Monday, January 19, 2015
Poor Rupert
Rather unbelievable that Rupert Murdoch should tweet complaining about the tax he pays in New York, isn't it? I take it he means 55% - and the outpouring of sympathy in tweets following is very amusing to behold.
Oh no it's Alan Jones
I don't normally listen to 4BC, but this morning it happened to be on in the car, just in time for me to hear its new morning host (Alan Jones on relay from Sydney - groan), but it was interesting to hear him telling the world that no one can believe a word the lying liar Campbell Newman says. (Jones actually went through the campaign launch speech and mocked all of his promises.)
It's all to do with Jones being against farm land being lost to miners.
I didn't listen long enough to get to the point of understanding who Jones thinks Queenslanders should vote for, though....
It's all to do with Jones being against farm land being lost to miners.
I didn't listen long enough to get to the point of understanding who Jones thinks Queenslanders should vote for, though....
The problem of Tony
I missed the story yesterday that a leak shows that top ranking Ministers are dead keen to let the public know that they did not agree with the Abbott "captain's call" to get into the Medicare rebate.
Unrest within government ranks about the PM's competency must be running a lot higher than journalists seem to be letting on.
Wouldn't it be hilarious if the Coalition "does a Rudd" with Tone? (Although, of course, I assume they would say it couldn't be done the same way, and they would just insist that he resign or the party faces certain defeat, and for all his faults, Tony doesn't have the personality of Rudd and would - I expect - accept such a rebellion.)
Unrest within government ranks about the PM's competency must be running a lot higher than journalists seem to be letting on.
Wouldn't it be hilarious if the Coalition "does a Rudd" with Tone? (Although, of course, I assume they would say it couldn't be done the same way, and they would just insist that he resign or the party faces certain defeat, and for all his faults, Tony doesn't have the personality of Rudd and would - I expect - accept such a rebellion.)
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Atonement simplified (and other Old Testament stuff)
I've been slowly reading a book written in 1963 by a Swedish Biblical scholar, Helmer Ringgren called Israelite Religion. (It was at a second hand book market at Kelvin Grove, and I bought it because I thought it might fill in some lack of knowledge about Jewish temple practices.) Helmer only died in 2012, I see, at the ripe old age of 94.
It is quite a good read, actually, and although only half way through, there are a few curious points I consider "blogworthy":
* tent sanctuaries, such as that originally described for the Ark of the Covenant, are clearly known to have been used by pre-Islamic Arabs, and by modern Bedouins, Seems little reason to doubt, then, that Jews had one. In fact, I see now that there is a book called The Kregal Pictorial Guide to the Tabernacle which goes into much detail about these. Interesting. I just didn't realise that they were likely many of these wandering the deserts of the ancient Middle East.
* there is the curious story of Jephthah in the book of Judges which is a little like the story of Abraham being prepared to sacrifice his son, except in this case the daughter does actually get it. I don't think I had heard of this before, although it is probably a favourite of the "New Atheists", as it is clearly not, shall we say, Sunday School friendly. (It certainly didn't pay for kids in that part of the world to rush out of the house to great their Dad after a hard day on the battlefield.)
The Wikipedia article about it notes the various ways its meaning has been guessed, although Ringgren himself seems to think it may be an echo of human sacrifice undertaken by the Canaanites. He thinks, however, that there are other parts of the Old Testament that more clearly indicate some Israelites at some times may have "borrowed" other Middle Eastern ideas of the sacrifice of children.
Update: Wikipedia has a quite detailed entry about the controversy over child sacrifice to Moloch
* As far as the matter of sacrifice and atonement in the Temple is concerned, Ringgren makes brief mention of a Babylonian atonement ceremony which involved putting dough on a person and washing it off. Seems a lot simpler than killing a bull, goat or pigeon and sprinking its blood on the altar. (I wonder if the size of the sin had to be reflected in the size of the animal?)
The chapter about sacrifice and its meaning is one of the most interesting in the book, but I haven't finished it yet.
Update: the book has also reminded me about the "showbread" or "Bread of the Presence" which was left in the Temple. I only had the vaguest recollection of this, but once again, there's a decent enough summary of this practice in Wikipedia.
As you may guess from this post, the Catholic Church has not, in my lifetime, shown much interest in teaching people about the Jewish precedents for Christian practices. Catholics to tend to only know about a fairly narrow range of the OT through the first readings at Sunday Mass. I guess the Catholic Church has more or less been motivated to distance itself from Judaism over most of history, and I presume that's the explanation...
It is quite a good read, actually, and although only half way through, there are a few curious points I consider "blogworthy":
* tent sanctuaries, such as that originally described for the Ark of the Covenant, are clearly known to have been used by pre-Islamic Arabs, and by modern Bedouins, Seems little reason to doubt, then, that Jews had one. In fact, I see now that there is a book called The Kregal Pictorial Guide to the Tabernacle which goes into much detail about these. Interesting. I just didn't realise that they were likely many of these wandering the deserts of the ancient Middle East.
* there is the curious story of Jephthah in the book of Judges which is a little like the story of Abraham being prepared to sacrifice his son, except in this case the daughter does actually get it. I don't think I had heard of this before, although it is probably a favourite of the "New Atheists", as it is clearly not, shall we say, Sunday School friendly. (It certainly didn't pay for kids in that part of the world to rush out of the house to great their Dad after a hard day on the battlefield.)
The Wikipedia article about it notes the various ways its meaning has been guessed, although Ringgren himself seems to think it may be an echo of human sacrifice undertaken by the Canaanites. He thinks, however, that there are other parts of the Old Testament that more clearly indicate some Israelites at some times may have "borrowed" other Middle Eastern ideas of the sacrifice of children.
Update: Wikipedia has a quite detailed entry about the controversy over child sacrifice to Moloch
* As far as the matter of sacrifice and atonement in the Temple is concerned, Ringgren makes brief mention of a Babylonian atonement ceremony which involved putting dough on a person and washing it off. Seems a lot simpler than killing a bull, goat or pigeon and sprinking its blood on the altar. (I wonder if the size of the sin had to be reflected in the size of the animal?)
The chapter about sacrifice and its meaning is one of the most interesting in the book, but I haven't finished it yet.
Update: the book has also reminded me about the "showbread" or "Bread of the Presence" which was left in the Temple. I only had the vaguest recollection of this, but once again, there's a decent enough summary of this practice in Wikipedia.
As you may guess from this post, the Catholic Church has not, in my lifetime, shown much interest in teaching people about the Jewish precedents for Christian practices. Catholics to tend to only know about a fairly narrow range of the OT through the first readings at Sunday Mass. I guess the Catholic Church has more or less been motivated to distance itself from Judaism over most of history, and I presume that's the explanation...
A First World Problem, if ever there was one...
Our TVs at home are all a good number of years old now - in fact we still use in one room a plasma screen that must be pushing 8 or 9 years, and is a very "standard" definition screen that still somehow gives quite satisfactory enough viewing with DVDs. The other big screen TV is LCD, but I think a fairly low end one. It does night time scenes from DVDs particularly poorly.
At Christmas we were watching Guardians of the Galaxy on DVD on my sister's new-ish LCD TV, and while I was sitting there thinking how clear and crisp the image was, my wife pointed out that it was actually too clear - it was like watching very high quality video, not a cinema movie. Once it was pointed out to me, it did become a little distracting.
I noticed that this was also the case with all the HD TVs at the department store this afternoon too - they were all were showing a silly Avengers movie, and they all made it looked rather like video.
But I see on Googling the topic that this is a common issue people have when they first get their shiny new HD TVs.
An article in Wired from last August explains:
I see that this was discussed in the SMH in mid 2013, but I didn't pay much attention to an article describing a problem I hadn't yet seen.
Anyway, now that I realise it's an issue, I'll know how to deal with it when we get a new TV. We're kind of hoping that happens soon, as the LCD TV did an odd flicker out the other day, but revived itself. It would be good to be able to watch movies with night scenes again...
At Christmas we were watching Guardians of the Galaxy on DVD on my sister's new-ish LCD TV, and while I was sitting there thinking how clear and crisp the image was, my wife pointed out that it was actually too clear - it was like watching very high quality video, not a cinema movie. Once it was pointed out to me, it did become a little distracting.
I noticed that this was also the case with all the HD TVs at the department store this afternoon too - they were all were showing a silly Avengers movie, and they all made it looked rather like video.
But I see on Googling the topic that this is a common issue people have when they first get their shiny new HD TVs.
An article in Wired from last August explains:
This annoying little phenomenon is commonly referred to as the “soap opera effect,” and it’s a byproduct of your TV’s motion-enhancing features. Thankfully, the effect can be turned off, and that’s probably a good idea when you’re watching movies. While these smoothing features can make a few things look better—scrolling tickers, sports, and HDTV test discs, for example—our eyes and brains expect something very different when we’re watching movies. A slower frame rate is one of them.It then goes into a rather technical description of what's going on, and how to try to make sure your TV isn't making some sublime cinematography look like a high end Days of Our Lives.
I see that this was discussed in the SMH in mid 2013, but I didn't pay much attention to an article describing a problem I hadn't yet seen.
Anyway, now that I realise it's an issue, I'll know how to deal with it when we get a new TV. We're kind of hoping that happens soon, as the LCD TV did an odd flicker out the other day, but revived itself. It would be good to be able to watch movies with night scenes again...
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Local and global heat
I've been meaning to comment here that it's been a hot and uncomfortable summer in South East Queensland. When the temperature hasn't been high (it will likely reach 38 degrees in the Western parts of Brisbane today), it's been very humid*, but with little relief from storms. (Oh yeah, but when they have come, they have caused damage pushing close to $1 billion.)
So with a hot summer, it will make the message that global warming is real more readily accepted by to many in Australia.
Amusingly enough, I see that when the Wall Street Journal runs a "straight" story reporting on the NOAA, NASA and JAMA findings that last year did set a global record (just), it does not go down well with its readership. (Have a look at the comments.)
Of course, the paper will probably run six follow up pieces by the likes of Roy Spencer, John Christy, Pat Michaels or Nigel Lawson all offering comfort to their deluded and gullible right wing readership that the paper hasn't abandoned them.
Anyhow, according to the stupid (or, more accurately, the ideologically motivated to disbelieve science) this is what "AGW - Ha! What a crock!" looks like:
And this is what it looks according to the Japanese (using a different baseline):
And let's not forget - what does Richard Muller's Berkley Earth temperature independently calculated record say:
(Actually, they say that 2014 was a record, but by such a tiny margin it's hard to be sure it really did beat 2010 or 2005. Seems they are very clear 1998 is not the king, though.)
We all know what the climate change "do-nothings" will say - look at the satellite records - even though they attempt to measure, via the most indirect and complicated means available, the temperature of the atmosphere above the earth rather than surface temperatures. The two major satellite records have been increasingly diverging, and were shown to be clearly wrong for a protracted period in the past, but deniers will cling to them anyway, rather than believe thermometers on the ground.
That all said, the temperature rise is still running on the low end of model projections (gee, who would have thought that modelling and measuring heat distribution across an entire planet would be complicated...), but stepping back and looking at the big picture (literally, in the case of graphs), people have to be very determined to convince themselves there is not a big problem....
* This weekend's high humidity (and temperatures - 38 near my house again, today) - noted here.
So with a hot summer, it will make the message that global warming is real more readily accepted by to many in Australia.
Amusingly enough, I see that when the Wall Street Journal runs a "straight" story reporting on the NOAA, NASA and JAMA findings that last year did set a global record (just), it does not go down well with its readership. (Have a look at the comments.)
Of course, the paper will probably run six follow up pieces by the likes of Roy Spencer, John Christy, Pat Michaels or Nigel Lawson all offering comfort to their deluded and gullible right wing readership that the paper hasn't abandoned them.
Anyhow, according to the stupid (or, more accurately, the ideologically motivated to disbelieve science) this is what "AGW - Ha! What a crock!" looks like:
And this is what it looks according to the Japanese (using a different baseline):
And let's not forget - what does Richard Muller's Berkley Earth temperature independently calculated record say:
(Actually, they say that 2014 was a record, but by such a tiny margin it's hard to be sure it really did beat 2010 or 2005. Seems they are very clear 1998 is not the king, though.)
We all know what the climate change "do-nothings" will say - look at the satellite records - even though they attempt to measure, via the most indirect and complicated means available, the temperature of the atmosphere above the earth rather than surface temperatures. The two major satellite records have been increasingly diverging, and were shown to be clearly wrong for a protracted period in the past, but deniers will cling to them anyway, rather than believe thermometers on the ground.
That all said, the temperature rise is still running on the low end of model projections (gee, who would have thought that modelling and measuring heat distribution across an entire planet would be complicated...), but stepping back and looking at the big picture (literally, in the case of graphs), people have to be very determined to convince themselves there is not a big problem....
* This weekend's high humidity (and temperatures - 38 near my house again, today) - noted here.
Friday, January 16, 2015
The secret life of vegans
I didn't go looking for this story, honest. (I was in fact reading about The Box Trolls' Oscar nomination, and the Laika studio is based in Oregon - see.)
Anyway, this is one of more improbable headlines I've seen for a while:
Two Portland strippers sue vegan strip club Casa Diablo for back wages, unlawful deductions, battery
And the opening sentence:
Anyway, this is one of more improbable headlines I've seen for a while:
Two Portland strippers sue vegan strip club Casa Diablo for back wages, unlawful deductions, battery
And the opening sentence:
Two strippers accuse Portland's Casa Diablo, which bills itself the "World's First Vegan Strip Club" of not paying them wages and fining them for such artistic transgressions as failing to disrobe fast enough.I would never have guessed that a vegan strip joint would have an audience, but it seems to have been operating for a few years at least.
Bee on being simulated
Backreaction: Do we live in a computer simulation?
Good post by the best active physics blogger that I know...
Update: I'm sure these are not novel thoughts, but I guess the upside of being in a computer simulation which is running right now is that on death, it may make re-loading me immediately into another simulation a.k.a "the afterlife" a relatively straightforward process. And, I guess, letting a person review their past life either as part of the dying process, or even at a more leisurely pace from the other simulation, should be easily accommodated too, providing there have been good backups made for "viewing."
I don't really see that there should be much difficulty in allowing ghost like visits from one simulation to another, too. Perhaps either the person/thing running the simulation could allow for it, upon request, or there could be viruses that allow for cross simulation incursions.
Of course, the downside is that if the simulation controller is a super advanced teenage gamer, he/she/it may find relocating people into randomly chosen varieties of afterlife a bit of a laugh. "Put Hitler and all the other bad dudes into into what everyone else thinks is Heaven, and see how they react? Haw, haw, haw."
Or does something like Game Theory dictate that if you are running simulations, you do not mistreat your underlings for fear of being punished yourself in the simulation you might be running in?
Good post by the best active physics blogger that I know...
Update: I'm sure these are not novel thoughts, but I guess the upside of being in a computer simulation which is running right now is that on death, it may make re-loading me immediately into another simulation a.k.a "the afterlife" a relatively straightforward process. And, I guess, letting a person review their past life either as part of the dying process, or even at a more leisurely pace from the other simulation, should be easily accommodated too, providing there have been good backups made for "viewing."
I don't really see that there should be much difficulty in allowing ghost like visits from one simulation to another, too. Perhaps either the person/thing running the simulation could allow for it, upon request, or there could be viruses that allow for cross simulation incursions.
Of course, the downside is that if the simulation controller is a super advanced teenage gamer, he/she/it may find relocating people into randomly chosen varieties of afterlife a bit of a laugh. "Put Hitler and all the other bad dudes into into what everyone else thinks is Heaven, and see how they react? Haw, haw, haw."
Or does something like Game Theory dictate that if you are running simulations, you do not mistreat your underlings for fear of being punished yourself in the simulation you might be running in?
Thursday, January 15, 2015
One month - shortest policy lifetime we've seen outside of an election?
So the government has given up on the bulk billing attack after all. It must have been 9th (or 8th?) December that it was announced by Abbott as a
Isn't he supposed to be on holiday at the moment? Can't be a very enjoyable one, if all this reverse-coursing is happening while he's trying to fit in some surfing.
What a shambolic government, and leader...
Update: one of the few commentators around who had been backing the government move was Terry Barnes, who was Abbott's policy adviser when he was Health Minister. Barnes has been slagging off the AMA on twitter for attacking this, but I note that he got sidelined earlier this month into mentioning climate change, and he tweeted:
It's another case of disbelief in AGW being the most reliable sign there is of unreliability generally in someone's political and policy judgement. Abbott should avoid them like the plague, but he's not the sharpest at knowing who to listen to, to put it mildly...
"an intelligent and sophisticated response" from government to the "quite reasonable observations" of the backbench and the community"and he was still defending it, what, yesterday?
Isn't he supposed to be on holiday at the moment? Can't be a very enjoyable one, if all this reverse-coursing is happening while he's trying to fit in some surfing.
What a shambolic government, and leader...
Update: one of the few commentators around who had been backing the government move was Terry Barnes, who was Abbott's policy adviser when he was Health Minister. Barnes has been slagging off the AMA on twitter for attacking this, but I note that he got sidelined earlier this month into mentioning climate change, and he tweeted:
It's another case of disbelief in AGW being the most reliable sign there is of unreliability generally in someone's political and policy judgement. Abbott should avoid them like the plague, but he's not the sharpest at knowing who to listen to, to put it mildly...
More battery news
The Train of the Future Might Be Battery-Powered - CityLab
I'm surprised I had not heard of this before:
I'm surprised I had not heard of this before:
This week, the U.K. has been quietly making transit history: it’s just brought the country’s only battery-powered passenger train into service. The train, fitted with lithium phosphate and hot sodium nickel salt batteries, is now undergoing a trial run shuttling passengers on a 12-mile stretch to the northeast of London. You can see a video of it below (spoiler: it looks like a regular train). If it works as it should, it will be able to make its journey without any connection to electrification.
Sick videos on the rise
I was somewhat amused to see at JB Hi Fi the other day a display stand of new DVDs (one containing the kid's movie The Box Trolls, actually, which I was supposed to review but never got around to it) with a hand written notice on the surround that was something like this "Must watch - sick videos!"
I blame Taylor Swift. She's like, totally sick.
I blame Taylor Swift. She's like, totally sick.
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