Lettuce eat

This Robot-Run Indoor Farm Can Grow 10 Million Heads Of Lettuce A Year | Co.Exist | ideas impact

That seems an awful lot of lettuce...

Rainfall will change - just not sure where

As I noted in a recent post, some climate scientists are warning that the current Californian drought may well be small compared to some ones that may be coming under climate change - lasting up to 35 years, perhaps.

Now it seems to me that for a State with a high population and a very big agricultural sector (which has presently been getting by on diminishing groundwater), a 35 year drought would be a very big problem indeed.  How are economists and their models on the effects on GDP dealing with that scenario?

More generally, a paper just out in Nature Climate Change explains that changes to tropical rainfall are shown under all modelling of the future climate under AGW, but the problem is working out where. As the abstract explains:

Many tropical countries are exceptionally vulnerable to changes in rainfall patterns, with floods or droughts often severely affecting human life and health, food and water supplies, ecosystems and infrastructure¹. There is widespread disagreement among climate model projections of how and where rainfall will change over tropical land at the regional scales relevant to impacts^{2, 3, 4}, with different models predicting the position of current tropical wet and dry regions to shift in different ways^{5, 6}. Here we show that despite uncertainty in the location of future rainfall shifts, climate models consistently project that large rainfall changes will occur for a considerable proportion of tropical land over the twenty-first century. The area of semi-arid land affected by large changes under a higher emissions scenario is likely to be greater than during even the most extreme regional wet or dry periods of the twentieth century, such as the Sahel drought of the late 1960s to 1990s. Substantial changes are projected to occur by mid-century—earlier than previously expected^{2, 7}—and to intensify in line with global temperature rise. Therefore, current climate projections contain quantitative, decision-relevant information on future regional rainfall changes, particularly with regard to climate change mitigation policy.

Again, I wonder how economic forecasts over the coming decades can take this uncertainty into account.

He has a point...

How school debating has ruined Australian politics

The unexpected

New The X-Files makes a dazzling debut as Cannes hosts world premiere

Given the show had become boring and not worth watching in the last couple of seasons, I wasn't expecting the re-boot to be good.  I hope this review is right, though.

When funny actors age

Jerry Lewis is 89 and frail, but still making public appearances:

I don't think he has many more left in him, though, by the sounds of the report.

I'm not sure what Chevy Chase does in his spare time now, but he has not physically aged well, at all:

He's an inspiration for dieters, though.

Doris Day, on the other hand, looks pretty much how I think she should (she's 91):

Last time I saw Billy Crystal on TV, I thought that his head was starting to look strange.  But in this photo, I think the beard makes him look more normal:

He's 67, and just had a TV series cancelled.

David Letterman, 68, on the other hand, looks positively ancient when he grows a beard:

Kirstie Alley turned up on The Middle this last season (still a funny sitcom, shamefully overlooked by the Australian market) and she is a good looking 64 (as long as she keeps the weight off):

Mind you, she would surely have had the best medical assistance Hollywood could buy.
 
The best preserved comedian of the modern era, however, has to be Bette White, who at 93 is still working and appears to have stopped aging 30 years ago:

Is there a reason for this post?   Not that I can tell.  It's strangely pointless...

Worse to come

10 Weather Extremes In October's First Week | Weather Underground

Given that there is a strong chance the El Nino's full effects are really just getting into gear, there is strong reason to believe we're in for a period of severe weather of different types around the world.

Mind you, I see that some economists have come out arguing that El Nino events are actually pretty good economically - the benefits outweigh the downside, globally.  Yet some of the examples given in the article seem  to be along the same lines that can be used to argue that earthquakes and war can be "good" for an economy.

Personally, I'd prefer that the economy improve without the death, destruction and pestilence along the way - but I'm not an economist.

One has one's doubts it will succeed...

New Quantum Cats game launches to build better understanding of quantum concepts

Good to see good Spielberg reviews

Bridge of Spies Reviews - Metacritic

I had been intending to note here that I was completely underwhelmed by the trailer for Spielberg's Bridge of Spies - it was a terrible, plodding example of trailer salesmanship, if you ask me.

Yet we all know a great trailer can be made from a bad or average movie, so it is always possible that it can work in the other direction, too.

That seems to be the case here, and I am pleased to see that the movie is generally getting solid reviews.

A detailed look at the Islamic State propaganda machine

BBC News - Fishing and ultraviolence

Interesting to read how the IS propaganda machine actually spends a lot of time on positive PR spin about the its economic and social future.   "Look! - a man growing melons.  Look! - a camel herder!  Look! - a homosexual being thrown off a building and the crowd below stoning his body."

[Apparently, the medieval period has a lot of allure to a certain subset of the population.   It's a bit like those who enjoy medieval dress up fairs - hey, I've been to one or two - but with the violence real.]

Longer droughts for California?

California agriculture weathers drought — at a cost

A bit of a worrying future in store for California:

A team led by climatologist Noah Diffenbaugh of Stanford University in California has used historical data and climate models to show that global warming is increasing the odds of the state seeing warm, dry conditions similar to those that spawned the current drought (N. S. Diffenbaugh et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112, 3931–3936; 2015).

The droughts could even last for many decades.  By incorporating palaeoclimate data into climate models, Benjamin Cook of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and two co-authors are predicting droughts that could last as long as 35 years (B. I. Cook et al. Sci. Adv. 1, e1400082; 2015).

“We’re in a new climate, and it’s a climate in which the probability of severe drought conditions is elevated,” Diffenbaugh says. “That recognition is really critical.”

The Xenophon solution

Plan to shake up Senate voting | Business Spectator

I find Nick Xenophon's proposed changes to the Senate voting system to be very reasonable.

They will upset Senator Leyonhjelm, who openly advocates gaming the voting system by the creation of microparties simply to direct preferences, so that people have no idea who they may get.  As we have seen in all other Senate or House of Reps election results, Leyonhjelm's party has a vanishingly small voter base, and he wants it to have a chance in future by the same devious tactic.   This deserves to be crushed.

Tempura noted

Been a while since I made a "just cooked this for the first time" post, but the weekend saw my first attempt at tempura.

The recipes for this on websites vary a lot - quite a few involve self raising flour, or baking powder added to plain flour; others recommend cornflower mixed in with it, or even potato starch.  The matter of using an egg (or just yolk) is not even settled.   The only universal thing is that the water used must be ice cold, and you do not want an over-mixed, smooth batter - lumps are good.

In any event, I found that plain flour, mixed with an equal quantity of iced water containing a lightly beaten whole egg, worked well.   And one cup of flour and one of water makes quite a lot of batter.   (Actually, I think I added a bit more water - I don't like thick batter.   But it basically seems hard to go wrong (as long as the oil temperature is pretty high too.)

As for the dipping sauce - 1 cup of dashi (powdered stock type, of course); 1/4 cup each of mirin and soy sauce, plus a couple of teaspoons of sugar, all heated in a saucepan and cooled  a bit for serving, worked well.

The history of tempura as a Japanese mainstay is interesting.  As the Kikkoman company's website explains:

China, which has long influenced Japan, has traditions rich in culinary techniques based on the use of oil. In fact, written Chinese includes an array of characters used to distinguish different types of frying, such as quick-frying over high heat, searing at low heat, and so on.

Yet Japan was unaffected by this particular culinary aspect of China: early Japanese cooking was more strongly influenced by the injunction against eating meat that arrived with the introduction of Buddhism in the sixth century. This meat-eating taboo came to Japan by way of China, but Buddhism was not the state religion of China, nor was it closely associated with the ruling classes, as it was in Japan. Pig lard was used to prepare some dishes in China, but pork fat was unavailable in Japan, once the eating of pork was prohibited. Vegetable oils were obtainable here, but they were used mainly as fuel for illumination and their quantity was limited; thus the use of oil in cooking was slow to catch on.

Tempura most likely made its first appearance in Japan via Spanish and Portuguese missionaries and traders, who introduced deep-frying in oil during the latter half of the sixteenth century. Gradually, the type of cooking we now know as tempura became firmly established during the eighteenth century. As if to endorse this history, I have encountered a deep-fried squid dish in Portugal. And to my surprise, I enjoyed something called “fritters” —deep-fried seafood or vegetables—which had an uncanny resemblance to tempura in Malacca in Malaysia. Malacca is a bustling coastal port where the descendants of Portuguese colonists, who arrived during the early sixteenth century, pursue fishing and other trades while conducting their lives in the local vernacular, a dialect of Portuguese....

What was early tempura like? The oldest extant records, dating from the late seventeenth century, indicate that it consisted of balls made of a paste of thrush meat, shrimp and ground walnuts, which were deep-fried in oil, then covered with a sauce thickened with kuzu (a perennial of the bean family) starch. No batter coating seems to have been applied.

In the mid-eighteenth century there are records of deep-frying with a coating, apparently fish dusted with flour or root vegetables like burdock, lotus and taro dipped in a thin mixture of flour, soy sauce and water. Considerable innovations then followed, creating the tempura we know today: the production of vegetable oil increased and its price stabilized, making it possible to use generous amounts in cooking; soy sauce manufacture became an established industry, and this seasoning became more widely available; it was also during this time that bonito-flake stock was more commonly used.

During the Edo period, tempura-style cooking first became popular at movable outdoor stalls. In those days, Edo was built entirely of wooden structures, and so was extremely vulnerable to fire. Cooking outdoors rather than in houses was encouraged, and outdoor stalls serving foods like tempura were very popular. Like sushi, tempura flourished as a snack enjoyed by the common townspeople, and went on to become an essential element in the “flavor hierarchy” of Japanese cuisine.

Thus ends today's culinary notes...

Quaint and distinctive

I don't know why, but a lot of my pleasant dreams lately seem to be about the memorable scenery.  Is it because the internet is serving up spectacular images of locations from all over the world - like a daily dose of National Geographic, instead of just a once a month (or once a dental visit) experience as it used to be when we relied on printed images?

In any event, my Zite feed has referred me to a short article at Country Living about Giethoorn, a
quaint Dutch village in which the houses are thatched and the streets are actually canals.  It certainly looks dream-worthy:

Here's the town's tourism website.   I would like to visit.

Extraordinary game

You can take as true, when it comes from someone like me who only invests about 5 hours a year in watching sport, that everyone saying that the Rugby League grand final tonight was stupendously good viewing is correct.  It showed everything that, even to my generally disinterested mind, makes this code the best to watch:  a scoring rate that is "just right"; genuine tension that comes from clear movement of team lines back and forth in relation to the try line; less risk of idiosyncratic umpiring decisions changing a game; and the ability to always see the ball in play. 

Good article on gun free zones

Commentary: Gun-Free Zones Don't Attract Mass Shootings