Go Tom

Gee, when I recently complained the lack of promising (US) summer films this years, I had forgotten about the new Tom Cruise science fiction outing Edge of Tomorrow.

An early (sort of) review for it on io9 reckons it's terrific, and it has good reviews on Rottentomatoes too.

Cruise always impresses with how much he throws himself physically into his science fiction/action films.  His Spielberg movies were great, Mission Impossible 1 and 4 were very enjoyable, and I even liked Oblivion quite a bit last year.   So I will be very pleased if this one is also good, if it encourages him to continue to pick intelligent and entertaining science fiction that is not a frickin' superhero/comic book movie.   

No showers - but lots of bacteria

I can't see it ever becoming popular, but it's interesting to read of this woman's account of her month long experiment of just using a spray on skin bacteria in lieu of showering and shampooing.  

She indicates that the worst effect was on her hair, even though I thought it was reliably said that if you stop shampooing and removing oils from your hair, it eventually stops producing much in the way of replacement oil and becomes (more or less) clean looking again.  I didn't think it would take more than a month to achieve that, though.

Some of the men in the company that is investigating this idea have taken things to quite an extreme:

AOBiome does not market its product as an alternative to conventional cleansers, but it notes that some regular users may find themselves less reliant on soaps, moisturizers and deodorants after as little as a month. Jamas, a quiet, serial entrepreneur with a doctorate in biotechnology, incorporated N. eutropha into his hygiene routine years ago; today he uses soap just twice a week. The chairman of the company’s board of directors, Jamie Heywood, lathers up once or twice a month and shampoos just three times a year. The most extreme case is David Whitlock, the M.I.T.-trained chemical engineer who invented AO+. He has not showered for the past 12 years. He occasionally takes a sponge bath to wash away grime but trusts his skin’s bacterial colony to do the rest. I met these men. I got close enough to shake their hands, engage in casual conversation and note that they in no way conveyed a sense of being “unclean” in either the visual or olfactory sense.

Thanks, but no thanks.

At least, I suppose, it indicates that the historical periods where fear of regular bathing was rampant were not as smelly as we might expect.

Aren't there any cranky critics who have just had enough with superhero movies?

Is it just me, or a sign of old age, that I really, really care not a hoot how good an X Men movie is reviewed - I still won't be seeing it.

From what bits of X Men past that I have seen on TV, I have no interest at all its whole, silly scenario.

Superhero/comic book movies have been done to death and the effect on creativity in the industry is much, much more dire than the much maligned "blockbuster" effect of the Spielberg/Lucas era of the late 70's to 1980's.

As spotted on twitter:

Tingle on the Budget

Coalition gets a brutal lesson in policy on the run

Interesting to note a few things from Laura Tingle's article:

Who is responsible for the debacle?

It is interesting that when The Australian Financial Review
was preparing a piece ahead of the budget on how it was put together,
people involved all described it as an Abbott budget, not a Hockey one.
There were lots of impressed references to the PM’s decisiveness in
meetings of the expenditure review committee.

This was despite the fact it was Joe Hockey who did all the footwork on the whole “age of entitlement” argument.

 Good to know that I can blame our not very bright PM, then.

Sympathy misplaced

Graham Richardson  this morning in the Oz:

I should also make it clear that I am appalled that the media in this country should give publicity to stories about a scholarship ­obtained by one of the PM’s daughters. The children of the famous can never win. Their achievements are too often belittled as if they would never get anywhere without the name and the good graces of the powerful mum or dad. I don’t know the young woman in question but I can imagine how she feels at the moment. The PM’s family should be off ­limits. They are not fair game.

A few corrections:

1.  Frances did actually win:  apparently a "scholarship" for which (it would appear - we are all awaiting any statement to the contrary)  she was contacted by the College to come and apply for, and with no other "applicants" competing.

2.  I don't think any of her classmates are actually criticising her achievements.  They're just annoyed that their College didn't give them any opportunity to compete for free money on offer.

3.  The story is about her father - a Prime Minister who has abruptly adopted a policy that will massively increase the cost of University courses, and give government support to the type of college his daughter attended, not declaring that his daughter's college seems to have gone out of its way to save him or her $70,000.   $60,000.

There is even evidence to suggest (see New Matilda - which also challenges in detail Abbott's understanding of the disclosure rules) that the money was thrown at Frances to curry favour with her father.

This is a matter that should be pursued.

PS:  we all know that the children of politicians and the famous will often be offered jobs through their family connections.  Nothing's ever going to stop that.   But there is a difference between being offered a position whereby you earn remuneration, and being actually given a gift, which is what this "scholarship" effectively appears to have been.  Frances was entitled to accept it, although if she is smarter than her father, she should also have realised that if word of this ever got out, it may well annoy the other students.  More importantly, her father should have disclosed it.

PPS:   further to my last point - the New Matilda article up today (saying Frances appears to have "no role" despite being on the Whitehouse payroll) is pretty irrelevant, and kind of petty, and came out after I made my last comment.    As I said, you are always going to have the "well connected" getting cushy jobs; maybe even positions created just for them.   Can't see that anyone can expect that to change...

Bacteria everywhere

Yet another case of bacteria turning up somewhere rather unexpected in the body:

The placenta, long thought to be sterile, is home to a bacterial community similar to the one found in the mouth, researchers report today. The microbes are generally non-pathogenic, but according to the authors of the study, variations in their composition could be at the root of common but poorly understood pregnancy disorders such as preterm birth, which occurs in one out of every ten pregnancies.....

The researchers also compared the placental microbiomes to those found in the vagina, gut, mouth and on the skin of non-pregnant women. They found that the placental microbiome was most similar to that of the mouth. The authors speculate that the microbes travel to the placenta from the mouth via the blood. The results reinforce data suggesting a link between periodontal disease in the mother and the risk of preterm birth, says Aagaard.

The scholarship story in more (anonymous) detail

New Matilda has more detail on the Frances Abbott scholarship story, and (as I expected) it has leaked from a college staff member who wasn't very impressed:

An account of how Frances Abbott came to be a student at Whitehouse, provided to New Matilda by a staff member, casts further doubt on the claims by the Prime Minister that her appointment was based entirely on merit.

The source told New Matilda that Frances Abbott was approached by Whitehouse Chairman of the Board - and friend of the Abbott family - Les Taylor, after Taylor became aware that Frances was looking to complete a degree with a competing design school.

“Les Taylor knew the Abbott family. [Frances] wanted to do something related to creativity and styling. She was going to go to one of our competitors. I think it was Billy Blue [a design school in North Sydney],” the source told NM.

“Leanne got the Chairman of the Board [Taylor] to tell [Frances] she had the offer of a scholarship.”
A few years later, in the run-up to the 2013 federal election, Ms Whitehouse became increasingly excited at the prospect of a Liberal win, the staffer said.

“She said to me something like, ‘Do you know what this could mean to Whitehouse if [Abbott] gets in?’

 The ambiguity in that last sentence could do with some clarifying.   If it means "this College stands to benefit heaps if Tony Abbott wins by virtue of changes to government policy" it is much more important than "this College will have a higher profile if Tony Abbott gets in and her daughter as a graduate."

In any event, if, as looks increasingly likely, this indeed was a special, one off invitation to come to the College for (virtually) free, of course it should have sent off Abbott's political antenna that it would look like a College seeking out political favours.  But it is hard to know how smart Abbott truly is.  Not very, has long been my judgement.

Yoo - hoo, Andrew Bolt, won't you do a post on this?

Update:   the story continues to develop:

Classmates express fury over Tony Abbott’s daughter Frances being awarded $60,000 scholarship to Whitehouse Institute of Design

Interestingly, it now sounds like Leanne Whitehouse personally funds and selects:

“The scholarship that Frances received was a direct scholarship from the founder and owner Leanne Whitehouse. As a private company, Leanne has from time to time awarded it,” Mr Tudor said.

“Originally it was called the MD’s scholarship and subsequently the chairs scholarship. It is a discretionary award made and funded by Leanne Whitehouse.”

The optics of this is so bad.  The "best" that Abbott can hope from this is (assuming that Frances was competing with no one to get her scholarship) is if he can claim that he didn't know she was getting such favoured treatment.   Because if he did - it is obvious that it would look like political favour being sought, and he should have declared it.

And remember - unlike poor old O'Farell - Abbott's government actually did change policy in a way which helped this College (and others.)

UPDATE:  As Junkee says, this shouldn't be about the results Frances got as a student.   (And, I would add, her current employment with Whitehouse.)  It is, however, all about Tony Abbott and the reasons he has not disclosed it (assuming it is the situation that the reporting is indicating - a specific invitation to Frances to apply for a scholarship that she got with no competition from anyone else).   The final paragraphs about his appalling hypocrisy (I hated the way he was always parading with his daughters during election campaign) are spot on:

Tone’s hypocrisy and cynical opportunism does, however, explain the particularly virulent strain of schadenfreude at play. Only this morning, Tone told Karl Stefanovic that “families should be kept out of the front line. That’s the way I’ve always tried to run my political operation – that we play hard but fair. Families should be [left] out of it.”

Given this principled stance, it’s weird how Abbott’s ‘not bad-looking daughters’ keep bobbing at politically expedient moments and for photo-ops. It seems inevitable that this habit would bite him on the arse at some point, and it looks like that point has arrived.

UPDATE 2:  I'm rather intrigued by the media outlets that are (and aren't) running with the story.   It's been the top one on The Guardian's website all day, but Fairfax seemed to quickly let it drop away in prominence.   And then News.com.au, from an article on The Courier Mail website, has been featuring it top of the page since (I think) around lunch time.  The Daily Mail on line is running with it too, but is giving more prominence to the stupid "wink" story.

The ABC is not running it at all, but is still talking about winkgate.

One might wonder whether the ABC is feeling a bit worried about further government attack if it is being seen to "go after" a politicians daughter - but surely this is a very newsworthy story about the PM, and can be run without pillorying the daughter.     

UPDATE 3:  Ha!  Karl Stefanovic smooches up to Tony Abbott when he asks him how Frances Abbott is coping with all the questions being asked about the "scholarship she deserved".  (He repeats that line twice, in fact.)  Abbott confirms she won it on her "academic potential".

Tony, the question is more about whether anyone else got a chance to put their "academic potential"  to the College.  And stop crapping on about how you "leave your family out of it".  Frances couldn't be pried off your side during the last election campaign, you user.

Rupert's excited

I've been curious to see if any words of wisdom would fall out of Rupert Murdoch's twitter account on the budget, or how Tony and Joe were doing.   Yet all I have today is this:  "Excited by X Men!". 

I'd be excited if we had an X Prime Minister.  (Come on, there wasn't much to work with.)

Sounds interesting

The abstract of a paper by Gerard 't Hooft which I haven't read yet, but must come back to:

When investigating theories at the tiniest conceivable scales in nature, "quantum logic" is taking over from "classical logic" in the minds of almost all researchers today. Dissatisfied, the author investigated how one can look at things differently. This report is an overview of older material, but also contains many new observations and calculations. Quantum mechanics is looked upon as a tool, not as a theory. Examples are displayed of models that are classical in essence, but can be analysed by the use of quantum techniques, and we argue that even the Standard Model, together with gravitational interactions, may be viewed as a quantum mechanical approach to analyse a system that could be classical at its core. We then explain how these apparently heretic thoughts can be reconciled with Bell's theorem and the usual objections voiced against the notion of 'super determinism'. Our proposal would eradicate the collapse problem and the measurement problem.

Dispute over scientists creating deadly diseases continues

Scientists Are Creating New, Incurable Diseases in Labs - Olga Khazan - The Atlantic
From the article:

That worries people like Marc Lipsitch and Alison P. Galvani, two epidemiologists who write in a PLoS Medicine editorial today that creating these types of new infectious agents puts human life at risk. They estimate that if 10 American laboratories ran these types of experiments for a decade, there would be a 20 percent chance that a lab worker would become infected with one of these new super-flus and potentially pass it on to others.

“The concern is that you're making something that doesn't exist in nature and combines high virulence for people with the ability to transmit efficiently,” Lipsitch told me.

I can't say that it sounds like a good idea to me.   Scientists don't always show a big enough interest in considering the worst case scenarios of their work, as I used to argue about the safety assessments done for large particle colliders. 

But long enough to send back Lotto numbers?

Physicist suggests some types of wormholes may stay open long enough to send a photon through

A charming bit of research

Wild mice actually enjoy running on exercise wheels | @GrrlScientist | Science | theguardian.com

The real problem: he doesn't wink enough

See, the problem isn't that Abbott winked for unclear purpose while taking a call from a woman with a surprising occupation for her age, it's that he didn't wink when he should have during the election campaign:

"There will be no new taxes"   Wink

"There will be no changes to pensions"  Wink

Etcetera

A friend on the board

Liberal donor personally recommended Tony Abbott's daughter for scholarship | World | The Guardian

It's not exactly a good look, is it?   A private  college which has been around for 25 years and has given out 2 "Chairman scholarships" in that time, and one of them happens to be for the daughter of a supported political friend who looks to be on track to become Prime Minister.

I wonder who the first recipient was?  And was there any other applicant other than Miss/Ms F Abbott in the year she applied?   The absence of answers to these questions give rise to suspicion that the Chairman scholarship applications might be made after personal invitation, and to very few people.  (Perhaps one?)   If this suspicion is wrong - why won't the Institute simply disclose how many applicants were competing for the scholarship that year?   A simple number would breach no confidentiality, surely.

And the reason why this is indeed a matter of public interest is really set out in the very last paragraph of the Fairfax report:

In the federal budget, the government announced that from 2016 it
would for the first time extend direct government funding to private
colleges.

The changes, which also extend support for TAFEs, and diploma
and associate degree courses, will cost $820 million over three years.
They follow a recommendation from a review of university funding by
David Kemp, who was education minister in the Howard government, and Dr
Kemp’s former advisor Andrew Norton.

If the delivery of a $3000 bottle of wine to a new Premier is a matter which should have been disclosed on a public register, then a direct $60,000 benefit received by a major politician's daughter should also have been disclosed unless it was clearly made on a competitive basis from a reasonable field of applicants (including some without obvious political connections.) 

Update:   I was most amused while watching The Drum last night to hear the media editor for The Australian ask whether The Guardian had been sitting on this outrageously unfair story for some time.   "Why would that matter?"  she was asked.  "It would tell us a lot about their agenda" she said.

Yes - a person who works at The Oz complaining about another paper having "an agenda"!   Hilarious.

Update 2:   Curious that Andrew Bolt has not had a post about this, despite his knowing that close Catallaxy buddy Sinclair Davidson (wrongly) thinks it's a case of "Lefties going after Lib family members", which would normally be right up Andrew's alley.   In fact, Catallaxy readers have lost interest in the thread already too.  How convenient.

Andrew Bolt does not like being in open disagreement with anything at Catallaxy.   He also will never call them out for offensive and highly sexist language in it's threads, even though he has now quoted directly a thread comment.

He's a massive hypocrite.

Update 3:  see new post above.