Good one, Kevin

CSIRO cuts could have 'unforseen consequences' - ABC News

The science research agency says it has no choice but to close its laboratories at Mildura in Victoria, and Rockhampton in Queensland, after a Federal Budget funding cut of more than $60 million over four years.

And I imagine most CSIRO scientists probably voted Labor too.

Not a good look

Orthodox Jewish youths burn New Testaments in Israel - International Herald Tribune

Just when you thought there was enough trouble in Israel already, we have the additional fun of friction between Orthodox Jews, Messianic Jews and Christians.

Here's an idea for sorting out the Middle East: the UN should mandate that the Disney corporation take it over. Disney World in Florida seems nearly as big as Israel anyway.

They really know how to make queues for attractions work, and they have probably got hundreds of lawyers who can sort out those fights between the different churches over who runs the holy sites.

As for the more serious issue, like resettlement rights for Palestinians: put Mickey and Farfur in a boxing ring and let them sort it out.

This post was brought to you by pseudoephedrine. (I have a cold.)

Unfortunate

Shitterton: The village that dare not speak its name - This Britain, UK - The Independent

From the article:

This isn't the only place in Britain proudly to wear the Shit– prefix – an unholy trinity is formed with Shittlehope and Shitlington Crags, both in the North-east of England – but Shitterton is the only one of the three actually to be named after excrement. According to the mathematician Keith Briggs, who keeps an informative website on this burning topic, the name is probably derived from a river called Shiter, "a brook used as a privy".

The whole article is funny, in a Benny Hill/Two Ronnies kind of way:

Shitterton probably started a slow metamorphosis towards Sitterton during the Victorian era, at the same time as towns and villages on the river Piddle were being renamed to Tolpuddle, Affpuddle and Puddletown – presumably in order not to cause embarrassment to travellers asking for directions.

I see that the Independent ran another article recently on rude place names in England. Go and pick a favourite.

Green heresies

Inconvenient Truths: Get Ready to Rethink What It Means to Be Green

I haven't had time to read all of this yet, but this list of 10 "Green heresies" about how to tackle greenhouse gas looks very interesting.

It includes "embrace nuclear". There really do seem to be a lot of articles from the 'States at the moment promoting nuclear.

When are we going to see the same in Australia?

I just tried to find the on-line copy of John Howard's Nuclear Energy Task Force report, and Googling took me to a page in The Age which contained a link, which takes you to an "error" page in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, noting that the content on the website is being "reviewed".

No matter, here it is archived by the National Library.

Another possible lung cancer test

Blood Test For Lung Cancer May Be Possible

This one, is, I think, different from a couple of other tests that have been noted in the last year or so:

Rather than screening for factors released by the incipient tumor into the blood stream, the test Dr. Vachani and colleagues used looked at gene expression in the subject's own circulating white blood cells. "We found that the types of genes present in these cells could tell us whether or not cancer was present," explained Dr. Vachani.

Sounds promising

Vaccine Triggers Immune Response, Prevents Alzheimer's In Mice

Vaccinated mice generated an immune response to the protein known as amyloid-beta peptide, which accumulates in what are called "amyloid plaques" in brains of people with Alzheimer's. The vaccinated mice demonstrated normal learning skills and functioning memory in spite of being genetically designed to develop an aggressive form of the disease.

Things I would rather not think about

One of the more peculiar things to come out of greenhouse gas concerns has been an interest in innovative (and environmentally friendlier) ways to dispose of human bodies.

First, on the New Inventors recently, there was the idea of burying the corpse in a sack, which discretely drops out of a reusable coffin. Hard to object to the idea really; coffins are expensive, and seem quite a waste. It could do a lot of coffin carpenters out of work very quickly, though, if it catches on.

Secondly, the topic came up on The Science Show last week. The basic proposal discussed there was that cremation produces a lot of CO2, and it would make much better sense to bury people vertically near a tree. The carbon from the bodies will end up in wood in the tree. Again, sounds quite sensible really, and the only objection is probably aesthetic, in that a standing body doesn't look as restful as a supine one.

But the next idea is a step too far. Apparently, it is being taken seriously in the States by the funeral industry. Here it is, from William Saletan's Human Nature blog at Slate :

You may soon have a new option: being dissolved in lye. Well, let's not call it that. Let's call it "alkaline hydrolysis." According to AP reporter Norma Love (what a byline!), the process leaves a "brownish, syrupy residue":

It uses lye, 300-degree heat and 60 pounds of pressure per square inch to destroy bodies in big stainless-steel cylinders that are similar to pressure cookers. ... In addition to the liquid, the process leaves a dry bone residue similar in appearance and volume to cremated remains. It could be returned to the family in an urn or buried in a cemetery. The coffee-colored liquid has the consistency of motor oil and a strong ammonia smell. But proponents say it is sterile and can, in most cases, be safely poured down the drain, provided the operation has the necessary permits.

This has a very high "yuck" factor to overcome. I think I would even prefer being left to be eaten by birds (as do the Parsis, although the lack of vultures is causing a bit of a concern to the neighbours) than being turned into industrial sludge.

Now I must find a more pleasant topic for my next post...

Just what we need...

Extinct gene brought back to life - Science - Specials - smh.com.au

According to the article, this research does not mean it would be easy to recreate an entire Tasmanian tiger; but further work with individual genes may lead to Frankenmouse creations:

Future experiments may be able to extract more specialised genes - such as those that were responsible for giving the thylacine its dog-like features, or its distinctly patterned skin, into a mouse.

"We might be able to produce a striped mouse," said Dr Pask, even one with a thylacine pouch.

Just be careful you don't make a ravenous, sharp toothed killer mouse, Dr Pask.

By the way, after reading some of Larry Niven's science fiction in the 1970's, which featured all sort of genetically modified creatures, I came up with the idea that humans modified to have pouches for fetus growing would have a fair few advantages compared to the current set up. Maybe the future belongs to human/kangaroo hybrids.

Love Saudi Style

She’s never met the man she’s marrying: it’s love, the Saudi way - Times Online

This was an interesting article about a couple of young Saudi men and their views on love and finding a partner.

The two guys interviewed are described as:

...average young Saudi men, residents of the nation’s conservative heartland, Riyadh, a flat, clean city of 5m that gleams with oil wealth, two glass skyscrapers and roads clogged with oversized SUVs. It offers young men very little in the way of entertainment, with no movie theatres and few sports facilities. If they are unmarried, they cannot even enter the malls where women shop.

So what do they do when not working?:

There are eight other children in the house where Enad lives with his father, his mother and his father’s second wife. The apartment has little furniture, with nothing on the walls. The men and boys gather in a living room off the main hall, sitting on soiled beige wall-to-wall carpeting, watching a television propped up on a crooked cabinet. The women have a similar living room, nearly identical, behind closed doors.

The house remains a haven for Enad and his cousins, who often spend their free time sleeping, watching Oprah with subtitles on television, drinking cardamom coffee and sweet tea – and smoking.

Well, I assume the recent episode of a man [sic] having a baby must have gone down a treat!

Clearly, the way to change Saudi society is to insert subliminal messages via Oprah. Maybe Obama could convince her to be a secret psyops agent.

Unhappy campers

Labor's leaders have eclipsed our solar power hopes - Opinion - theage.com.au

The domestic solar power industry is very unhappy with the budget.

I know that a huge amount of government money being spent on this would not be an effective way to fight greenhouse gases, but if only a modest amount is spent encouraging families to use solar, I don't think that it hurts.

Ouch

Europe, please stop funding this man | Features | guardian.co.uk Film

Joe Queenan writes a fierce, but amusing, attack on the recent career of Woody Allen. I haven't cared for much since Crimes and Misdemeanors.

(Meanwhile, that Indiana Jones movie is hovering around a 70% approval rating at Rottentomatoes. Maybe that's not a bad thing: if I'm disappointed in an extremely well received movie, it's hard not to get annoyed at why so many other people over-praised it.)

Just a little creepy

A Purity Ball - The New York Times

Hey, I'm as much for young unmarried people not having sex as the next conservative, but even so I can't help but cringe at the symbolism used at the "Purity Ball" shown as a slideshow linked above.

It's all too much setting themselves up for a fall, if you ask me. Just go and stay a virgin quietly.

A history of Pebble Bed Reactors

There's a blog run by Robert Hargraves devoted entirely to Pebble Bed Reactors. It was dormant for a while, but he appears to have revived it recently, and he's got a link to an interesting recent article by an engineer about the history of the reactors. Well worth a read, and I'll add the blog to my links soon.

McCain has fun

Found via the always interesting Tigerhawk, here's John McCain doing an amusing short sketch on Saturday Night Live:



Glad to see he doesn't take himself too seriously.

Just as I said

Rudd and Swan fudged paltry spending cuts | smh.com.au

My initial reaction to the budget was to call it a con, because of the difference between how it was spun and what it actually did.

Ross Gittins today makes out a very convincing and detailed case that I was right.

Bring it on

Turnbull denies fuel excise leak | NEWS.com.au

I didn't see Insiders yesterday, but heard part of it on the radio. Gerard Henderson was being scathing of Nelson's petrol tax excise policy. Now it appears the preliminary fun and games of a leadership challenge are probably underway.

I guess the plan may well be to see if Nelson can increase his approval rating to anything significant in the next poll. If he is still Mr Around-Ten-Percent, I really can't see the point of letting him hang around any longer, even if the ideal may have been to let Turnbull get more experience as shadow treasurer first.

Nelson is a liability as leader; he should go.

Eye candy

Wild China, a 6 part BBC nature documentary, started on the ABC last night, and it was spectacularly good to look at. Why is the BBC so accomplished at this sort of thing?

Highly recommended.

Begging to differ

Shirley Hazzard: Greatest novelist of the 20th century? - Times Online

Based on Bryan Appleyard's high regard for Shirley Hazzard, I recently bought her last novel "The Great Fire." Now Bryan's gone and interviewed her (see above link), and his admiration is set out clearly there.

Sadly, I am almost half way through the novel and am finding it close to unbearable; last night I nearly decided to simply give up.

I don't mind the more ornate style of writing of your typical mid 20th century author: I have read nearly everything of Evelyn Waugh, and quite admire Brideshead Revisited in particular. In the last few years, I finally got around to The Great Gatsby, and while I felt the material was somewhat slight, I thought the writing had some of the same appeal as Waugh's. Going back further, Conrad can be a bit of struggle for me, but I could still understand him.

The problem with Hazzard, who is old enough to have started writing mid last century, is that I keep finding apparently carefully constructed sentences or paragraphs (she took 20 years to finish it) which none the less I have to re-read to discern the information or mood they are intended to convene. Even then I am not always successful in getting her point.

I don't think I am a particularly thick reader. As she has generally been very well reviewed, I have to give examples to try to validate my complaint.

This first paragraph is, I think, important to the theme of the novel, set shortly after the end of WWII; but that's only my guess, given the way it is written:

In the pattern of disruption that had been Aldred Leith's life for years, arrival had kept its interest. Excitement dwindled, curiosity had increased. Occasion revived an illusion of discovery, as if one woke in a strange room to wonder afreash not only where but who one was; to shed assumptions, even certainties. On the sea that evening, such expectation was negilible. Earlier in the day, in the swaying train, Leith had written to a wartime comrade: 'Peace forces us to invent our future selves.' Fatuity, he thought now, and in his mind tore the letter up. There was enough introspection to go round, whole systems of inwardness. The deficiency didn't lie there. To deny the external and unpredicatable made self-possession hardly worth the price. Like settling for a future without coincidence or luck.

I hope someone out there agrees with me, but I find that to be a semi-opaque mess; not good writing at all.

I learn from Appleyard's interview that much of the novel must have been inspired by Hazzard's real life adventures as a young women in post war Asia. She also makes it clear that she was an artistically inclined youth who longed to escape Australia, and that explains why she has one major character who views the country the same way:

He and Rysom had been raised on the Australian myths of desecration - on tales of fabulous vomiting into glove compartments or punch bowls, of silence ruptured by obscene sound: the legends of forlorn men avenging themselves on an empty continent, which, in its vast removal, did not hear or judge them.

These things, Peter Exley knew, who had been born and raised to it all, and endangered by it. Who had released himself into the lavish hospitality of art. Because of his own hairbreadth escape, the condition did not excite his compassion: the attack on whatever withheld itself in mystery - a woman, a culture, a work of art; the sense of private self. All could be exorcised with a beer and a jeer; the mockery, like the drink, being passing assuagement only, of the wound that would not heal.

Of course, this section makes Hazzard sound like a snob too; but who knows, maybe I would not have been entirely happy in mid 20th century Australia either.

No, I restrict my complaint to her prose style, which I guess is a result of what happens when an author keeps revising her writing over twenty years: it becomes elaborate but tedious and unclear.

The review of the book at Slate I can partially agree with. It notes that:

For all her subtlety and depth, Hazzard does not create memorable or particularly believable characters, or, if she manages to, she doesn't seem to favor them....

Moreover, all of Hazzard's characters lapse at intervals into unconvincingly poetical speech: "Decent people, but the place is laconic. Surprised by peace" is how the old scholar describes conquered Hiroshima to Leith upon first acquaintance.

Her style is described as "oblique", whereas I definitely would say "opaque".

Actually, now that I read more of the reviews, a lot of them do seem to acknowledge flaws, yet somehow they still come around to forgiving them. Take this from another review:

Hazzard's prose is crisp and whittled, sometimes even cryptic. We never get a fully fleshed story of Leith's heroics, nor of the mysterious mentor, a former Japanese prisoner who, on his deathbed, presciently foretells Leith's passage back to a personal life. Horrors are hinted at but never dwelt upon. Hazzard revels in oblique distillation, but she is by no means a minimalist. Her sentences are rich in clauses, and her observations run deep, as do her characters' self-awareness and interior lives.

There's that word "oblique" again. And I would not say that her prose is "sometimes" cryptic; it happens on about every second page, and I just find that intolerable.

Bryan Appleyard wonders why she isn't better known, but it doesn't surprise me at all.

Confusing Fisk

It's hard to tell why The Independent continues to pay Robert Fisk. His style is increasingly confused, and in dire need of editing. Here are some recent examples.

First, talking about a nice meal he was able to have despite the recent violence in Lebanon:

But I brought up the tiny matter of the little massacre in northern Lebanon in which 10 or 12 militiamen were captured and then murdered before being handed over to the Lebanese army. Their bodies were – I fear this is correct – mutilated after death.

"They deserved it," the elegant woman on my left said. I was appalled, overwhelmed, disgusted, deeply saddened. How could she say such a thing? But this is Lebanon and a huge number of people – 62 by my count – have been killed in the past few days and all the monsters buried in the mass graves of the civil war have been dug up.

I chose escalope du veau at the Cocteau – I am sickened by how quickly I decided on it – and tried to explain to my dear Lebanese friends (and they are all dear to me) how much fury I have witnessed in Lebanon.

Fisk should have more self loathing about his writing style than his choice of lunch.

If you need more convincing of his self-indulgent and increasingly opaque style, try the latest column. It contains such gems of journalism such as this:

So let us start at the beginning (be that the Ottoman, French, post-Versailles beginning of Lebanese history). Or let us begin yesterday, when it was broadcast that two Hizbollah members (for which read Shia Muslims) were knifed to death in Aley by Druze Muslims. Outrageous, if true. So let us begin with the statement that the Lebanese army command has decided to let Brigadier General Wafiq Chucair remain in command of security at Beirut airport. And that the Lebanese army commander – General Michel Sulaiman (the favourite for president if parliament, after 18 sittings, decide to choose one) – was determined to restore "law and order".

Thus (if the reader is not already confused) we should advance to the near-present.

Then, talking about an exhibition of Lebanese civil war posters, he writes:

And when I walked round that exhibition, I thought – yes – that this war could never be recreated. I even contemplated an article saying that there would not be another civil war here. On reflection, I should have sent that story to this paper. For despite everything that we have witnessed these past three days (or two years, or the 30 years or 2,000 years, you take your pick), I don't think the Lebanese want another civil war.

Five days ago, I recorded an interview for Saad Hariri's Future channel about my new book, and told my interviewer that I did not think there would be another civil war in Lebanon. Because Hizbollah has cut the cables of the channel, there will be no programme. "You did it for nothing," the young Lebanese woman interviewer told me yesterday. Yes, I think she was right. But I still suspect that the Lebanese will not tolerate another civil conflict.

Whatever you think of his politics, you would surely have to agree that his writing has become awful.

Now it's engineers

High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers - New York Times

First, it was doctors, now it's engineers. Of course, the basic problem is, Japan is going to run out of people soon. It's one of the nations that forgot to have children, and it's kind of sad to watch.