Mice in the news

*  Important research news from Japan:   

A trio of researchers working in Japan has found via experiments they conducted, that male virgin mice prefer to watch videos of other mice fighting with one another, than videos of mice having sex.

 *  Nature.com, which seems to run a lot of stories about the relatively recent realisation that a lot of mice based medical research has been stuffed up for decades by the researchers not housing or caring for their furry subjects in the same way, has another story about this.   (It's funny how long it can take smart people to realise they are overlooking something important.)

*   Mice seem to have an odd brain structure that "throttles" violent rage:

New evidence shows mice have a brain structure that throttles rage.
The structure is called the lateral septum. It’s physically connected to and receives electrical signals other parts of the brain that control emotions, learning, aggression, and hormone production.
Damage to the lateral septum can trigger a cascade of activity in other brain regions that produced “septal rage.” These sudden, violent acts, mostly attacks on other mice, have long been seen in rodents with a damaged lateral septum, and in some birds, researchers say.
“Our latest findings show how the lateral septum in mice plays a gatekeeping role, simultaneously ‘pushing down the brake’ and ‘lifting the foot off the accelerator’ of violent behavior,” says study senior investigator Dayu Lin, an assistant professor at New York University.
Lin emphasizes that septal rage is not known to occur in humans, but that studying male aggression in mice might help to map the circuitry involved in controlling other forms of aggression, including violent behavior in humans.

*  Another Japanese mice study indicating that staying hungry may help with better ageing:

Researchers in Japan have showed that stimulating secretion of the ‘hunger hormone’, ghrelin, in mice using the traditional Japanese Kampo medicine rikkunshito had beneficial effects on aging-related diseases. The article was published in Molecular Psychiatry. ...

Previous studies have shown that caloric restriction (CR)—reducing calorie intake without incurring malnutrition or a reduction in essential nutrients—slows aging and delays functional decline as well as the onset of some diseases. Ghrelin, which regulates energy metabolism, is secreted in the stomach in response to CR and fasting.

Insecure

Lawrence Mooney harasses.... female journalist for Adelaide Fringe review

I think Mooney can be somewhat likeable as host of Dirty Laundry Live, but I did see him do some live stand up show on TV recently, and I didn't care for it at all. 

[By the way, why do so many comedians, when it comes to doing stage comedy, have to dramatically increase the swearing and ribaldry compared to how they present in other forums?   Mooney wasn't the worst in this regard, but he did spend an awful lot of time discussing his regret at his infant circumcision in a way that wasn't particularly funny, or made much sense.]

And to be honest, I didn't sense that the theatre audience was into it as much as he might have thought they were.

So I am inclined to think that the short review linked above may be about right, and that by his reaction Mooney has shown himself up as an insecure guy (or jerk, if you will) who should get out of that form of performance.

Goodbye Tim

What have I said about Tim Wilson before?  That his primary talent and interest is self promotion?

Nothing much changing, then.   But has he got his head screwed on right?   When you look at the work experience of his main competition for the seat:

Ms Downer is a lawyer turned diplomat who served in Australia's embassy in Japan for four years. The mother of two has a Masters in Public International Law from the London School of Economics and degrees in Law and Commerce from the University of Melbourne. She is fluent in Japanese and French.
A member of the Victorian Liberal Party's administrative committee, she also made regular appearances on The Bolt Report...

Versus "I used to work for the IPA, got an ill defined job with the HRC with lots of travel with the primary purpose of annoying Lefties, and take a selfie at least every second day"?  I mean seriously, if the Liberals select him over her, they'll want their head read.

But, in a spirit of generosity that I don't like to show him, he at least made the right call on the matter of the government's unwarranted attack on Save the Children staff on Nauru.

Suddenly sounded credible on tax

Chris Bowen and Bill Shorten are currently on the front foot.

I happened to see Shorten in Question Time last week before Stuart Robert got dumped, and he looked really confident and impressive.  (The government benches decidedly glum, as they do when they know the inevitable will happen, just that they have to wait for a bit of process to finish.)

Chris Bowen is also sounding very on top of his game, too, on the new negative gearing/CGT policy.

This is looking like how policy development and announcement should be done, for a change.

And Rupert's hobby paper The Australian is showing signs of being worried, wheeling out Sloan and Ergas in the one edition today to attack Labor for daring to have a policy other than merely "cut spending." 

(I don't subscribe, so it's hard to tell for sure, but I think by the looks of its website, the paper has become more like the Daily Telegraph since Whittaker took over.  And we all thought Chris Mitchell was bad...)

Shaving cont.

A pretty good explanation

Gravitational waves: A triumph for big science - BBC News

I thought this explanation of how the gravity wave detection was achieved is clear and understandable.

I'm not all that excited about it, though:  I mean, if every single other test of general relativity had been proved, there wasn't any reason to suspect gravity waves wouldn't be detected, eventually, was there?

Yes it's a brilliant technical achievement, but of itself, I can't see it leading anywhere new in particular.

A studio's deceptive advertising?

Unlike some people, I tend to read some reviews of movies before I see them.  Hence I know that I won't be going to see Marvel's Deadpool, because it's said to be hyper-violent, sweary and have relatively strong sex scenes, even if it is of genre (funny superhero) that I sometimes like.  It has an R rating in the US and  MA15+ here, which means under 15 year olds must be accompanied by an adult.

But - the TV advertisements that have been running in Australia give absolutely no idea that it is a very adult audience film.   It is in fact so blatantly bland - giving the impression that it's just a somewhat comedic superhero who suits up like Spiderman - that I reckon it's virtually deceptive advertising.  The fact that it is from Marvel compounds the problem.  (The film is not from Disney, but how many people think it might be?)

I would say it is a near certainty that there are going to be some parents (Dads, probably) who are going to take their 10 to 14 year old sons to see this, having no idea that the content is not age appropriate.  Same thing with DVD hire (or streaming viewing) in future.

Hasn't anyone else noticed this?

Update:  I suppose the same claim could have been made to similar films like Kick-Ass, except I don't really remember any television advertisements in prime time for that film at all, and I guess the very title indicated a teen to adult audience.

Also - The Guardian writes at length about how the Deadpool character is meant to be "pansexual", yet spends the movie only having sex with his girlfriend.   I guess kids get more than their fair share of pansexuality if they watch Doctor Who, but it still might be a confusing factor for a 10 or 12 year old viewer.

Touch the mango

China's curious cult of the mango - BBC News

Gee, the BBC website has a knack for bringing us obscure and odd bits of history from 20th century communism.   Last week, it was the secret Soviet analysis of Mao's poop;  this week it is the very strange period in which mangoes (re) gifted by Mao gained a semi-sacred status.

New CO2 removal ideas

Emissions reduction: Scrutinize CO2 removal methods : Nature News & Comment

Not a bad article here, looking at some old (and new) ideas for removing CO2.  I had missed this odd one, for example:

More recently, other, potentially more controllable, ocean-based CO₂-removal techniques have been suggested, such as the cultivation of seaweed to cover up to 9% of the global ocean¹²

I suppose as long as it was edible varieties, it could help feed the planet too.

But all of these ideas have to work on such a massive scale, they all appear implausible, for now.

Doubts arise

I hadn't read anything about the CSIRO Chief Executive Larry Marshal until his decision to cut hard into his organisation's climate change arm.

But this morning, he well and truly put himself in the "intellectually suspect" list when he complained that the reaction against his decision "almost sounds more like religion than science to me."   What a foolish thing to do: use a favourite climate change denial line when he says he is upset that people are claiming he's a closet climate change skeptic!

Actually, I did notice a headline from last year about him at The Australian's website recently, but I didn't follow up on it.  The story is, however,  that he has some serious sounding troubles lingering from his time in venture capital and high tech start ups.  Have a read here and here.

And even the Australian Skeptics have their doubts about him, over statements he has made that he thinks there just might be something to water divining!   (I'm sympathetic to, and interested in, many paranormal and weird science claims, but water divining is one of the easiest things to test, and am pretty sure that no one has ever shown convincing evidence it worked.)

The Abbott legacy

State governments are about to hike up taxes

A good, clear column from Peter Martin about how the Commonwealth is leaving it up to the States to raise taxes for essential health and education funding.  Although I blame Abbott, mostly, I have to admit that the Labor "no GST increase" position at the Federal level is compounding the problem.

Self explanatory..

Worrying signs

Maybe this was understood by others before now, but until this morning I didn't understand why some seemed concerned about on going low oil prices for the global economy.

Someone on Radio National, who sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, said that it may be a short term good, but the problem is that banks have lent a huge amount of money to companies with  projects (mining, gas) which are not viable if oil prices stay so low.  Big defaults are possible, seemed to be the message.

I see now that Paul Krugman is sounding nervous about the bond market, too.  Not that I understand the bond market, but Krugman is generally sensible, and if he's thinks its a bad sign, I'll take his word for it.

Not that there is anything that I can do about it.

Libertarian identity crisis

Poor old Lionel Shriver, the American (female) author who is usually pretty well reviewed, has written an op-ed piece in the New York Times entitled "I Am Not a Kook" about her annoyance that people consider her self proclaimed status as a libertarian as a sign of kookiness:

When I announced to my mother in the 1980s that I considered myself libertarian, she recoiled. How did people like me come to seem like kooks?

She seems a smart woman, but perhaps she needs a few pointers, such as these:

*  Ayn Rand is associated with American libertarianism, and she was an eccentric trashy writer who fetishised powerful men getting their own way, economically and sexually, and suggested that people who didn't get on board (a train pun for you there) with her views probably deserved to die because of their own laziness and stupidity.  

*  A libertarian philosophy of minimal government leads to policies that Shriver admits she doesn't like.   She thinks gun control is a good idea;  she had a positive experience with the UK "single payer" health system;  she acknowledges that markets alone are not likely to deal adequately with climate change, which she believes in.   Shriver tries to defend her positions by arguing that no one is politically pure, and all of us can be a tad inconsistent with what policy positions we favour despite our claimed political philosophy.

But seriously, Ms Shriver - look at what the political and economic leaders who adopt libertarianism as their mantle actually believe in, both here and in Australia. 

They believe in the loosest gun control laws possible, and (as with David Leyonhjelm) celebrate instances of citizens shooting (and killing) robbers as if the wild West is something to be emulated.   There answer to every mass gun shooting is that there should be more guns.  

They not only really, seriously, believe in doing nothing about climate change;  they (see Koch brothers, of course) actively fund climate change denial to make political action on it as difficult as possible.   They are treating the single greatest environmental issue the planet has ever seen, with the possible consequence (amongst other things) of flooding scores of the worlds great cities within a century or two, because of short-sighted selfishness and an imagined socialist conspiracy against capitalism.

In the American case, they ridicule "socialised medicine" against all the evidence that the American system is incredibly expensive with (in many cases) worse outcomes overall.   But this counts little for rich libertarians with the money to get the best treatment.

It's pretty obvious, isn't it:  libertarianism downplays "the common good" in theory and, for most self proclaimed libertarians who have achieved leadership positions in the US and Australia, in practice. 

The real problem here is that I reckon Shriver should not even claim the title of libertarian, given her preferred policies are sufficient in number, and so wildly different from what other libertarians think on the same issues, that she step away from the official title due to it indeed justifying policies that are just too kooky.  

And, of course, I would say the same to Jason Soon, who I assume could write a very similar column to Shriver's.

Another bit of American Right nonsense

Everyone knows that the Republicans make stupid statements about "socialised health care", and Ted Cruz repeated the old memes only last week, to much criticism.

And here is a chart I found from 2014, which is interesting:

Why are the Republicans (and those in Australia who admire them) so full of nonsense?