The household gas chamber

Lucy Siegle: How can I evict house mice? | Magazine | The Observer

From this story one can learn the PETA recommended way to kill a mouse in the house:

...Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) recommends a mousetrap that actually kills the animal, and gave the Radar (Rodent Activated Detection and Riddance device) an award last year. This is allegedly the world's smartest mouse trap: when a mouse trips it, the doors close and a tiny canister releases carbon dioxide. In 10 seconds the mouse is out cold, in 60 it's dead. The device then sends an email to a pest controller - all 'without any toxins going into the environment', boasts Rentokil.

I am sorely tempted to wonder out loud if they are manufactured in Germany, but that would be cruel.

(And anyway, they appear to have been developed in England. Damn!)

UPDATE: It also occurs to me that having such a device in your house must provide one of the most peculiar pretences you could ever use to get out of a date or meeting you were not enjoying: (After checking at your e-mail on your mobile device): "oh, sorry, must rush home, the mousetrap has just emailed me that it has caught something."

Some China reading

A few weeks ago, I noted that there seemed to be some pretty compelling reasons to be pessimistic about China's economy. If there was something fundamentally flawed in what Friedman says, I would like to hear the explanation.

On the issue of potential political instability, there have been a few articles around this week of interest. First, this one (reprinted from the WSJ by the looks) paints a glum picture of the potential for reform:

Many in the West think that Chinese growth has created an independent middle class that will push for greater political freedom. But what exists in China, Mr. Mao argues, is not a traditional middle class but a class of parvenus, newcomers who work in the military, public administration, state enterprises or for firms ostensibly private but in fact Party-owned.

The Party picks up most of the tab for their mobile phones, restaurant bills, "study" trips abroad, imported luxury cars and lavish spending at Las Vegas casinos. And it can withdraw these advantages at any time. In March, China announced that it would introduce individual property rights for the parvenus (though not for the peasants). They will now be able to pass on to their children what they have acquired—another reason that they aren't likely to push for the democratization of the regime that secures their status.

Earlier in the article, it notes that the size of the middle class as follows:

...200 million of China's subjects, fortunate to work for an expanding global market, are increasingly enjoying a middle-class standard of living. The remaining one billion, however, are among the poorest and most exploited people in the world, lacking even minimal rights and public services.

The New Yorker, meanwhile, runs a lengthy article on a political prisoner. It's a pretty interesting read that covers a lot of Chinese modern history.

Finally, China continues in the tradition of nations founded as worker's paradises which have appalling workers' safety standards. Today's news is of a particularly gruesome accident:

At least 32 workers were killed and two injured today when they were buried in white-hot molten steel at a metal factory in North East China, officials said.

The mishap was triggered when a 30-tonne-capacity steel ladle sheared off from the blast furnace, spilling liquid metal onto the factory floor three metres below.

The molten steel engulfed an adjacent room where workers had gathered for a routine shift change, the State Work Safety Administration said.

An exam to remember

Indian teachers 'purify' students with cow urine - World - theage.com.au

Extract:

The Times of India reported yesterday that upper-caste headteacher Sharad Kaithade ordered the ritual after taking over from a lower-caste predecessor at a school in a remote village in the western state of Maharashtra earlier this month.

He told an upper-caste colleague to spray cow urine in a cleansing ceremony as the students were taking an examination, wetting their faces and their answer sheets, the newspaper said.

"She said you'll study well after getting purified," student Rajat Washnik was quoted as saying by the CNN-IBN news channel. Students said they felt humiliated.

Wittier readers than me can supply their own wisecracks.

Evil under discussion

Thought Experiments : The Blog: Evil

Go to the link for a thoughtful blog discussion underway about the concept of evil. (It's in Bryan Appleyard's pleasantly eclectic blog, which is worth checking daily.)

Accidental deaths of WWII

The friendly fires of hell | Jerusalem Post

This article tells the tragic story of 7,000 odd concentration camp inmates accidentally killed in the very last days of World War II.

(As the article notes, it may have been the intention of the Nazis that they all drown anyway, but it is still somewhat embarrassing that it was the British attack that did the job.)

You can learn something new every day.

I don't understand ...

Janet Elder - On Polling - Campaign 2008 - New York Times

This article points out that President Bush has significantly higher support in polls amongst the under 30's than he does with those over 60.

They also support the Iraq war more strongly, and the same age group did the same even during much of the Vietnam war, apparently.

Very odd, is all I can say.

Some Virginia Tech commentary

For some well worth reading blog commentary on the Virginia Tech killings, there are a couple of good posts by Former Spook. As you might expect, Neo-Neocon writes well about it too.

The uncertainties of psychiatry

NEJM -- Treatment of Bipolar Depression

This editorial from the New England Journal of Medicine talks about recent studies on the use of antidepressants for bipolar disorder (the manic/depressive illness). This is of some interest to me because I have recently been reading at work psychiatric reports on someone who was initially diagnosed with this.

It would appear that American psychiatrists don't like to give anti-depressants for it because they believe it increases the risk of manic episodes. Apparently, European psychs don't worry about this much, and a recent study seemingly backing them up. However, the editorial questions whether this is a valid conclusion from the study.

This strikes me as odd: that there are different schools of thought depending on which continent your psychiatrist works.

Given that bipolar and anti-depressants have both been around for a long time, I would have thought that such an issue would have been sorted out long ago.

Instead, you get the feeling that, to a large extent, psychiatric patients are treated by trial and error, with individual biases not necessarily supported by studies playing a significant role.

Everyone should keep their fingers crossed for their continuing mental health.

Hey you!

This has been one of those weeks when I think my posts are particularly entertaining or interesting. As usual, this means no one makes a comment, at all.

At other times, I make a quick post that I don't think particularly well done, and someone at the top of the blogging chain links to it and I get hundreds of "drop-ins" for a couple of days before going back to a normal 30 - 40 hits a day. (OK, that has only happened a few times.)

Blogging is a weird game. Good thing I amuse myself, I guess.

Out there

news @ nature.com - Physicists bid farewell to reality? -Quantum mechanics just got even stranger.

This is not that easy to follow - understanding quantum non-locality never was. I can't even summarise it well, and news@nature stories aren't available for long. Just go and read it if it is your thing.

I wonder whether non-realistic understandings of the quantum world lend credence to the idea that the universe is a simulation running on someone else's (God's?) uber-computer? It only needs to "render" something when someone is looking at it.

Don't leave home without it

'Deflector' shields could protect future astronauts - space - 18 April 2007 - New Scientist Space

More on research into using plasma shields to protect astronauts from radiation. Good to see.

While we are talking about English history..

The past was a stinker | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books

This book review of "Hubbub - Filth, Noise & Stench in England" was re-printed in the Sydney Morning Herald a couple of weeks ago. It sounds like an amusingly appalling read. An extract:

Cockayne has dug deep into the archives and come up with a hundred little snatches of story that show ordinary people bustling about their business and taking care not to step in something nasty. Mostly they don't succeed. The walls of domestic dwellings in the 17th century were routinely bulked out by shit shipped from "the necessary house" and quite likely to dissolve into a nasty goo when the rains came down. One authority noted that few homes outlasted the ground lease of 50 years or so, while one German visitor wondered out loud whether he should venture into the street during a violent storm in 1775 "lest the house should fall in, which is no rare occurrence in London". "Kennels", or drainage ditches, were mostly bunged up with everything from brassica stalks to dead babies, and it was a good idea to carry a stick in case there were any rampaging pigs about (market days got them especially jumpy).

Inside was not much better. In 1756 Harrop's Manchester Mercury advertised a book that claimed to get rid of all household vermin, including "adders, badgers, birds, catterpillers [sic], earwigs, fish, flies, foxes, frogs, gnats, Mice, otters, Pismires [ants], Pole-cats, Rabbits, Rats, Snakes, Scorpions, snails, spiders, Toads, Wasps, Weasels, ... Moles, Worms ... Buggs [sic], Lice, & Fleas &c".

Fish were "household vermin"? Maybe it means silverfish.

Eat like an Edwardian

Appetite for excess-TimesOnline

This is a quite amusing article about the excesses of the Edwardian rich man's diet.

If you liked "The Edwardian Country House", which is perhaps the only "reality TV" I have ever taken to, then you will enjoy this article.

Stoner provides a health message

The Sydney Morning Herald Blogs: All Men Are Liars

Sam de Brito, whose blog at Fairfax I don't particularly care for, has at least done a service by warning youngsters off marijuana, at least if it is of the hydroponic kind.

I don't have time to go looking for evidence of this today, but is the explanation he gives (that hydroponic stuff is dangerous because it is usually covered in pesticides and fungicides) actually been tested? I have heard it before, and it seems to be widely believed in the smoking community. But has it been tested?

More explanation on why the media does not love K Rudd

Cut & paste: Heavy the media and risk a broken glass jaw, Mr Rudd | Opinion | The Australian

After Kevin Rudd's clumsy attempt at heavy-ing the media was revealed by Alan Ramsey a couple of weeks ago, it's remarkable that Rudd appears to have attempted it again. Laurie Oaks brought this to light in a question at Rudd's Press Club appearance yesterday. Funny how this was not mentioned in the highlights I saw on the evening news (and even The 7.30 Report) last night. Here's Oaks' question:

LAURIE Oakes: This morning the editor of the Sydney Sunday Telegraph, Neil Breen, appeared on radio in Melbourne to talk about what's become known as the false dawn affair, or sun-lies.

He said after the story appeared in his paper, "Mr Rudd just went bananas about it, he just went crazy ... The phone calls started from then and they went to the highest powers of News Limited. I ended up speaking with him at length on Tuesday and he was just indignant that we were totally wrong, this story was baseless, when we in fact knew it was right. And then as ... he demanded what sort of remedy he wanted from us (for) publishing this story, (it was clear) he was involved in this fake Anzac service."

He also says, "It was the heaviest situation I've been in, in my journalistic career."

That's why I ask you, is that true? Also, as we know, it's not the first time this sort of thing has happened, as Kerry-Anne Walsh here from The Sun-Herald can attest.

How do you explain or excuse this sort of thing? Do you really think you can heavy the media? And what are you going to do about the glass jaw?

Rudd does not exactly deny it in his wishy washy response.

Maybe too much information in this post...

Looks easy enough... but not for everyone - In Depth - theage.com.au

This article is all about pauresis, the inability to readily urinate in close proximity to others. Mostly suffered by men because of the open design of most public urinals.

I think most men would guess, from the number of guys who head to the stalls in a public toilet, that it is not an uncommon problem. Indeed, it's not that unusual to see men who leave the stall door while standing to pee. They just need that additional bit of privacy. The Age article notes that "...a 1975 study by two psychologists at the University of Idaho that found a quarter of the male college students they questioned reported difficulty "getting started" when using public urinals." At another point it says:

People acknowledging occasional problems with hesitancy include Oprah Winfrey, Andrew Denton and US shock jock Howard Stern. In fact, recent studies show that about 7per cent of the public may suffer from this social anxiety disorder to some extent.

As an intermittent mild sufferer of this myself (and yes, just as the article suggests, it was started by some taunting by some nasty older kid behind me in primary school,) I have never understood why the designers of public toilets in Australia (or most of the world) do not seem to pay any attention to this as an issue. For example, going back to my trips to Disneyland in the 1980's, I noticed how the toilets there had the individual urinal that is now common here, but with simple privacy screens attached to the wall between them. These just extended about 40 cm or so between each urinal, mid body, and meant that you just had that additional bit of privacy. It worked for me. I remember thinking at the time that it was nice to see that Disney understood the problem, as I think before that trip I had already read something about paruresis, and the screens seemed to be addressing that issue. (Now that I think about it, maybe it also had something to do with not wanting pedophiles to be able to "check out" boys, but I am not about to write to Disney to ask about their primary motive for this design!)

Ever since then, I have tended to notice whether public toilets have copied this, and I think I can say without fear of contradiction that it is extremely rare to find in Australia, even in toilets in new buildings.

This is an extremely simple and inexpensive feature to put in a new toilet being built, so why hasn't it caught on? If it would make up to , say, 20% of men feel more comfortable, isn't it worth it?

I note that the Age article features the story of a guy with paruresis so severe he can't even go in an aircraft toilet easily. Now that is severe, and I can't imagine why he didn't seek help about this before he was in his fifties.

On the Virginia Tech killings

Cho Seung-Hui's Plays - News Bloggers

Assuming they are genuine, it is pretty weird reading two short plays by a mass murderer that indicate he did indeed have serious mental issues of some description or other.

I am not sure how I feel about the rapid publishing of this material. It's ghoulishly interesting, but seems too soon after the event.

In cases like this, I can't help thinking about the killer's family and the burden of guilt or shame they presumably must feel. (This is assuming they are relatively normal family and have not mistreated the killer as a child in any dire fashion.) I don't mean to diminish the pain of victims' families, but at least the death of an innocent victim does not carry the same psychological burden of self assessment as that of being the "normal" parent of a mass murderer.

On the topic of gun control philosophy generally that this raises, there's a good discussion in progress at Catallaxy.

Every time I think I need a break from blogging, along comes a story like this...

Toto to fix buttocks-scorching bidets | The Japan Times Online

Tipler on life in the universe

My favourite cosmologist Frank Tipler has a recent paper up on arxiv about intelligent life in the universe, and summarising the development of his end of universe theories first explained in length in The Physics of Immortality.

This one is under the arxiv section "popular physics" and is easier reading than some of his stuff. I guess I still have to work out what unitarity is, though, as it is rather crucial to his argument.

For the diminishing number of readers who have made it this far into this post: one of the things which gives me reservations about Tipler is his whole hearted endorsement of "many worlds" interpretation of quantum physics. Over at Quantum Quandaries there is a recent post arguing philosophically about "many worlds", and any post that deals with Kant and quantum physics is well worth reading, isn't it?

More on abortion in England

A crisis brought on by our selfish desires-Comment-Columnists-Libby Purves-TimesOnline

Libby Purves notes that in England they are having trouble finding enough young doctors willing to take on abortion training.

Her explanation of the law in England makes it sounds rather similar to ours, with its implementation effectively meaning abortion on demand.

I don't know why issues with abortion seem to be more actively discussed in that country than here.