tell where visitors are coming from.   (Well, not from my longstanding favourite visit counter, anyway.   Google Stats works, but it presents too much information, almost.)

Last week, some Spiegel Online blog mentioned my mocking of James Cameron.  A couple of weeks ago, a Finnish magazine blog mentioned my Olympics orgy post.  I need to know whether my new found popularity in European language websites is going to continue.  I am still also waiting for the Revolver map counter thingee to show when I have had a visit from Iceland and Madagascar.   But obviously, I am gradually (very gradually) taking over the world, so it will happen one day.

What a record

Found via Planet 3.0, this Media Matters post about the pattern that the Wall Street Journal always seems to have followed on environmental issues is very revealing.

New blogs noted

The kerfuffle over Watts and Muller last week has led me to find two Australian climate skeptic watching blogs - Watching the Deniers is back and looks nicer than it did before.   Then there is also a newcomer uknowispeaksense, which looks pretty promising.   On the international side, it's about time I added Peter Sinclair's Climate Denial Crock of the Week.

An American blog about various things apart from climate change gets a look in too.

Real Climate finally talks about the Watts/Muller war too, but in a way that doesn't add much.

Anyway, must get around to adding the new ones to the roll...

Watts down with that - Part the Second

I really think Anthony Watts might be starting to crack up.  This post from a couple of days ago, begins with:

I’ve been sitting on this little gem for a year now, and it is finally time to point it out since nobody seems to have caught it.

It's about the BEST temperature analysis.  Watts complains that, following a 1 to 5 scale of how well weather stations are sited, the enemy Muller's BEST analysis has put the mid range class 3 in with the high quality classes 1 to 2.  And this is just wrong, so wrong, according to Watts.  He's been waiting to see if they would correct this for a year.

But the nutty thing is - he then goes on to point out that the BEST papers acknowledgement they have done it, and explain that they think it is the right thing to do.  In fact, as the temperature trend was lowest in class 3 (for whatever reason), adding it to the worst two categories (4 and 5) would make them seem not as bad as they would otherwise be.  (Remembering that the Wattsonian theory is that poor siting of stations leads to a warming bias in the temperature record.)  

So what the hell is Watts complaining about?  

And yet, being the Watts worshipping automatons that they are, quite a few comments to the thread are along the line: "ho, ho, ho, you really caught them out this time, Tony."  (Thankfully, there are some comments saying - are you really sure this is significant, Tony?)

Really, I don't know what he's going to come out next.   I wouldn't be surprised if it was something to do with how the density of his moustache is significantly better than Richard Muller's.

A big, new, thing discovered

The headline in the LA Times is: Oh, come on! It's a salamander...sort of, but the first line gives you an idea of what to expect from the photo:

Biologists studying a drained river in Brazil have discovered a new species of amphibian that looks disconcertingly like a male organ.

Researchers have called the eyeless creature, known formally as Atretochoana eiselti, a "floppy snake," but it is not a reptile. Rather, it is an amphibian more closely related to salamanders and frogs.

It is a disconcerting looking creature, and it's surprising that new things like this can still be discovered these days.

Talking to Michael

The dark knight rises: Perhaps Michael Palin isn’t the nicest chap in Britain after all… - Profiles - People - The Independent

Don't be put off by the title:  there are no revelations of a "dark side" to Mr Palin.  It's a very long and quite interesting interview with him.

Fasting for life

BBC News - The power of intermittent fasting

This article, about a BBC show that looks at whether fasting is a good way to extend life in humans, talks in particular about Alternative Day fasting.  You can also do it for just two days a week:

I decided I couldn't manage ADF, it was just too impractical. Instead I did an easier version, the so-called 5:2 diet. As the name implies you eat normally 5 days a week, then two days a week you eat 500 calories if you are a woman, or 600 calories, if you are a man.

There are no firm rules because so far there have been few proper human trials. I found that I could get through my fast days best if I had a light breakfast (scrambled eggs, thin slice of ham, lots of black tea, adding up to about 300 calories), lots of water and herbal tea during the day, then a light dinner (grilled fish with lots of vegetables) at night.

On my feed days I ate what I normally do and felt no need to gorge. 

I stuck to this diet for 5 weeks, during which time I lost nearly a stone and my blood markers, like IGF-1, glucose and cholesterol, improved. If I can sustain that, it will greatly reduce my risk of contracting age-related diseases like cancer and diabetes.

Current medical opinion is that the benefits of fasting are unproven and until there are more human studies it's better to eat at least 2000 calories a day. If you really want to fast then you should do it in a proper clinic or under medical supervision, because there are many people, such as pregnant women or diabetics on medication, for whom it could be dangerous.

I was closely monitored throughout and found the 5:2 surprisingly easy. I will almost certainly continue doing it, albeit less often. Fasting, like eating, is best done in moderation.

It does sound relatively do-able,  I guess.

Whether it's good for you still seems up in the air, though.

Recommended TV

There's a new series of Horrible Histories being shown on ABC3, and I just watched this Darwin song, done as a style parody of David Bowie, and "ch-ch-changes" in particular.   Very clever.



And hey, I see it's not just me who finds this show good viewing.  Here's the Guardian TV blog earlier this year:

 CBBC's Horrible Histories is a wonderfully curious thing: wildly praised, yet woefully undersold as really funny … for a kids' show. But Horrible Histories isn't just the best show on children's television – it's one of the smartest comedies on TV.

That's a bold claim, admittedly. But with the fourth series – broadcasting every afternoon this week – it's time to stop patting Horrible Histories on the head for not being rubbish, and accept that it's a genuinely brilliant comedy in its own right. There are few British comedies that can touch it for ideas, writing and performance