Potatoes in space

All hail the uber-tuber | By genre | guardian.co.uk Books

Yet another of those history of a commodity books, this time on potatoes.

From the sound of the review, it is pretty interesting. I for one didn't know that the route the tuber took to Europe is still not clearly known. Also, I'm not sure I've heard this claim before:

Each tuber contains all the vitamins, minerals, proteins, calories and cellulose necessary for life: a healthy adult could survive indefinitely, though perhaps unenthusiastically, on potatoes alone.

But the potato's crowning achievement may yet lie in the future:

A stand of potatoes large enough to provide an astronaut's nourishment for the day will also, Reader reports, supply all the oxygen that the space traveller needs, and mop up all the exhaled carbon dioxide as well. It won't be the only crop in tomorrow's zero-gravity garden, but it could be the most vital.

Just so you know

Al Jazeera English - News - Eu Deems Iran Poll Unfair

Good to see Al Jazeera reporting this.

Interesting medical news for Mark Latham & Paul Keating

Technology Review: Taking a Shot at Hypertension

....scientists from the Swiss biotechnology company Cytos have created a vaccine that lowers blood pressure. They say that it may one day eliminate the need for daily medication.

And you thought we had a bad doctor shortage...

Doctor shortage takes a toll in Japan

Japan's fear of immigration is hurting their hospitals:

Unlike in some Western countries that welcome medical professionals from abroad, the gap in Japan cannot be filled by foreigners.

Japan has virtually no foreign doctors due to strict immigration rules, although it took the landmark step in 2006 of allowing in a limited number of nurses from the Philippines.

2020 vision - more candles

Penny Wong's warnings today that "the Government's plan to cut greenhouse gases will produce the biggest shake-up to the economy in decades" illustrates one reason people should be deeply cynical about the 2020 Summit.

Isn't it bleeding obvious that massive changes to energy use and generation to be made within a very short time frame will, if taken seriously, completely over-ride all other long term issues in importance and effect?

What a mix

Gays fear an influx of hate - Los Angeles Times

The US as a cultural and ethnic melting pot was never more fully on display than in this case which happened in Sacramento.

Short version: Fijians (one of whom was gay) clash for hours with Slavic evangelical Christians, of which there are many in Sacremento, during a picnic. About the Russians generally:

With as many as 100,000 newcomers from republics such as Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus, the Sacramento region has one of the nation's largest concentrations of Soviet immigrants. Most began arriving in the late 1980s -- about a third of them conservative evangelical Christians seeking religious freedom.

The influx has created a thriving Russian community with Russian-language newspapers, cable TV and radio shows, as well as 70 Slavic churches -- nearly all adherents of a fundamentalist creed that condemns homosexuality.

Sounds like a place for Foreign Correspondent to do a story.

Tracee's latest upset

Tim Blair seems to be having the weekend off, so someone has to take over the Tracee gig.

First: what the hell is it about the women columnists at The Age and their habits with mirrors? First, it was Catherine Deveny making the oddest introduction to a column about International Women's Day I had ever read; now its Tracee Hutchison confessing to her fair share of sub-navel gazing. Who will be next? *

Anyway, the point of Tracee's column this week is to complain bitterly about the recent tampon ad which reminded viewers of the sexual slang (originally American, I assume) meaning of beaver.

Given that, as a conservative, I actually don't disagree with Hutchison's criticism of "raunch culture", and I would hardly accuse the ad of being in good taste; I still find her outrage a bit over the top.

First, it's hard to take the metaphor too seriously. The rodent in question is shown under the girl's arm walking down the street, then under a hairdresser's hairdryer, and then having its nails painted. As these are activities with no real life equivalent, the point would seem to be that the anatomy in question is a young woman's (best?) friend. Given Tracee's self-examination, I take it she approves of women having a thorough acquaintance with their body, but extending that into a jokey stereotypical girly friendship is obviously just too much of a stretch for her.

Tracee seems particularly upset by the fact that a considerable number of young women are apparently not offended by "... their vaginas being referred to as toothy, amphibious rodents.." She seems a bit unduly sensitive about beavers as animals; I thought most people found then interesting and somewhat endearing, and far from the ugliest creature around. Personally, I think some rodent sensitivity counselling for Tracee would not go astray. (Don't watch this, TH.)

But the part that really upset Tracee was the third scene, in which 2 men are shown looking at the bikini clad woman/rodent at the beach. Our columnist reads it this way:

And who in their right mind thought it was OK to thinly disguise a blatant male ogling at beaver-as-vagina sunning itself on the beach as a tampon ad?

Make no mistake. There was absolutely no ambiguity here. This ad said loudly — and apparently proudly — that women are nothing more than vaginas on legs. It not only offended and degraded women, it underestimated and degraded men.

Well, as a general rule, it's near impossible to underestimate men enough when it comes to their visual interest in what's on display at the beach. And couldn't part of the point be that there is (at least metaphorical) genitalia on open display? Ask Paris and Britney if that attracts attention.

As I say, I'm not a fan of the ad, and conservatives do share (for somewhat different motives) feminism's concern that men and women would be better occupied not thinking about sex all the time. But this ad's central (admittedly dubious taste) joke is only appreciated by those old enough to have heard the slang already; and to the extent that the "ogling" section can be taken to be mean that young women might enjoy the learing attention of men: well it would hardly be the first ad to suggest that.

Our Tracee is giving it more attention than it deserves.

* (I trust not Michelle Grattan; that would be a mental image way, way too far.)

Bugs in space

Hardy Earth bacteria can grow in lunar soil - New Scientist Space

Planning on colonizing the moon? Cyanobacteria may be your best friend:

The cyanobacteria were taken from hot springs in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, US. When put in a container with water and simulated lunar soil, the cyanobacteria were found to produce acids that are amazingly good at breaking down tough minerals, including ilmenite.

They use the nutrients freed up this way to grow and reproduce. "This is unbelievable," Brown told New Scientist. Breaking down the same minerals artificially would require heating them to very high temperatures, which uses enormous amounts of energy, he says. Cyanobacteria, on the other hand, use only sunlight for energy, though they do their extraction work more slowly than heating the soil artificially.

History repeats

Hospital staff on a 'knife's edge' - National - smh.com.au

After reading this story of today's damning evidence of government incompetence in funding and managing Sydney's North Shore Hospital, it occurred to me that the electoral success of Labor in New South Wales in the last 7 years or so is very reminiscent of the National Party's success in Queensland in the early 1980's.

That is, against all logic, the voters keep re-electing a party which no sensible person could say is governing properly. Somehow, a mild wariness of the talent of the Opposition keeps trumping incredibly incompetent government.

Test yourself

DOTHETEST

It takes barely a minute and (if you are like me) you will be truly surprised.

Hand that advertising agency a cigar. Or something else that signifies success without necessarily killing you.

Found via the ever excellent Mind Hacks blog (see link at the side.)

Quark nuggets ahoy

0803.1795v1.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Click the link for the intriguingly titled "The search for Primordial Quark Nuggets among Near Earth Asteroids".

Turns out some small asteroids in the solar system might be made of quarks, and careful observation could check this out:

The exotic nature of the nuggets allows one relatively easy form of distinguishing them from conventional asteroids: since the strange quark matter is expected to have a plasma frequency as high as 20MeV (well in the hard-ray frequencies), the bare quark surface would act as a perfect mirror to the incident solar light. Hence, contrary to the case of even metallic asteroids for which A ∼ 0.1, we expect albedos ≈ 1 and therefore a quotient FV /FI much larger than any reasonable normal surface.

Sounds cool; asteroids that are nice shiny mirror balls.

The paper says there may be 10 to 100 bound to the solar system, and many others that may just pass through. They might occasionally hit the earth:

The possibility of a direct impact onto the Earth is
extremely small (about one event per Hubble time) for halo PQNs, but grows considerably for a captured population. Specific signatures of such an hypothetic collision (likely giving rise to a huge epilinear earthquake) have never been worked out in full detail.

Just thought you should know.

No wonder they ate so many coconut cream pies

'Gilligan's' Mary Ann Caught With Dope

Texting money

Loans by text message send young Swedes spiralling into debt

Fire off a simple text message, wait 15 minutes and presto, 300 euros land in your account; the simplicity of obtaining SMS loans in Sweden is increasingly luring youths into debt.

What a silly idea.

The predictive powers of Lost in Space

Alpha Centauri Should Harbor Earth-like Planets

Of course it does: the Robinson family would not have sent off on a wild goose chase, would they?

As it happens, last weekend I found Lost in Space episodes on DVD at the local video hire. Hence, my ongoing project to brainwash my son into liking the TV and movies I liked at his age continues.

Just a few comments on re-watching some episodes:

a. the deliberate humour is often still pretty funny.
b. American TV series really have long seasons, don't they?
c. it's still good TV for kids, at least until they get to the cynical age when a beach ball cannot plausibly be a landmine (from the episode "The Golden Man", of which I had a clear memory.)

I have to hire the 3rd season, when the theme music changed to the upbeat "countdown" version. What are we going to do when John Williams dies?

By the way, I am one of the few people who saw the movie at the cinema. It was not bad at all, in my books.

Keeping it young

Injection Of Human Umbilical Cord Blood Helps The Aging Brain, Study Shows

A somewhat interesting study reported above. But does the idea of old folks trying to find a source of umbilical cord blood for their brain rejuvenation therapy sound just a little creepy?

(Actually, the study involved human cord blood cells going into rats, and it still seemed to help. Maybe animal cells would help in humans - hopefully without too many animalistic side effects!)

NASA re-designs, and shuttle sightings

Someone has to remind the Australian nation to go out and watch the space shuttle/International Space Station go overhead, and it looks like it's me.

It turns out there are a good run of evening sightings available starting Friday. Go to the NASA sightings pages and follow the links to your nearest city.

The whole NASA home page has been re-designed, and it's looking a lot better for it.

High temperature talkshow

In case you missed it, you really should have a look at the Memri video on this recent LGF post, showing a very heated recent "talk" show on Al Jazeera.

While Wafa Sultan can be certain to face criticism from some quarters that she does not understand Islam as a religion, what is more disturbing to Westerners is how the pro-Islam speaker (and the show's host) seemingly don't care about the historical accuracy of virtually anything they say.

Last night's Four Corners on Islam in Australia was of some interest, but hardly went into depth on any individual part of the picture. I didn't see all of it, but my impression was that most of its intention was to blame Australian for not being accommodating enough. (It was fair enough, though, to have embarrassing displays of ugly yobbo Australian patriotism as part of the show.)

Still, the attitude of worldwide Islamic victimhood on display in both of those links is very worrying, as is the fact that it is being taught to their children.

It's also puzzling how Islamists can continue to paint the invasion of Iraq as an anti-Muslim crusade. Can't those on the Left, who deplore the American action, still try and do something to correct Muslim beliefs about the motive? It's no use those on the Right telling Muslims they are mistaken, they won't believe us anyway.

The China problem

Alarming growth in expected CO2 emissions in China

Some impressive (but not necessarily in a good way!) figures discussed here:

The researchers' most conservative forecast predicts that by 2010, there will be an increase of 600 million metric tons of carbon emissions in China over the country's levels in 2000. This growth from China alone would dramatically overshadow the 116 million metric tons of carbon emissions reductions pledged by all the developed countries in the Kyoto Protocol. (The protocol was never ratified in the United States, which was the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide until 2006, when China took over that distinction, according to numerous reports.)

Put another way, the projected annual increase in China alone over the next several years is greater than the current emissions produced by either Great Britain or Germany.

Based upon these findings, the authors say current global warming forecasts are "overly optimistic," and that action is urgently needed to curb greenhouse gas production in China and other rapidly industrializing countries.

The whole article is worth reading, if you like being depressed.

Departing for another universe

A Brief History Of Time Machines - Forbes.com

What's Forbes.com doing with a general overview of time machines?

It's an easy read, with nothing much new to me, except the second paragraph from the section I quoted here, which has an idea I don't recall reading before:

British physicist David Deutsch, invoking the "many-universe" interpretation of quantum mechanics, believes that "pastward" time travel would require travel to another, parallel universe--one in which I could kill my grandfather and in which I (therefore) would never be born. Via a time machine, I would have removed myself from this universe to take up residence in that one.

The idea has some interesting implications. Deutsch has suggested that one reason we have detected no extraterrestrial civilizations may be that, using time machines, they have left this universe, preferring to live in another.

I suppose it also means that our universe could see a sudden influx of aliens arriving from another universe; not just from a corner of the one we know.

Neutrino beam from aliens

0803.0409v1.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Here's an interesting suggestion in a new paper on arXiv: maybe aliens use neutrino beams to communicate over interstellar distances, and these may be detectable at the IceCube neutrino detector in Antarctica.

For something even more out there, the paper has a footnote to a 2003 paper which speculates on the use of neutrino beams to disable nuclear weapons. The paper makes it clear this is not about to happen anytime soon, but it's pretty good fodder for a science fiction writer.