Geeky movie news

:: INDIANA JONES - OFFICIAL SITE ::

The first trailer for the new Indiana Jones is up.

And yes, Roswell has something to do with it. Cool.

France on side for once

France Presses Nuclear Agency on Iran - New York Times

President Nicolas Sarkozy and other senior French officials met here on Thursday with Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in an effort to smooth over differences between France and the agency over Iran’s nuclear program.

France has taken a hard line against Iran, leading the way with the United States and Britain in pressing for new, tougher international sanctions against the country for flouting United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding that it stop making nuclear fuel......

In a speech Wednesday night to France’s Jewish community, for example, Mr. Sarkozy called on Iran to “renounce military nuclear power” and “live up to its word.” He added that Iran’s uranium enrichment program “has no civilian use.”

Dr. ElBaradei, by contrast, has said repeatedly that there is no clear evidence to support the claim that Iran intends to make nuclear weapons.

Caring for your prostate

What's good for the heart may be good for the prostate

Men who eat a diet low in fat and red meat but high in vegetables and lean protein and who drink alcohol in moderation may not just be doing their hearts a favor. A new study shows that such a heart-healthy diet may also be good for the prostate.

Specifically, such a diet significantly decreases the risk of symptomatic benign prostatic hyperplasia, or BPH. The bothersome condition is associated with frequent and painful urination that affects about half of all men by the time they reach 50 and nearly all men by age 70.

About 1/2 of all men get prostate issues by the time they are 50? That's a much higher figure than I expected. The medical recommendation is pretty encouraging, though:

Doctors often recommend routine sexual activity to men with prostatitis because ejaculations help flush the prostate clean.

Logically, then, if I eat a meaty, high fat diet and drink to excess, I am more likely to have a doctor prescribe more sex. Hmmm....

The ultimate peak oil solution

Mine Titan!:

Titan's surface organics surpass oil reserves on Earth:

Saturn’s orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new Cassini data. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.

Interesting

Appeal upheld for youths 'intoxicated by terror' - Telegraph

From the report:

The country's top judge has dealt a significant blow to a key plank of the Government's anti-terrorism legislation after he overturned the convictions of five Muslim men jailed last year for downloading and sharing extremist terror-related material.

The Lord Chief Justice ruled that unless there was clear evidence of "terrorist intent" it was not illegal to read or study such literature....

Under the Terrorism Act 2000, "a person commits an offence if he possesses an article in circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that his possession is for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism."

How do you obtain evidence for the 'reasonable suspicion', I wonder? In this case:

The students were arrested after Mr Raja, then a schoolboy in Ilford, ran away to meet the other four in Bradford. The teenager left a note for his parents saying he was going to fight abroad after getting to know the others via internet chatrooms.

But it would appear that the problem may simply be the way the jury was directed:

Directions given to the jury did not tell them "that they had to be satisfied that each appellant intended to use the relevant articles to incite his fellow planners to fight in Afghanistan".

That seems to be overstating what the jurors should have been told about the offence.

The interesting point may be whether possession of a large amount of terrorist material of itself can lead to a reasonable suspicion that it is being looked at for "commission preparation or instigation" of a terrorist act. The appeal court seems to be saying "no". Maybe that is technically correct, but when you take into account who is looking at it, I would have thought that the reasonable suspicion may be pretty readily made out.

But this is pretty funny from the defence lawyer:

Imran Khan, solicitor for Mr Zafar, said: "My client is over the moon. He says it is surreal and he cannot see why he has spent the last two years in prison for looking at material which he had no intention of using for terrorism.

"Young people should not be frightened of exploring their world. There will always be people out there with wrong intentions, but we must not criminalise people for simply looking at material, whether it is good or bad."

And I suppose a young Muslim's world is naturally all about terrorism? Actually, I think it is a pretty good idea to make them frightened of spending all of their time obsessed with that.

What was that about airplanes?

True scale of C0₂emissions from shipping revealed

From the Guardian:

The true scale of climate change emissions from shipping is almost three times higher than previously believed, according to a leaked UN study seen by the Guardian.

It calculates that annual emissions from the world's merchant fleet have already reached 1.12bn tonnes of CO₂, or nearly 4.5% of all global emissions of the main greenhouse gas.

The report suggests that shipping emissions - which are not taken into account by European targets for cutting global warming - will become one of the largest single sources of manmade CO₂after cars, housing, agriculture and industry. By comparison, the aviation industry, which has been under heavy pressure to clean up, is responsible for about 650m tonnes of CO₂emissions a year, just over half that from shipping.

Sheesh. I am not supposed to fly for holidays anymore, and now even a pleasure cruise is bad. But come to think of it, it would be kind of cool to see giant sailing ships being used for passengers and cargo again.

Indiana Jones can be viewed with clear conscience

Spielberg boycotts Beijing Olympics over Darfur - Beijing2008 - Sport

Commentators saw this coming, but Spielberg has dropped out of his artist adviser role with the Chinese Olympics.

Fair enough. They can always do those slightly creepy North Korean style mass displays instead.

Kevin should apologise...

...for not having a better speech writer. My lack of enthusiasm has not exactly been changed by soaring oratory.

The worst line:

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

Embracing possibilities of new solutions? How bland. I would have thought "prospects" would be the better word.

On the other hand, "mutual responsibility" gets a tick.

But on the third hand, a blanket statement of apology for separating children from parents, their community and "country" sits uncomfortably with the current situation in Cape York, where safeguarding children still often leaves no choice other than trying foster care hundreds of kilometres from the community.

One other point: I reckon the media coverage (and Labor politicians) have vastly overestimated public excitement and interest in this. Richard Flanagan wrote in The Guardian:

The national excitement around the event is palpable, with thousands heading to Canberra for it, and public screens being erected in most major cities for the live, national broadcast of the event.

All depends what circles you move in, I suppose, but I would say there is a much more palpable degree of cynicism about the hyping of the apology in any suburb that is not inner city.

UPDATE: when I referred to needing a better speech writer, I was actually only referring to the apology, not Rudd's supporting speech. Now that I've read it, I would grade it as "mostly harmless."

However, I expect he has set himself up for failure with his musings about what should be achieved next. In particular, this line had a definite touch of Hawke's "no child will live in poverty":

Let us resolve over the next five years to have every Indigenous four-year-old in a remote Aboriginal community enrolled in and attending a proper early childhood education centre or opportunity and engaged in proper preliteracy and prenumeracy programs.

I predict it will take some very heavy handed, paternalistic tactics, exactly of the kind Labor is less inclined to take than the Liberals, to get anywhere near achieving that goal.

Also, isn't it peculiar that the first "joint policy commission" is to look at aboriginal housing? Hasn't this been looked at many times already?

Anyone who has worked on aboriginal communities complains that the issue is not simply a question of providing the houses; it involves the more difficult issue of how to get the residents to look after them. Surely drug and alcohol abuse is a large part of that problem. It's all rather a chicken and egg dilemma, isn't it?

(For anyone interested, see my previous musings about a possible, somewhat counter-intuitive, housing approach.)

Ferris fad

World's largest ferris wheel debuts in Singapore | Lifestyle | Living | Reuters

Why are luxury ferris wheels such a fad all over the world at the moment? Can't some city come up with a more novel way to get a view, other than via observation decks or wheels?

(Give me time to think about it, but a giant corkscrew thing with glass pods slowly going up and down hasn't been done yet, has it?)

Pearson on "sorry"

When words aren't enough | The Australian

If someone like Noel Pearson can be distinctly ambivalent about the apology, then it's fair enough for any white person (like me) to be less than enthusiastic as well.

My feelings exactly

Normalcy will return - one day - Opinion - smh.com.au

Evidently, I was not the only one during the holidays having a conceptual difficulty with Kevin Rudd as PM. Annabel Crabb writes wittily today:

THE past few months could so easily have been a dream.

Who among us hasn't sat bolt upright in the middle of the night and been convinced, in the gin-clear moments for which dreams survive intact in the consciousness, that Kevin Rudd grew bushy sideburns and became prime minister and invited Dick Smith, Kerry O'Brien and the girls from Sass & Bide to Parliament House for a strategy session?...

It will be a while before, on seeing Kevin Rudd stride into the prime ministerial suite of offices, one's natural instinct stops being to call security.

Seymour's thoughts

Al Jazeera English - News - Interview: Seymour Hersh

You get a good idea of Seymour Hersh's liberal credentials in this interview in Al Jazeera.

He wrote a recent New Yorker article about the Israeli attack on a Syrian mystery facility last year. Here's the key paragraph as to what he thinks was attacked:

A senior Syrian official confirmed that a group of North Koreans had been at work at the site, but he denied that the structure was related to chemical warfare. Syria had concluded, he said, that chemical warfare had little deterrent value against Israel, given its nuclear capability. The facility that was attacked, the official said, was to be one of a string of missile-manufacturing plants scattered throughout Syria—“all low tech. Not strategic.” (North Korea has been a major exporter of missile technology and expertise to Syria for decades.) He added, “We’ve gone asymmetrical, and have been improving our capability to build low-tech missiles that will enable us to inflict as much damage as possible without confronting the Israeli Army. We now can hit all of Israel, and not just the north.”

Whatever was under construction, with North Korean help, it apparently had little to do with agriculture—or with nuclear reactors—but much to do with Syria’s defense posture, and its military relationship with North Korea. And that, perhaps, was enough to silence the Syrian government after the September 6th bombing.

In the Al Jazeera interview he explains:

I was told two different things by various people inside Syria.

One said it was perhaps a chemical facility for chemical warfare, another one said more persuasively to me that "no, it was for missiles - short range missiles to be used in case we're attacked by Israel, we'd respond asymmetrically with missiles."

So Seymour seems to agree with the common sense proposition that there is strong reason to doubt that Syria is telling the whole truth. Yet who does he appear to direct most of his criticism to? Israel:

....if this article I did generates a decision by Israel to go public with its overwhelming dossier that will answer any questions well that's great ... but they have not and [I find awful] the hubris, the arrogance of thinking that you could go commit an act of war by any definition and then say nothing about it.

Syria of course compounded the problem by being hapless and feckless in response.

So, Syria's avoidance of the issue is mere "fecklessness"; Israel not disclosing its evidence is "hubris and arrogance".

And Seymour likes to get his anti-Bush credentials out there too:

Q: What do you think of Bush's legacy to the world?

He's done more to terrify the world than anybody I know. The world is so much more dangerous.

Worthy of Daily Kos commentary, that is.

He even brings this up:

[On Israel] it's very hard, you know in America there's just no questioning. The American Jewish influence is enormous. There's a lot of money.

Does "Jewish money" affect what you write in the New Yorker, Seymour?

He also has a very rosy, and pretty amazing view, of the potential for goodwill towards Israel in the Middle East:

I'm Jewish and I'm not anti-Semitic and I'm not anti-Israel - [Israelis] understand that, just as by the way a lot of Americans don't understand that many of the leadership of Hamas and others.

Not everyone spends their life there wanting to kill Jews, they're more willing than people would like to believe to co-exist, they just don't like the system the way it works now.

How very encouraging (sarcasm).

Breaking news from India

Mosquito-proof coolers developed-The Times of India

I'm a bit puzzled by this:

NEW DELHI: A cooler with almost 100% efficiency at preventing mosquitoes from entering it and laying eggs will now spearhead India’s fight against vector-borne diseases like dengue and chikungunya.

Sounds like we are talking about evaporative coolers for domestic use. They aren't very common in Australia any more, especially in a place like Brisbane, where to feel better in summer you want to reduce humidity, not attempt to increase it. I assume they still have some benefit in Melbourne or Adelaide, though, where desert winds mean high summer temperatures are nearly always desiccating.

So, just how long did it take them to work out that it is possible to keep mosquitoes out of a cooler's water tank?:

After over six months of research, scientists at Delhi’s National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) have developed a "Mosquito Proof Cooler" (MPC).

And what startling innovation was involved?:

"A metallic barrier has been put above the tank to prevent mosquitoes from entering. Side shutters have been done away with...."

So metal barriers stop mosquitoes, hey? I wouldn't be holding my breath for the Nobel prize.

(By the way, this has nothing to do with cricket. I just thought it was one of the least news worthy innovations I have ever read about.)

Sick in space

The Associated Press: Medical Issue Delays Space Lab Work

Isn't it a little odd that NASA won't give even a hint as to what the illness is that caused the cancellation of a spacewalk. (Well, apart from saying it was not life threatening.)

Sounds to me like it could be a psychological issue. A panic attack perhaps? Yet the astronaut concerned has been in space twice before.

Come on, just let us know.

See what happens when you apologise...

You get stupid theatrics in courts, not just in Parliament.

Keith Windshuttle makes many interesting points today about exaggeration by "stolen generation" historians. And Andrew Bolt is being driven nuts by the whole apology thing, but as with Windshuttle, he does present some information that you wouldn't hear elsewhere.

I heard Phillip Adams on Late Night Live this week express surprise that Canada had not issued a full apology for its treatment of its indigenous population, although they are having a Truth and Reconciliation Commission into the system of residential schools for Native Americans. (Actually, I did not hear all of this show, and I note that Canada did make some sort of apology in 1998.)

In fact, that last linked article has a list (how exhaustive it is, I don't know) of the handful of historically significant apologies. There don't seem to be many around.

Of course, the churches that had a lot to do with telling aborigines what was best for them in the past are now all for an apology. It seems to be something that it's too impolite to say that the departure of the church from their missions does not often seem to have resulted in healthier, more vibrant communities.

It certainly seems true that the value of the symbolism is often being exaggerated by people who are not always forthright about both personal and social history. These exaggerations (with, according to Gerard Henderson, Ronald Wilson himself coming up with the term "genocide" for the stolen generation report, against even Mick Dodson's doubts) actually made it harder for a national consensus to be reached that an official national apology was appropriate.

It all comes down to semantics between a statement of regret, and the use of the word "apology". Half the people of the country have probably forgotten that in 1999 Howard did respond to the Stolen Generation report by having Parliament resolve that it :

acknowledges that the mistreatment of many indigenous Australians over a
significant period represents the most blemished chapter in our national
history;
(f) expresses its deep and sincere regret that indigenous Australians suffered
injustices under the practices of past generations, and for the hurt and
trauma that many indigenous people continue to feel as a consequence of
those practices; and
(g) believes that we, having achieved so much as a nation, can now move
forward together for the benefit of all Australians.

Beazley tried to have it changed to incorporate a direct apology. If that had been done, there was nothing else to object to the in the resolution.

It seems to me that the new Labor government could simply have dealt with this by revisiting the resolution and amending it with the additional words Beazley wanted. It could be done without a great song and dance, and without all the dubious puffing up of the importance of the symbolism.

But that is often Labor's way: valuing symbolism or theory at the expense of results, and encouraging others to do likewise.

Nice to have someone to chat to...

Corpse 'lay on sofa for up to eight years' | The Guardian |

The surprising thing about this (apart from the obvious point that the dead person's flatmate lived with this slight inconvenience) is that it would appear that a several year old corpse can still smell. I would have assumed it would be a relatively smell-less mummy-like thing by then, if not a bunch of bones.

Retro review and ramble

Watch this extract from Artists and Models, the 1955 Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis vehicle, and then some questions for discussion:



1. Would Rick (Dean Martin) risk court action if he was this "fresh" with a young woman today? (Probably; or at least risk a knee in the groin).

2. In dramatic terms, is his pursuit of the girl made acceptable by Shirley MacLaine's arguably even more forthright harassment of Jerry Lewis? (Probably.)

3. Did any women in the audience really think Dean Martin had sex appeal? (Seems a wildly unlikely proposition to me.)

4. Did the 1950's idea of beauty actually give women a longer shelf life as actresses, compared to women actors today? I mean, the shapely, far from skinny or taunt bodies tended to make younger actresses look a bit older, but then they could hold that look for longer than a waif-like starlet of today. (Shirley was just 21 at the time this film was made.)

5. Why are strong female characters from '50's films so appealing? (I saw a bit of Rear Window again, and was reminded how the Grace Kelly character was charming yet assertive in her own way.)

Maybe (I'm just thinking out loud here) it's that the feminist gains of today's Western women tempt one into one into assuming, almost subconsciously, that poor pre-feminist women must have had less character and willfulness as a consequence of their more restricted, pre-liberated state. Of course, this is not true, but maybe this playing against unconscious expectation that appeals. Of course, it could also just be that I really only want all women to only be liberated to a 1950's level!

6. The movie satirizes a 1950's moral panic about comic books, and indeed Wikipedia confirms that this did happen. According to this article, a popular book behind the panic saw implied homosexual love between Batman and Robin. (And here I thought finding repressed homosexuality everywhere was something that people only started doing in the 1970's or 80's!)

7. Why am I talking about a Martin & Lewis movie at all? Well, I liked them as a kid (the icky Dean Martin songs and kissy bits notwithstanding) and the wonders of DVD mean I can show them to my children in an attempt to brainwash them into being mini-me's. So far, it seems to be working.

(The range of Martin & Lewis movies are at Big W for about $9 each at the moment. You can do much worse than to re-visit these. Even better, if you are under 30 you probably have never seen them, and should do so on a rainy day or three.)

Sharia law for England

Ruth Gledhill - Times Online - WBLG: Has the Archbishop gone bonkers?

If you want to read some very strong rebuttal of the Archbishop of Canterbury's musings about Sharia law perhaps having some role in Britain, go to the above link.

Towards the end of the post, Ruth Gledhill repeats a claim she has heard from an informant who did not want to be identified. If true, it is a disturbing story:

A few weeks ago, I was chatting to a woman who works in an advocacy role for Muslim women in an area that, quite independently of the Bishop of Rochester, she described as a 'no-go area' for non-Muslims. Her clients were women in the process of being sectioned into mental health units in the NHS. This woman, who for obvious reasons begged not to be identified, told me: 'The men get tired of their wives. Or bored. Or maybe the wife objects to her daughter being forced into a marriage she doesn't want. Or maybe she starts wearing western clothes.There can be many reasons. The women are sent for asssessment to a hospital. The GP referring them is Muslim. The psychiatrist assessing them is Muslim and male. I have sat in these assessments where the psychiatrist will not look the woman patient in the eye because she is a woman. Can you imagine! A psychiatrist refusing to look his patient in the eye? The woman speaks little or no English. She is sectioned. She is divorced. There are lots of these women in there, locked up in these hospitals. Why don't you people write about this?'

My interlocuter went very red and almost started to cry. Instead, she began shouting at me. I was a member of the press. 'You must write about this,' she begged.

'I can't,' I said. 'Not unless you become a whistle-blower. Or give me some evidence. Or something.'

She shook her head. 'I can't be identified,' she said. 'I would be killed. And so would the women.'

UPDATE: The Archbishop should really know he is in trouble when most of the Guardian's reader's comments are against him too.

UPDATE 2: I like some of the comments made about this over at Bryan Appleyard's blog, especially this one:

Pure intelligence, which I'm sure the ABoC has in abundance, is a pretty useless commodity unless it can be harnessed to awareness and character. We all know people who are so intelligent they can't tie their own shoelaces.

Now if he had any practical intelligence it might have given him the foresight to realise, no matter how well meaning, how this sounds. Instead he somehow though talking on Radio 4 was the same as having a chat at High Table in Balliol.

He's ba-ack

Pollies are financially self-interested schemers: Latham - National - smh.com.au

It's amusing while ever most of his venom is directed towards Labor.

UPDATE: Andrew Landeryou really rips into Latham about this (and also does us a service by posting a scan of the article.)

A bid for hits

Wonderful Wednesday: How to Insult Americans

Bryan Appleyard has discovered the secret to successful blogging: insult Americans. Maybe some of his success will rub off on me through this link to his post. (Don't worry, we both really love you.)

Make sure you read the comments too; they're very funny.