Not rushing to comment

I like the way that when something embarrassing for Kevin Rudd comes up, the left leaning blogs certainly take their time to make any comment. Despite it dominating the news and ABC current affairs shows last night, nothing yet on LP, Road to Surfdom, or Blogocracy as at 10 am this morning. "Rapid fire commentary" indeed, Tim Dunlop. (While I am at it, I reckon Blogocracy would benefit from less bloat in each individual post. His non-corporate blog had a bit more life to it than this incarnation, and I still don't see what benefit it is to News Ltd to run it.)

The contrast is with anything of embarrassment to John Howard. That never gets left alone for long. I can see the questions from the blog commentators if the shoe was on the other foot: so it took 6 months for her company to realise the mistake? Shows how careless she is in running her company, and what little disregard it has for the workers...

Also, although the SMH website this morning gave the story a "headline" near the top, you really had to look much harder to spot it on The Age website, down under the "National" section.

As I understand it, Kevin Rudd's wife's fortune has effectively been made (or at least greatly enhanced?) from the Liberal government's change in policy on employment placement services, which was (if I recall correctly) strongly opposed by Labor at the time. The irony of this seems to have attracted remarkably little comment since the Rudd ascendancy.

Unusual brain chemistry

Endogenous cannabinoids linked to fetal brain damage imposed by maternal cannabis use

From the article:

A critical step in brain development is governed by endogenous cannabinoids, ‘the brain’s own marijuana’. ..... these endogenous molecules regulate how certain nerve cells recognize each other and form connections.

But this is not good news for babies with mothers that smoke:

Earlier studies have already found that children of marijuana-smoking mothers more frequently suffer from permanent cognitive deficits, concentration disorders, hyperactivity, and impaired social interactions than non-exposed children of the same age and social background.

On Palestinian victimhood

neo-neocon The Palestinians: when does a victim stop being a victim?

This is a good read from Neo-neocon. I found it particularly interesting how a journalist from 1961 was already pointing out how Palestinian refugees were being used as a pawn - by other Arabs.

It's a boy thing, and water for nuclear power

The Guardian reports that the British government is going to "push ahead with proposals to build a new generation of commerically built nuclear power stations". There's an interesting snippet at the end of the story:

When the Guardian last asked voters their opinion on the issue, in late 2005, 45% backed nuclear energy and 48% opposed it. The poll also shows that 62% of men think more nuclear power stations should be built against 27% of women.

That's a big difference. In Australia, the recent Newspoll, which mentioned nuclear power in the context of greenhouse gases, still showed a significant difference between the genders, as does this Morgan poll. Interestingly, both of these polls show that the strongest opposition by far is from women aged 35 to 49. What do these women have against nuclear power? Are they better informed than men, or just more easily scared? Is being a mother something to do with this?

As for nuclear power for Australia, one point I have been meaning to make is that the lack of water for convention coal power stations in South East Queensland is currently a serious issue. In discussions of nuclear power here, there has been frequent mention of a need for access to water, with the main suggestion being that they would need to be beside the sea.

However, it would seem to me that pebble bed reactors, which are occasionally mentioned as a potential new generation design for Australia, are unlikely to be very thristy. They are proposed to use helium turbine systems, not steam. They are also intended to run at high temperatures, which has the benefit of making them good for hydrogen production. (A detailed explanation of pebble bed is given in this paper.) I could be wrong, but this sounds to me like they won't need anywhere near as much water for cooling as steam based turbine systems. Some engineer type reader might care to confirm or correct this for me.

If pebble bed designs are not very thirsty, I would have thought that this feature would make them very attractive to our drought prone land. It would also mean that they can simply be located on current inland power station sites, regardless of current or projected future dam levels. This would surely help defuse the "not in my backyard" scare campaign that Labor has already started.

Saving water Japanese style

Brisbane's water supply dams are now at 18.62% capacity, and it's the start of winter when substantial rains are virtually unheard of until spring. Looking at the graph at that link, it would seem very likely that we will hit 10% before the end of the year. No one knows how the water quality is going to be as it gets lower. Already, if I leave the kid's bath water in the tub overnight (before pouring it down a grey water hose that is hanging out the window to a big tub below, for later bucketing over the garden,) there is a very brown residue left on the bath which never used to be there.

The government is aiming for an average daily consumption of 140 litres per person. My family is close to that, but none the less it does feel as if the city is on the verge of crisis, with many substantial sized garden plants dying all over the place, so one does feel the need to do more. We had a rainwater tank installed in January. It has not had more than about 15 cm of water in the bottom since then.

If the letters to the Courier Mail are anything to go by, many people are starting to take pride in how little water they can get away with using in a day.

Here's my boast. I think that even "low flow" shower heads use up to 9 litres of water a minute. They are urging people to limit showers to 4 minutes, so that's about 36 litres all up. But that doesn't count the litres wasted while waiting for the hot water to reach the shower, and this is an unavoidable problem in winter. I have used a bucket to check this, and it takes about 5-6 litres in my house to get the temperature right.

(You can save the cold water in a bucket for the garden, but frankly, we are finding that the greywater from the Top Loading Washing Machine That Refuses to Die and kid's bath is enough for keeping the garden alive.)

My solution is to adopt Japanese style bathing in the shower recess. This involves a 10 litre round plastic basin, a smaller bowl as a ladle, a plastic stool and a sponge, costing around $12 in total from Big W.

Typical Japanese bathing, either in the house or a public onsen, is done while sitting on a little stool and either using a little hand held shower or ladling water over the body. The bathrooms are designed as areas able to get completely wet, with drains in the floor. There are some good photos of a typical Japanese apartment bathroom here. In Brisbane, I have to do it in the shower recess, but I find I can fit in OK.

The advantages: in my house, for the first 10 litre basin fill, the combination of the first 4 litres of cold water and the next 6 of scalding water works out just right. You can stay clothed while this is done. Ten litres is plenty for the body. I then use another 10 litres for hair and final body rinse, and really I find that plenty. There is no water wastage at all. The only disadvantage: no nice steamy bathroom in which to dry yourself.

Anyway, I know that I am definitely using only 20 litres per day for bathing.

Send me a medal, someone?

Appreciating Disney

James Lileks' series on his recent family holiday to Disney World (the first part is here) is very enjoyable. His genuine, non-ironic, postive response to the place also feels very close to how I felt during my couple of visits there (without child or partner) in the 1980's. (He is perhaps a little underwhelmed by EPCOT, but he barely touched that park, by the sounds.)

As it happens, my childrens' first experience of Disneyland will likely be in Tokyo. I am not entirely sure how much I will enjoy it, but I have faith!

In other Disney posts, Boing Boing recently linked to an Orlando resident's post about the underground tunnel that encircles Disney World. I knew about its existence, but had not heard about how it works in detail before. Good reading.

Doctor Yes

Top sex change doctor faces damages claim | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

This is a story of special interest to Zoe Brain, I assume.

The overall story is that:

The General Medical Council (GMC) today declared that the UK's top expert on transsexualism inappropriately rushed patients into sex changing treatments.

Its inquiry into the consultant psychiatrist Dr Russell Reid found that he gave five patients hormones too soon and referred them for genital surgery without an adequate assessment of their health or proof that they were transsexuals.

This particular example of what Dr Reid did is remarkable, to say the least:

Dr Reid was found to have prescribed Patient D male hormones against the advice in a second opinion provided by another psychiatrist. The patient, who wanted to change sex in order to fulfil a delusion that she was turning into Jesus, only avoided surgery to remove both her breasts because she was sectioned and diagnosed with manic depression. She told the inquiry she was never transsexual and claimed she had been misdiagnosed by Dr Reid.

Dr Reid evidently thought the patient was always right, no matter how mad.

Antony goes to Cuba

Comment is free: Getting connected

What's Antony Lowenstein doing visiting and writing about Cuba? And why meet someone there at the Iranian embassy? He is our International Man of Mystery.

Anyway, I suppose it's nice to see him critical of a government other than Israel's.

How soft are our obstetricians?

Sarah Buckley: Mothers not just too posh to push | Opinion | The Australian

The article above disputes the idea that it is women wanting unwarranted caesareans which is pushing up the rates of such deliveries in Australia. Her figures indicate that there are few mothers asking for it without good reason.

However, last week, two obstetricians discussed the issue on Radio National (audio available here), and I was surprised to hear both of them say that there are cases where, despite explaining all of the risks and disadvantages in detail, some patients will still insist on a caesarean birth, and they felt that they had no choice but to provide that service.

This seems very strange to me. Why should any obstetrician comply with a request to provide an unwarranted medical procedure which is known to have worse health outcomes for both the mother (who at least can give her consent) and also the baby (who obviously can't.)

Isn't there some risk that, if the baby suffers a complication typically arising from caesarean birth, the father could sue the doctor on behalf of the baby for providing an unwarranted and more dangerous procedure? I could see this as a scenario especially where the father and mother are estranged either before or after the birth. Or do the doctors also seek the father binding waiver before the procedure?

I know that lots of people have unnecessary cosmetic surgery despite its risks, but as I say, there is only the need to consider one person's interests in those cases.

In the multiverse version of Earth where I am benevolent and wise ruler of Australia, obstetricians are just ordered to refuse the request for unnecessary caesareans, and doctors doing cosmetic surgery are sent to work on remote aboriginal outposts. (Oh, hang on, I have closed most of them too.) The producers of Big Brother were fed to the crocodiles long ago.

New meteor idea

Diamonds tell tale of comet that killed off the cavemen | Science | Guardian Unlimited

This is interesting:

Scientists will outline dramatic evidence this week that suggests a comet exploded over the Earth nearly 13,000 years ago, creating a hail of fireballs that set fire to most of the northern hemisphere.

Primitive Stone Age cultures were destroyed and populations of mammoths and other large land animals, such as the mastodon, were wiped out. The blast also caused a major bout of climatic cooling that lasted 1,000 years and seriously disrupted the development of the early human civilisations that were emerging in Europe and Asia.

'This comet set off a shock wave that changed Earth profoundly,' said Arizona geophysicist Allen West. 'It was about 2km-3km in diameter and broke up just before impact, setting off a series of explosions, each the equivalent of an atomic bomb blast. The result would have been hell on Earth. Most of the northern hemisphere would have been left on fire.'

And politicians can be hard to convince that spending money on spotting dangerous objects in space is worthwhile.

Science and religion at work

Focus | Cosmic Variance

This is a couple of weeks old, but worth reading if you are interested in the culture wars.

China and Catholics

The Tablet

According to the Tablet:

Martin Wu Qinjing, Bishop of Zhouzhi, is being held by police and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), according to the Rome-based AsiaNews. His faithful say he is undergoing "endless political sessions" and being pressured to give up his diocese. Two years ago Bishop Wu was consecrated bishop in the official Church but with Vatican approval.

According to the CCPA Bishop Wu's ordination was illegal because it contravened a regulation banning religious bodies from being controlled by "foreign influences". The bishop was taken from his church on 17 March. According to AsiaNews, the CCPA opposes Bishop Wu because it had a more compliant candidate who had done it various economic favours.

Funny how quasi Marxist China fears outside influence in its state approved version of the Catholic Church, when South America used to be hot bed of liberation theology and Marxism. (The lead story from the same edition of the Tablet is about an apparent softening of both sides in the Vatican's stand off with liberation theology in South America.)

Real cinema verite

Japundit - Camera on Conveyor

Go to the link for an oddly pleasing video taken from the sushi's point of view. It looks like a nice trick that a clever director might use in a movie.

A tyrant in the making

Fine young criminal | Books | Arts | Telegraph

This review of a new book "Young Stalin" gives a short taste of some key events in Stalin's early life.

It seems to me that the lead up to the Russian revolution was so full of drama and bad characters that it could work as source material for many, many movies. It has the benefit of not being overly familiar to Western audiences, and now that Russia is not communist, just how many people there would still be horrified to see an accurate portrayal of Stalin as a criminal thug?

Oh wait a minute: another review in The Telegraph makes a similar point:

In succeeding years he [Stalin] graduated from extortion to murder and armed robbery, using some 39 aliases, ranging from 'Joe Pox' to 'Oddball Osip', and employing several psychopathic associates, notably the baroquely vicious Simon 'Kamo' Ter-Petrossian.

Sebag Montefiore gives a brilliant account of the great 1907 Tiflis heist, when Stalin's gang held up a convoy delivering roubles: the resulting scenes of mayhem were worthy of the De Niro and Pacino film Heat, although here the bullets and bombs flew amidst armoured wagons and mounted Cossack guards. These robberies were essential to the funding of Lenin's exiled Bolshevik Party.

Over to you, screenwriters.

Market players: get in quick!

A simple algorithm based on fluctuations to play the market

I am not sure how seriously to take the above paper found on arxiv.org. This is its conclusion:

By analogy with the way motor enzymes trap favourable brownian fluctuations, we have built an algorithm which is able to make the best from out of equilibrium price fluctuations and to play the market. Testing its efficiency with genuine historical data, positive cumulative returns have been measured even in presence of a 0:1% transaction cost. Especially stupendous are the results dealing with the application of the algorithm to EMS currencies or with the Cac40 components.

The results of using the algorithm with Cac40:

Fig.(14) displays the stupendous results of the application of the MD3 algorithm to the components of the Cac40 between 2000/01/01 and 2006/05/12 ( 6:5 years). First, the optimal value of m does not depend on the time interval (out of sample). Second this optimal value is found to be close to 25 days, so to say one month since only workdays are taken into account. Finally but not the least, average yearly return up to 60% are obtained!

There is a catch, however:

The money which is captured by our algorithms comes from the irrational behavior of uninformed noisy traders. Therefore we really expect the present algorithms will become unprofitable as soon as our paper will be published, either because irrational traders will be taught a lesson or because the profitability of the algorithms will vanish with the number of users.

The thing is, this paper has only just been published, and maybe there aren't that many people who sit at home on a Saturday night reading arxiv.org papers. If I have alerted any market player to a way to make a killing in a short time, please sent me a cut of your profit!

Conflict on the high seas

It was surprising today to read a New Scientist article that says the Southern Oceans may not be absorbing much CO2 because they have become too windy:

Global warming has caused the Southern Ocean to become windier, churning up the waters so that they are unable to absorb CO₂ at the rate we produce it, the researchers say.

This is because only in March did I hear on The Science Show another researcher saying the exact opposite:

Around the poles, and particularly Antarctica, the winds are causing more mixing between water and atmosphere. The Antarctic polar current brings water from 3,000m depth to the surface. This water is low in CO2 and takes up the gas from the atmosphere.

More research needed to get to the bottom of this, evidently.

Come here, geekdom

I have noticed recently that my already low readership is usually even lower on Fridays. I figure it may have something to do with longer lunches and drinks after work. I also noticed that when I mentioned X Files actress Gillian Anderson in a previous post, several hits came here via several guys (well, I assume guys) who evidently search blogs for the very mention of her name.

So, in the interests of increasing a Friday's figures:

There is talk of a second X Files movie. Talk about a case of Rocky-itis. I didn't even like the first movie, although I loved the series for the first few years. I can't remember by which season the rot had set in.

Gillian has her own website/blog type thingee, which she seems to make an entry about once every 6 months.

She does take a good photo, though.

So crazy it might just work...nah!

Gizmodo UK : Windscraper Buildings Generate Power

From the article (which has a Youtube link too):

Architect, David Fisher, has envisioned a new tower that is one part wind turbine and one part skyscraper. The tower is based around a concrete center core, with each floor spinning like an individual wind turbine. When all of the turbines are harnessed together the tower will not only be able to power itself, but up to ten other similarly sized buildings, too.

Allergy testing

ScienceDaily: Peanut Allergies Overstated, Study Finds

This story reports how some kids, who eat peanuts with no problem, can still show an allergic reaction with a skin test.

I thought I had heard somewhere, years ago, that the skin tests for allergens was always a pretty haphazard exercise, with many false positives. It's not something I know much about, but the results of this particular study do seem pretty surprising.

Pirates, special effects, etc

Last weekend I saw the shorts for the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which looks very spectacular indeed.

I liked the first one (although yes, it could have been shorter) but had missed the second.

Last night I watched the second one (Dead Man's Chest) on DVD and plasma. Again, a bit too long, but really hard to dislike. The scripts are quite witty and imaginative, the acting is all pitched at just the right level for this kind of film, and the central character of Jack Sparrow is a great creation. (I would agree, though, that the plots are a bit too complicated for their own good.)

But the thing that keeps impressing most about the films is their absolutely exquisite look. They're expensive movies to make, but all the money is up there on the screen, with ravishing locales and extremely photogenic pirate ships, and some amazing costumes and creatures.

The second instalment is particularly big on the special effects, and while I was watching, it struck me how I have become underwhelmed by computer generated stuff in some movies, but not others. For example, I agreed wholeheartedly with the Village Voice's critic when he called George Lucas' style in the last 3 Star Wars movies "baroque nerdism". I also never feel impressed by any movie where armies of thousands are shown swarming likes ants across a field (think Lord of the Rings, but also "Troy".)

It's actually kind of difficult to explain why some special effects leave me cold, and other's don't. I mean, it's clearly the case that a giant Kraken attacking a pirate ship is not real; yet to me it looked cool and convincing. But a shot were a hundred people are made to look like 10,000, or hundreds of little spaceships are zooming around big ones: well that just looks too easy now.

I think it just has something to do with an effect blending in with an already spectacular background, rather than it being clear that all of the background has been created in a computer. (Maybe that still doesn't explain why I don't like the ant armies of LOTR.) Also, in the shorts for the last Pirate instalment, there are many shots of ships swirling around a giant whirlpool of water which looked cool to me, but it may be that the entire thing is fake; I don't know, and (more importantly) I don't care.

For whatever reason, I get much pleasure from watching the Pirates movies effects, which truly are very seamless and natural looking, and will probably go see "At World's End" at the cinema.