Yet more CS Lewis biography

Mere C. S. Lewis | TLS

There are still biographies being written about CS Lewis, and this review of two of them is not a bad read, but it didn't contain much in the way of information that I hadn't read elsewhere.  Except, perhaps, for this minor anecdote:

In his biography, McGrath is candid about the eccentric and less edifying side of his subject’s life. Lewis was personally shabby and unkempt, and he let his house get into an unhealthily filthy state. He refused to learn to type or drive a car. He smoked and drank heavily: Tolkien was amused to hear a reference to “the ascetic Mr Lewis” on a day when he had seen him down three pints of beer at lunchtime.

Neat

Hunt for alien spacecraft begins, as planet-spotting scientist Geoff Marcy gets funding

So, the Templeton Foundation, much criticised by some prominent atheist scientist figures (well, Sean Carroll comes to mind at least) for promoting "woo", has given some funding for a search to look for signs of alien civilisations (spaceships, Dyson spheres, or lasers).

It's not clear what should be looked for yet, but that's part of the fun:

Marcy hopes that hiding within it will be hints about intelligent life abroad. What if, say, the dimming of a star that Kepler observes is caused by something even more fanciful than the passage of extrasolar planets? Something synthetic, perhaps? Marcy admits that even he's not certain what he's looking for.

"I do know that if I saw a star that winked out, then at some point it winked back on again, then winked out for a long, long time and then blinked on again, that that would be so weird," he says. "Obviously that wouldn't constitute the detection of an advanced civilisation yet, but it would at least alert us that follow-up observations are warranted."

Such an irregular pattern might signal the leisurely and unpredictable passage of massive spacecraft in front of the star. But, perhaps more likely, it might indicate the presence of a Dyson sphere, a mainstay of science fiction first proposed by physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960.

As for the laser search:

The rest of the $200,000 grant is buying Marcy time on the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the largest telescope in the world, to search for - what else? - a galactic laser internet.

While the movie Contact, based on Carl Sagan's book of the same name, popularised the idea of aliens dozens of light-years away picking up an old telecast of the 1936 Berlin Olympics that was unintentionally transmitted into space, our civilisation has become quieter to any outside observers in recent decades. As our civilisation makes the jump from analog to digital, communication is increasingly carried by fibre-optic cables and relatively weak mobile phone repeaters rather than powerful broadcast transmitters. Rather than spilling out messy radio transmissions, Marcy posits that alien civilisations would use something much more precise and efficient than radio waves to stay connected, and lasers fit the bill. At the Keck Observatory, he hopes to spy an errant beam flashing from a distant star system, an observation that would be strikingly obvious on a spectrum.

Research well worth doing, I reckon.

Say something stupid, get endorsed on Catallaxy

Bernard Keane from Crikey made this statement about plain packaging cigarettes:

One of the highest profile public health industry lobbyists, Professor Mike Daube, yesterday claimed “the primary focus for plain packaging was always to reduce smoking among children, but it is a real bonus that it has clearly had an impact on smokers”. That’s rather different to what Daube said when plain packaging was first announced, when he claimed “we know from research that it will have a significant impact on children and adults”. Is Daube readying for when we see that plain packaging hasn’t affected tobacco sales?

Actually, Bernard, it is not "rather different" at all.   You can say that something will have a significant impact on both A & B, while believing that the primary effect will be on A.  To say that the impact on B is "a bonus" is hardly controversial rhetoric.

Anyone who had read anything about the plain packaging argument knows that the effect of getting less children to start smoking was always believed by many to be the main way it would work.  Here's Harry Clarke in 2012:

Well, I think the main target is youth.  Young people, it's claimed, are seduced by the attractive packaging and the brand names that are associated with cigarettes.  I guess for confirmed smokers it won't make so much difference, but certainly for youth, it's well recognised that branding does have an impact on purchasing choices.  We've currently done pretty well in Australia in reducing smoking rates among young people, but this is really trying to clinch the deal and to reduce the initiation of smoking among young people as much as possible.

Anyone with any common sense would also then assume that this effect would take time to show.

But all of that is not good enough for Sinclair Davidson, who thinks evidence should be in by now and that the lack of evidence on the number of smokers means he can already declare the "policy is a dog."  The policy has been fully in effect for about 7 months. 

Talk about taking glib and pathetically poorly informed criticism to new heights.

Guess where...

 

It's been warm up north - like 32 degree warm, and this very pleasant looking beach on a body of fresh water is:    Loch Morlich in Scotland.

Not your typical Scottish image, hey?

$40 a tonne?

Origin Energy chief says low carbon price will encourage future investment in coal-powered plants 

I saw this interview with Grant King on Sunday, talking about how you would actually need a carbon price of about $40 a tonne to make developing new coal fired power stations unattractive.

This sort of figure has been bandied about before, and given the state of the European ETS price, it makes you wonder why economists like John Quiggin seem so relatively relaxed about Australia joining up to that scheme.

I really don't understand. 

But, on the other hand, I still am yet to hear any economist in the land argue that the Coalition direct action plan is an efficient way to do what it claims to want to achieve.  

Big movie failures

‘Turbo’ and ‘R.I.P.D.’ Open to Disappointing Results - NYTimes.com

From the report:

With extremely weak domestic ticket sales over the weekend for “R.I.P.D.” and “Turbo,” Hollywood has now sustained six big-budget duds since May 1, the start of the film industry’s high-stakes summer season. The other failing movies have been “After Earth,” “White House Down,” “Pacific Rim” and “The Lone Ranger.” 

The main thing disappointing about that list is that there are no Marvel superhero movies included.   I'm desperately sick of all the money being sunk into them.

I actually want to see The Lone Ranger - some reviewers have liked it, and I am very fond of the Pirates of the Carribean movies.  Even the third one has grown on me by re-watching it on DVD.

What you have to do is what the whole  series in quick succession - say, over a week.  The entire arc of the story makes much more sense that way, and you actually notice jokes in the last movie (for example) that depend on remembering incidents and characters from the first movie.

On a sailing related note, I also finally caught up with Master and Commander on DVD.  As with Pirates of the Caribbean, I am continually impressed with how utterly realistic modern movie technology can make sailing ship battles and storms appear.   But the movie itself seemed more interested in just being an earnest portrayal of life at sea in the British Navy in 1805, rather than having a really compelling story or characters.  Maybe the books are better, but the movie felt a little hollow at heart.  I don't really see that it was worth 10 Oscar nominations.

Arthur noted

I've only caught the last 20 minutes of Q&A tonight, but I have to say again that Arthur Sinodinos is one of the few on the Coalition side of politics at the moment who appears to be a decent, relatively straight talking politician.  He and Malcolm Turnbull are about the only two who don't set my teeth on edge.

As for the rest:  Abbott needs to chuck it in for being promoted above competency; Julie Bishop is, I am sure, actually a robot; Christopher Pyne can't "handle" the truth (or rather, he can't deliver it);  Joe Hockey looks means and cranky since he lost weight and has to puff himself up with indignation and hyperbole for the cameras regularly; Andrew Robb does not look quite engaged, despite his medication; Scott Morrison is an arrogant motor mouth; Greg Hunt has to sell his principles and learning and endorse a rubbish climate change plan; Sophie Mirabella has a reputation for appalling bitchiness in Parliament; Bronwyn Bishop is still floating around and endorsing anti-science; Eric Abetz has a touch of the "not quite human" like Julie B; George Brandis is (I believe) well hated by many Liberal Party members for being annoying and arrogant.

It's a great line up....

Free will on the brain

Is free will a scientific problem?

The article refers to a book by Peter Tse, which argues that the brain's ability to re-wire itself quickly actually means that free will is real.  From another link:

Tse draws on exciting recent neuroscientific data concerning how informational causation is realized in physical causation at the level of NMDA receptors, synapses, dendrites, neurons, and neuronal circuits. He argues that a particular kind of strong free will and “downward” mental causation are realized in rapid synaptic plasticity. Recent neurophysiological breakthroughs reveal that neurons function as criterial assessors of their inputs, which then change the criteria that will make other neurons fire in the future. Such informational causation cannot change the physical basis of information realized in the present, but it can change the physical basis of information that may be realized in the immediate future. This gets around the standard argument against free will centered on the impossibility of self-causation. Tse explores the ways that mental causation and qualia might be realized in this kind of neuronal and associated information-processing architecture, and considers the psychological and philosophical implications of having such an architecture realized in our brains.

My brain is not sure what to think of this yet.  Rewiring is currently in progress....

Wandering black holes

A Captured Runaway Black Hole in NGC 1277?

Here's the abstract from the above paper at arXiv:

Recent results indicate that the compact lenticular galaxy NGC 1277 in the Perseus Cluster contains a black hole of approximately 10 billion solar masses. This far exceeds the expected mass of the central black hole in a galaxy of the modest dimensions of NGC 1277. We suggest that this giant black hole was ejected from the nearby giant galaxy NGC 1275 and subsequently captured by NGC 1277. The ejection was the result of gravitational radiation recoil when two large black holes merged following the merger of two giant ellipticals that helped to form NGC 1275. The black hole wandered in the cluster core until it was captured in a close encounter with NGC 1277. The migration of black holes in clusters may be a common occurrence. 

You wouldn't want a cluster of black holes passing near your solar system, I assume.

Be appalled...be very appalled

It took me quite a bit of Googling to track down this story which was recently in the Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend magazine "2 of Us" section.   But here it is, an almost comically appalling story of one woman and the professional biker thug she loves. 

It features the opening line:

I was a nurse before I met Caesar. If I hadn't been, I wouldn't have been able to get the bullets out of his back years later.

and goes on to explain how she is still with amazingly unattractive (both morally and physically:  have a look at the photo) outlaw biker she met in 1978.

The best line from "Caesar's" section (where he gets to tell his side of the story):

I sat there one day and was thinking about her and everything she did for me and I thought, "She really is like the ultimate woman." So I started calling her "Woman", and that's what I've done for 34 years. If I say "Donna", she comes in with her head down looking like she's in trouble.

I see that she has written a couple of books about their time in "outlaw culture", and this piece is probably really just a bit of self promotion.  That means I probably shouldn't be mentioning them either - I hate it when the media gives de facto celebrity status to criminals who write a book along the lines of "look at me - look at how bad I've been.  Contribute to my retirement fund by buying this."

Still, this example of the genre really was noteworthy.  Just don't buy their books!

Sepia dog

This was taken by my daughter in the car today, with the tablet camera which I had accidentally left on "sepia"setting.  It turned out surprisingly pleasing:

She's 14 years old now.  Health is not too bad, but she sleeps a lot and doesn't seem to hear us arriving home.

An inappropriate remembrance...

For the one or two people in Australia* who might be vaguely amused:   who can forget the sadly departed Mel Smith and the famous "Gerard the Gorilla"sketch?:

(This started as a mere name pun, but then I realised, on watching the original sketch, that the gorilla actually does talk and behave in a Henderson-esque manner.**)

*  This may well be the first post on the blog in its 8 year history that Phillip Adams would like.

**Watch the always cheery Gerard here from the 1min 50 mark, if you don't believe me.  He is, quite possibly, the least likely man in the known galaxy to ever appear in a gorilla suit.)

Formulaic screenwriting examined

Hollywood and Blake Snyder’s screenwriting book, Save the Cat! - Slate Magazine

I knew of Syd Field's and Robert McKee's promotion of "3 act structure"for movies, but did not know of Snyder's book which sets out a much more detailed formula for movies.  This article argues that his book is being followed by most blockbuster movies these days, which makes for a tiresome sameness.

Tony contemplates the future

Don't worry, Tony.  At least the fan base at Catallaxy will always back you up. 

Ah-hahahhahaha.

Meanwhile, back in the Arctic

The annual drop off is about to head outside the 2 standard deviations range, again.