Lessons of a new husband

Scott Adams (of Dilbert Blog, which I have only recently started following) got married in July this year to a woman namely Shelly. It would appear from Wikipedia that this might be his first marriage. I suppose that it is possible that he has lived with a de facto partner before, but then again this story from his blog makes that seem a little unlikely. (It also made me laugh out loud):

Last night we were having some quality time alone at home and I made the mistake of writing myself a note while Shelly was still talking. She asked me what the note was about. I proudly told her it was about Vladimir Putin and how two of his critics were recently poisoned. It would make a great blog topic. I was quite pleased with myself, until Shelly asked, “Is that what you were thinking about while I was talking?”

Now let me explain something to the single men out there. If you think there’s an easy way to explain to your wife why you were thinking of Vladimir Putin while she is telling you about her feelings, you would be totally wrong. And I hadn’t practiced that conversation so I was caught unprepared. I think I said something along the lines of “I only think of Russian politics during the gaps between your words.” But apparently I’m supposed to be using that time just waiting around.

On a more philosophical note, Adams insists that he does not believe in free will, and in a recent post gave an example to try and help bolster his argument. This attracted 845 comments in response, which just goes to show the odd places where serious discussion of such an issue can take place.

Linked at last

Well, that only took 18 months! Tim Blair evidently moves in mysterious ways, taking my not so subtle hint of a few posts back that a link on his blog roll was long overdue. Thanks TB.

Just to be perverse I should now announce my retirement from blogging.

My history of being linked is fairly tragic. Currency Lad was an early one, but he's has wandered off into semi-retirement without, as far as I know, any explanation. Evil Pundit gave me a kind recommendation but now has disappeared completely (after talking about serious health issues). Does anyone know if he is OK? Catallaxy had a link earlier, then had a massive crash and I haven't re-appeared. Maybe my appearance on Blair's site means he'll soon have a tragic accident ironically connected to global warming and also have to retire. (Cruise ship to Hawaii hits iceberg, leaving Tim stranded on tiny 1 m high island in the South Pacific slowly being inundated by rising sea levels?)

Speaking of which, I think I may have found the perfect Tim Blair Christmas gift:


It's the Global Warming Mug:

Each mug is covered with a map of the world. When you pour in a hot beverage, the mug shows what happens when the world heats up and the oceans begin to rise... Land mass disappears before your very eyes!

Quite handy for choosing where one's long term real estate investments ought to be.

Let me be the first to say...

1. Alan Ramsay is probably in hospital today with severe finger cramps after typing every single word of his SMH column today (as opposed to usual cut and pasting of 70% of it.)

2. I really hope Kevin Rudd is the new leader so that I can see him looking extremely uncomfortable in one of those required "having a beer in his local pub" photos that are deemed essential in every election campaign.

3. What was going on with Julia Gillard's hair yesterday? Did she pick a bad week to get a new style, or did the leadership challenge come on so fast that she had to do the press conference straight out of the shower? (I know that I should either be female or gay for that joke, but what the heck.)

4. Just how long is some of the Left commentary going to be about how this is all a Murdoch plot? It's funny, but I didn't know that Murdoch had much control over Phillip Adams (who came out strongly for Rudd a couple of weeks ago), or the Fairfax press or the ABC. What is Tim Dunlop going to say about this?

5. The best line from Matt Price's piece today:

Logic dictates Coalition disunity should be monopolising the headlines, except logic and federal Labor caucus go together like foie gras and tomato sauce.

A surprise for Michael Crichton

The quality of Michael Crichton's books has always been pretty uneven. Without going back and checking, it seems he follows some sort of 6 year cycle between pretty good and pretty ridiculous.

As a fiction stylist he usually leaves a lot to be desired. But even then, some of his books read much better than others.

I therefore don't read everything he publishes, but of his recent books I liked "Prey" (about nanotechnology) and quite enjoyed the plotting of "Timeline", even though the reason for corporate time travel was very disappointing. I did not bother reading "State of Fear" because the basic idea (evil environmentalists creating weather manipulating machines) sounded like something no writer could make me believe. (Besides, some climate scientists he consulted expressed dismay that he either misunderstood or deliberately ignored them.)

Anyway, it is a little surprising to read that his latest book ("Next", about biotechnology) has received good reviews in the States. Maybe a Christmas gift for me?

Personal flying concepts

Found via New Scientist technology blog, a great article reviewing personal flying concepts developed for a time by the US armed forces. Many of these I have seen before, but had half forgotten. But I don't recall the first one with the pilot standing above chopper blades. Looks very disconcerting.

Murder by magnet

Here's an article that the script writers for CSI or House could use inspiration for a story next season:

Researchers found that while common magnets for home and office use with low magnetic strength posed little risk, stronger magnets made from neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) may cause interference with cardiac devices and pose potential hazards to patients. NdFeB magnets are increasingly being used in homes and office products, toys, jewelry and even clothing....

Two spherical magnets of eight and 10 millimeters in diameter and one necklace made of 45 spherical magnets were tested on 70 patients, 41 with pacemakers and 29 with ICDs. Magnetic interference was observed in all patients. The cardiac devices resumed normal function after the magnets were removed.

I like to think that it must be a very fun job being a researcher for (say) House, as I assume they spend most of their time reading weird case studies in the medical journals that can be varied a little to form the basis of the difficult diagnosis of each episode. Of course, being a doctor might help too.

Silly hats and academia in Japan

An interesting article from the Japan Times about Japan and overfishing. It starts off talking about a famous TV fish expert:

In September, the TV personality known as Sakana-kun was appointed to the position of guest assistant professor by the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology.

Famous for his childish demeanor and blowfish-shaped headgear, Sakana-kun certainly knows his fish, and his lack of a college degree doesn't detract from his reliability as a marine expert. Having turned a childhood obsession with octopi into a lifelong study of sea life and all it entails, he first gained attention on the TV Tokyo contest show "TV Champion" when he beat out other piscine otaku with the depth and breadth of his knowledge: the contestants also had to have an understanding of fish cuisine, which is more important on TV than the zoology stuff.

Sakana-kun's motto is "Take a look, take a bite (Mite miyo, tabete miyo)," which makes him the perfect fish expert for TV even beyond his big smile and ingratiating manner.

Hmm, I want to see what a self-educated, childish, blowfish-headgear-wearing fish expert looks like. Here he is:


He just looks...annoying. Remember, he has been appointed an assistant professor at a Toyko University.

Anyway, the rest of the article gets more serious in talking about how the Japanese need to start eating less tuna (they account for 40% of world consumption of bluefin tuna, and 25% of all tuna!)

Kim must be very annoyed

I reckon the thing annoying Kim Beazley most about the leadership challenge would be that did all that dieting and workouts in the gym for no political purpose. Oh well, if he loses he can always console himself by forgetting about the diet completely over Christmas.

On Insiders last week, Kim made it clear he was very happy to have his weight loss noticed:

BARRIE CASSIDY: It comes up periodically, too, questions are being raised about your health. Physically, clearly, you haven't been in a shape as good as this for a long, long time. But you did have that recent illness?

KIM BEAZLEY: The illness is fine. My physical shape very kind of you to say that. I've been working very hard on the subject of my physical structure and on the whole I'm being successful with it.

Actually, the way he skipped over the illness question so quickly seemed just a little suspicious to me. Of course this is pure speculation, but I wonder whether part of the reason for the leadership challenge (which all commentators agree is unusual in that it does not appear to have been instituted by any contender) is due to lingering concern by close colleagues about his memory or ability to concentrate.

Teachers and The Age

It's a match made in heaven, lefty teachers and The Age. Big union rallies are being held today, to what end I don't know. It's about a year from a Federal election, and there is no way rallies of whatever size are going to persuade the Howard government to retract its IR legislation after it just had its constitutional right to create it confirmed by the High Court. (Maybe that is the reason for the rallies, a pointless whinge about losing a High Court case.)

So, teachers today in many States are taking the day off to attend these rallies. Here's their justification from The Age letters today:

... I am obligated to stop work so that, hopefully, students at my school do not have to join a workforce where there is no job security, no basic rights and no collective agreements.

I look into my classroom each day and see a class full of students who have hopes, ambitions and dreams which would not be fulfilled under a Howard Government.

Maybe teenagers have changed since I was one, but I somehow doubt they dream all day of the fantastic collective bargaining agreement their union will win for them.

And from a teacher sympathiser:

WHEN teachers took strike action I would always keep my child at home. His absence note would explain that I kept my child at home because I did not want my child surrounded by teachers who were so selfish that they would not surrender a day's pay to fight against injustice or so dull that they could not comprehend the importance of fighting injustice. I encourage all parents to send such messages to schools and to John Howard.

Ohh..we don't want our child contaminated by all those unjust or dumb teachers who happen to take a different view of where the balance should lie in industrial relations, do we?

Look, I'm not saying people don't have a right to disagree with the Howard government's policies on IR and to fight tooth and nail to do the only thing that will change it - elect a Kevin Rudd government. (Beazley has only got to make one more slip of the tongue in the next 6 weeks and he is gone.) But what irritates me is the preciousness of the arguments on display here, that suggest the issue is so dire and immediate that teachers must attend (even when they are not personally affected, as no public sector teacher would be) and that the rallies are going to achieve something.

The lonely job of being anti-Dunlop

I still don't get why Tim Dunlop, now blogging courtesy of News Limited, is not attracting much negative attention from the Right.

JF Beck has ripped into Blogocracy , and I added my comment of support. But why is there so little challenge of Dunlop on his site?

For anyone who cares, I am the lonely "Steve from Brisbane" who has been posting critical comments at Blogocracy. Here are some examples of matters Dunlop has been excited about recently:

1. Ex SAS officer Tinley criticises the government's decision to go into Iraq in what was obviously a highly politically motivated attack. Tim Dunlop can hardly contain himself:

Can all the pretending stop now? Have we finally reached a tipping point? Will comments today by war hero and former SAS officer Peter Tinley, finally give people across Australia—others in the military, the media, members of the Government—the courage to call the bluff on the prime minister’s discredited defence of the war in Iraq?....

Could there be a more devasting assessment from someone so intimately involved and so obviously dedicated to the military and to the defence of his country?

When it turns out within a couple of days that Tinley is a long time member of the ALP who has been in discussions about preselection, Dunlop can't see why people take the view that it was cynical media manipulation to make this attack without disclosing his personal incentive. Even long time Dunlop supporter Aussie Bob could see the point, I reckon, just that he thought it was funny that The Australian was sucked in.

2. Dunlop has been carrying on like a pork chop about how talk of challenge to the leadership of Kim Beazley is to a major degree the fault of the media, and News Limited in particular. His mate Aussie Bob posts at tedious length about how the media misreads polling all the time (conveniently forgetting how good the Liberals have been at gaining ground during Federal election campaigns). Today, Mark at Lavartus Prodeo agrees whole-heartedly; it's a regular Beazley support group.

Boys, boys, if the ABC and Fairfax press are running with leadership speculation too, doesn't this suggest the primary source of the problem is within the Labor party itself? Tonight The Age reports:

Supporters of a change have resolved to make no move before next week to maximise the focus on rallies against workplace laws being held today. But they rate the prospect of an approach to Mr Beazley to step down, or even a challenge by Kevin Rudd as "50-50".

No, no, the media should just ignore talk like that.

3. This one surprises me most: Dunlop posted a YouTube video purporting to show "White House manipulation" of video when it had been thoroughly debunked by Michelle Malkin and others weeks ago. When commentors point this out to him, he posts a not overly obvious semi-retraction at the bottom of the post as an "update", but leaves the offending video in its star position at the top. Tim Blair, you must be following Blogocracy, and if had happened on some other lefty blog I imagine you would have lept on this blunder with enthusiasm. (I remember Tim D let Tim B temporary host his blog while Blair had technical problems. Has this led to a reluctance to criticise him?)

4. Blogocracy has really become an exact clone of the old Road to Surfdom, including now the use of the "Howard's funny face" at the top of some posts. What's more, he posts about how the Left is so much more successful in blogging than the Right, citing Tim Blair as the only successful right wing blogger. Again, I would have expected some response from Blair, but none. Here's what I posted about this at Blogocracy:

Yes Tim, blogs such as yours add so much to current debate when you post a YouTube “White House manipulation” story as if it hadn’t been thoroughly debunked 3 weeks ago. (By the way, your semi-retraction at the bottom of that post is pretty half arsed. If you want people to really know that you think there probably is nothing to that video, why not put an update at the top of the post where people will clearly see it. Or do you think it isn’t conclusively debunked?)

The other interesting thing about that YouTube video is how it has about 213,000 views, compared to the debunking YouTube effort (as linked to by Malkin) has had about 1/7 of that. There is no doubt at all that the Left wing blogshphere is better at constructing an echo chamber, but I don’t see that as something to be proud of.

(I also reckon that the Left’s natural constituancy - students, academics, public servants, and the underemployed - simply have more [time] to spend on listening to the echo chamber than those on the Right.)

As for Blogocracy, it is rapidly going the way of SMH’s Webdiary. I reckon those who disagree are not bothering posting much because it is clear that the site has its own cheersquad that is never going to change its mind on issues surrounding this Howard government. This is not a healthy sign, and frankly I can’t see why News Limited would be thinking it was worthwhile to do a virtual transplant of Surfdom to here. (I would say the same if any other currently free website was transplanted here too.) In fact, I don’t get the whole “every columnist is now a blogger” thing either, unless readers are going to have to pay for the privilege sometime in the future.

To say something positive: Tim D obviously maintains a level of civility at his blogs, allowed in my increasingly critical posts, and is not exactly the "mad" Left.

But: there are many, many issues on which he is impervious to persuasion, and his anti-Howard schtick runs into the juvenile. If News Ltd wants to be part of blogging because it sees it as an interactive medium to promote discussion amongst its readership, why would it pick a private blog like Surfdom, which had clearly not been attracting much in the way of dissenting discussion, and let it be cloned?

It is just all puzzling to me. (As is the fact that Tim Blair has linked to posts here a couple of times over the last year, but there is no sign that I will ever be added to his blogroll!)

Latest Slate Hitchens

From Hitchen's latest column in Slate comes this key paragraph:

The objectionable thing about the proposed Baker-Hamilton "talks" is not that they are talks but that they give the impression of looking for someone to whom to surrender. And they have, apparently, no preconditions. It would be an excellent thing to have direct negotiations with Iran, for instance, with all matters on the table. But if the mullahs did not have to sacrifice their ongoing nuclear deception in order to get to that table, then all the efforts of the Europeans, the United Nations, and the International Atomic Energy Agency to get them to do so would have been shown to be risible. With Syria, there is an even more intelligible precondition to be announced. Most people are unaware of this fact, but Damascus has always refused to recognize Lebanon as an independent state. There is no Syrian Embassy in Beirut. Implicitly and explicitly, this suggests that the country is regarded as an actual or potential part of a "Greater Syria." Is it really too much to demand that Syria acknowledge the self-determination, or "right to exist," of a fellow member of the Arab League? Without this line of demarcation, for one thing, the "withdrawal" of Syrian soldiers and police is a merely tactical thing; a retreat over the horizon while the Assad dynasty waits for better days. These "better" days may well not be long in coming.

The crisis in Hollywood

A long article in The Independent (found via Pajamas Media) talks about the current decline of Hollywood. There is nothing to disagree with here. We have been going through a lean period for enjoyable, quality Hollywood fare for some years now, and it is not clear when it will end.

A secret harvesting of eggs ?

This article about how medical research may be getting eggs for use in stem cell research is interesting. It would seem that supporters of the recent Bill about this do not understand all of the possibilities it may allow.

Ms Patterson has claimed her Bill permits only the creation of cloned embryos, never sperm-egg in-vitro fertilisation embryos, for research. But her Bill does indeed permit the IVF creation of a sperm-egg embryo using an egg from an aborted fetus and an adult male's sperm. This hidden provision to create fertilised embryos for research using ova from an aborted fetus was directly addressed by the Senate inquiry.

Ms Skene, for the Lockhart committee, acknowledged: "The committee's recommendations envisaged that an embryo could be created for use in this way." And no, she said, the committee had not canvassed public attitudes to such a practice.

Hard to imagine

This must be "male contraception week" in the British media. Following my recent post on vasectomy, The Guardian discusses some ideas for male contraception under investigation. This includes one idea which might be a hard sell:

There are several at various stages of development, with the latest a single-dose pill that produces a "dry orgasm", the slightly eye-watering notion that the man experiences sexual pleasure, but does not produce any semen. ...

Under normal conditions, rhythmic movement of muscles running lengthways along the vas deferens and circular rings of muscle around the tube propel sperm during an ejaculation. But the two drugs [a schizophrenia and blood pressure drug] have the side-effect of shutting down the lengthways muscles. "They relax it," says Amobi. That means the sperm don't go anywhere. Usefully, the effect wears off 12 to 24 hours after taking the pills.

Um, I guess you kind of don't know if it has worked until it is too late. And if it had to be used with a condom for that reason (or for safe sex reasons,) there would be no point in using it at all.

Women in Afghanistan

The Guardian has a fairly long article about the continuing plight of women in Afghanistan. Although it opens as if its sole point is to criticise the failure of Western intervention to help maintain early improvements to women's status, it does acknowledge that women are still far better off than they were under Taliban rule, and no one thinks it would be good for the West to leave.

Some specific examples of spectacularly bad treatment of women there:

Human Rights Watch says that a third of districts in Afghanistan are now without girls' schools, due to attacks on teachers and students by the Taliban and other anti-government elements; and traditional practices such as child marriage and baad, in which women are exchanged like objects in tribal disputes, still continue unchallenged. ...

Joya talks like this to me, furiously, for more than an hour, almost weeping as she catalogues the crimes against women that still keep them in a state of fear: from Safia Ama Jan, the leading women's rights campaigner assassinated in Kandahar earlier this year, to Nadia Anjuman, a poet murdered in Herat last year; from Amina, a married woman who was stoned to death in Badakhshan in 2005, to Sanobar, an 11-year-old girl who was raped and exchanged for a dog in a reported dispute among warlords in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan last month.

She is desperate for people to take account of the silent women whose voices we never hear. "Afghan women are killing themselves now," she says, "there is no liberation for them." This is not just rhetoric: the Afghan Human Rights Commission recently began to document the numbers of Afghan women who are burning themselves to death because they cannot escape abuse in their families.

Makes worrying about the glass ceiling in the West seem a bit of an indulgence.

An unappealing concept

Apropos of nothing, I just stumbled across a (literally) "high concept" business on the Internet:

A unique event meant for anyone who wishes to transform an ordinary meal or meeting into a magical moment that will leave a lasting impression on their guests!

Dinner in the Sky takes place at a table suspended at a height of 50 metres by a team of professionals. Benji Fun, our partner in this event, is the worldwide leader for this type of activities.

This is what it looks like:


My attitude to heights might be little unusual. I like flying, and I enjoy it more on a small aircraft than a huge one. (I feel it is more "natural" for a Cessna to fly than a 747.) But when it comes to buildings, I can get a little nervous standing on an apartment balcony if it is any more than a few stories up.

Maybe it's the tilted angle of that photo, but for some reason it makes me feel queasy just thinking about trying to enjoy food while strapped into a seat with 50 m of air between my backside and the ground.

(By the way, it seems Boing Boing has not posted on this one yet, even though it is right up their alley.)

The pain that only men can feel

For those male readers contemplating having a vasectomy, The Times has an article on the uncomfortable issue of long lasting pain. The solution for some men sounds rather radical:

Dr Black says: “I’ve seen a handful of cases in which pain has continued beyond nine months after the operation.” He suggests that the debate about longer-term post-vasectomy pain exists because of the industry that has sprung up around it. “Some urologists, especially in the US, are making money by removing the epididymis or even the testicles of men in post-vasectomy pain, promising that the pain will disappear,” he says. “But I’ve never seen anyone who really needed this.”

Well, removal of testicles should completely remove the fear of the loose ends rejoining, as is known to happen from time to time.

The problem with this type of issue is that it is very easy for doctors to think it's all in the mind. However, if a specialist himself suffers it, well that's different:

Dr Andrew Dawson, of the Hartlepool Vasectomy Reverse Clinic, is not so sure. He, too, has suffered post-vasectomy pain: “My own problems made me realise that this was something we needed to take seriously. I’ve come across men whose pain has taken over their lives. We’ve performed vasectomy reversals (re-joining the cut tubes) for them, which have been 100 per cent effective and eliminates the pain.”

What might be causing the pain?:

He believes that he can explain what is happening. “Vasectomy is pretty crude really; it just traps sperm in the epididymis. In some, often highly sexed, men this can cause the epididymis to become swollen. Eventually it can rupture — Americans call this a blowout — which will solve the problem naturally but can be very painful. A vasectomy reversal can reduce the pressure.”

I remember asking someone - I forget who - years ago about what happened to sperm that could not get out after a vasectomy. The vague suggestion was something like "the body just absorbs it." Maybe in most people it does, as we don't hear of "blowouts" all that often. Still, it's good to know that my puzzlement about this was in fact a good question.

By the way, this was all dealt with in detail in an episode of ABC's Health Report in 1997! I wonder if there is adequate warning of this possible complication being given now?

Red, white and blue butterfly

I spotted this particularly attractive butterfly in the yard today and took this pic. (The butterfly itself is exactly how the camera caught it; but the background has been smudged and blurred by me with an image editor program and my little tablet.) It looks very good if you view it full size.

From the annals of useless commentary...

Alan Ramsay in the SMH today:

Our Prime Minister lately is behaving and sounding very much like the Paul Keating of old in the ebullience of his arrogance.

Keating in Labor's 13th year of office was insufferable, however mellow the memory. Howard nearing his 12th displays much the same underlying contempt, only differently.

And in The Australian, Phillip Adams continues his one man campaign to "out" every gay (or bisexual?) man he has ever met or heard about.

Phillip, all of this will be received without criticism when the authorised biography with full details of all your indiscretions is available.

When in doubt, parachute in the historians

From the International Herald Tribune:

Last week, Kofi Annan gave the Middle East a history assignment. Speaking in Istanbul, the UN secretary general identified the competing historical narratives of Palestinians and Israelis as central to the Middle East crisis and the alleged clash of civilizations between Muslim and Western worlds...

To bridge this gap in public perceptions, the [UN] report recommends the drafting of a white paper analyzing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dispassionately and objectively, giving voice to competing narratives on both sides. In recommending historical research as a precondition to political dialogue, the UN report has identified a core problem that dates back to the spring of 1919 when three politicians, Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau, disregarded history in favor of political expediency. Since then, political leaders have grappled vainly with the consequences of this "peace to end all peace" in the Middle East.

By acknowledging the importance of history and seeking to engage historians in the peace process, Annan is creating an opportunity for new approaches to resolving this seemingly intractable conflict.

Maybe it doesn't pay to be too sceptical about anything that could possibly help in the Middle East. But really, I imagine one side having much greater difficulty than the other in being persuaded by historians' white papers. (Here's a hint: it's not the side that has trouble accepting the extent of the Holocaust, and does nothing to stop theProtocols of the Elders of Zion being re-hashed as truth.)