A completely expected answer

Rudd stone cold on marijuana - National - theage.com.au

The least likely man in the universe to have ever tried marijuana confirms he has never smoked marijuana. (Nor have I, so I don't criticise politicians who haven't. Still, isn't it sort of funny to think that anyone might even bother asking supernerd Kevin this question?)

Polling day

It seems that there is a relatively subdued response in the left leaning blogosphere to the Newspoll out today that is still good news for Labor. Not much crowing at all compared to previous months.

I suspect that this is because, despite it not reflecting in voting intentions yet, the general feeling is still there (even amongst Labor supporters) that Howard's decisive action in the aboriginal crisis, and the renewed discussion of terrorism within Australia, are issues which are going to work in the Coalition's favour, with yet another resurrection of Howard's electoral performance still very possible.

People have to remember that, while a 12 point TPP lead seems impressive (and would be on an election day!), it only takes a shift of 6 points to make them even again.

Oddly, though, Howard's performance was not that great in the last week, when he dissembled on "oil is why we are in Iraq" issue (a problem caused by Brendan Nelson really, who I can't stand) and seems to have made a mistake on the Indonesian terror warning.

On the other side of the fence, surely some people are starting to tire just a little bit of Rudd's very mannered way of speaking (once he gets a phrase going during a speech or interview, he can't let it go.) And is it possible that just a little mud might stick via the "Peter Garrett smoked pot with me and Bono" story by seriously strange musician Daniel Johns?

Interesting political times coming up in the second half of this year.

Life in a North Korean gulag

There's a horrifying story of the gulag system in North Korea at the IHT.

King Jong-Il cannot die soon enough for the long suffering people of that nation.

The ABC has an opinion

Has anyone else noticed how the ABC News website now has a fairly extensive Opinion section?

As far as I can tell, it's only been running since May.

This seems to be dangerous ground for the ABC to be attempting to cover, as surely the editorial selection of whose essays and opinion articles get published can easily lead to allegations of bias. In fact, just doing a quick read of the topics and authors of the articles that are already there, I am surprised that (as far as I know,) no commentator or politician has yet raised this.

I think that ABC News would be better off leaving this sort of stuff well alone.

This will be interesting..

We've got the Brimble cruise death inquest resuming, and this is the evidence that is going to be presented:

Counsel assisting the inquest, Ron Hoenig, has told Glebe Coroners Court that intercepted telephone calls between the eight men implicated in the mother of three's death have been secured by police.

The 42-year-old woman died from a drug overdose on board P&O's Pacific Sky cruise ship in September 2002....

Mr Hoenig told the court "a considerable volume of material" would be placed before the inquest comprising a large number of intercepted conversations between the persons of interest.

"These conversations relate specifically to this inquest, what occurred on board, and (how) they are to give their evidence and describe Mrs Brimble and their view of her conduct on board," Mr Hoenig said.

It seems extremely likely that this evidence is going to be very embarrassing for these guys, and given the stuff that has already come out of the inquest, it would very surprising if no prosecutions result.

That last link, by the way, was to a site called Cruise Bruise which seems purely dedicated to maximizing bad publicity about anything that can possibly go wrong on a cruise ship. (Who knows, its summary of the Brimble case might not be the most accurate one in the world, given the strange obsession that it must take to create a website like this.) Still, it looks like a perversely interesting site, even though I haven't had time to look around it for long.

Hadn't heard that one before

Madeleine Bunting has an interesting article in The Guardian's "Comment is Free" today, in which she discusses an (apparent) new seriousness within the British Muslim community to take home grown Islamist terrorism seriously. She opens it with this interesting snippet:

Two days after the 7/7 bombings in London two years ago, Muslim community leaders gathered at the London Muslim Centre to consider the impact of the attacks and who might have organised them. Many present refused to accept it might have been Muslims - the common refrain was that it could have been the French, because they had just lost the bid to host the Olympics.

The article goes on to say this:

In the past few days, key Muslim community activists have admitted to me that what worries them is how certain theological issues have not been properly clarified, and can be used to justify extremism. The most important is the age-old distinction between dar al-Islam (the land of Islam) and dar al-harb (the land of the other, of unbelief - or of war, according to the literal translation from the Arabic). This demonisation of all that is not Muslim is the "paradigmatic, instinctive response that people fall back on in a moment of crisis", I was told. Extremists such as Hizb ut-Tahrir use this dualism, as do jihadis, to justify their contempt for the rights - and lives - of the kufr, the unbeliever.

How long it will take to weed out the jihadist theology, though, is another question.

Revisiting the many worlds

There's a good article available for free from Nature on the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum physics.

The article has a footnoted link to a short biography of Hugh Everett, who came up with the interpretation. Interestingly, he believed one of the odder ideas that some argue is implicit in the "many-worlds" theory:

Everett firmly believed that his many-worlds theory guaranteed him immortality: His consciousness, he argued, is bound at each branching to follow whatever path does not lead to death —and so on ad infinitum. (Sadly, Everett's daughter Liz, in her later suicide note, said she was going to a parallel universe to be with her father.)

Stranger than fiction.

Bjorkiness

There's a fairly entertaining interview article in The Guardian about nutty Icelandic pop star Bjork. I liked this part:

I didn't expect Björk to be eccentric in the flesh, although oddness is an integral part of her public persona, of course. ... Oddness, kookiness and quirkiness have been as much a part of Björk's brand as her off-kilter, jarring, powerful sound. Björk, who wore a swan costume up the red carpet at the Oscars in 2001. Björk, who sewed pearls into her own skin for the video to 2001's 'Pagan Poetry'. Björk, who battered a television reporter at Don Muang airport in Bangkok, when she tried to talk to her son Sindri, then 10. Björk, who was rumoured to have been so unhappy while filming a role in Lars von Trier's Dancer In The Dark that she ate her own cardigan.

Sadly, the interviewer does not actually establish whether the clothes eating incident was true.

UPDATE: Here's the link I forgot to add. Actually, the article was from The Observer, via the Guardian Unlimited site.

What's happened to Terry Lane?

Terry Lane's column in The Age today, about Howard's response to the aboriginal situation, is very, very surprising. There is virtually no criticism of Howard at all, and contains statements like this:

We may be as sentimental as we like about indigenous culture, but it is simply incompatible with real life and must change or be changed.

You can see how a can-do chap like Howard would eschew the pussy-footing and send in the army. The inquiry's message is inescapable — left to their own devices, the condition of Aboriginal life will go on getting worse until they disappear....

Realistically, there is no alternative to assimilation. Missions, protectors, citizenship, land rights, equal pay, affirmative action and self-determination haven't worked.

Such sentiments seem extremely out of character for the consistently left wing, and (I think it fair to say) Howard-hating Lane. In fact, I am worried he has had a bump to the head and the injury is not being treated yet.

Vindication 23 years later

The Internet is quite the tool for vindication, even if it comes decades later.

This week, science fiction author Fred Saberhagen died. This reminded me of an incident from 1984. I can be quite certain of the year, because of the place I was working at the time.

I shared an office with a guy who was reasonably well read in science fiction, as was I at that time. I mentioned to him that, although I had never read Saberhagen, I had been surprised while browsing in a bookstore to find that he had a novel which seemed to have references to Queensland.

My office friend managed to convince me that I must have imagined it. The memory (from probably a couple of years before this conversation) was vague. I think I actually said that my recollection was so vague, that maybe I had dreamt it.

However, a quick Google now reveals that one of Saberhagen's books has this plot:

The berserkers have chosen to focus their latest attack upon one individual. Their target, King Ay of Queensland.

Yes, well, maybe it has nothing to do with Queensland the Australian State, but finally there is proof that I did not completely imagine the connection.

If, in the afterlife, there is a super Google that lets you review the equivalent of Youtube clips of arguments had years ago, perhaps some souls spend years just watching it and keeping score of how many times they are vindicated. (Maybe that is why tests involving souls communicating secret messages back through mediums are usually failures.) Anyway, I can imagine that sort of afterlife activity keeping Paul Keating going for decades.

Way to attract tourists, Malaysia

Malaysian band detained after singer's top reveals bare skin | The Guardian

From the article:

Religious police in Malaysia have detained a Muslim singer and her band, accusing her of baring too much flesh during a recent performance at a nightclub.

Siti Noor Idayu Abd Moin's sleeveless white top exposed a triangle of skin on her back, prompting officials to charge her with "revealing her body" and "promoting vice".

The artist, who plans to contest the allegations, was released on £145 bail and ordered to appear before the sharia court in the northern town of Ipoh early next month. But Noor Idayu, 24, was bemused by the charge that her top was too skimpy and said it was a style she would feel comfortable wearing in public during the day.

Any gluttons for punishment out there?

At the Movies: West

When David Stratton says this about an Australian movie, you know it must be unpleasant:

It's beautifully acted, it's well-directed, it's, the cinematography is fine and it's possibly, probably, an authentic depiction of life in the western suburbs of our cities, but it's such a deeply, deeply depressing experience in the cinema.

And coming on the heels of other deeply depressing Australian films like CANDY and other films like it, I just sat through the film getting more and more miserable as the film went on...

And, the four-letter language all the way through - I'm sure it's like that but it makes me wonder what a film like, who, where the audience is for this film.

Yet, in the strange way of assessing films they use, he still gives it 3/5. (As always, there seems to be a 1 to 2 star bonus there simply for it being an Australia project.)

The writer/director, meanwhile, thought he was writing for an audience:

WEST grew out of, basically, things that had happened to me as a teenager. I wrote the first draft, kind of in a haphazard way, when I was very young. I was about 16. I didn't really know what I was doing and I just - I was just trying to write something that I felt that I would want to see or that my friends would want to see.

So it wasn't an intellectual process at all. It was just spewing it out, you know, I guess. And then - and then the script - I worked the script really for another eight years in between other jobs and the draft that we shot was completed in about '94 and then it took a long time to get the money after that. So it was an exercise in persistence and patience really.

He seemed very earnest in the interview, which makes the almost guaranteed failure to find an audience for the project that has been on his mind for many, many years seem rather sad. Sort of. The other part of me just wants to continue ridiculing him.

Really, someone should be giving a collective slap in the face to Australian film makers and start yelling "snap out of it. Make something other than dire films about losers. NO, not even about losers who seem to come good in the last five minutes! And you, funders, stop spending money on them!"

Silly

Comment is free: Distinct possibilities

Go to the link for a Guardian "Comment is Free" piece which gives Hamas a ridiculous number of big brownie points for its role in the release of Alan Johnston:

...it was the "Islamists" ... who made the difference in terms of bringing relentless worldwide appeal as well as action on the ground, and led to his eventual release. Indeed had the Hamas leadership had its way, Alan Johnston would have been freed many weeks ago, but its self-restraint and discipline in dealing with this matter as well as its tenacity, has brought about this welcome resolution.

Even the Guardian's commenters find this hard to take:

hahaha - you're a joke. Are you talking about the same Hamas organisation that only 3 weeks ago were throwing their fellow muslim brothers off 10 storey buildings, or going into hospitals tying men and kids up and shooting them in the back. All the while screaming Allah Acbbbarrrr...

Or this:

Any sensible and decent person would be very happy that Johnson has been freed, but I don't see how it changes anything. Hamas still believes in the destruction of Israel, still has Shalit, still launches rockets at Israel, and so on. Just because they did something good (which was for their benefit anyway, hardly altruistic) doesn't mean they have ebcome good.

"We must seize the opportunity of these groups coming out clearly against terrorism and violence, and work to cultivate the common ground."

There is the problem. Hamas, Muslim brotherhood et all have not come out against violence nor will they anytime soon.

Credibility lost

Time for a long look at bottom of the glass - Opinion - theage.com.au

David Campbell complains about drinking culture in Australia. He admits, however, to having a jaundiced view (hmm, medical pun there) as he is a non drinker. The reason:

Wine is bitter and beer is … well, why anybody would pour that stuff down their throat is one of life's little mysteries....

I've been asked all sorts of questions: "Is there a health reason?" "Is it a religious belief?" The plain answer — that I don't like the taste — is met with raised eyebrows and a visible turning of the mental wheels: "Hmmm … weird!"

Well, at the very least, it shows a startlingly low level of curiousity. People who stop trying new tastes in either food or drink at their teenage years deserve a degree of ridicule, I reckon. If you say you don't drink for ideological reasons, even if it is not particularly well founded (like saying you never want to lose any degree of self control), that at least makes some kind of sense. But to carry on about the taste for the rest of your life, that's just a bit childish in my books.

(It just occurred to me that he may be a supertaster, in which case my criticism is unfair. More likely, though, he's just a big .... well, I was going to humourously suggest girl, but that doesn't seem apt considering today's teenagers. He is like my mother, but she's in her 80's and you allow for a degree of lack of experimentation by that age.

I also don't want to suggest that the likes of Campbell should be hassled relentlessly about their abstinence; of course people can chose to not drink for whatever reason they want and don't have to justify it. It's just that if they make silly blanket statements suggesting that all wine is bitter and beer worse than car acid they should expect a rebuke.)

Queensland - mad doctor magnet?

What is it about Queensland and foreign doctors? First the awfully over-enthusiatic Dr Patel, whose Wikipedia entry notes that, even before he landed in Australia:

Medical staff alleged that he would often turn up, even on his days off, and perform surgery on patients that were not even his responsibility. In some cases, surgery was not even required, and caused serious injuries or death to the patient.

Then there was the case of the fake Russian psychiatrist working at Townsville hospital:

The Australian newspaper today published allegations that a bogus doctor engaged to work as a psychiatrist at the Townsville Base Hospital in North Queensland is a convicted paedophile. The newspaper claims that in 1987, Vincent Berg was jailed in the Soviet Union for indecently dealing with boys, and later deported from the United States after being accused of stealing church ornaments.

He was also allegedly defrocked as a Russian Orthodox priest in his home country.

When contacted by the newspaper, Mr Berg denied any wrongdoing and said the KGB had fabricated the allegations.

More recently, Cairns hospital had some youngsters with questionable qualifications:

Queensland's chief health officer, Jeanette Young, is investigating how the Cairns Base Hospital hired four foreign junior doctors before their credentials were checked by the medical board....

..a newspaper report alleging that one of the employees used an online medical degree from the Caribbean to get the job, while a Chinese woman's documents show she would have started medical school at the age of 14.

And finally, we get our very own doctor from Gold Coast hospital arrested and being investigated for possible connections with the mad (alleged!) doctor bombers of England. (Of course, he may end up being found completely innocent of anything, but it's not a good look.)

The big mystery is: why does this run of foreign doctors gone wrong stories seem centred on Queensland out of all of Australia? Sure, it adds a certain potential air of drama and excitement to visiting a public hospital here, as you wonder whether all the possible ways that Queensland foreign hospital doctors have been in trouble have yet been exhausted. I mean, about the only thing we haven't discovered yet is that Josef Mengele's grandson, who qualified in surgery under the guidance of faith healer Arigo ("surgeon of the rusty knife") in Brazil, has been stealing kidneys from Jewish patients. (OK, there aren't many Jews in Queensland, but they holiday here from Melbourne sometimes, surely.)

It's all very odd, if you ask me.

Drink up, kids

They have ads on TV for kid's beer in Japan. (You can see it on Youtube via the link.) I am not offended. This is a country, after all, where beer can be found for sale in vending machines on the street. (They're not all over the place, like the coffee, tea and various soft drink vending machines, but still.) Yet there is nothing like the ridiculous drunken teenage party invasions that go on here.

A journalist in Baghdad

I’m cowering under the bed. But I’m here -Times Online

Here's a short account of what it is like for a Western journalist (and a female one at that) to work in Baghdad at the moment. She deserves praise for being one of the few journalists willing to be there at all.

More deep thoughts from Paul Davies

We are meant to be here | Salon Books

Paul Davies is out promoting a new book, and gets a long interview in Salon to explain his ideas. It explains his views better than the last article I linked to.

Here's the key sections:

Now we're into another variant of the anthropic principle -- which is sometimes called the "final anthropic principle" -- where, somehow, the emergence of life and observers link back to the early universe. Now, Wheeler didn't flesh out this idea terribly well, but I've had a go at trying to extend it...

It's part of conventional quantum mechanics that you can make observations now that will affect the nature of reality as it was in the past. You can't use it to send signals back into the past. You can't send information back into the past. But the nature of the quantum state in the past can't be separated from the nature of the quantum state in the present.

What we're saying is that as we go back into the past, there are many, many quantum histories that could have led up to this point. And the existence of observers today will select a subset of those histories which will inevitably, by definition, lead to the existence of life. Now, I don't think anybody would really dispute that fact.

What I'm suggesting -- this is where things depart from the conventional view -- is that the laws of physics themselves are subject to the same quantum uncertainty. So that an observation performed today will select not only a number of histories from an infinite number of possible past histories, but will also select a subset of the laws of physics which are consistent with the emergence of life. That's the radical departure. It's not the backward-in-time aspect, which has been established by experiment. There's really no doubt that quantum mechanics opens the way to linking future with past. I'm suggesting that we extend those notions from the state of the universe to the underlying laws of physics themselves. That's the radical step, because most physicists regard the laws as God-given, imprinted on the universe, fixed and immutable. But Wheeler -- and I follow him on this -- suggested that the laws of physics are not immutable.

The mechanism by which they are changeable over time seems rather vague speculation to me, and he doesn't seem to suggest a way to test the idea. (Although there has been mention recently that whether changes to certain laws of physics have taken place over time is testable.)

One area in which I think is a bit inadequately addressed in the interview is the odd "Platonic world" feeling of mathematics.

In my previous post about Davies, I suggested that it was a bit of a stretch for him to say that there was "ultimate meaning" to the universe when he doesn't seem to believe in eternal life of any kind. However, maybe he is a secret admirer of Tipler's Omega Point after all:

Ultimately, it may not be living intelligence or embodied intelligence but some sort of intelligent information-processing system that could become omniscient and fill the entire universe. That's a grand vision that I rather like. Whether it's true or not is another matter entirely.

The whole interview is worth reading.

The kindness of rats

news @ nature.com-Generosity among rats-Rats do unto others as they have been done to.

Odd forms of rat research will always be welcome here. (I was particularly fond of the ticking rats story a few months ago.)

Now from Nature:

Rats that benefit from the charity of others are more likely to help strangers get a free meal, researchers have found.

This phenomenon, known as 'generalized reciprocity', has only ever been seen before in humans. A good example, says Michael Taborsky of the University of Bern, Switzerland, is what happens when someone finds money in a phone box. In controlled experiments such people have been shown to be much more likely to help out a stranger in need following their good luck.

In humans, such benevolence can be explained by cultural factors as well as by underlying biology, says Taborsky. But if similar behaviour can be found in other animals, he reasons, an evolutionary explanation would be far more likely.

To test for this behaviour in animals, Taborsky trained rats to pull a lever that produced food for its partner, but not for itself. Rats who had received a free meal in this way were found to be 20% more likely to help out an unknown partner than rats who had received no such charity

Maybe all rats go to heaven too.

How did this slip through?

PM warms to his task - Opinion - theage.com.au

It was most surprising to see in The Age yesterday some commentary by Jason Koutsoukis talking up John Howard's policy initiatives on greenhouse gases:

NOW that winter has settled in and taken some of the heat out of global warming as a political issue, it's worth taking stock of who is offering the best policies on climate change.

At this stage the answer, surprisingly, is John Howard, who in a few short months has managed to cobble together a decent looking framework for a national emissions trading scheme, plus a host of other measures.

Despite harping on about the urgent need for government to do more on climate change for the past six years, Labor is still unable to articulate what it would do.

Gosh, editorial control seems to be slipping at The Age!