All about Moon dust

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Lunar dust 'may harm astronauts'

This is an interesting, fairly lengthy article about the problems moon dust may cause for astronaut's health. Same thing may apply on Mars too, I think I have read elsewhere.

A surprising survey

Iraqis: life is getting better-News-World-Iraq-TimesOnline

I wouldn't have expected this:

One in four Iraqis has had a family member murdered, says the poll by Opinion Research Business. In Baghdad, the capital, one in four has had a relative kidnapped and one in three said members of their family had fled abroad. But when asked whether they preferred life under Saddam, the dictator who was executed last December, or under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, most replied that things were better for them today.

Only 27% think there is a civil war in Iraq, compared with 61% who do not, according to the survey carried out last month.

Yet in the next paragraph, it says:

By a majority of two to one, Iraqis believe military operations now under way will disarm all militias. More than half say security will improve after a withdrawal of multinational forces.

I guess what it doesn't answer is when the locals want the multinational forces to leave. But it is a bit odd that the survey indicates support for the current security operations, but that they also want the main troops doing it to leave.

What is going on in Spain?

Large Iraq war protests across Spain | International | Reuters

Don't they have anything better to do other than making very sexually explicit art house films and protesting against a war they no longer have any part in? They are even protesting against sending troops in to support Afghanistan. Just how many socialists want to see the Taliban back in power?

Happy music time

This deliberately educational song, as covered by They Might be Giants, never fails to makes me feel happy. (The video, made be someone at home, is nothing special; I post this just so you can listen to the music.)



If you want to hear what the 1959 original version of this sounded like, there is a short clip of a young looking Sting lip-syncing it. It looks like it is from a TV show, and I think he was trying to be funny.

Boys for the boys

Making male babies for gay men. - Slate Magazine

As if the world was in need of more men (when sex selecting abortion practices in India and China mean that there will soon be hundreds of millions more men than women,) it appears that gay men in America who want to make their own kiddies usually choose boys too (at least if the choice is available).

Sex selection should be banned for everyone, everywhere.

It's not the beer, it's the soap

ScienceDaily: Obesity In Men Linked To Common Chemical Found In Plastic And Soap

From the above article:

Phthalates have been widely used for more than 50 years, but only recently implicated as a possible health risk in people. Animal studies have shown consistently that phthalates depress testosterone levels. Recent human studies have found that phthalates are associated with poor semen quality in men and subtle changes in the reproductive organs in boy babies. This connection between phthalates and testosterone helped to establish a basis for the study, Stahlhut said.

Stahlhut's group hypothesized that phthalates might have a direct link to obesity, since low testosterone appears to cause increased belly fat and pre-diabetes in men....

The analysis found that, as expected, several phthalate metabolites showed a positive correlation with abdominal obesity. Indeed, men with the highest levels of phthalates in their urine had more belly fat and insulin resistance. Researchers adjusted for other factors that could influence the results, such as the mens' age, race, food intake, physical activity levels and smoking.

Pretty surprising, hey?

I'm ready for my close up..

ScienceDaily: Videotaped Confessions Can Create Bias Against A Suspect

For those with an interest in law enforcement, this story indicates that the way suspects are videotaped affects a jury's perception of a confession:

In videotaped confessions, many law enforcement agencies focus the camera on only the suspect. Lassiter’s research shows that this practice creates what he calls a camera-perspective bias that leads trial participants to view the confessions as voluntary, regardless of how interrogators obtained them.

That sort of makes sense to me, and it's easily fixed. Good to see some very useful psychological work being done.

More on the big ideas

Could Crazy Technology Save the Planet?

This Physorg.com article starts off with a bad metaphor for the geo-engineering style proposals for reducing CO2:

"Of course it's desperation," said Stanford University professor Stephen Schneider. "It's planetary methadone for our planetary heroin addiction. It does come out of the pessimism of any realist that says this planet can't be trusted to do the right thing."

Well I wouldn't trust this planet to ever be well behaved. It's spent a hell of a lot of its time covered in ice, and by that I mean the real thing, not the crazy homeless man with bugs under his skin type.

Anyway, the article is worth reading. I didn't realise another test of fertilising the oceans with iron was about to begin.

A dark energy solution?

0703364.pdf (application/pdf Object)

The link is to a paper on arxiv in which a couple of guys claim to have sorted out what causes dark energy. Not that I can understand it properly, but they say their solution is a relatively simple one, which cuts out the need for a lot of the more complicated stuff in other proposals. It's also testable (unlike string theory.)

Good luck guys. If their solution turns out to be correct, remember that I may one of the first bloggers in the world to have posted about it.

Bad medical practices of the world

Unneeded cure spreads a deadly killer - International Herald Tribune

Oh good. The "Blog This" feature on Blogger works now on the new version of Blogger. I find it very handy.

Anyway, back to the point. The story above is about a medical treatment issue I had never heard of before: the use of unnecessary blood transfusions in Russia, Asia and Eastern Europe, and its role in spreading HIV.

Keep Gran alive for Christmas

Phillip Adams once wrote somewhere about how intense hatred of a politician can be a powerful incentive to stay alive, in the hope of seeing said politician fail.

Further confirmation of this idea, and a lot of excitement amongst the left generally, is currently being generated by the strong Labor polling. Have a look at the comments to this post at Road to Surfdom. Some extracts:

I was talking to an old mate yesterday who is eighty six and not in good health, we talked about things generally and he said suddenly, “Lang, I’d like to live just a little while longer, I want to see Howard voted out and most of the people he controls, I fought in the second war, as you know, and the friends and family that died in that war would be most upset that this fellow has been in a position that he should never have been allowed to obtain and the disgrace he has brought on this country.”

And how about this piece of calm political commentary:

The point is that the current Canberra Mafioso absolutely HAS to disintegrate into oblivion, and soon. History will eventually write down Howard’s band of loony freaks as just that: a marauding abberation that unfortunately reigned upon the nice land of Australia simultaneously with the uprising of the worst ghostly shadows of Hitler and Stalin: e.g. Bush, Blair and the chronically addicted liar and dangerous warmonger extraordinaire: John W. Howard of Australia....

Only a snail who has lived in a darkened hole for the last ten years would think that John Howard and his Gestapo militia of stinking jackbooted thugs has brought benefit and honesty to this country....

If Howard’s Nazis aren’t thrown out soon, then we won’t have a home. Or an environment. Or a future.

I suppose this means that if there is a Labor win later this year, there will be a sudden surge in deaths caused by all those frail or terminally ill people who have been hanging on just to see Howard's defeat.

If you want to have your aged relative here for Christmas, I say vote Howard.

I want a can

Japundit has a story about a new insect spray that works by freezing the bug. Sounds cool (boom boom.)

But... wouldn't an accidental spray to the eye with that be a lot more dangerous than what happens with your average can of insecticide? Paging litigation lawyers...

Under the knife not good for the brain (and a rant against cosmetic surgery)

It seems to me that there is still a lot that is not understood about the possible consequences of modern anaesthetics. A story in Nature points out:

Exposure to widely used anaesthetic drugs increases production of a brain protein thought to cause Alzheimer's disease, a study of mice has shown. The research feeds concern that general anaesthesia may be linked to dementia in humans.

Inhaled doses of halothane, one of a class of drugs called volatile anaesthetics, increase the amount of a protein called amyloid beta in mouse brains, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia have found.

Some 60 million people worldwide are given volatile anaesthetics each year. The drugs are known to cause 'post-operative cognitive decline' in many cases, which can last for days, weeks or years.

If these drugs boost production of amyloid beta, they may also be linked to long-term dementias such as Alzheimer's. The brains of Alzheimer's patients contain high levels of amyloid beta, although the molecule's links with disease are still unknown.

Clearly, being put under for an operation always carries some risks, and what puzzles me is that the cosmetic surgery industry seems to be booming despite this. Just how clearly are the risks of the anaesthetics alone explained to someone who is undergoing a voluntary operation for something as mundane an increase in bra size?

Four Corners had a good show about the industry in Australia last year, and I am not sure whether I had an earlier post about it. In any event, here's the link.

If there is one area where I have a sort of socialist urge to kill off a profession for ideological reasons, the cosmetic surgery industry is it. At a time when there are not enough doctors for everyday illnesses, it seems scandalous to me that so many should be diverting off into the world of facelifts, breast implants and tummy tucks. The TV shows that are devoted to cosmetic surgery "makeover" stories are just awful in the way they promote such surgery as crucial to self esteem. I say ban those shows! Only allow plastic surgery for those who are disfigured as a result of illness or accident. Liposuction should be illegal!

People will say that it is market forces at work. True, but we also regulate and restrict lots of things that, arguably, the market wants. Prostitution comes to mind. It can be regulated in such a way that it minimises harm, but we don't want brothels all over the place, and restrict the way it can be advertised. Also, there is no real argument as to the valuable resources it is diverting from an area of employment for which there is an urgent shortage. Most prostitutes aren't there because they don't want to use their degree (partly paid for by the government) for a more socially beneficial job.

So, cosmetic surgery is arguably in need of greater restriction.

I have no idea how it should be done, but if I were Australian Dictator, ordering doctors out of that industry and into a field of practice that is actually socially useful would be one of my first actions.

Note: revised considerably since first posted a couple of hours ago. The thing is, I often post first when I am busy and then re-read it an hour later and see mistakes or a better way of wording it. Provided I don't change my basic argument, I just revise it and don't bother telling people. Usually, only a few people would have read the first version by that time anyway.

An odd comment

Ronald Dworkin has a short comment piece in The Guardian in which he sets high standards for "genuine" democracy:

In a new book I argue that the conditions of genuine democracy are far from met in the US, the UK and other mature self-styled democracies. These conditions can easily be set out in very abstract terms. Government must respect human rights, it must respect religious freedom and other forms of freedom of conscience, it must distribute its wealth so as to give everyone a fair stake in its economy and, above all, it must conduct its elections and other political procedures argumentatively so that each citizen is treated as someone worth convincing not just outvoting.

In the comments that follow, I found this one, which starts off as if it is written by a normal intelligent person, but then suddenly ends with such aggression that it made me laugh in surprise:

I live in America.
I know I live in a democracy. I serve on my local town's water board, and on a county hospital board. Two of my friends are county supervisors. We argue our cases before our voters, the state, and the federal government. We've failed in some things but been successful at others and got funding to improve our hospital, our water system, our infrastructure. We've made a difference.
I discuss religion, politics, and economics on forums and blogs like this one before an audience of millions. My voice is heard. I get a fair hearing.
Because of this I know Ronald Dworkin is a sub-human, lying moron not fit to write advertising for toilet paper. He belongs in a sewage treatment plant where he can be converted to useful fertilizer.

You have to remember to take your pills before commenting, you know.

Fun in the diplomatic life

An ambassador is caught out having just a bit too much fun in the Embassy:

Israel has recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found drunk and naked apart from bondage gear.

Reports say he was able to identify himself to police only after a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth.

I just hope our likely future ambassador Amanda Vanstone doesn't get any ideas...

Slowing down the universe

It is possible that the current accelerating expansion of the universe will slow down and stop. There's a recent arxiv paper about it here, in which it seems to be argued that a natural process may lead to deceleration.

On the other hand, Frank Tipler believes that expanding intelligence in the universe will cause its slowing and eventual collapse. (But with the happy ending of the Omega Point, which is the equivalent of eternal heaven.) I like the idea; it's good to know there is useful work to be done until the end of time.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Frank Tipler is writing a book in which he maintains that the most important miracles of Christianity can be explained by the same mechanism to be used to stop the universe expanding. Here's a sample of his ideas:

It is this mechanism of baryon annihilation via electroweak tunnelling that could have been used to accomplish ALL of the miracles described in the Gospels, in particular the Resurrection. I point out in my book [1] that Jesus' resurrection body, as described in the Gospels, has all the essential properties of the computer emulation resurrection bodies we all will have in the far future. The property most difficult to duplicate at the lowest level of implementation is the sudden dematerialization (vanishing from the appearance of His disciples) and re-materialization (suddenly appearing inside a locked room). De-materialization can be accomplished by electroweak quantum tunneling, which violates baryon number and lepton number conservation. The key reaction would be proton plus electron goes to neutrino plus antineutrino. This would convert all the matter in Jesus' body into neutrinos, which interact so weakly with matter that a person in a room with Jesus would see only Jesus appear to vanish. (If the matter of a human body were converted into photons rather than neutrinos, this would be equivalent to the detonation of a 1,000-megaton H-bomb, assuming Jesus weighed 178 pounds ([27], p. 2). The people of Judea would notice this, though the disciples would not, since they would be vaporized.) Materialization apparently out of nothing could be carried out by reversing the process . The Resurrection is then merely an example of first de-materialization of Jesus' dead body, followed by the materialization of a living body. The Resurrection, in other words, is a profoundly different process than the mere resuscitation of a corpse.

I must admit that I have not even read all of that article. It is very long, and deals with the Virgin Birth, Turin Shroud and even original sin. All are explained in a quasi scientific way (to the satisfaction of Tipler's mind, anyway.)

I don't think he is mad; he's a physicist/cosmologist who seems to have done good work for many years. However, I reckon his views are going to be taken as so eccentric and on the fringe that his book might not even be reviewed by the science community.

There is more I want to say about miracles, but don't have time today.

Metaphors on the march

In 2004, the SMH's Alan Ramsey went on and on about Latham being a Mack truck looming behind John Howard. (Handy list of links is at Tim Blair's.) Today, Phillip Adams writes:

There’s a hurricane called Kevin bearing down on John Howard.

I think there may be some law that silly metaphors doom a candidature, so conservatives can stop being quite so worried about those poll results now.

The Clinton character question

Captain's Quarters has a post about the latest evidence of Hillary Clinton's tendency to either confabulate or lie about her past. Some other examples were helpfully listed by Dick Morris in his Lateline interview here.

Such people make me uncomfortable in real life, as social politeness often prevents any correction to false recollections told to a group. Not every politician has to be personally likeable to achieve good things, but a repeated history of telling falsehoods about your past does reflect poorly on character, and on reliability of judgement in all aspects of your life.

On Kurdistan

I forget to mention last week that the always absorbing Foreign Correspondent on ABC had an interesting story on Kurdistan. You can watch it on streaming video via this page.

Rats know what they don't know

An interesting story at Science Daily about evidence for rats being capable of "metacognition".

Maybe this means rats can have failure dreams too?