Gun nuts fighting gun nuts

Assault-rifle-toting Texans get NRA to back down on 'weird' claims - CSMonitor.com

By way of further background to this example of severe American weirdness, try this Mother Jones article. 

Who knew that a lot of Texans thought the Taliban looked cool?

Einstein summarised

I enjoyed this article about Einstein and his fame.  I've never read a biography of him; perhaps it's time I did.

I didn't know that he really did make serious money from his fame, although he did lose some of it through his first marriage break up too.  Some extracts:

In college, Einstein had fallen in love, against his family’s wishes, with a fellow physics student named Mileva Marić. They had two sons (Hans, a future engineer, and Eduard, who died in an asylum) and packed plenty of Sturm und Drang into just a few years. It didn’t help that, whenever a domestic storm kicked up, Einstein buried himself in his equations and ignored the problem.

Einstein eventually divorced Marić, and married Elsa, his cousin and a mother of two girls, in 1919. And although his domestic life quieted down, the price was not cheap. For one thing, Einstein now had two families to support. Furthermore, in a desperate gambit to rid himself of Marić in 1918, he’d agreed to give her—for he expected to win it soon—the cash bonus that accompanied the Nobel Prize. (The sum turned out to be nearly fifty times his annual salary, with which Marić bought three houses.) To compound the problem, Marić and their sons moved to expensive Switzerland while Einstein remained in Germany, where inflation was laying waste to the economy: In 1923 alone, the price of bread rose from 700 marks per loaf to one billion marks. Fame allowed Einstein to hoist himself out of this financial hole. He requested fees as high as $15,000, almost $200,000 today, for a talk. Some institutions balked; others happily paid what they could for the honor of a visit.

 Also of interest - I don't recall the name of Leo Szilard, who apparently actually came up with the core idea for an atomic bomb:

Despite his pacifism, he also supported U.S. involvement in World War II. He donated $11.5 million from the sale of a handwritten copy of his 1905 paper on special relativity to the war effort. His celebrity also changed the course of the war. A less famous colleague of Einstein’s realized in the late 1930s that uranium could be harnessed into an atomic weapon. Having no pull himself, Leó Szilárd turned to Einstein to alert President Franklin Roosevelt, who soon initiated the Manhattan Project. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein regretted even his peripheral involvement in the project. For once, he refused to talk to reporters.

 The magazine this article appears in looks generally pretty interesting -  Humanities - The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

Peta causing more problems

Hard not to snigger:

The deputy leader of the Nationals was asked about the power Peta Credlin wields while being interviewed by Channel Ten’s The Project on Tuesday evening.

“Peta has a strong role,” he said. “You have to be to be the chief of staff to the prime minister. You wouldn't expect to be a wallflower and she’s not.”

He said Credlin answered the “fallacy” that there are no strong women involved in running the country. “Peta Credlin … certainly ticks all those boxes. And I’m on good information from her husband that she is definitely a woman.”

He did apologise abruptly when (as far as I could tell) no one laughed.

Creighton again

Readers will have noticed my dislike of Oz journalist Adam Creighton for his spin-riffic economics analysis.  Here's a tweet from him today, confirming my disdain:

Tolstoy's Meaning of Life

I quite liked this lengthy summary of Tolstoy's (late) mid life Meaning of Life spiritual crisis.   In a general sense, I pretty much agree with his take on things, although my dislike of physical exercise makes me somewhat less inclined to be impressed with the spirituality of peasants labouring in the fields.

Tolstoy missed out on the modern quantum and cosmological mysteries of science which provide another way that people can legitimately get ideas about how the finite and infinite may interact.   (Although, I would have to admit, that biological science with its attack on free will works in the opposite direction - towards encouraging dismay about whether humans are even in control of themselves.)   

All change sides

It's a really weird political situation at the moment, isn't it?

As we can see in matters of science (climate change) and economics (rabid anti-Keynesianism and massive over simplification about debt and taxes), large slabs of the Right have gone all "ideology over evidence", which was something that the Left formerly specialised in.

We can clearly add to this list "self pitying victimhood" as shown by Andrew "I lost a court case and I risk losing another one if I don't do better research - you need to change the law" Bolt; Gerard "why won't the ABC put on a conservative host?*" Henderson; and Chris "people might really think I would have sex with a dog!" Kenny. 

In fact, all of the Coalition moaning about the ABC is victim mentality.

Sure, sure:  when it comes to sexuality, the Left has victim claiming status for that still firmly aligned with them.

But to a very large extent, the Right wants to feel sorry for itself:  probably because (as they have just realised) they are not all that intrinsically popular.  People do actually want centrism. ** It must be the ABC's fault, then, for not hosting a conservative show.

To be fair, as much as I hate doing so with him, Tony Abbott looked positively embarrassed about Andrew Bolt getting upset on his behalf last Sunday about Abbott's wife getting stupid criticism from Tim Mathieson.  (Yes, I did watch Bolt for the first ten minutes because Abbott was there from the opening.)  So I don't actually think that Abbott is so much into this victimhood thing - but it is obvious that a huge slab of his strongest supporters are.

Update:  I forgot to add to this "victimhood" business on the Right the way they demand that every single Left sympathetic voice in the land join in condemnation of sexism, even when it is made by someone on the Right (like Clive Palmer).   Not enough that the Leader makes a quick and unqualified attack on Palmer - every single person who ever agreed that Gillard faced sexist attacks is now supposed to find a media outlet to say "Oh, and it is also wrong against Credlin".   Give me a break, and get a life.


* I don't know if Henderson reads Catallaxy, but it is widely acknowledged, even in that collection of Boltheads, that the one prominent Right wing show on TV is often pretty awful due to his poor broadcast media skills.   Henderson himself is clearly not capable of the job, and in fact I have no knowledge of any likely conservative figure who has an obviously appealing media presence.  This fact is resolutely ignored by those calling for a "conservative" show.

** thanks to monty for indicating this was an interesting post.

Another malaria post

Wow.  Ed Darrell, who blogs at Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, seems to really be the man to take the fight to the Right on the matter of the denigration of Rachel Carson and the deeply entrenched meme that DDT was banned everywhere, undeservedly, and that this caused the death of millions from malaria.

The malaria cure

Here's a rather fascinating story from medical history:  for a couple of decades in the first half of the 20th century, deliberately infecting poor sufferers of neurosyphilis with malaria was actually a reputable and (it seems) pretty widespread treatment.  The fever seemed to help quite a few recover enough to leave asylums, although that article notes that there was little in the way of detailed follow up. 

And the problem of neurosyphilis was a major one:

Many patients were involuntarily institutionalized in epidemic numbers: in the early 20th century, neurosyphilis was responsible for 5 to 10% of all psychiatric admissions.

I don't think I have ever heard of this treatment before. 

Good grief

Self-driving cars: A solution for Saudi women? | GulfNews.com

From the article:

Will women in Saudi Arabia be able to take advantage of Google’s new self-driving cars to move around?

The questions has popped up in the minds of those who believe that women who cannot legally have a driving licence can soon use the cars without breaking traffic rules or social taboos, since they will be riding and not driving....

A Saudi scholar recently argued that allowing women to drive meant changing the whole social structure.

“If we allow women to drive, then we will have to drop the concept that women need a mahram (an adult male relative) with them as they travel,” Habeeb Al Mutairi said.

“And if a woman is allowed to travel freely, then she will need a hotel to stay in. In such a case, we have to abolish the decision that women cannot stay alone in hotels. This, in turn, means that we should allow women to take up positions in hotels and accommodation facilities in
order to serve [other] women.

"We will also need to set up special women’s section in all traffic police stations and in all workshops to help women drivers who have flat tyres or mechanical problems with their cars,” he said.

Oddballs

I noted recently the enthusiasm amongst commenters at Catallaxy for "hard man" Scott Morrison.  Real Prime Minister material, quite of few of them reckon.

Turns out that polling indicates that they are in a "elite" (actually, the opposite of "elite", whatever word that is) of 1% of the public who agree with them:

Soldier on, brave fantasists of Catallaxy. 

Not sure it's happening here

David Appell puts up a map of tropical cyclones from a study which says there is a long term poleward shift in where their maximum intensity happens.

I'm not sure that this is happening around my part of Australia, though.  I have been saying for years (and friends of my era agree) that it seemed not uncommon in my childhood for small cyclones to drift down towards Brisbane and some would reach the stretch of coast between the Sunshine Coast and Bundaberg.   That seems to have stopped as of about the 1980's.  Still, I guess that is a different thing from where the maximum intensity occurs.   Some BOM person needs to explain to me what has been going on around Queensland since I was a child.

OK, perhaps they already have:

Trends in tropical cyclone activity in the Australian region (south of equator; 105-160°E) show that the total number of cyclones has decreased in recent decades. However, the number of stronger cyclones (minimum central pressure less than 970 hPa) has not declined. 

This overall decrease may partly be due to an improved discrimination between tropical cyclones and sub-cyclone intensity tropical lows. Tropical cyclone numbers in the Australian region are influenced by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomenon and the decrease in total cyclone numbers may be associated with an increased frequency of El Niño events. A number of long-term trends and oscillations have been observed in other parts of the world, extending over many decades. It is difficult to sort these natural trends from those that may result from global warming.

Potential changes in tropical cyclone occurrence and intensity are discussed in detail in the 2007 report, Climate Change in Australia Technical Report - Chapter 5: Regional climate change projections (8.9MB) See: Chapter 5.9.1 Severe weather: Tropical cyclones. There have been three recent studies producing projections for tropical cyclone changes in the Australian region. Two suggest that there will be no significant change in tropical cyclone numbers off the east coast of Australia to the middle of the 21st century. The third study, based on the CSIRO simulations, shows a significant decrease in tropical cyclone numbers for the Australian region especially off the coastline of Western Australia. The simulations also show more long-lived eastern Australian tropical cyclones although one study showed a decrease in long-lived cyclones off the Western Australian coast.
Each of the above studies finds a marked increase in the severe Category 3-5 storms. Some also reported a poleward extension of tropical cyclone tracks.

Projected changes in tropical cyclone characteristics are inherently tied to changes in large-scale teleconnection patterns such as ENSO, changes in sea surface temperature and changes in deep convection. As global climate models improve, their simulation of tropical cyclones is expected to improve, thus providing greater certainty in projections of tropical cyclone changes in a warmer world.

Yet more bacteria found where they weren't expected

Gee, it seems like every week there's a story about bacteria being found in parts of the body where they weren't expected.  (It was the placenta last week.)

This week - it's the healthy male urogenital tract:

Much like the vaginal microbiome differs among women and changes over time, the penis is home to a variety of bacteria that vary with a man’s age, sexual activities, and whether he is circumcised, among other things. And it’s not just the skin that envelops the male sexual organ that’s inhabited by microbes: researchers continue to identify bacteria that dwell within the urogenital tract, a site once considered sterile in the absence of infection.

David Nelson, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Indiana University in Bloomington, was investigating Chlamydia infections when he and his colleagues found evidence to suggest that the sexually transmitted pathogens in the urogenital tract were obtaining metabolites from other microbes. “There was a signature in the chlamydial genome that suggested this organism might be interacting with other microorganisms,” said Nelson. “That’s what initially piqued our interest. And when we went in and started to look, we found that there were a lot more [microbes] than we would have anticipated being there.”

The researchers found that some men pass urine containing a variety of lactobacilli and streptococci species, whereas others have more anaerobes, like Prevotella and Fusobacterium. In terms of overall composition, “we see a lot of parallels to the gut,” said Nelson, noting that there doesn’t seem to be a standout formula for a “healthy” urogenital tract. Commensal microbes within the urethra could make a man more susceptible to infection by supporting colonization by pathogens like Chlamydia, whereas bacteria that consume the environment’s nutrients could help prevent it. “We just don’t know at this point,” said Nelson.

I would presume that men who partake of a particular activity without condoms might generally have a larger number of bacteria to be found there, for obvious reasons. 

Amusing article about cranky academic

Slavoj Zizek calls students stupid and boring. Stop worshiping this man!

What Clive Palmer should have said

Yes, Clive Palmer was in error in claiming Tony Abbott wanted the PPL for Peta Credlin, because she is already covered by a generous public service leave plan (not to mention that it was extremely tacky because Credlin had gone public about her attempts to use IVF - unsuccessfully - to have a baby.)

No, what he should have said is that Abbott is wanting to look after his daughters.  (Or at least those of them, like Frances, who are in the private sector.) 

I've always thought that this was the most likely explanation for Abbott's weird adoption of this pet policy. 

Confirmation that ocean acidification is a scary experiment without precedent

Modern ocean acidification is outpacing ancient upheaval, study suggests

 I'm sure we've seen this conclusion about the comparative rate of ocean acidification from previous studies, but still:

Some 56 million years ago, a massive pulse of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere sent global temperatures soaring. In the oceans, carbonate sediments dissolved, some
organisms went extinct and others evolved.

Scientists have long suspected that ocean acidification played a part in the crisis—similar to today, as manmade CO2 combines with seawater to change its chemistry. Now, for the first time, scientists have quantified the extent of surface acidification from those ancient days, and the news is not good: the oceans are on track to acidify at least as much as they did then, only at a much faster rate.

In a study published in the latest issue of Paleoceanography, the scientists estimate that surface ocean acidity increased by about 100 percent in a few thousand years or more, and stayed that way for the next 70,000 years. In this radically changed environment, some creatures died out while others adapted and evolved. The study is the first to use the chemical composition of fossils to reconstruct surface ocean acidity at the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a period of intense warming on land and throughout the oceans due to high CO2.

"This could be the closest geological analog to modern ocean acidification," said study coauthor Bärbel Hönisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "As massive as it was, it still happened about 10 times more slowly than what we are doing today."

 And the oceans do not fix themselves quickly:

The study confirms that the acidified conditions lasted for 70,000 years or more,
consistent with previous model-based estimates.

"It didn't bounce back right away," said Timothy Bralower, a researcher at Penn State who was not involved in the study. "It took tens of thousands of years to recover."