That's fat

Hospital forced to open 'fat only' ward | The Nation | Breaking News 24/7 - NEWS.com.au (01-08-2005)

The link is to a story about how Royal Melbourne Hospital will soon open a room to deal with the severely obese, who can weigh from 350 to 500kg!

At 182 cm and about 82 kg, this is as if I was around 4 to 6 times heavier than my present weight. And I guess most obese people are shorter than me, so the ratio of their actual to their "ideal" weight is likely worse for them.

What I don't understand is this. Isn't there something seriously wrong in a person failing to recognise when they hit, let's say, 3 times their "ideal" weight that they just can't continue putting on more weight? I mean, mentally wrong. Doesn't the fact that they can no longer sit in a normal car or bus seat indicate something to them? I just can't comprehend it.

John Lennon fights Islamic fundamentalism

Life is too short to spend too much time exploring the truly weird and wacky corners of the Web, but sometimes a site gets brought to one's attention that is worth at least 10 minutes.

Perhaps this couple (the Polleys) are better known in the USA because their site mentions some appearances on Jimmy Kimmel's show (who, I think, was the smarter looking co-host of the original "Man Show" before getting his own chat show.) I assume he would not have them in for a respectful interview.

Broadly, they appear to be spiritualists of a sort, but with a very specific and idiosyncratic set of metaphysical beliefs. Their website is chock full of interviews and messages from Jesus, Peter, and many, many famous deceased persons etc.

Just to give you a taste, have a look at this edition (one of many) of their on-line journal "Voices From Spirit Magazine". I like the way the direct messages from Jesus begin "Jesus here."

Turns out Jesus really, really hates gay sex, supported Arnold Schwarzenegger, supported the Iraq war, etc. (Apparently, attempts at gay sex in the afterlife eventually lead to the souls exploding.) I guess Jesus is a conservative, after all.

But perhaps the best part of their weird (after) world is the stuff about John Lennon and his role in helping Muhammad fight off Islamic fundamentalists (although I think this is all happening in the Kingdom of God, not down here.) There are even drawings to illustrate it.

Not only that but a lot of channeled songs from John as well, who performs in the afterlife with "Beatles and Friends" which gets its own special web site.

Turns out that John divorced Yoko in the afterlife due to her support for homosexuality. A drawing of the ceremony is here. (I don't know why, but even though all of the afterlife drawings seem to be done by Linda Polley, they seem to emphasize the women's breasts, or at least nipples, in particular. They look more like they were done by a 13 yr old boy.)

Just about every page I look at has a weirdly amusing aspect that I want to mention, but I have to get to bed. It is well worth a browse.

I've heard of weeping statues, but walking?

World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online

The link is to a story of a "walking", semi-human statue of Mary in Italy, alleged to have been caught on mobile phone video. This I want to see. Why isn't it on the net already, if it exists?

From an aesthetic point of view, sounds like a particularly creepy sort of miracle too. Inaminate things should stay that way.

The science of dating

Also from New Scientist, just what we need, more science on dating stategies:

"Men who spend big money wining and dining their dates are not frittering away hard-earned cash. According to a pair of UK researchers, they are merely employing the best strategy for getting the girl without being taken for granted.

Using mathematical modelling, Peter Sozou and Robert Seymour at University College London, UK, found that wooing girls with costly, but essentially worthless gifts – such as theatre tickets or expensive dinners out – is a winning courtship strategy for both sexes.

Females can assess how serious or committed a male plans to be and males can ensure they are not just seducing 'gold-diggers' – girls who take valuable presents with no intention of accepting subsequent dates.

Sozou came about the idea after reading about a man in his local newspaper. The man had been paying the rent of a woman he considered was his girlfriend – he was giving her a valuable gift. But she had been heartlessly manipulating him, dating another man on the sly while accepting money from her unwitting sugar daddy."


I suppose I can see value in this research...especially if it leads to tricky ideas like this:

"Sozou and Seymour believe their conclusions about people find support in the actions of animals, such as the dance fly. Males of this species give worthless cotton balls to entice partners into mating – and they work – although other scientists interpret this as male trickery."

I was always bad at the strategies of dating, so I find it hard to come up with something witty now! Suggest an end joke here please.

Trees cause deserts?

This is the sort of story (from New Scientist)that Tim Blair loves to have fun with:


"Planting trees can create deserts, lower water tables and drain rivers, rather than filling them, claims a new report supported by the UK government.

The findings - which may come as heresy to tree-lovers and most environmentalists - is an emerging new consensus among forest and water professionals.

“Common but misguided views about water management,” says the report, are resulting in the waste of tens of millions of pounds every year across the world. Forests planted with the intention of trapping moisture are instead depleting reservoirs and drying out soils."

Over to you, Tim.

Death rates in Iraq

News about Attrition at StrategyPage.com's How to Make War.

The above link is to an interesting article (on a web site that may or may not be all that reliable) regarding death rates now and historically in Iraq. This claim is particularly relevant to arguments about the "immorality" of the current death rate since the downfall of Saddam:

"The Iraqi government now believes that at least 12,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed during the last 18 months. In the last ten months, about 800 Iraqi civilians and police have been killed each month. Adding a bit more to account for unreported deaths (especially in Sunni Arab areas where chaos, not the government, runs things) the death rate is running at the rate of about 45 dead per 100,000 population per year. This is far higher than the usual rate in Middle Eastern countries (under 10). Well, most of the time. During civil wars and insurrections, the rate has spiked to over a hundred per 100,000, sometimes for several years in a row. During Saddam’s long reign, the Iraqi death rate from democide (the government killing its own people) averaged over 100 per 100,000 a year. This does not include the several hundred thousand killed during the war with Iran in the 1980s. There are other parts of the world that are more violent than Iraq. Africa, for example, especially Congo, Sudan and South Africa. Only South Africa has a sufficiently effective government to actually keep track of the death rate, mostly from crime, but it’s over 50 per 100,000. It’s worse in places like Congo and Sudan, but the numbers there are only estimates by peacekeepers and relief workers.

During the 1990s, Saddam used access to food and medical care as a way to keep the Shia Arabs under control, but this process caused at least twenty thousand or more excess deaths a year (from disease and malnutrition). Foreign media, especially in Sunni Moslem nations, played down Saddam’s homicides, just as they play up the current death toll in Iraq (which is still largely the result of violence by Sunni Arabs.) "

I am sure there are some other sites I can check about the claimed death rates during the 1990's, although no doubt much of the argument will revolve around whether it was the West's embargo actions that caused the deaths rather than Saddam's.

And by the way, can't they get on with his trial faster than October? Really, you sometimes wonder what the point of "due process" is in extreme cases like his. If some guard was mad enough to just kill him now, he would be doing us all a favour.

Miscellaneous stuff

A quick round up from this morning's browse of the web:

Daniel Pipes and Janet Albrechtsen in the Australia : both good reads.

The Economist gave George W a tick for education reform (it seems to be working).

Christopher Hitchens points out that the legislation at the core of the Plame/Rove debacle was always a bad idea.

An academic in The Age suggests the forced closure (or take over by the government?) of all private primary schools as a way of forcing all children to learn the "civic values" of Australian society. I can imagine the State Treasurers rolling their eyes at this one. Get real, Dennis.

In Indonesia, they take their cricket farming very seriously (it sounds like something being discussed on Landline):

"He added that the association would not accept crickets bred outside its membership because their quality could not be assured.

"We tried buying crickets from common farmers once. The crickets they bred had a very high water content. Only 1 kg of dried crickets was derived after roasting four kg of them, whereas only 2.5 kg of live crickets bred through the program could produce one kg of dried crickets. Besides that, due to inferior feeding techniques, their protein content was found to be lower too," said Bayu, who comes from Gunung Kidul.

Dried crickets can last for six months after being vacuum packed. Before being packed, live crickets are immersed in hot water at 70 degrees centigrade.

They are then roasted in an oven for seven to 12 hours. A one-kg pack of dried crickets can be sold at Rp 110,000.

"These crickets are also delicious, crispy when fried and eaten immediately," said Bayu, while offering a plate of fried crickets."

Fun from Scamming

Aimless web surfing while I should be working has led me this morning to this site, which is quite amusing. (It's copies of email correspondence between scammers and their attempted victims, who in fact are just taking the scammers for a ride.)

I haven't the time to read too much yet, but this one (involving Marty McFly as the "victim" is fun. As is this one, with Juan Perez Jnr as the correspondent. Actually, just about every second story is pretty damn funny.)

I don't spend much time on internet humour, but this is good.

A Brain Change?

Goodness, what odd things can happen in this world of blogging. Alan Brain (see left) kindly recommended this site in a post a few weeks ago, and now appears to be undergoing a not unwelcomed dramatic alteration in his life, due to hormonal changes the source of which he says are a medical mystery. Not only that, he wants to complete the task, as it were, inviting donations.

I don't think he is joking; he sounds sincere. But unusually "matter of fact" about it. He wasn't on 4 corners tonight, was he?

No one has commented on this yet as far as I can see from my blog role. Certainly there are no comments on his site to his "new image" post. I can just imagine everyone out there being slack jawed like me wondering what to make of it.

That is all I can think of to say about it ....

Pearson on Ronald Wilson

Christopher Pearson's article in the Weekend Australia about the late Ronald Wilson was a sizzling read, and I expect a strong counter attack will be mounted by Wilson's liberal admirers.

It is my understanding that Wilson's close involvement with the Uniting Church, which had a historic role in the "stolen children" issue, made him eminently unsuited to head that enquiry. Too much potential for misplaced guilt by association to make him an objective judge of the matter.

Feeling away morality

I am sure Currency Lad could do a better job on this, but I can't let today's peculiar opinion piece by Michael Read in The Age go without comment.

The writer feels that, although he now has a perfectly good life, and can't remember much of his earlier difficulties due to a birth defect, he is so sorry for the pain his Mum went through that he believes it would have been better for her to have aborted him. As he summarises:

"My life in many ways has been a wonderful experience, but it has been achieved through the suffering of my mother. It would have been better for her had she aborted me. After all, my life then would never have been, and logically, I could not have regretted not living it, but my mother would almost certainly have had a better one."

Talk about your liberal death wishes....

The main thrust of the article, though, is about not being too judgmental on women who want abortions, even late term ones, such as the notorious incident involving a woman who aborted late due to probable dwarfism in the child.

There are many issues I have with the "logic" of this article.

Firstly, the point about a hypothetical abortion meaning that he would not be around to regret not living adds nothing to the argument about the morality of abortion or killing. I mean, adults killed don't harbour regrets either. Let's judge an act at the time it happens. (And let's not be too confident of being able to perceive alternative futures and the degree of happiness in them either.)

Perhaps inadvertantly, Read's comment on his hypothetical termination can be read to relate to issue of "personhood" and its relevance to the Peter Singer's utilitarian arguments about abortion. That is, if you abort a child before it has any significant self awareness, it is no moral wrong at all. (Remember, Singer would even allow a period of, say, a month after birth for parents to "accept" a child, and by his logic killing even a healthy new born is not necessarily "immoral".) This is where you can trust your intuition more than your "public intellectual".

Read is surely a utilitarain himself, with his emphasis in the article of wanting to see the maximum happiness. There are many, many problems with utilitarianism, but for the sake of the argument, if we try to apply it to his case, why does Read not factor in the happy ending? Having an adult son with a successful life is a good thing for his mother, surely. Achieving that happiness after overcoming physical adversity should make it especially profound, shouldn't it? Not to Mr Read, it seems.

And what does his mother think about this? He seems to deliberately avoid telling us her opinion (she is still alive.) Isn't this a vital factor if we are going to attempt some calculation of maximum happiness?

No, his aim is just to have us avoid judgement on the poor mother facing a possible hard life. So there is no point in being rigorous about it, he just wants us to concentrate on the negative possiblities and fears of the mother, regardless of how realistic they may be.

This points to one fundamental problem with utilitarianism: the nature of happiness itself and the difficulties in measuring it. I have posted here before on cognitive therapy for depression. It appeals to me becuase its fundamental idea (that all of your moods are in fact created by your thoughts, including your perceptions, your mental attitudes, beliefs and the way you interpret things) sounds right. And besides which, as a therapy it seems to clinically work.

If you philosophically agree with this understanding of moods, it makes the emphasis on "happiness" decidedly shaky grounds for deciding moral issues. Happiness (or the lack of it) is a cognitive reaction to events that may or may not be built on sound foundations in your cognitive world. What's more important is to look at those foundations.

(There's a lot of good stuff on the problems of trying to base morals on utilitarianism on the internet. Unfortunately, it is treated as a vague default position for many people who have never had the inclination or education to really think about the basis of morals.)

It's all well and good for Michael Read (and liberals generally) to emphasise sympathy for mothers who fear unhappiness. But when it comes to matters of life or death of a fetus/baby which would be viable outside of the womb (we are talking late term abortion), it is hardly the most important factor at stake.

Multiculturalism wars

A matter of respect - Opinion - theage.com.au

An opinion piece in the Age today (above) rushes to the defence of mulitculturalism. The argument seems to boil down to blaming Australia for not "sharing power" enough with its new migrants. The implication in the last paragraph is that we don't give the young men enough job opportunities:

"Perhaps when Terry Lane and Pamela Bone and Andrew Bolt and the others take on Muslim young people as work-experience trainees, and are prepared to admit ignorance and seek to listen and learn, the young people might be more willing to sit on the heads of the thugs who threaten them just as much as they threaten the rest of us."

And earlier in the article:

"Immigrants often see the self-serving nature of social practices of the "host" society far more clearly than members of that society's own chattering classes and politicians. Their children, imbued with the lessons of democracy and fairness in the new world, shed their parents' acquiescence to the contradictions and demand that its claims to justice and equality be realised."

Apart from the fun of seeing Terry Lane being criticised for what would normally be called a right wing opinion, this article seems very dubious. How about some empirical evidence to support the idea that Australia (or Britain for that matter) is somehow discriminating against the children of Muslim immigrants.

At least in Australia, just when did the increase in Muslim immigration kick in? (My guess would be from maybe the mid 1980's or even a bit later. Bit hard to say for me, never having lived in Sydney. Brisbane only started having an obvious presence of Muslims since, I reckon, about 5 to 10 years ago.) Surely it takes a bit of time for the children of a new migrant group to start to get higher positions in the jobs market. And look how successful European, Chinese, Vietnamese and other immigrant children are in our society now.

He would have to do a much better job of justifying this argument before I would give it any credence at all.

Give me space

Sitting ducks - Tips - Travel - theage.com.au

I missed this article from earlier this week about the erosion of airline seat space, especially in economy. It is ridiculous what the airlines expect us to put up with, especially on anything over a couple of hours.

Although I don't support spurious litigation, I am a bit surprised that the litigation brought by deep vein thrombosis sufferers against some of the airlines has not (to my knowledge) met with any success yet. I mean, the airlines must have had some concern about potential liability over this, because of the sudden torrent of in-flight guidance on how to avoid it (starting maybe 3 or 4 years ago?) It is one area where I think the success of such litigation would serve a useful social purpose. Otherwise, it is really just not possible to see a way that the public is ever going to get the airlines to come up with a more acceptable standard for seat space.

Take sugar tablets instead?

Efficacy of antidepressants in adults -- Moncrieff and Kirsch 331 (7509): 155 -- BMJ

Wow, this story in the British Medical Journal will cause a lot of controversy, I expect. Bottom line: it's not so clear that antidepressants are better than placebo. The article summary is:

"The NICE review data suggest that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors do not have a clinically meaningful advantage over placebo, which is consistent with other recent meta-analyses. In addition, methodological artefacts may account for the small effect seen. Evidence that antidepressants are more effective in more severe conditions is not strong, and data on long term outcome of depression and suicide do not provide convincing evidence of benefit. In children, the balance of benefits to risks is now recognised as unfavourable. We suggest this may also be the case for adults, given the continuing uncertainty about the possible risk of increased suicidality as well as other known adverse effects. This conclusion implies the need for a thorough re-evaluation of current approaches to depression and further development of alternatives to drug treatment. Since antidepressants have become society's main response to distress, expectations raised by decades of their use will also need to be addressed."

I should point out that placebo tablets will only work if you don't know they are placebo (so I am not seriously suggesting swapping your tablets for sugar ones!) However, as I have mentioned in an earlier post, cognitive therapy has got years of good results behind it now. Try it, depressed Lefties!

More on Iraq / al Qaeda

The DIA and CIA Go MIA

This story is about the issue I raised previously, namely the disconcerting way the main stream media is, by and large, completely unconcerned about looking into the question of Iraq and al Qaeda. A good read.

A Jakarta Post opinion piece on London bombing

The Jakarta Post - After the bombs, London searching for the root cause of terrorism

Contrary to the headline, the above article contains nothing about the "search for the root cause of terrorism", but takes the opportunity to try to paint a moral equivalence between the conduct of the US and al-Qaeda. To quote:

"The aims of both al-Qaeda and some of these Western governments are somehow similar: Both "sides" believe in bombing and wars, both "sides" try to create the impressions that the other is evil and deserves to be destroyed in the name of (ironically) humanity, and both sides are spreading hatred and terror.

Both have used and sacrificed ordinary working class people, to achieve their ambitions, whatever these ambitions are. As Noam Chomsky has stated, George Bush used fear as a tool for his re-election, and had to manufacture another threat to American security to win his Presidency."

Appalling....

Christopher Hitchens on Rove

Rove Rage - The poverty of our current scandal. By Christopher Hitchens

The link is to the ever readable Hitchens on the Rove/Wilson stuff. Excellent! (Although Professor Bunyip did a good job on this too.)

Avoiding the issue

From the same website that I linked to in my last post, which from a quick look seems generally to be a relatively moderate Islamic site, note this question and answer:

"If it is proved that a Muslim carried out the London bombings and I know something about him. Shall I call the non-Muslim police to arrest him? Or hand him to a Muslim schoalr or imam who can talk to him and convince him no to do that henious act again? Does this case have an origin in Fiqh literature?

Answer In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. According the Qur'an: (Whoever saves a human life, it is as if he has saved the entire humanity.) (Al-Ma`idah 5: 32) Therefore, if you found someone that is planning to attack civilians and innocent people, then you have to stop him by all legitimate means, including giving advice, preventing him from carrying out the crime, or even calling the police if he refuses to listen to you. There is no difference between Muslims and non-Muslims as for being perpetrators or victims, because every human life counts in Islam. The Qur'an, talking about the prohibition to kill people, used the word "nafs" which means "soul" without making a distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims. "

See how the question says the person was already involved, but doesn't concentrate on whether to report him for that, but just on what to do to stop him doing it again. And the answer doesn't address the need to arrest him because he has already done the crime.

Is it too much for an Islamic leader to just say "yes, call the police if you believe he was involved"? And I am sure the UK police have Islamic liaison officers, as if that should matter anyway.

Everything you may never have wanted to know about this...

I am not really mocking Islam by linking to this detailed explanation of Islamic views on toilet paper. I was just genuinely curious about how detailed they get in their teachings on this.

However, you can't but help find the reference to using rocks or pebbles a bit funny, can you? Pity the poor desert dwellers, I suppose.

I am also curious about how many Muslims really follow the shaving pubic hair bit. I mean, it's not like your fellow Mosque attendees are ever likely to see, are they?

Facing facts

TIME.com: When Denial Can Kill -- Jul. 25, 2005

The link is to a good essay from this week's Time magazine, about how Islamic leaders should face up to the fact that the Koran can be used to "justify" terrorism, and start their counter-arguments from that point (rather than from a blanket assertion that Islam is all about peace.) Well worth a read.