Super fit to super dead

Even with a generally low interest in sport of any kind, some have always seemed to me to be particularly stupid. Marathons and triathlons fall into that category. When amateurs get a thrill from completing these events in a particular time it makes me doubt their good sense and see them more as being self absorbed rather than passionate. (You could say this about many sports persons, I suppose, but at least other forms of sport keep the displays of self punishment within more reasonable time frames.)

I therefore take some mean spirited pleasure from reading this:

People who regularly take part in endurance sports could be putting their lives at risk from damage to the right side of the heart, research suggests.

Marathons and triathalons are fast-growing events, more than 10,000 people regularly running, cycling and swimming long distances. But the super-fit athletes who train hard for such races can develop a life-threatening condition called ventricular arrhythmia (VA), in which the heart beats at an irregular rate and rhythm, according to the Belgian study. The condition increases the chance of sudden arrhythmic death syndrome, which kills 500 healthy Britons a year.

So, it's essentially a pointless activity that can also induce heart problems. Ban the fun run, I say!

From the "only in Japan" files

In Osaka, there is a unique "restaurant" dining experience to be had (and, incredibly, it has been a success for four years.) The Japan Times explains:

Here, you can choose from a wide selection of delectable delights ranging from Spam to asparagus, and enjoy them in their purest form -- straight out of the can. No need to heat anything up (there's no oven on the premises), no need to have a waiter deliver the dish to your table and no need for fancy plates or silverware, as management thoughtfully provides plastic spoons and forks upon purchase. After you've ordered, pull your food and drink up to one of the steel barrels that serve as tables in the dining area, which is actually a bare lot, open to the air in summer and enclosed with plastic sheeting during the colder months....

Kanso is the brainchild of Osaka-based Clean Brothers, a company specializing in the design of restaurants and cafes...

You might well ask why anyone would pay to eat cold food out of a can?

"It's a combination of the friendly atmosphere and the novelty of the place," explained one customer. "A lot of people I know have started coming here."

I have an idea for Australia: this might be the simplest cafe franchise system, ever!

Maxine on board

The Tom Switzer article in The Australian today is a good summary of the issue of ABC bias.

As for Maxine McKew working for Kevin Rudd: well, being married to a Labor identity has long indicated where her sympathies lie, but from the way she has conducted interviews over the years I have always assumed she has quite moderate and reasonable views. It's no surprise that she is helping Rudd, and if she makes the party more centre or right wing, good on her.

And you thought the Pope was blunt

The BBC reports that there is a group of Greeks who want to revive the old Greek religion. Yes, worship Zeus and all the squabbling denizens of Mt Olympus. (Well, I guess many members of the Greens are halfway there anyway.)

The Orthodox Greek church is not impressed:

The move is bound to aggravate the highly conservative Greek Orthodox church, which strongly disapproves of what it regards as paganism.

"They are a handful of miserable resuscitators of a degenerate dead religion who wish to return to the monstrous dark delusions of the past," said Father Efstathios Kollas, the President of Greek Clergymen.

I wonder how many ecumenical conferences he's been to...

Comet success

For the second time this week, I spotted Comet McNaught from near my home in Brisbane. It is getting higher and fainter, but if you have a clear low Western horizon, it's still easy to see. Tonight I had my camera with me, and took this photo first on an automatic exposure:



OK, you have to click on it to enlarge to see the comet at all, but it's there, top right.

While trying to get a better shot, I accidentally used manual exposure, and it ended up at 30 seconds, using the car roof to steady the camera. Lucky accident, as this was the result:




Much better!

Humour

If you don't find this short ad at least a little funny, crank up the anti-depressants:

Pilger Alert! Pilger Alert!

For another completely over the top Pilger rant, complete with either an inaccuracy or ridiculous overstatement in about every second sentence, have a look at this piece in The Guardian. As a single blogger fisking it would have to devote about a week to the task, I suggest assembling a crack team to be assigned 5 sentences each, and join up their efforts for one big mega-fisk. Go read it!

From the reader comments which follow the article , I like this one:

John Pilger has it completely correct. I returned to live in Australia in Oct 2005 after a number of years in Europe and was horrified at many of the changes. Muslim-bashing is rife, far worse than anything I saw during 1991 during the first Iraq war and is actively, personally vicious.

The author of that comment is "Bobthekelpie," whose nick I have seen before on an Australian blog, I suspect.

Another bad China story

The Economist explains in some detail the story of a terrible public health scandal in China. This is a country with a very serious problem when it comes to the orderly regulation of just about anything.

Running away from the fight

Tigerhawk has an interesting post about Al Gore's seeming reluctance to debate Bjorn Lomborg.

(Tigerhawk's position on global warming seems close to mine.)

Only a hundred years ago...

While looking around some ebook websites, I found the intriguingly titled The Four Epochs of Woman's Life: A Study in Hygiene by Anna Galbraith. The author was a doctor, and her book, published in 1915, appears noteworthy enough to the University of Virgina Library to be in their ebook collection. (Gathering e-dust mostly, I suppose. Boom boom.)

Having a browse through it, I get the impression that the Western world has changed a lot more between, say, 1915 to 1965 than it has in the last 50 years. Here are some extracts as examples (except for the section headings, all bold has been added by me):

Psychic Changes at Puberty. -- The angular, gawky feeling gradually disappears; the girl becomes self-conscious; new impulses arise, and she gives up many of the hoydenish ways of childhood. The girl's imagination is more lively, and just at this time mathematics form an excellent subject for mental occupation. The girl now begins to question the whys and wherefores, and demands reasons for the course that is laid out for her, and is full of ideas of her own; so that while as a child she had accepted almost unquestioningly the commands of her parents, she can be managed now only through the power of reason. And this is just as it should be, for the girl has reached the years of discretion, and now is the time when her reason and judgment are capable of rapid cultivation.

My comments: Well, why hasn't my range of books "Mathematical Amusements for Modern Young Women" volumes I to IX been running off the shelves, then?

Interesting how the current idea is that there is a 90% probability that you won't be able to reason with your young teenage daughter. People talk about children "growing up too quickly" now, but the issue is perhaps more to do with how young adults get independence without associated expectation of substantial domestic or social responsibility. Anyway, back to the good doctor:

Shall Husband and Wife Occupy the Same Bed? -- Among civilized nations custom differs in this regard; in Germany, for instance, the husband and wife occupy separate beds in the same room; formerly in this country it was almost the universal custom for husband and wife to occupy the same bed. The current of opinion has changed in this respect, and it is now considered in the highest interests of both that they shall occupy not only separate beds, but separate rooms; these rooms communicating through a door which connects their respective dressing-rooms. This is unquestionably the best arrangement from the hygienic as well as from the ethical point of view....

She's very precise with her recommendations, isn't she?

The Marital Relation. -- It is most important for the interest of both parties that there should be chastity in the marriage relation as well as out of it. Many young couples have had their lives ruined by excessive sexual indulgence. The effect is usually most severe upon the husband, yet the wife becomes weak, nervous, and excitable. Sexual excess is also the grave of domestic affection. The general rule given is that coitus should never take place oftener than every seven or ten days. When coitus is succeeded by langour, depression, or malaise, it has been indulged in too frequently...

When the conjugal act is repeated too often, the man will become gradually conscious of diminished strength, diminished nerve force, and diminished mental powers. Excess weakens a man's energies, and enervates and effeminates him. Moreover, it renders him liable to an infinity of diseases and a readier victim to death. Not only is the strength of the constitution lowered by the excessive expenditure of force and matter requisite for the perpetuation of the species, but this lowered standard of vitality is transmitted to children. There can be but little doubt that this is one of the reasons why so many healthy parents beget sickly children, who die early. They have exhausted themselves of the material from which a new life is created, and so it is not properly started at the beginning and never reaches its highest development...

Nothing like laying on the guilt to the parents of a lost baby by telling them "it's because you had too much sex"!

I also like the suggestion that too much sex saps the man's energy, while it makes the wife "nervous and excitable".

About the bowel:

Regularity in this, as in all other habits of life, is most essential, and the individual should go to the toilet at the same hour every day, even if there is no inclination to have a bowel movement, and thus the habit will be established; the most convenient time is directly after breakfast.....

But should the patient have gone so long without a bowel movement that all these means fail, it will be necessary to precede the water enema with one of oil; or still more effective is the following combination: take one teaspoonful of the spirits of turpentine, the yolk of one egg, and two tablespoonfuls of olive oil, and beat well together, and add to these one pint of water at a temperature of 110 degrees F.

Hmm, I wonder if using enemas which include "spirits of turpentine" helps cut down on toilet cleaning too?

A David Byrne fan

This seems as good as time as any to admit that I have been a fan of ex-Talking Head David Byrne for a long time. I saw him for the first time in Brisbane last year, and it was a great concert. Contrary to expectation that he wouldn't interact much with the audience, he was relaxed, chatty and in very good humour.

The NYT has an article about his many and varied artist endeavours of recent years. He also has a long running blog of sorts at his website, which I have been meaning to recommend for ages. Sure, he's as left wing as you would expect any New York avant garde artist to be, but his journal is well written, philosophical, covers his broad ranging and somewhat esoteric interests, and is generally more or less optimistic and cheery in outlook. He's still very cool after all these years.

The genre that refuses to die

Jack Marx's post about the changing styles of pop music raises a very valid point: why does Hip Hop refuse to die? (And for that matter, why is it popular outside of America?)

Babies on ice

Just some interesting background from Slate on how embryos are frozen and de-frosted.

Loose lips sink her ship

In an interview which is bound to cause a frenzy of comments over at the Julia Gillard fan club known as Larvatus Prodeo, Julia indicates that she has deliberately chosen career over children. Women can't have it all, after all, it seems. She's also in a relationship that appears to have no immediate prospect of moving into co-habitation, making it sound like she has "commitment issues" (either that or she unwisely hangs around with men who do,) and to cap it all makes it clear that she is one of those irritating children of the 60's who still haven't gotten over the "marriage is just a piece of paper" rebellion of the 70's.

Tim Dunlop, who is going to need years of therapy if Labor loses the next Federal election, therefore has to spin this as perhaps not really influencing how people vote. Let's face it Tim, it's not exactly a vote winner though, is it?

It's also odd timing that the Julia interview comes after Nancy Pelosi is held up by the media in the States as a groundbreaking example of a woman succeeding despite having a whole houseful of children. Mark Steyn's commentary on this was the most interesting.

The thing is, I reckon there are ways Julia could explain her life and attitudes which would, even if not all that genuinely felt by her, not be able to be nitpicked by either side. She just hasn't learnt how to do that yet.

She can send me money if she wants my advice, though.

Update: just to fend off some possible criticism of this post: I am not saying that all conservative attack on her will be fair, but at the same time I think there is a sizeable slab of the breeding population (not all of whom vote Liberal) who share my social conservative instinct to prefer as politicians men and women with children, or at least those who seem to like children enough to have wanted some if circumstances allowed. On the other hand, there will be Labor supporting feminists who are not going to be comfortable about the spin that can be put on her seeming "can't have it all" attitude.

My main point therefore is that she is too good at setting herself up for attack from both sides with this sort of talk. She should either decline to talk about it at all, or find the ways that do pre-empt attack.

Update II: Hmm, it's at least 12 hours and still no post at LP about this. I am surprised. Should I be worried if I can't predict what will or won't get them posting? Nah, not really. Maybe they are too busy reviewing old posts for entry into some new competition for best opinion writing from a soft left perspective.

Hearing voices

This link is to a long and interesting Washington Post Magazine article about people who hear voices in their head. Many such folk now network via the internet and encourage each other in the (very common) belief that they are the victims of secret government mind control technology. This belief is also encouraged by some credible reports of government research into beaming auditory words into heads via microwaves. However, there seems little reason to believe that the success was much more than the equivalent of a party trick.

It's a bit too sad to get too much fun from some of the delusions mentioned, but it is worth noting that there is a company that sells undergarments designed to protect the wearer from electro magnetic radiation, and their range includes aluminium lined boxer shorts.

Auditory hallucinations are a pretty fascinating part of mental illness. Why, for example, are the voices usually harassing and nasty? Helpful voices are not completely unknown, as in the case of science fiction author Philip K Dick, but they seem the exception. (I seem to remember reading that the specific advice PKD got from the helpful voice included such mundane things as changing the margin settings on his typewriter.)

The other thing that interests me is why some people are able to reach a point where they do realise that the voices are delusions, and have enough insight to know they need additional medicine if they are heard again. Other people, like those detailed in the article, spend their entire life in obsessional rationalisation of the reality of the voices. As the article notes, some people for whom anti-psychotic medication works still rationalise this by thinking that the medicine simply protects their brain from the secret technology.

Anyway, go read the article if the topic is of interest to you.

Gruesome

The most detailed explanation I have found of what happened in the botched Iraqi hanging is by John Burns in the NYT. Curiously, he explains how journalists found on the internet an old US army manual on how to conduct a hanging. It would seem the latest version deals only with lethal injection, which is somewhat of an improvement if you allow for capital punishment at all.

Readers can Google up the manuals themselves, if so inclined. I am not entirely sure that it is a good idea for anyone to be publicising drop tables, though.

Too much of a good thing

The Times reports on a new suggestion about what's good for a healthy prostate:

Eating tomatoes and broccoli in the same meal could help men to fight prostate cancer.

A study suggests that when they are both present in a regular diet, the two foods — known for their cancer-fighting qualities — help to reduce tumours more effectively than when they are eaten separately.

Fine, I happen to like both. But how often should it be eaten?:

They suggest that men should regularly consume servings of up to three quarters of a head of raw broccoli and two to three tomatoes to help fight the disease.

John Erdman, Professor of Food Science and Human Nutrition at the university, said that men should consider consuming three to five such servings a week.

Who on earth likes broccoli that much? I guess it does say "up to", so maybe it is not as much as it sounds.

A bungy too far

I don't like fast rides, so just watching this video actually made me feel queasy. I can't believe someone would do this for fun. The other things that come to mind are the phrases "detached retina" and "law suit".

A brief history of autism

Interesting article in Slate about the history of autism as a diagnosis (suggesting there is not a current "epidemic".)

Is this correct?

Phillip Adams in his column today writes of President Bush, in the context of last week's "surge" speech,:

Then there was the President's one and only tear, snail-trailing down his left cheek. Haven't seen such a sad, solitary tear since Malcolm Fraser's famous sniffle on the night of his defeat to Bob Hawke in 1983. Two famous tears, equally expressive of self-pity.

As it happens, I only saw very brief excerpts from the speech. However, if there was a Presidential tear on the cheek, I would not have expected to read about it first in a Phillip Adams column days later.

Did this really happen?