Mouthing off in Europe over a Coke and Mac

Gar�on! Un Coca-Cola, S'il Vous Pla�t - Europeans hate America these days. So, why are they still buying our stuff? By Daniel Gross

Above is an amusing article from Slate about how it would appear that Europeans, despite being very anti America at the moment, are not exactly punishing American brands. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Doctor Dog

New Scientist Breaking News - Dogs as good as screening for cancer detection

Dogs are very, very useful.

At last, the electronic book comes of age?

Sony Reader Electronic Paper Book: Science Fiction in the News

"Electronic paper" seems to have been coming for years and years. Finally, a product is released using it (see link above).

It looks very cool to me. I was going to say "why doesn't it play MP3s too", but then on the Sony page itself (which is linked from the article above) it confirms that it does. I presume they could issue e books with "mood music" to listen to while you read too. Or background sound effects, if an entire page is set in a storm, for example. (Just a thought...)

Now cost: a device that can carry 80 books around (or more with added memory, it seems) is pretty damn convenient, especially for school or uni students. (Also pretty disastrous to leave on the bus seat by accident!) But how much would people pay for one? My guess: anything much above $450 to $500 (Australian $) might be pushing it.

Some more on climate change ...

Researchers Confirm Role Of Massive Flood In Climate Change

The link above talks about how it is believed that a massive flood of fresh water from North America into the Atlantic about 8,200 years ago did affect the ocean currents and reduce temperature suddenly in the northern hemisphere.

Interestingly, though, the study also says this:

"...the team's results showed that the flood had much milder effects around the globe than many people fear--including the dramatic shifts in climate depicted in the 2004 movie 'The Day After Tomorrow'.

According to the model, temperatures in the North Atlantic and Greenland showed the largest decrease, with slightly less cooling over parts of North America and Europe. The rest of the northern hemisphere, however, showed very little effect, and temperatures in the southern hemisphere remained largely unchanged. Moreover, ocean circulation, which initially dropped by half after simulated flood, appeared to rebound within 50 to 150 years.

"This was probably the closest thing to a 'Day After Tomorrow' scenario that we could model," said LeGrande. "The flood we looked at was even larger than anything that could happen today.""

Seems to be a good idea to live in the Southern Hemisphere.

Mark Steyn on Climate Change

Sorry, but I am short staffed at work at the moment, so blogging rate has suffered. (Actually, I have been involved in another forum in a semi-argument with a physicist over particle accelerators, micro black holes and the fate of the earth, which I will have to discuss in detail here one day soon.)

Anyway, in today's Australian, Mark Steyn gives some good reasons to be sceptical of the environmentalists on climate change, and makes mention of sea change rises that generally confirm my comments of a few posts back. (Incidentally, even if I do say so myself, I think I did a reasonable job of quickly debunking Labor's environment minisiter's policy launch last week, but no one in the right wing world of blogs that I visit seems to have noticed.)

On climate change generally I am more inclined to be a fence sitter; on the other hand, I can see no real sense in clinging to Kyoto, as it is indeed the politics of empty gesture at its worst.

Briefly on Narnia

I noted recently how the movie version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy seemed to me to get nearly everything wrong.

Happily, the first "Narnia" movie seems to get everything one would expect from the story close enough to 100% right.

I don't intend writing a review as such. There have been sufficient good ones in the media already, and I would mention David Edelstein's review in Slate as being pretty spot on. Strangely, I seemed to notice more hostile reviews in the British media than the American. See this one in The Times. But then, the Guardian review (as opposed to the Polly Toynbee commentary I posted on previously) gives it a "perfect" score. Strange, hey.

As the "positive" reviewers note, the movie differs from Tolkien in that it has a human intimacy (contributed no doubt by the fact that it has recognizeable humans in it!) Regular readers may recall I have no time for Tolkien at all. I guess that part of his appeal is due to the fascination that readers can develop with any really unique and detailed "universe" that writers of very lengthy fantasy (or science fiction) novels have to engage in.

However, with his review of Return of the King, Roger Ebert summarised well my whole objection to the LOTR (even though he still gave the movie 3.5 stars):

"There is little enough psychological depth anywhere in the films, actually, and they exist mostly as surface, gesture, archetype and spectacle. They do that magnificently well, but one feels at the end that nothing actual and human has been at stake; cartoon characters in a fantasy world have been brought along about as far as it is possible for them to come, and while we applaud the achievement, the trilogy is more a work for adolescents (of all ages) than for those hungering for truthful emotion thoughtfully paid for."

The funny thing is, even though the book and the movie are directed to a younger audience than Tolkien's, "Narnia" does have that emotional connection. For me, anyway.

Pacific Islands and Global Warming: does Albanese know how to use the internet?

Labor's Shadow Environment Minister Anthony Albanese, obviously looking for opportunities to get his face on the media during a quiet patch, made some surprising claims yesterday:

""It's quite clear whole countries could literally disappear under rising sea levels in the next decade; it's the pointy end of climate change, and it's happening in our region," Mr Albanese said."

Let's see, how many seconds does it take to google "sea level rises Pacific", and to reveal some interesting facts:

In 2000, the BBC reported:

"Ahead of this week's global warming conference in The Hague, Pacific nations were told about the results of a scientific reassessment of historical tide-gauge data in their region.

The study found that Pacific-wide sea levels had risen at an average rate of about 0.8 millimeters per year. The trend was measured using only those recording stations with hourly data stretching back more than 25 years.

Dr Wolfgang Scherer, director of the National Tidal Facility (NTF) of Flinders University, South Australia, which undertook the review, told BBC News Online that the much larger increases in global sea level predicted by some climate models were not apparent in their regional data.

"There is no acceleration in sea level rise - none that we can discern, at all," he said."

This would suggest that within a decade, the sea level might rise by 8 mm. Ok, let's be generous, and allow 12 mm, or half an inch. (Or let's go the whole hog and allow for nearly an inch.) If that's enough to sink an island, I would think that they must already use boats instead of cars most days of the year.

So where does the hysteria about Tuvalu sinking some from? Try this article (which also shows that for some recent years, the sea level around the island nation actually dropped!):

"Tuvalu'’s 10,500 people live on nine tiny atolls. They are densely packed; 403 people per square kilometer; Australia has 2.4, New Zealand just under one. Kiribati has 111 people per square kilometer....

Scherer says data from Funafuti shows no evidence of sea level rise. '“As at June 2001, based on the short-term sea level rise analyses ... for the eight years of data return show a rate of 0.0 mm per year, i.e. no change in average sea level over the period of record.'”

They found a major anomaly in 1998, an El Nino year, when sea levels actually fell by 35 centimeters (14 inches). The monitoring project will next year install satellite monitoring equipment that will determine whether the atolls themselves, as distinct from the sea, rise and fall....

The historical record, both recent and pre-historic, shows storm surges, which bring the sea across the land, destroying gardens, have long been a fact of life. In places like Kiribati and Majuro, for example, the highest point above sea level is on bridges 11 feet and 20 feet high, respectively; virtually everyone lives about five feet above sea level.

'“That is the over-riding psychology behind it,'” Scherer says, adding that population pressures are aiding the political drive to move people to Australia and New Zealand. '“Sea levels have been rising since the last ice age.'”"

Of course, to the Green movement, any problem with low lying islands is (at least implicitly) the fault of the industrialised West. See this from the Green Left Weekly of barely a month ago:

"On November 24, plans were put in place to evacuate the 980 people living on the six Carteret atolls, after they battled for decades with the effects of climate change. The Papua New Guinean government will move 10 families at a time to Bougainville, 100 kilometres away. Within two years the Carterets will be uninhabitable, and they are likely to be completely submerged by 2015. "

Clearly, it is utter rubbish to suggest that islands currently facing problems with the sea level are in trouble because of rises that have occurred in recent years. Indeed, Anthony Albanese's claim that countries could disappear within the next decade is also bilge, but he obviously doesn't bother checking things himself.

So even if you fear that the Liberal government's Ian Campbell has become too much of a captive of the global warming crowd, at least he is still ahead in the common sense game:

"Responding to Labor's calls for the Government to accept environmental refugees from the Pacific whose countries were flooded as a result of climate change, the Minister for the Environment, Ian Campbell, branded the suggestion absurd."

Of course, the fact that a significant percentage of the population probably does believe that islands are already in trouble from global warming is also caused by the media being happy to uncritically report such press releases (and only follow with a denial from the other side the next day, after some mud has no doubt already stuck in impressionable minds.) The media's performance in this area is pathetic.

UPDATE: It gets worse. Albanese slags off at the government's response as follows:

" 'Climate change is real and it's hurting our Pacific neighbours now," Mr Albanese said.

"PNG citizens on the Carteret Islands have become the world's first climate change refugees.

"Tuvalu is expected to be uninhabitable because of rising seas levels over the coming decade."

He said Tuvalu had twice called for help from the federal government and been twice rejected....

Greens leader Bob Brown said Senator Campbell was ignoring the evidence about rising sea levels as a result of human induced global warming.

"The minister's claim that there is no evidence to suggest that Pacific island populations are in any imminent danger of being displaced by rising sea levels is absurd," he said.

"The threat is real and imminent.""

Bob, Anthony: you seem to picking one area of the global warming debate where the current effect (namely, next to nil) is actually clear and entirely measureable. Where is the evidence for the disaster for Tuvalu within a decade??

UPDATE 2: From Wikipedia:

"To date, sea level changes have not been implicated in any substantial environmental, humanitarian, or economic losses. Previous claims have been made that parts of the island nations of Tuvalu was "sinking" as a result of sea level rise. However, subsequent reviews have suggested that the loss of land area was the result of erosion during and following the actions of 1997 cyclones Gavin, Hina, and Keli. [23] [24] The islands in questions were not populated. Reuters has reported other Pacific islands are facing a severe risk including Tegua island in Vanuatu, data shows no net sea level rise. According to Patrick J. Michaels, "In fact, areas to the west such as [the island of] Tuvalu show substantial declines in sea level over that period."[25]"

This year's "death by mochi" toll

Mochi mortem

See the above link for the ever interesting Japundit's story on how many people died this year in their attempt to enjoy traditional New Year mochi (cooked rice pounded until it is a soft, sticky, stringy mess) in Japan.

In my experience, which is not vast, eating fresh mochi as a sweet (with red beans in the centre, say) is not a problem. But eating very soft mochi in soup has sometimes made me gag, because unless you are careful to swallow it all in one lump, it can string out with part of it heading south while still attached to part at the back of your throat. Get the idea?

Anyway, every year several people in Japan choke to death, usually the elderly, while eating it on New Years Day. If 4 died in Tokyo, I would guess that maybe 20 or more died across the nation.

A long post on some movies

* Regular readers might remember my skepticism about "King Kong" being a runaway success at the box office, despite early positive reviews. (Who needs a 3 hour version of a B grade story, no matter how good it looks.) Looks like I was right. ("Narnia" is now at $225 million in the States; "Kong" is $175 million.)

I haven't seen Narnia yet.

* Did see "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" on cable the other night. Although I was tired, and that can certainly dull one's enjoyment of a film, it still seemed to me that it got everything nearly perfectly wrong. All of the characters seemed underplayed, as if a flat delivery would somehow work better than the panic-y, eccentric and much more charming performances given in the TV series. Actually, I read somewhere in the reviews of the movie that Douglas Adams did not like the TV series, and I am curious to know why.

The movie also had far too little of Marvin the robot (for me the funniest character in the book) and far too few extracts from the Guide itself.

The changes in plot were more or less acceptable, and Trillian herself was quite charming, but this movie was for me a very big disappointment overall. It got 60% approval on Rottentomatoes too. How?

* Spielberg's Munich has attracted a lot of controversy in the States. I predict that David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz (from the ABC's "At the Movies") will give it high marks, as it apparently can be read as a pretty much "liberal" take on the Middle East conflict, and any movie with a "liberal" sensibility gets an automatic extra star from those two reviewers.

I still have high hopes that I will like the film, but then I happen to think that Spielberg could direct the 'phone book and make it compelling. Even a flawed Spielberg film can be interesting for the ways in which it is flawed. (There is perhaps one exception: "Always", which was both a box office and critical failure in the 1980's. For me, it is the only truely forgettable film he has ever made.) Anyway, Roger Ebert has 2 interviews with Spielberg defending "Munich" from some of the "political" criticisms of it.

* Speaking of Ebert, who writes reasonable reviews, but also has a very liberal outlook and somewhat erratic tastes; he absolutley loathed the recent Australian horror flick "Wolf Creek", giving it zero stars.

David Stratton, meanwhile, shared most of Eberts' reservations, saying this in his review:

" But I do think the film is incredibly sadistic. I think it's foul in some ways in terms of violence. I think it really is thoroughly nasty."

Yet he still gave it 4 stars, though saying he was very "conflicted" about it.

The star rating can be accounted for by his habit of giving any Australian film an automatic 1 to 1.5 star increase simply because it is Australian, and that he probably knows lead actor John Jarrett very well. One suspects that if this had come out of America, local sensitivities would not have overwhelmed his obvious repugnance to the strong violent sadism (most notably directed against the female characters too) of which he and Ebert both complain.

I have never understood the appeal of "horror". Suspense and frights can be satisfying without being gruesome, and I don't understand how writers or directors can take satisfaction from being involved in creating that genre.

Some counter-intuitive points about smoking

Peter Martin's article in the Sydney Morning Herald today was very interesting. Some highlights ('bold" is mine):

"Then they [2 Melbourne Institute researchers] examined the effect of the extra bans on smoking in public places introduced in some states. They found that while these encouraged older Australians and the very young to quit, people aged 18 to 24 were actually less likely to quit in those states in which a ban had been introduced.

This "rebellion" effect appears to pop up all over the place when it comes to fighting smoking. It had been thought that increasing the price of cigarettes would cut the number sold and improve the health of smokers. It certainly cuts the number sold. In Australia, a price increase of 10 per cent cuts sales by about 4 per cent. But a price increase doesn't necessarily cut the amount of nicotine taken into smokers' bodies....

She [economist researcher Francesca Cornaglia] found that while increases in cigarette taxes did cut the number of cigarettes sold, they appeared not to cut at all the level of continine in smokers' saliva. As she put it: smokers were smoking fewer cigarettes but were smoking each one "more intensively"....

Banning smoking on public transport, in shopping centres and in schools appears to improve non-smokers' health. But banning it in places where smokers "go out", such as restaurants and bars, makes the health of non-smokers worse. It pushes smokers away from those establishments and back into their homes where they pump smoke into the air breathed by their children and loved ones. Cornaglia suggested a better public health measure would be to allow the creation of special smoking establishments where smokers could breathe smoke over each other."

I guess that is what bars used to be, except that non smokers wanted to use or work in them too.
All very interesting. While I never smoked, many in my family did for at least some time in their lives, and I have never felt fanatically against it; especially as going out to bars and nightclubs during my young adulthood (at a time they were still quite smokey) was not my "thing" anyway. However, the more I read about its health consequences, and hear of relatives and friends whose health now leads them to deeply regret their past habit, the more loathesome I feel the industry really is. Has any mad dictator anywhere yet tried banning it totally? I wonder what the unforeseen consequences of that would be?

Some cautious optimism on AIDS

news @ nature.com�-�AIDS at Christmas time�

The link above is to a more or less optimistic editorial in Nature on the increasing ability to fight AIDS, even in the poorest countries, with anti viral drugs.

Note that evil capitalism has not prevented this: "The issue of drug pricing has become less acute, as mechanisms have been established to supply HIV treatments at a reasonable cost." But stupidity is not helping, especially in South Africa:

"South Africa is one of the wealthiest countries on the African continent, but less than a fifth of the nearly 700,000 people who need drugs are receiving them. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the country's health minister, meanwhile continues to emphasize herbal remedies, most recently in a speech in Durban on 1 December."

Surprisingly, the Wikipedia entry about her notes that Tshabalala-Msimang is a real doctor, with medical training from Russia and Europe. It's a wonder that Queensland Health didn't offer her a job!

More bad news on Iran

It seems somewhat ironic that the Guardian is currently running hard with the "nuclear danger from Iran" issue.

Have a look at these 3 recent Guardian stories:

"Tehran ends freeze on nuclear fuel research"

" The Iranian government has been successfully scouring Europe for the sophisticated equipment needed to develop a nuclear bomb, according to the latest western intelligence assessment of the country's weapons programmes." (The intelligence assessment is that of the Europeans, so it presumably won't be seen quite as dubiously as intelligence from the US.)

"Intelligence report claims nuclear market thriving" From this story, note the following:

"...it is not surprising that much of the document focuses on Iranian activities - not only in the nuclear field, but in bio-chemical and conventional weapons, notably its "very ambitious" missile programmes. The document lists more than 200 Iranian companies, institutes, government offices and academic outfits said to be engaged in weapons research, development and procurement, and mostly subordinate to the defence ministry in Tehran's armed forces logistics department.

Russia, which has just clinched a billion-dollar missile deal with Iran, is identified as crucial to Iran's military programmes, especially the missile development; 16 Russian companies and academic institutes are named as helping and profiting from the Iranian military effort. They range from the Glavkosmos space agency to St Petersburg's Technical University.

The Iranians, as well as the Pakistanis and the Syrians, are also benefiting from North Korean military prowess and exports, the document says, noting that "the export of arms equipment is currently reckoned to be North Korea's most important source of income."

So the "axis of evil" comment by George W Bush is seemingly given support via stories in the Guardian. How interesting...

Christopher Hitchens keeps at it

Are Elections Democratic? - Dictatorships are hardly preferable. By Christopher Hitchens

See the link for Christopher Hitchen's latest reasoned attack on the anti-war isolationists who are determined to be pessimistic about every apparent advance in Iraq.

For those who still smoke

Just One To Four Cigarettes Daily Triples Risk Of Dying Of Heart Disease Or Lung Cancer

I think I missed this one from September last year. I find this study pretty surprising too, as I think a lot of people would assume that a couple of cigarettes after dinner would do so little harm as to not be worth worrying about. Seems clearly wrong...

For those who received chocolates at Christmas

A Few Squares Of Dark Chocolate A Day May Stave Off Artery Hardening In Smokers

The above story seems to indicate a pretty remarkable effect of the consumption of dark chocolate, at least in smokers:

"After two hours, ultrasound scans revealed that dark chocolate significantly improved the smoothness of arterial flow, an effect which lasted for eight hours. Blood sample analysis also showed that dark chocolate almost halved platelet activity. Antioxidant levels rose sharply after two hours.

White chocolate had no effect on endothelial cells, platelets, or antioxidant levels.

Dark chocolate has more antioxidants per gram than other foods laden with the substances, such as red wine, green tea, and berry fruits, say the authors, who suggest that the beneficial effects of dark chocolate lie in its antioxidant content.

"...Only a small daily treat of dark chocolate may substantially increase the amount of antioxidant intake and beneficially affect vascular health," conclude the authors. "

One thing to note, though, is that this was very dark chocolate (74% cocoa solids), and from what I can gather most commonly sold dark chocolates are maybe around the 30 to 40% mark. I did try a 70 or 80% one from a specialty shop once, and it was rather on the bitter side. I think Lindt might sell a very high proportion one too; maybe it tastes better.

New Year Greetings for 2006

I hope to resume a more or less "normal" rate of blogging soon.

I note that the on-line magazines such as Slate and Salon have a fair amount of "filler" at this time of year. These are sometimes good and interesting, though, and here are some I recommend:

From Slate: a warning to all those who have a romantic idea of opening a coffee shop. (Sure it is written from a New York perspective, but I bet the same thing happens here all the time.)

Also from Slate: a woman has a go at being an inflatable mascot at a basketball game. Quite a few funny lines (and I share her mental inability to take any significant interest in team sports. Or even solo ones.)

From Salon: a writer who stumbled into being a newspaper food critic for a couple years explains how debilitating the job became.

Speaking of food critics, I have always enjoyed listening to Alan Saunders on Radio National. He seems too smart to not share the same reservations that the Salon article writer has about the whole field of "food porn", yet he keeps at it (broadcasting and sometimes writing on food in all its aspects) for years.

Some Christmas Thoughts

1. God it's hot. (I was reminded that Christmas day 2004 in Brisbane was not all that hot. Unfortunately, this has been wiped from my mind in view of the other 9 stinking hot and humid Christmas Days in the last decade.)

2. I will not have a mid life crisis that involves become a caterer. Estimating the amount of food to be consumed by 15 adults and 4 children proved to be impossible.

4. This years game of "how long can we keep eating that ham" is currently on.

5. Giving ham skin to a dog might make it vomit.

6. I just remembered now - I forgot to put out the party poppers. (That's about number 20 on a list of things we forget to serve or do on Christmas day.)

7. I now have to join the rest of the world and read "The Da Vinci Code".

8. One of the local TV stations was so desperate for something to show on the Christmas Day evening news that they went to the international terminal at the airport and filmed people arriving and being hugged by their relatives.

9. Spa pools spend most of their time broken.

10. If they moved Christmas Day to 18 December, maybe most small businesses could close for 2 weeks instead of only one. Would suit me.

More worrying news about Iran

Waiting for the rapture in Iran - Yahoo! News

Iran's president is a real worry. (See the Christian Science Monitor story above.)

Why oil rich countries can stay poor

The curse of oil | The paradox of plenty | Economist.com

An interesting article in the Economist (link above) on the "curse of oil". This kind of backgrounder is what this magazine does best.

Tell us something we didn't know already..

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist... 12/14/2005