More possibly worrying - but who really knows? - news on global warming - or is that cooling?

New Scientist Breaking News - Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age

Reported everywhere today is research that the deep Atlantic currents do seem to have changed significantly in the last few decades, with the worry being that it could be the start of dramatically cooler weather for Europe.

But, there is plenty of room for uncertainty, because (as the New Scientist article linked above mentions) average temperatures in Europe have been on the way up, not down.

Give it another 4 years or so before anyone can really tell.

I also get sick of reports of this stuff referring to "The Day After Tomorrow". (Even news@nature does this.) I linked to the New Scientist version of the story because it does not mention it.

A short history of Limbo

Lose limbo, but salvage purgatory - Opinion - smh.com.au

For those with any interest in curious Catholic beliefs, Paul Collins gives a brief history of Limbo in the Sydney Morning Herald today (link above.)

I remember being told about this by Catholic nuns in primary school, but it was never given much emphasis.

Paul ends with a mention of purgatory. I think it can be cut out safely by just revisioning it as being on the outer edges of Hell, which is not (at least until the end of the world) permanently sealed. I think that is how CS Lewis thought of it, and (I stand to be corrected) Dante. Certainly, I have read the entertaining Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle science fiction-y reworking of Dante's Inferno (called "Inferno") from a couple of decades ago.

Strange

Here's something a little odd I wonder about. Some time ago I lightheartedly posted a small pic from a science fiction movie and named the image file I uploaded "big head", to reflect the fact that the character has, well, a big head. Since then, my site meter indicates that there are a ridiculous amount of people in the world who search for "big head" on google or other search engines. What's more, sometimes people who come here via that search actually do seem to stay a little while, looking at a few pages.

This is odd. Of course, I could delete that file from the post, but do I want the drop off in my hit rate?

Hotting up?

FuturePundit: Ice Core Climate Record Extended To 650,000 Years

Futurepundit (link above) has a not bad post on the meaning of the recent report about older ice core studies showing that there definitely is a significant amount of additional CO2 in the atmosphere now compared to any time in the last 650,000 years.

The article notes that there have been several ice ages over this time, and the interglacial periods have ranged from between 10,000 and about 20,000 years. As the current warm spell has lasted 10,000, let's all hope there is another few thousand years left in the current balmy conditions.

It also points out that the cycle of ice ages is believed to be caused by changes in the earth's orbit. How well is this really established, I wonder? How well do they understand the current status of earth's orbit? I need to do more reading on that.

Another useful lesson that the article notes about climate is this:

".....if you have had fairly stable climate for a few centuries then best you start expecting a big shift. The climate is just not stable for many centuries running."

Sad case

7.30 Report - 28/11/2005: A miracle needed to save Nguyen

Just to put the (terribly sad) Nguyen case into perspective from the Singaporean point of view, the link above is to a recent 7.30 Report story on a Singaporean man hanged for being caught with a kilogram of cannabis on him at the Malaysian border.

Is it any wonder that the Singaporean government has a lot of face to lose if it does deals on Nguyen, caught with a substantial amount of a potentially much deadlier drug?

By way of comparison, in Queensland, it appears that possession of up to 500g can be dealt with in the Magistrates Court, with an absolute maximum of 2 years jail (although presumably that would never be imposed for a first offence.)

I haven't been able to quickly find the maximum penalty for possession of a kilo in Queensland...

Things on the up in the Middle East?

Arab world, Iraq and al-Qaeda | Unfamiliar questions in the Arab air | Economist.com

The Economist is vaguely optimisitic that the whole of the Arab world is getting sick of violence in the name of resistance. Well worth reading. A key paragraph:

"Arab governments used to treat local terrorism as something that dented their prestige and should be covered up. Now they eagerly exploit the images of suffering to justify their policies. The way such events are reported in the press no longer hints at a reflexive blaming of external forces. The Arab commentariat, much of which had promoted sympathy with the Iraqi insurgency, and focused on perceived western hostility to Islam as the cause of global jihadism, has grown vocal in condemning violence. Jihad al-Khazen, the editor of al-Hayat, a highbrow Saudi daily, is a frequent and mordant critic of western policy. Yet his response to the Amman tragedy was an unequivocal call for global co-operation to combat what he blasted as the enemies of life, of joy, and of the light of day."

Even Newsweek criticises the Democrats

Panic Is Not the Solution - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com

See the link above to a sensible opinion piece in Newsweek (obviously not from an overly Bush friendly editor) on the ridiculous rush by some Democrats towards isolationism. It's a good read.

Who's a pretty bird?

As promised, here's a photo from my holiday of something other than flowers. I don't know exactly what it is, but assume it is a kingfisher of some description. (Kookaburra shape and size, but colouring is different.)

Steyn on leaving Iraq

Mark's column last week in The Australian was his usual entertaining and good read. This paragraph (on the current kerfuffle in America about whether to just leave Iraq) stands out:

"Taking your ball and going home is a seductive argument in a paradoxical superpower whose inclinations on the Right have a strong isolationist streak and on the Left a strong transnational streak, which is isolationism with a sappy face and biennial black-tie banquets in European Union capitals. Transnationalism means poseur solutions, the Kyotification of foreign policy."

Science notes

Here's a few science news items of interest:

* Is string theory all that it's cracked up to be? A Slate review of a new book by Lawrence Krauss notes that the author, a real live physicist himself, criticises all of the hope vested in string theory because no one has yet come up with any way to test it. It's a pretty good point, really. As the reviewer notes:

'When I asked physicists like Nobel Prize-winner Frank Wilczek and string theory superstar Edward Witten for ideas about how to prove string theory, they typically began with scenarios like, "Let's say we had a particle accelerator the size of the Milky Way …" '


* So you thought a new Blu Ray DVD burner would be pretty cool. Well, just around the corner may be the faster and bigger holographic disc burner. New Scientist says it can hold up to 300
GB, and burn faster too.

I am really beginning to wonder, just how much storage on a single disk does the world really need?

* But then if you want to get into the mind boggling prospect of quantum computing, (which I only barely understand), New Scientist reports (in an article that needs to be paid for on its website, but available for free via this page in Eureka News) on a new idea for how to build a super quantum computer before they have even worked out how to build a "normal" one. The summary:

"As futuristic as quantum computers seem, what with all those qubits and entangled atoms, here is an idea that promises to make atom-based quantum computers look passé even before anyone has built a full-sized version.

It seems that bubbles of electrons lined up in ultracold liquid helium could be used to build a quantum computer capable of carrying out a staggering 1030 simultaneous calculations."

Actually, as the article ends with this:

Because each qubit carries two values, a quantum computer with two qubits could carry out four parallel calculations, one with three qubits eight calculations, and so on. "I see no major technical obstacles to the system I envisage working with 100 qubits," says Yao. "That means it could do 1000 billion billion billion operations all at once."

the reference to "1030" presumably is meant to be "10 to the power of 30" (10 followed by 30 zeros).

Has anyone worked out how you would use that computing power in practice?

While I was away...

Staying in a new place with a couple of little kids (with their tendency to wake up a bit more often in a strange place) and fairly noisy airconditioning doesn't help much with sleep patterns. Drinking more wine than usual, falling asleep at 9 pm while putting the kids to bed and waking up again at 11 or 12 pm doesn't either. Anyway, it meant a lot of stupid dreams were interrupted. The dreaming mind really carries on with some crap, doesn't it? The silliest dream I remember involved my starting a new career as a used car salesman, and my having arguments with my new boss about how I would do things differently. I have no idea why I would be dreaming about this. Becoming a car salesman is only marginally above my becoming a test cricketer in the probability stakes.

The other shorter dream I remember was one no doubt influenced by seeing a War of the Worlds DVD on sale. I was somewhere in public (like a bus or train station) and on a TV screen a newsreader was saying that there were reports of a UFO attacking the White House with lightning bolts. The scary part of the dream was the silence in the public space while people were listening. It was a very realistic "I can't believe this could be really happening like in science fiction movies" feeling. Creepy. Then I woke up.

Back at work today and catching up with the blogosphere today/tomorrow.

Tim Blair's still wandering the highways of the USA I see. He seems to keep it a secret how long he will be away.

Currency Lad has returned and seems to be posting at a rapid rate. Hope it's permanent.

There are some things I want to post about, but they will probably have to wait until this evening.

Holiday time

Off for a week. Probably no posting in that time. I'll try to post pics of something other than flowers when I get back!

A New Yorker review on CS Lewis

The New Yorker: The Critics: A Critic At Large

It's been a few weeks since I have recommended a New Yorker book review, but the link above is to a good one on CS Lewis. As usual, the "review" is really just an essay on the subject of a recent book, but it is interesting and detailed.

CS Lewis is already getting lot of renewed attention due to the forthcoming release of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" in the cinema, and from what I can gather there is a generally good "vibe" about it. I just don't get Tolkien at all, but am quite fond of some of the Narnia books.

I think I have read every major book by Lewis, except for his couple of purely academic ones. When I occasionally dip into his work again, I am usually pleasantly surprised by his clear and engaging prose, and how some of the points he made on the state of Christian faith are still very relevant today despite it being 60 years since his earliest books.

I don't agree with every point made in the review, but it is a good read anyway.

Getting cold and catching a cold

Feeling cold linked to developing a cold. 14/11/2005. ABC News Online

I made a comment in an earlier recent post how common sense sometimes points towards the truth faster than science does.

Many years ago, a friend used to ridicule me for insisting on my belief that there was a likely relationship between marijuana use and schizophrenia, because all of the studies at that time (as mentioned on that highly authoritative source Radio Station JJJ) insisted there wasn't. My hunch was based on family experience, the reported experience of other families, and a skepticism towards the "self medication" explanation that was sometimes invoked to explain higher rates of schizophrenia amongst marijuana users.

Of course, medical opinion did swing around eventually to support my hunch, and a causative relationship seems now well established. (Maybe mainly with those who were susceptible to develop mental illness anyway, but if you would not have developed it without the use of marijuana, that is sufficient causation for most legal and common sense purposes.)

The other topic of argument with my friend was a connection between getting "chilled" and developing a cold. Based on a couple of camping experiences, where I had cold feet all night quickly followed by a heavy cold within the next 30 hours or so, I was always inclined to believe there was a connection, despite some studies which indicated otherwise.

Anyway, once again there is finally a study (see link at the top) that seems to vindicate my common sense assessment. In fact, the mechanism suggested in this article was exactly what I suggested years ago (namely, a chill could sufficiently weaken resistence to a virus already lurking on you.)

More people should just listen to me and learn that I am usually right. (Just kidding folks!)

Just for some colour

Not sure what they are ...

Someone please arrest Tony Kevin - it's the only way he'll be satisfied

Over at Margo Kingston's site, Tony Kevin remains a frequent contributor, and he's been going on for some time now about the "new" sedition laws and how he will act in defiance of them, even at risk of arrest.

As I have never noticed Tony calling for an armed or violent resistence against this government, despite his frequent claim that John Howard has just about created a fascist state, I fail to see how it is possible that he could be at risk of a sedition charge. I don't think he has read the legislation, but that seems pretty common in the anti sedition laws media commentary lately. He likes to get carried away, though:

"For fascism is almost with us now. The experience of 20th century fascism in Europe reminds us of the apparent normality of life, for most people most of the time, under the fascist regimes before they went to war. Outside the minority communities being scapegoated, life under the German and Italian fascists was pretty much like life under John Howard here now."

Uhuh.

It's like walking down a street minding your own business and having a stranger come up to you saying over and over "I have my rights, don't hit me!" Although you may never have had any such intention of doing so at first, you really do want to hit him after a while 'cos he is so annoying.

(There is a similar bit in Monty Python somewhere, I am sure, but it won't come clearly to mind.)

More on Iraq and WMD

FrontPage magazine.com :: Where the WMDs Went by Jamie Glazov

See the link for an interesting interview with someone with direct experience in Iraq on the the WMD issue both before and after the war.

Silly science

Seasonal depression may affect hamsters

My questions: 1. how do you tell that hamster is depressed?

2. Why does it matter? (Yeah, yeah, may provide some insight into human seasonal affective disorder. Not much, I bet.)

Lefty Francophile upset by Aussie media coverage

Bronwyn Winter argues the Australian press has used the French crisis to push a little local propaganda. - On Line Opinion - 11/11/2005

See link above for a long article that definitely deserves a fisking - but no time for me to do it now.

Her basic idea: the media here thinks the Australian economy and assimilation of migrants would be something of a lesson for France. But not so - things are pretty appalling for everyone here too. Just that we don't know it.

But her ending is a bit of a worry - and a good way to lose any possible sympathy:

"Perhaps the editors of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian would do well to consider what a fragile glass house Australia has become. And right now, there are plenty of us clutching sharp stones in our hands. "

The author is "Dr Bronywn Winter is a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney, School of Languages and Cultures, Deptartment of French Studies." Perhaps her boss deserves a letter.

On WMD in Iraq

Although it seems to have attracted little media attention in Australia, The Guardian has been extracting bits of a book by former British Ambassador to the US, Sir Christopher Meyer. The book looks at the run up to the Iraq war, and while Meyer thought the war was justified, his book is apparently highly critical of Tony Blair for being too compliant with American wishes.

However, he still defends the government on the issue of WMD and the danger of Saddam Hussein, and indeed the character of George W Bush:

"With hindsight, of course, there were no weapons of mass destruction, one of the prime justifications for the war, at least in Britain. "This is one of history's loose ends, which may yet be tied," he suggests defensively. But he denies that the government suspected all along that Saddam was less of a threat than was being claimed in public. "I do not know anyone of any stature in 2002 who was going around saying they don't have this stuff."

The US Iraq survey team, sent in after the war, failed to find any WMD after one of the most intensive hunts in history. Sir Christopher suggests they could have been "spirited out of the country into Syria or maybe even Iran. That is a possibility". To the Americans, though, Sir Christopher says, the war was always about regime change, not WMD. "One of the things that came to me when writing was how political the war was. This wasn't just a war, it was a political war." The US, he says, wanted to "replace a bad government with a good government". It was, he says, the "neo-con vision".

US officials who planned the war, such as deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, "thought it was possible to bring not perfect democracy but start with a fairly rough and ready version that would be the basis from which you could move on to higher things".

"Put it like that and it doesn't sound so loony," he says.

And despite the current situation in Iraq, Sir Christopher remains an admirer of Mr Bush. "I have got to declare an interest: I like George W Bush. In public, on the whole, he doesn't do himself justice, at least for a European audience. In private, from the very first time I met him, I found him articulate and interesting. He did do detail. You can argue, millions will, that what he did with those details and the policies he created out of them are not to our liking. But the portrait of an ideological, religious simpleton is wildly off-beam."