Good for the heart (but there's a catch)

Wine only protects against CVD in people who exercise

What?  You mean I can't just have a glass of wine each instead of getting exercise?  The world is so unfair...

Bad for the heart

Energy drinks cause heart problems

Really, should bars in dance clubs be allowed to serve these in alcoholic cocktails at all?  (I'm assuming they do that still, despite recent warnings about their danger if you have more than a couple in quick succession.)

Yet more need for that "How to Win Friends and Influence People" book

From the Australian's media diary:

Estranged party
IF you don’t like hearing a few home truths don’t invite this paper’s columnist Judith Sloan to your birthday party. South Australian captains of industry and business leaders were “stunned into silence” on Friday as Sloan delivered a speech at the 175th gala celebrations for Business SA. “It was akin to inviting someone to your birthday party to speak, only to have them tell everyone they’re fat and ugly,” Ish Davies, News Corporation’s regional director of South Australia, told Diary.

Guests at an event hosted by Sunrise’s David Koch were told “Australia can’t afford another Tasmania”. But the wake-up call left Davies feeling a bit uneasy. When he collected an award later that evening he used his acceptance speech to put some “clear distance between The Oz and The Advertiser”. He told the audience: “We’re from the same mothership but they’re estranged.” Our hard-hitting columnist left the venue before Davies took to the stage, but informed by Diary she was working for an “estranged” publication, Sloan said: “They just want to put their heads in the sand.”

Update:   Another report on the speech confirms it went over like a lead balloon:

Academic and media columnist Professor Judith Sloan chose one of the state’s most important occasions to deliver the worst keynote speech I’ve ever heard.

Sloan’s speech was the lowlight of an otherwise remarkable tribute to local enterprise as Business SA celebrated the 175th anniversary of the SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry – the oldest such chamber in Australia.

The business community was ready to celebrate – but the applause turned to jeers as Sloan’s long speech failed to acknowledge any positives about the state’s future.

 I wonder - maybe the woeful reception it got was behind this weekend's rumour that she was on a short list to be Treasury Secretary.   (I go with it being a joke; but with this government, anything is possible.)

About data homogenisation

Good point raised about the effect of data homogenisation that the Bureau of Meteorology undertakes to try to get a more accurate long term temperature record:

Our data on extreme temperature trends show that the warming trend across the whole of Australia looks bigger when you don’t homogenise the data than when you do. For example, the adjusted data set (the lower image below) shows a cooling trend over parts of northwest Australia, which isn’t seen in the raw data.

Anyone who has credulously believed Marohasy, Jonova and their publicity agent Grahan Lloyd are fools.

Yet another fail

Plain packs don't drive smokers to buy cheap imports

Gee.  Just how comprehensively wrong can Davidson, Ergas, Sloan and Creighton get?

Mad doctors

After the remarkable story on TV last week about the cocaine addicted neurosurgeon who left prostitutes for dead but was able to continue operating at a private Sydney hospital, there was this story in the weekend magazine of the Sydney Morning Herald about another mad hospital doctor, although this one has been dead for 26 years.

It's a really amazing story of just how mentally disturbed a hospital doctor can (or could?) be and still work.

You've come a long way, baby

So, I was looking  at that Flickr account that got publicity last week for the huge number of historic book image scans you can look up (and then, if interested, go to the scan of the full book) and stumbled across this one:

which came from this 1889 American travelogue book:    "The boy travellers in Australasia : adventures of two youths in a journey to the Sandwich, Marquesas, Society, Samoan and Feejee islands, and through the colonies of New Zealand, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia".  (They really didn't believe in succinct book titles in those days, did they?)

I was curious to read about their impression of Brisbane, and while there is not much of interest to report about on that topic, in the same chapter, they did get onto the matter of race relations.  This section, for example, makes white men sound rather too delicate for Queensland:

But when we get to the quality of aborigines, who, it is acknowledged, often work on sheep and cattle stations, we get this assessment:

Well, I'm glad we have in modern Australia a more sympathetic assessment of the effect of  sudden exposure to the West had on aboriginal Australia.  Here, for example, is someone at Catallaxy yesterday talking about the PM's somewhat insensitively expressed statement that arrival of the First Fleet was the defining moment for Australia: 

Yes, we've come a long way, baby.    [For those too young to pick up on it:  ironic reference to the Virginia Slims faux feminist advertisements of the 60's and 70's.]


Update:  Oh look:  this time Henry Ergas, someone who actually posts at Catallaxy, talks about aborigines and salaries too:

Rather, the rise in imprisonment rates reflects the changes the 60s brought: the equal wage decision in 1965, which accelerated the collapse in indigenous employment in regional areas; the dismantling of laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol to indigenous Australians; and the explosive increase in welfare payments.

 Now, he doesn't actually say that he thinks the equal pay decision was wrong, but given that everyone who posts there hates minimum wages, I wonder if he gives it the tick of approval....  

A weird review outcome

Success. The Renewable Energy Target's greatest failing

So, everyone (including Dick Warburton) seems to agree now that the original claim of Tony Abbott (that the RET is killing everyone with its added cost to electricity) was wrong.

No no, the real problem is that it is reducing CO2 (and at the same time driving down wholesale prices), but at a higher cost than what something else would cost - with the only "something else" that the government will allow being "direct action", which has no specifics yet, and nearly everyone can't see achieving the goal at the low cost the government thinks.

The review therefore looks a bit of an embarrassment, but once again, I expect, we will see Greg Hunt selling his soul and making directly opposite claims to what he did a mere year ago.  (Or I could be wrong, but looking at his track record so far, I doubt it.)

I do not recall ever having a government so full of political, unprincipled opportunism. 

Anyway, Peter Martin's explanation of the review seems pretty spot on to me:

It's killing the coal-fired power generation industry. The panel doesn't put it that crudely. It refers instead to a "transfer of wealth among participants in the electricity market". If by 2020
retailers are required to buy 41,000 gigawatt hours from new pollution-free suppliers, the old polluting suppliers are going to sell 41,000 gigawatt hours less.

It would have hurt in any event, but a time when electricity use is sliding (thanks largely to the carbon tax) it means what was to have been 20 per cent is on track to become 28 per cent.

The abolition of the carbon tax gave coal-fired power generators a windfall. Kneecapping the Renewable Energy Target will give  them a second helping.

Taking business away from coal-fired generators was never an unintended consequence of the Renewable Energy Target as the report seems to suggest, it was a design feature. It has helped cut pollution.

Update:   John Quiggin notes this:

I can certainly see some ways in which the RET could be improved, but I won’t canvass them here so as not to commit myself in advance. I’ll observe however, that the Abbott government itself has removed the strongest argument against the RET, namely, that it duplicates the effect of a carbon price (there were valid counterarguments, which I’ve discussed elsewhere, but it was still an important issue)

And yet, as was reported last week, there was a push from within the government to leave open the option of its complete removal.   That certainly indicates you've got complete ideologues behind the scenes who do not want to see CO2 reduced at any cost...

Silly Americans, again

Americans Clearly Don't Understand How Deadly HPV Is

I've posted about this before, but here's another detailed story about the pathetically low US rate of immunisation against HPV.

I didn't know this point (about its effectiveness):

He proceeds to debunk several common misconceptions about the HPV vaccine's effectiveness (it is virtually 100% effective at preventing the most common cancer-causing HPV infections, for at least 30 years), safety (the vaccine has been shown to cause no serious side effects), and propensity to promote promiscuity (it doesn't).  

My son had his first shots for it at school earlier this year (along with some other vaccine), and I don't think he had any idea of (or care about in the slightest) the details of the disease he was getting it for.  Sorry, but it's absurd that Americans are squeamish about it. 

Making a photo with photons that weren't there

Entangled photons make a picture from a paradox 

What a brilliant experiment, based on the entanglement of photons.

I feel sure there must be some science fiction use this technique could be put to....

The marijuana headline that will probably confuse

Marijuana compound could be used to treat psychosis in young people

I wouldn't be surprised if the headline alone, if noted by yoof interested in marijuana, made them think that smoking cannabis might actually help mental illness.

As the body of the article makes clear, this is definitely not the case.  Interestingly, the "good" compound seems to hardly be in the street cannabis at all now:

She said there was a small, but growing number of studies suggesting
CBD relieved psychosis, anxiety and insomnia, and that her team was
trialling it in about 10 people withdrawing from cannabis use to see if
it helped them through the process.

But Professor Copeland said people should not try to source
CBD in street-based cannabis because tests on seized portions of the
drug in NSW showed it contained virtually no CBD.

"It has high levels of THC, around 15 per cent now, but
almost no CBD ... so it's definitely not the same thing as smoking
cannabis," she said.  

I also note the other claim in the article relates to the relatively high number of people who may face increased risk of mental issues due to THC:

The director of Orygen Youth Health Research Centre said while
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in cannabis was widely thought to be
dangerous and increase the risk of psychosis in about 10 per cent to 20
per cent of people, another component - cannabidiol (CBD) - appeared to
relieve psychosis, depression and anxiety. 

So, if you were going to legalise marijuana, I wonder if it could be done only on the basis that the strains sold have to be bred to have a high amount of the apparently protective compound in it?

Still, as I have said before, if that product is more expensive, the black market for the normal stuff will likely continue to be strong anyway.

Palmer-ing about China

It must be a blue moon - I'm linking to an Andrew Bolt post with approval.

It's about Clive Palmer's boyhood (very young boyhood) adventures in China.

I too trust nothing that Clive claims.

Yes, you're magnificent, Sam

As a person who's really disliked Sam de Brito's writing for many years (search the blog if you don't believe me), I am amused to see this satire of him at Crikey, which is no doubt inspired by this recent column.

The truth is, I don't actually bother looking him up on Fairfax any more, so I hadn't read the tale of his fantastically orgasmic bedmates.  The puzzle remains as to why he is engaged by Fairfax at all...

Can't be too much of a ratbag for Catallaxy (and let's look at renewables again)

Well, my question earlier this week as to whether someone booted out of the IPA for being too offensive to Muslims could still post at Catallaxy has been answered in the affirmative, with Alan Moran still posting there today (about renewable energy.)

Well done, Sinclair Davidson!  Previously, extreme views of Islam were restricted to those visitors in threads; now we know they're held by (at least one) who posts there too.

Speaking of renewable energy, Moran points with approval to a Leyonjhelm piece in the Australian today, which (as usual) is big on claims but short on evidence.

The Bald One apparently accepts uncritically a Deloittes report from earlier in the year that figured the RET would "cost the economy" $29 billion.

But as this article noted, this is based on some very dubious assumptions about the ongoing cost of installing renewables, when we know that they have been becoming cheaper.   And besides, this way of modelling and adding up a cumulative amount over years of "costs to economy" exaggerates the effect for political purposes.   And even more crucially, the Deloittes report is open about not taking into account any environment benefits of renewables at all.

This last point is, of course, at the heart of nearly all criticism of the RET:  those fighting it do not really believe there is an environmental benefit to it at all, because they don't believe in climate change.

Update:   here's Leyonjhelm as apparently quoted in The Australian today:

“I have seen so much levy money being poorly spent on ridiculous fantasyland things such as climate change and sustainability; ..."

I thought he used to take a more "well I'm just being open minded" line on climate change, saying things like:

Nobody disputes the fact that atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing, although there is debate about what effect this is having and whether it justifies government action. 

 So it's good to see that he has outed himself as a clear denialist, then.  

Interesting science and technology

1.   Here's a handy potential plot device if you are writing a spy or crime story:

The cold boot attack is possible because of a little-known property of the random access memories used in computers to store and read data quickly. Random access memory is volatile meaning that it has to be constantly rewritten over periods measured in milliseconds. This property means that anything stored in random access memory is temporary–when the machine switched off and the memory loses power, the date is soon lost.

At least that’s what everyone thought. In 2008, the Princeton group showed that data stored in the random access memory turns out to be preserved over a period of many seconds after it loses power. What is more, cooling the memory can extend this period to many minutes and possibly hours. (One way to cool random access memory is to spray it with an upside down can of liquid air, which releases cold liquid rather than gas.)

During this short period after power is lost, any information in the random access memory is there for the taking. And this is exactly how the cold boot attack works.

The idea is to cut the power to the device and then immediately reboot it to a USB flash drive so that the operating system does not immediately overwrite the contents of the random access memory. Next, search the random access memory for sensitive material, download it and be gone.

Speaking of USB flash drives, using one of the them with a "portable" version of a browser would have to be one of the safest ways a teenager could browse the web with no risk of browsing history being detected by parents.   Maybe even safer to boot a simple version of Linux, I guess?   I wonder how commonly this is known amongst teenagers.   (Mine doesn't read this, and working on the assumption that children don't care to read their parent's writings, it will likely be years before he does.)

2.    An interesting laser experiment that may, or may not, indicate that we are all holograms has started working.    (Actually, I think physicist Bee is skeptical that it is really relevant to the holographic idea, but she thinks it worth doing anyway.)

3.    Feynman's famous book version of his lectures is now fully available on line.