Angry Liberal guy

Boing Boing: Angry liberal guy rant

See this (sort of) funny post at Boing Boing (which has interesting stuff despite its politics).

Also at Boing Boing, a pic of a very cool design for a rotating kitchen.

In case you wondering what the letter said

Dr. Sanity

See the link above to Dr Sanity's take on the long, long lecture/letter the Iranian President wrote to George Bush. (You can get to the translation of the letter from there too.) Also, have a look at the way AP reported this, via LGF. Really appalling.

Sex on the brain

New Scientist Breaking News - Clue to sexual attraction found in lesbian brain

The study reported above strikes me as rather useless. The fact the lesbians brains seem to respond differently from those of straight women to a male armpit chemical doesn't tell us a hell of a lot, does it? As the report says:

"But our study can't answer questions of cause and effect," cautions lead researcher Ivanka Savic at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. "We can't say whether the differences are because of pre-existing differences in their brains, or if past sexual experiences have conditioned their brains to respond differently."

I would have been surprised if their brains did respond the same way.

The article says:

Despite these issues, the scientists agree that mapping these differences in brain activity between heterosexual and homosexual women is an important step towards understanding how sexual orientation manifests in the brain.

Given this chicken and egg problem about sexual differences in brains, and that the cost of such studies can't be so cheap, haven't we got many better things for which to be scanning brains?

Take a Bex, Elizabeth

A tragic tale of a nation that drowned in greed and neglect - Opinion

Good Lord, Elizabeth Farrelly, the SMH's architecture and planning writer, gets very overwrought in her article in today's paper. It takes 3/4 of the article to get to the reason she's writing it: her objection to the New South Wales State government reviewing the Building Sustainability Index. (Which apparently requires energy and water efficiencies in new houses.)

She may be right; doing away with the index may well be short sighted. But to go on with a rant for the first page like this (talking from the point of view of explaining to our grandchildren what happened):

Instead, we chose to get richer, fatter and smugger. We had resources to burn and, my, we burnt them. What a fire it was. We let our fauna drift into extinction and our indigenes into indigence. Instead of harvesting wind, wave, hot-rock or sun energy, which we had in sparkling abundance, we sold our forests for toilet tissue, our rivers for cotton-farming, our space for radioactive waste, our military for oil. While old Europe poured her energies into sustaining big, dense populations on the few renewables she could muster, we, stuck in neutral, let the mining lobby draft our energy policy and the developers draft our urban plans. So, while the old world leapt forward we new worlders went on filling our air with fossil fuels and covering our remaining farmlands with fat, eaveless houses.

And yet, as the icecaps started to melt and the earth to drown, we sank ever deeper into denial.

And so on.

Doesn't she realise that such hyperbole doesn't serve her cause well? Don't ruin a decent argument by claiming the end of the world if you lose the debate.

The budget response

A quick survey of the left leaning blogosphere this morning shows very, very little response to last night's budget. Seems they are sitting around scratching their heads about how to best attack it. When Labor immediately supports a lot of it, that makes the job pretty hard.

Really, this would have to be the best received budget I can ever remember.

But one thing I would suggest to the government for next year's pre-election sweetener. Go for a re-instatement of a reasonably funded dental health scheme for the pensioners. It is obvious that all of the States are just never going to fund this properly themselves (even though it is logically their responsibility.) It looks like a couple of hundred million dollars a year would replace the old scheme, which seems peanuts when the surplus is maybe $10 to $12 billion.

Panic over corporations power

Tearing up the constitution - Opinion - theage.com.au

Greg Craven, a professor of constitutional law (and the executive director of the John Curtin Institute) gets over-excited by the implications of a Commonwealth success on the current IR High Court case. He argues that, as most things are done by corporations, if the Commonwealth succeeds in controlling industrial relations this way, they will be able to control... everything.

There may be some point to some of his examples, although I am far from completely convinced about any of them. What I think is his most ridiculous example is this:

The school sector faces the same prospect. Numerous private schools are organised as corporations, and have nowhere to hide, yet even state schools should be feeling the cold breath of the Brindabellas on their necks. After all, what proportion of their students ultimately will work for corporations? Under an ascendant corporations power, a law regulating state school curriculums in the interests of their ultimate corporate employers is a tritely logical step.

So a power to govern corporations could be used to dictate to State governments the curriculum of non-corporate State schools? By no stretch of the imagination can I see that as plausible. (I guess that by signing up to some weird UN treaty it could happen under the external affairs power, but that is a different argument entirely. It is also an avenue more widely used on "progressive" issues than conservative one.)

Constitutional law professor or not, you need to a grip, Craven.

And as for Labor generally on this issue, the phrase "hoist on your own petard" seems most appropriate.

From an MI3 review

in the New Yorker (Anthony Lane):

Returning from there, they don’t even make it to the office, having the misfortune, while crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, to run into a barrage of air-to-ground missiles fired by a pilotless drone. I hate it when that happens.

And from The Sunday Times review:

..Yes, there’s one reference to America blowing things up in the Middle East and cleaning up financially, but it’s so silly, not even Noam Chomsky could take it seriously.

I wouldn't bet on that!

I haven't seen it yet. Maybe this weekend.

Real tough guys

The only original thing I can think to say about the release of the Tasmania miners is that they make David Blaine look like a goose.

On socialism

TCS Daily - Why Isn't Socialism Dead?

The article above on socialism, and its relationship to myth in particular, is interesting. I'm not sure if its explanation of Marx's views on revolution is entirely accurate, but certainly the idea that socialism serves the equivalent function of religion for many people does ring true.

Don't hold back, Theodore

Theodore Dalrymple: From stiff upper lip to clenched jaws | Opinion | The Australian

Theodore Dalrymple really lets fly in this Spectator article, which seems to have appeared in The Australian on Saturday:

The doctrine of rights has borne putrid fruit. In the ward recently was a young woman of the now very extensive slut-babymother class, whose jaw was clenched in a habitual expression of world-destroying hatred. Her glittering saurian eyes swivelled mistrustingly, on the qui vive for infringements of her rights. She exuded grievance as a skunk exudes its odour.

I think Theo has retired recently (was this his last piece for The Spectator?) A pity in a way, but probably good for his blood pressure.

Noel Pearson talks sense

Visions of brighter future can liberate camp dwellers - Opinion - theage.com.au

The article above is short, but again shows Noel Pearson's common sense on aboriginal issues. This part in particular rings true:

Welfare reform is only a part of the picture. True reconciliation would also mean that Aboriginal Australians could walk in two worlds; that they could seek work and education in places far away without losing the link to their homelands.

We must change the current system, because it does not provide incentives for young people and their parents to think about the future. There is no substitute for geographic mobility, education and work experience; without them, Aboriginal culture will collapse.

As I am sure I have said here before, the idea of all remote communities being able to be integrated into the national economy always seemed to be pie in the sky. (Sure, some might make it on art works or tourist ventures; but even those with mining employment available nearby have not always succeeded.) Lack of integration into the economy means poverty, hopelessness, and the vices that go along with those.

At least to the extent that it may have encouraged residents in remote and non-economically viable areas to stay there, the emphasis on land rights (with its talk of the spiritual need for "connection with the land") has actually worked against the interests of keeping a viable aboriginal culture alive.

Pearson seems to think that the land connection is still important to keep, and that is fair enough, as long as it does not encourage the kids actually stay there.

Aspartame cleared - again

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Sweetener 'not linked to cancer'

The Europeans have decided that an earlier study that raised a question about the safety of aspartame (as found in diet drinks) was flawed. (I had posted about the previous study before.)

So how much Diet Coke (or Pepsi Max) can you drink and be OK?:

"On the basis of the evidence," said Dr Pratt, "there is no reason to revise the previously established Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) or to undertake any further revisions of the safety of aspartame."

The ADI is the level of additive considered to be safe if consumed every day over a lifetime without risk to health.

For aspartame, the ADI is set by the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Food (SCF) at 40 milligrams per kilogram of body weight.

An adult would have to drink about 14 cans a day of diet soft drink, or consume about 80 sachets of sweetener to reach this amount.

Drink up.

Nasty Surfdom

It's been noted by Currency Lad and his readers recently that Road to Surfdom has become a nasty place of late. Have a look at this post and in particular the comment from Aussie Bob, which argues that as Australia is a "religious monarchy" it's not a real democracy anyway, and who are we to question the legitimacy of the Iranian "democracy", which is a little different in style, but (just like ours) allows for religious figures to intervene in government. (I don't think that is an unfair summary of his argument.)

There are some arguments not even worth wasting your breath with, and I made a post to that effect. (Yes, I am the Steve. I did not put my url on the post, as there seems to be little here that its readers would agree with.) The post was meant to be slightly tongue in cheek, and of course I could expect some response to the effect of challenging me to argue against AB instead.

AB does do that, but in a style I find snide and overly personal, as indeed are comments below that. They then got onto the Cole response to the Hitchens article, the links to which are well worth reading. The Surfdom readers - well, the couple who referred to it - think Cole got the better of the argument. This I similarly find hard to believe, when Cole comes across to me as barely keeping it together.

No one has yet taken up my proposal that some one on the left should state the bleeding obvious responses to Aussie Bob.

Anyway, you can see why I consider Surfdom has become a very unpleasant place to post, or even visit much for that matter. It's rather reminiscent of posting at Webdiary in its heyday.

Update: Dunlop's pun obviously stuck in my brain. I originally referred to "Serfdom" in this post. Sorry.

The only option ?

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Give Iran Enough Rope

Found via LGF was the above article that suggests waiting on the Iranian issue at the moment. Given the apparent difficulties of "surgical" military action in this case, and the possible regional consequences as well, this seems to be the only option at the moment. (Maybe Israel has nothing to lose if it embarks on some limited operation, but no one seems to think it can do it on its own.)

It's all about fun

BBC NEWS | Health | Britons 'put fun before babies'

Meanwhile in Britain:

The Guardian poll suggested that those quizzed were aware of women's declining fertility, but that they had to balance financial and work pressures against this.

However, most men (64%) and most women (51%) said it was more important for women to enjoy themselves than have children.

A majority also said they believed doing well at work and earning money can count for more than bringing up children.

The report says nothing about how this poll was taken. I suspect that if it was of readers of the left leaning newspaper, the results would be skewed against having children.

The Family Planning Association seems to downplay the fact that people waiting too long means not many people at all soon enough:

A spokeswoman for the Family Planning Association said things had changed both for women and men, with more choices and opportunities open to both.

"There are more things you can do in life, such as going off travelling and going to university.

"But it's actually quite a responsible thing to do, to wait until you are financially secure before having a family so that you can provide for your children."

This may be a reason for delaying children until you are able to work, but otherwise this line of thinking ("we can't start yet, we would have to put off that 3 month holiday in France") is really what fertility experts are trying to warn against.

The vanishing children of Japan

The Japan Times Online - Advanced Search

From the above:

The number of children in Japan has been falling for 25 years straight, highlighting the country's aging population and declining birthrate, an annual government survey showed Thursday....

Children 14 and under now make up 13.7 percent the population, down from 13.8 percent a year ago, hitting a record low and declining for the 32nd year in a row. Meanwhile, people aged over 65 account for a record-high 20.4 percent....

The percentage of young children to the overall population in Japan ranks even lower than other aging societies, including Italy, where such children make up 14.2 percent of the population, and Germany and Spain, both of which stand at 14.5 percent, according to the most recent figures.

Must be less and less need for primary school teachers every year.

These are awful figures, which the government will have to deal with in a serious way soon.

It's turtle's all the way down

New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - 'Cyclic universe' can explain cosmological constant

I will expand on this post later.

Update: I think that the news@nature version of this story is much clearer than the New Sdientist one above. (It's a pity that news@nature links are not good for very long.) From the Nature story:

A bouncing universe that expands and then shrinks every trillion years or so could explain one of the most puzzling problems in cosmology: how we can exist at all...

In Steinhardt and Turok's cyclic model of the Universe, it expands and contracts repeatedly over timescales that make the 13.7 billion years that have passed since the Big Bang seem a mere blink. This makes the Universe vastly old. And that in turn means that the mysterious 'cosmological constant', which describes how empty space appears to repel itself, has had time to shrink into the strangely small number that we observe today.

In 1996, it was discovered that the universe is not only expanding but is also speeding up. The cosmological constant was used to describe a force of repulsion that might cause this acceleration. But physicists were baffled as to why the cosmological constant was so small.

Quantum theory suggests that 'empty' space is in fact buzzing with subatomic particles that constantly pop in and out of existence. This produces a 'vacuum energy', which makes space repel itself, providing a physical explanation for the cosmological constant.

But the theoretically calculated value of vacuum energy is enormous, making space far too repulsive for particles to come together and form atoms, stars, planets, or life. The observed vacuum energy, in contrast, is smaller by a factor of 10120 - 1 followed by 120 zeros. "It is a huge problem why the vacuum energy is so much smaller than its natural value," says Carroll.

The "cyclic universe" idea gives lots of time for the vacuum energy to have decayed to its current strength.

What I don't understand is how the collapse of the universe starts in this theory.

I still have a soft spot for Frank Tipler's Omega Point theory, expounded in detail in "The Physics of Immortality." How the cyclic universe idea fits into that, I am not sure. Tipler has not given up on his ideas either, as this relatively recent interview shows. Tipler believes that it is life itself that will cause the slow down in the current acceleration of the expansion of the universe:

So, if the observed acceleration were to continue forever, the Omega Point Theory would be refuted. But the expansion of life to engulf the universe is EXACTLY what is required to cancel the positive cosmological constant (a.k.a. the Dark Energy): as life expands outward, life willl require energy, and before the collapse of the universe provides gravitational collapse energy, the energy source will be the conversion of baryons and leptons into energy via electroweak quantum tunnelling, a process I describe in Section N (relativistic spacecraft) of the Appendix for Scientists. What I did not realize when I wrote my book a decade ago is that this electroweak process would also act to cancel any positive cosmological constant today, and that the net baryon number in the universe would REQUIRE such Dark Energy today.

The weakest part of Tipler's ideas is his suggested method of "resurrection" which (as I recall it) requires every possible version of every person in all of the "many worlds" being re-created by the super advanced computing thing-y that is God at the end of the universe. I had a thought while having a shower recently which seemed a better idea, but it is only a rough idea which I don't want to reveal for now.

I don't always have deep thoughts in the shower.

By the way, for those who may not know, the title of this post is explained at Wikipedia. (I am amazed at what you can find there now.)

UPDATE: The Nature article has links to some more detailed papers about the cyclic model. One I have read quickly is here. It does explain the model more clearly, even though there is much terminology there that is way above my head. Importantly, it seems that the model does not mean the universe shrinks to anything like an Omega Point (a total "Big Crunch") before the next bang happens. (There's some confusing stuff about black holes mentioned in the paper too.) Having read this, it made me realise I had something about this model some time ago in New Scientist.

It's all speculative fun, but at least does seem capable of some testing.

A good fisking required

Guardian Unlimited - This high-octane rocket-rattling against Tehran is unlikely to succeed

The above article is by Tariq Ali, who (as one would expect from his past writing) naturally springs to the defence of Iran in the current atomic programme confrontation.

It seems very likely that this could be the subject of a very good fisking, but I don't have the detailed knowledge or time to undertake it. Christopher Hitchens would be the obvious journalist to do it.

Ali seems to deal with one issue - Iran's hope for the obliteration of Israel - in a confusing way. This is the paragraph:

Nor is fundamentalist backwardness exhibited in the denial of the Nazi genocide against the Jews and the threat to obliterate Israel, a basis for any foreign policy. To face up to the enemies ranged against Iran requires an intelligent and far-sighted strategy - not the current rag-bag of opportunism and manoeuvre, determined by the immediate interests of the clerics.

Maybe it is just me, but I have read that first sentence several times and its meaning is still not clear. I think (from the second sentence) that Ali does not agree that Iran should be making such threats, but why does he not give these statements the importance they deserve in relation to the world's strong reaction to the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran?

Ali talks of Washington having "manufactured this crisis". Sure, and Iranian hopes to see Israel wiped off the map have nothing to do with it.

In the bigger picture, how has America helped make the Iranians feel insecure lately? By giving their fellow Shia the major role in the government of Iraq? From the Washington Post:

Iraq's president appealed for national unity and the renunciation of sectarian violence ahead of a parliament meeting set for Wednesday, saying he had met with Sunni Arab insurgent leaders and observed a "great change" in their war aims.

The insurgents "do not think that the Americans are the main enemy," President Jalal Talabani said in an interview on al-Hurra television Tuesday night. "They feel threatened by what they call the 'Iranian threat.'

He referred to the insurgents' fear of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, which many Sunnis believe is dominated by the neighboring Shiite theocracy in Iran.

I would also be happy to see if anyone can come up with any credible Israeli politician who has ever talked of the elimination of the state of Iran.

A link that gives some more background as to this problem (from the Israeli perspective) is here.

That's as much as I have time for now.

Nutty actor makes decent movies

Mission: Impossible III

Early reviews for MI 3 are good. Yay.

I really liked the first MI, but it was a sort of guilty pleasure. Uneven acting, a plot that was hard to follow, but great direction. (Has any other director had a career as wildly uneven as De Palma?)

MI2 - just awful. In every respect.

Tom Cruise: sometimes acts well, sometimes not. A bit of a nut in his private life. But he usually chooses interesting films, and despite it all, I find him kinda likeable.

On Hamas and history

Hamas is new name for old desire to eliminate Israel - Opinion - theage.com.au

The Age runs a very pro-Jewish column today, which (I predict) will soon be followed by a pro-Arab rebuttal. It's a good read anyway.