A lifestyle to envy

A couple of weekends ago we went camping not too far from Brisbane, just for one night, mainly as a "proof of concept" for my sceptical wife who had previously avoided the joys of nights under canvas since we married. (My tent is about 18 years old, but as far as I can tell, still waterproof.) As I expected, it was a big hit with the kids.

This mob of kangaroos hung around the campsite. It struck me while watching them that modern day kangaroos have a pretty easy life as far as wild animals go. An undemanding diet, no need for plenty of water, and a lack of significant predators apart from the odd dingo and the two legged variety of hunter. (A sign in the shower block said there were dingos in the area and to avoid them. I didn't see any.)

They really just spend the day nibbling and resting in the shade. Good work if you can get it.

Recycling aircraft

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Where old aeroplanes go to die

This is just a good article on what they do with old passenger aircraft. It's all interesting, just go and read it.

Probably my first post on sport

I don't talk about sport here because if it didn't exist, I don't think I would miss it.

That said, I am from Brisbane, was forced into playing rugby league at primary school, and so have some vague familiarity with the game. (It always seemed to me that the talent of throwing yourself at the ground with a ball in such a way that you had confidence that you would not hurt yourself was something that was already mysteriously evident by the age of 8. I never had that confidence. Is it like taking your first proper head-first dive into a swimming pool? Did those kids who would throw themselves on the thin August turf with abandon have fathers who taught them the trick of how to do it without breaking ribs? I don't recall it being a matter of coaching.)

Anyway, after paying no attention to the code for many years, I think I was in my 20's when I stumbled across a particularly close grand final match on TV one Sunday (I forget what year and which teams), but since then I have usually followed State of Origin games and grand finals, and maybe one or two other "crucial" matches a year. Maybe a total of 4 to 6 games a year, then.

The Brisbane Broncos have always been an easy team to like. As far as I can recall, they have always avoided the sleazy sex incidents (although for all I know that may be more by good fortune than good behaviour). Coach Wayne Bennett has huge popularity, but seems such a self effacing, fatherly character (with the well publicised background of having raised kids with serious disabilities) it is impossible not to like him.

(If anyone overseas is reading this and is interested in Bennett's personal story, the transcript of the 1999 ABC "Australia Story" is here.)

This is all preamble to explaining that tonight, the Broncos won the rugby league grand final in pretty convincing fashion, and it makes me, even with nearly as low an interest as you can get in sport, pretty happy.

I still don't think I am ever in danger of actually going to a stadium watch a match, though. Hearing the individuals in the crowd clearly may well put me off again.

Odd court case of the day

How two Roman soldiers 'did battle' in bath house - Britain - Times Online

Maybe too much emphasis on asteroids

Impact from the Deep -- Strangling heat and gases emanating from the earth and sea, not asteroids, most likely caused several ancient mass extinctions. Could the same killer-greenhouse conditions build once again?

Well you get the picture of what this Scientific American article is about, don't you. As to whether humans could build up CO2 to such high levels as to cause extreme extinctions, we have a little way to go yet:

Although estimates of the rates at which carbon dioxide entered the atmosphere during each of the ancient extinctions are still uncertain, the ultimate levels at which the mass deaths took place are known. The so-called thermal extinction at the end of the Paleocene began when atmospheric CO2 was just under 1,000 parts per million (ppm). At the end of the Triassic, CO2 was just above 1,000 ppm. Today with CO2 around 385 ppm, it seems we are still safe. But with atmospheric carbon climbing at an annual rate of 2 ppm and expected to accelerate to 3 ppm, levels could approach 900 ppm by the end of the next century, and conditions that bring about the beginnings of ocean anoxia may be in place. How soon after that could there be a new greenhouse extinction? That is something our society should never find out.

Yes, well, saving life from massive extinctions does seem a pretty good reason for trying to keep levels fairly well below 1000 ppm.

About that NIE report

TigerHawk

TigerHawk short take on the leaked NIE report makes is very good. He's a smart commentator.

I would add this: surely most voters would guess that with intelligence assessments (especially when they are dealing with a general level of threat, such as the report in question) they are likely to be rubbery and rather subjective. It's inherent in the nature of the intelligence business that it is not a precise science.

Sometimes leaders have to make a call on intelligence material anyway (such as in the decision to invade Iraq) and the fact that such decisions involve a degree of uncertainty is what makes them hard decisions.

For opposition parties to crow about this current report may be expected, but (in my opinion) it does not really endear them much to the sensible swinging voter.

UPDATE: Michael Costello's column about the report is also good, and not entirely supportive of his mate Kim Beazley's take (as evidenced in the previous link.) This paragraph by Costello is very apt:

The NIE states: "We assess that the Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre for jihadists." Well, let's assume that's correct. My question is: And? What follows from that assessment? Israel is also a cause celebre for jihadists. Does that mean we should abandon it? If the answer is: "No, that's a ridiculous proposition", then it is logically equally ridiculous in the case of Iraq.

Painters beware

ScienceDaily: Solvent Exposure Linked To Birth Defects In Babies Of Male Painters

From the above report:

The study focused on questionnaires filled out by a random sample of 398 painters exposed to a mixture of chemicals present in organic solvents and 302 carpenters with little or no exposure, in the period of three months before the last pregnancy. Workers employed as painters three months before their partners became pregnant were on average six times more likely than the carpenters to father congenitally malformed babies (e.g. defects of cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, urogenital and central nervous systems.)

In addition, the painters exposed to the chemicals were 50 to 100 per cent more likely to produce low birth-weight babies, depending on the level of exposure, compared to unexposed carpenters....

Of particular concern, said Dr. Burstyn, is that all of the levels of exposure to solvents investigated in the study were well within Dutch regulations and occupational exposure limits established in the United States and Canada. Therefore, they had previously been considered safe.

Office work has its upside.

About drugs policy in Sweden

News.com.au Gotcha Blog

This is an interesting story on the relative success of Sweden in dealing with illicit drugs:

...Sweden moved down the path of enforcement and rehabilitation with the aim of not just lowering drug abuse, but eliminating it. Legislation removed the discretion from prosecutors to decide whether to press charges, unless the amount of drugs such as cannabis or speed claimed to be for personal use could not be subdivided. Charges for possession of heroin, morphine, opium or cocaine were virtually never waived. Penalties for possession of drugs were increased, with one year minimum jail sentences.

At the same time Sweden poured extra funding into social programs for those most at risk of drugs. Social welfare authorities were also given the legal power to force users into six-month long detox and rehabilitation programs.

The result was a dramatic decline in illicit drug usage. The number of 15-16 year olds saying they had tried drugs at least once fell from 15 per cent in 1971 to three per cent in 1989. The number reporting they had used drugs in the previous month fell from five per cent to 0.5 per cent over the same period.

Always pleasing to see (relatively) conservative approaches working...

This is a worry

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Organ sales 'thriving' in China

This article is about buying transplant organs in China. Note that at the right hand side of the article, there is a link to another BBC story in March which says China was to ban the sale of transplant organs by July. Evidently did not happen.

I may have overlooked posting about the recent investigation into Falun Gong claims that they in particular are being harvested for organs. Lateline had a good interview about this in August.

It would seem that this story is rather hard to keep the public interested in. Startling claims are made, governments talk about the need for independent investigation and seek re-assurances that it is not happening, and then it slips off the radar. However, maybe an unintended conseqence of the Olympic Games coming up is that there is good reason for the media to keep doing stories about human rights in China.

Flying and greenhouse gas

Is flying really evil? from Guardian Unlimited: Travelog

There is a bit of a push going on, especially in Europe, to make flying much more expensive as a way to reduce greenhouse gases.

(I wonder if modern day Zeppelins would be more fuel efficient. There is a theory, although Wikipedia tells me it is highly controversial, that a large part of the Hindenburg's flammability was to do with the construction materials, not so much the hydrogen. I suspect that helium might be too expensive and rare to seriously use on a large scale. Also, surely modern materials could increase airship's carrying capacity mightily. Just a thought...)

Anyway, the writer of the above article notes this:

Reading the papers you would think that air travel is the single biggest cause of global warming. In fact, air travel accounts for less than 5% of carbon dioxide emissions. We must look to every sector to reduce emissions, but if we really want to target the biggest culprits then we need to look at homes, which account for nearer 25% of emissions, and power stations, the UK's largest coal-fired version of which wastes two-thirds of the energy it generates.

We've shown before how a few simple changes made in your home can save double the carbon emissions of a return flight to Egypt. In seeking to reduce our emissions we need to examine our entire lifestyles, not just our flying habits. The trouble is that it's sexier to write about planes than lagging your loft.

Indeed.

The second comment to the article is also interesting:

The aviation industry has always, and continues to work extremely hard to be good 'climate citizens'. Aircraft designs produce HALF the CO2 emissions that they did forty years ago. Current research and new aircraft aim to produce 50% less CO2 per aircraft by 2020. That is a massively ambitious target, and billions of UK, EU and US funding is being spent to reach this goal. Not only that but an 80% reduction in NOx and 50% reduction in noise are other targets.

This represents a doubling of the rate of improvement in environmental performance, i.e. achieving what previously took 40 years in 20 years (targets are relative to 2000).

I may still be able to take a holiday in 15 years time, then.

On swearing in Japanese

The Japan Times Online - Be warned: we're talking rather rude Japanese

As you can see from the above article, swearing in Japanese seems sort of complicated, depending very much on the context of when and where an expression is used.

(I have had troubles myself in explaining the relatively simple Australian concept of "swear words" to Japanese people. Now I understand why a bit better.)

Freakonomics looks at doctors handwashing

Selling Soap - New York Times

A fun read from the NYT about the famous Cedars-Sinai Medical Centres efforts to increase doctors' hand washing habits.

Amongst other measures:

They started a Hand Hygiene Safety Posse that roamed the wards and let it be known that this posse preferred using carrots to sticks: rather than searching for doctors who weren’t compliant, they’d try to “catch” a doctor who was washing up, giving him a $10 Starbucks card as reward. You might think that the highest earners in a hospital wouldn’t much care about a $10 incentive — “but none of them turned down the card,” Silka says.

They then moved onto doing an agar plate culture of some doctors' hands after lunch:

The resulting images, Silka says, “were disgusting and striking, with gobs of colonies of bacteria.”

The administration then decided to harness the power of such a disgusting image. One photograph was made into a screen saver that haunted every computer in Cedars-Sinai.

A nicely creative approach.

Jim Holt on the problems of string theory

The New Yorker: The Critics: A Critic At Large

Jim Holt is an excellent science writer. (His old articles in Slate are well worth looking up.)

In the New Yorker, he has a long review of the 2 anti string theory books out recently, and it is very good reading. (Peter Woit, who wrote one of the books, likes this review much better than the one in Slate that I mentioned some posts back.)

The difficulties of anti drug programs

A White House drug deal gone bad. By Ryan Grim - Slate Magazine

Better late than never. I missed this a few weeks ago, but the article talks about the contradictory effects of anti drug programs in America. (They either don't work or actually seem to result in more use.)

I had heard of such research before, but have never gone looking for more information. It does cross my mind often, however, especially when I take calls at my office from the some group seeking donations to help its anti-drugs educational program in schools here. (I think the police visit and distribute an anti-drugs booklet.) They probably would not appreciate me advising them that their efforts may well be counterproductive.

Controlling the behaviour of people is such tricky business, isn't it?

Poor rats

Future Mars astronauts have radiation on their minds - space - 25 September 2006 - New Scientist Space

The likely serious problems with cosmic radiation on the long trip to Mars is, by my reckoning, good reason to be concentrating on settling the Moon underground first. (Provided that the effect of low lunar gravity can be shown to be less serious than radiation effects.)

Some rats are already being irradiated to see what happens:

These are more difficult to shield against than lighter elements, and Rabin's studies suggest that they are more potent in affecting the brain. The team beams heavy particles into the brains of rats using particle accelerators, then tests the rats to see how the radiation affects their cognitive abilities.

Rats whose brains have been exposed to heavy particle radiation perform more poorly in navigating mazes and have a harder time learning to press a button to get a food pellet. They also are more easily distracted and experience more anxiety in stressful situations.

Maybe in the future, snobby earthlings will deride the intelligence of space settlers in much the same way jokes are made here about settlers inbreeding in remote areas.

As I have mentioned before, one of the first things I want to see done back on the moon is a breeding colony of rats to see how the low gravity affects their offspring.

Bad news for Iran?

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Israel 'holds secret Saudi talks'

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has held an unprecedented meeting with a senior member of the Saudi royal family, Israeli officials say.

The meeting 12 days ago has not been confirmed by Saudi Arabia, which has no official contacts with Israel.

Israeli media say they discussed Iran's nuclear programme and a Saudi peace plan adopted by Arab states in 2002.

Barry Cohen's lunch with Mark Latham

Barry Cohen: Prepare to be blessed with a new Marksism fantasy | Opinion | The Australian

Don't you love it when former supporters of Latham tell personal anecdotes of Mark's behaviour? For the amusement of the nation, Latham should continue with this self defeating series of books at the rate of one a year.

From Cohen's column:

I was alerted that I had been given a spray in The Latham Diaries when it was released late last year. As a friend and supporter for many years, guest speaker at a dinner in his honour and having been publicly thanked by him for urging him to run for the leadership, one would expect nothing less.

Stadiums and storms

News in Science - Sports stadiums may focus lightning damage - 20/09/2006

Some time ago I promised my story of stupid behaviour in storms. It's still on its way.

Fiddling with the atmosphere

Fake volcanoes could combat global warming | COSMOS magazine

When it says "fake volcanoes" I'm not sure exactly what mechanism it suggests to get the sulfates into the high atmosphere. (I have suggested before nuking volcanoes that no one wants, but no one pays any attention to me!)

Anyway, the idea of deliberately polluting the high atmosphere to help fight global warming must horrify Greenies.

Stephen Hayes on Saddam & al Qaeda

How Bad Is the Senate
Intelligence Report?

See above for a very lengthy and detailed Stephen Hayes article criticising the Senate report which claimed no connection between Saddam and al Qaeda.