More self indulgence (as inspired by Catallaxy)

Excuse me while I indulge myself...

For a certain writer at Quadrant

Embarrassing

I've just discovered, while googling my name for a work related purpose, that a young man from England has a twitter account in my name.  His tweets indicate he may well run the most boring twitter account in the universe, as it comprises mainly of short complaints:  "it's so cold today, hate this weather"  "when's my next pay rise?"  "I wish I was on holiday again".  To break up the monotony, there is the occasional "great time last night".  But it's nearly completely devoid of information. 

Come on, lad:   a namesake of me has to be more interesting.  And stop smoking.  (He thanked his Mum for a gift of fags.  D'oh.)

Fish to the foreground

Farmed fish overtakes farmed beef for first time - life - 19 June 2013 - New Scientist

It's just - interesting...ok?

Bringing back Zeus

BBC News - The Greeks who worship the ancient gods

I hope they draw the line at temple prostitutes, nude olympics, and pederasts ceremonially chasing boys, though. 

Some Friday weirdness for you

Yowie sighted at Bexhill - witness asks to stay anonymous | Northern Star

An anonymous, but interesting, claim of a recent yowie sighting in Northern New South Wales.  

Local science makes me proud

Catalyst: Dengue Fever - ABC TV Science

I was very impressed with the state of science in Queensland as shown on Catalyst last night.  

The first story was about the promising looking plan to replace dangerous mosquitoes in Cairns with bred ones that will not carry the dangerous Dengue Fever.  

You can watch the video at the link (or see a transcript.)

The second story was about scramjet research based a the University of Queensland.  They've been plugging away at this for a long time, but still seem to be making advances.  

The story is not yet up on the Catalyst website, but I'll link to it when it is.

Tony loves Gina

   

As inspired by Malcolm Farr's story today which should have been titled "How the Coalition plans a complete suck up to Gina Rinehart."

Quick and early success with vaccination

Sexually transmitted HPV declines in US teens

Since a vaccine against HPV was introduced in 2006, 56 percent fewer girls age 14-19 have become infected, said the research announced by the US Centers for Disease Control and published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.

CDC Director Tom Frieden described the findings as a "wake-up call" that the vaccine works and should be more widely used. Currently, about one-third of girls age 13-17 are fully vaccinated.

 I wonder what percentage of 14 to 19 year old girls were formerly infected, though.  Certainly, go a bit older and the figures are big:

The CDC says about 79 million Americans, most in their late teens and early 20s, are infected with HPV, and every year some 14 million people become newly infected.

Hot where it counts

All-Time Heat Records Broken in . . . Alaska?! | Climate Central

It hasn't had attention in the Australian media, as far as I know, but recently Alaska has been having all time record heat, even while England continues with another wet and cool summer (and possibly may have more in the coming years.)

Someone in a comment somewhere on the net said it reminded them of chaos theory, which suggested some systems go through swings from one extreme to another until they settle into a new state.   That did ring a bell with me too.

The criteria as defined by Catallaxy

As far as I can tell, the main criteria by which Sinclair Davidson, Judith Sloan and others who post at Catallaxy for an economist to run Treasury (or the Productivity Commission) is that they have never been identified as expressing belief in, or have worked on, matters relating to environmental causes, and climate change in particular. 

Hence, Davidson says Treasury all started to go wrong when Ken Henry came in back in 2007.  

Of course, one would think that an economist who went out hard on a stagflation warning two years ago might be more circumspect in criticising Treasury for getting their recent years forecasts wrong, but no...

Awesome

More data storage? Here's how to fit 1,000 terabytes on a DVD

In The Conversation today:

 In Nature Communications today, we, along with Richard Evans from CSIRO, show how we developed a new technique to enable the data capacity of a single DVD to increase from 4.7 gigabytes up to one petabyte (1,000 terabytes). This is equivalent of 10.6 years of compressed high-definition video or 50,000 full high-definition movies.

They also point out:

 Some 90% of the world’s data was generated in the past two years.

Their two light beam technique, which reduces the "dot" size when burning a DVD, is said to be:

...cost-effective and portable, as only conventional optical and laser elements are use, and allows for the development of optical data storage with long life and low energy consumption, which could be an ideal platform for a Big Data centre.

I'm not sure if that means it won't be turning up on a home PC, but still, it sounds a remarkable advance.

The Age tries comedy

(As inspired by this story in The Age this morning: Abbott, the thinking person's prime minister.)

No Bond gadgets needed?

Uri Geller psychic spy? The spoon-bender's secret life as a Mossad and CIA agent revealed - Features - Films - The Independent

This sounds very improbable, but interesting:

We may know him for spoon bending antics and for his lengthy friendship with pop star Michael Jackson but showbiz psychic Uri Geller has seemingly had a lengthy second career as a secret agent for Mossad and the CIA, albeit one that was more Austin Powers than James Bond.

Geller was at the Sheffield Doc Fest this week for the premiere of Vikram Jayanti’s The Secret Life Of Uri Geller – Psychic Spy?, a new film that offers compelling evidence of his involvement in the shadowy world of espionage.

“Uri has a controversial reputation. A lot of people think he is a fraud, a lot of people think he is a trickster and makes things up but at the same time he has a huge following and a history of doing things that nobody can explain,” Jayanti says of his Zelig-like subject....

 The doc leaves a question mark in its title but provides so much background evidence that we are left in little doubt that even its most outlandish assertions are rooted in truth. Whether or not Geller had psychic powers, US security forces were certainly prepared to take a very hefty wager on him.

The documentary doesn't just rely on Geller's claims (in fact it says he is guarded in what he says):

Jayanti didn’t rely on Geller’s own cryptic testimony. Instead, he spoke to the high-level officials involved in recruiting and using him. These include scientists from The Stanford Research Institute as well as senior CIA operatives. Among the interviewees with first hand knowledge of Geller’s psychic spying activities are former CIA officer Kit Green, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell (the sixth man to walk on the moon), physicists Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff, and retired US army colonel John Alexander (of The Men Who Stared At Goats fame). A Brit, Nick Pope, once the British Government’s UFO boffin, also puts in an appearance. 

Hmmm.  Given that most of those named are prominent as believers in the paranormal, I wonder how reliable some their testimony might be.

Anyway, sounds well worth watching.