For the love of Kevin

I saw most of Q&A last night, which was basically an hour of the Prime Minister taking questions from a (mostly) loving audience.

Andrew Bolt has already noted how the audience was stacked.

The odd thing I noticed about it was that the audio on the audience seemed really turned up to 11. Kevin would make a mildly humorous comment, and the audience laughter in response sounded like a laugh track from Seinfeld.

Although there were questions coming from a critical perspective, the whole thing was so controlled it was far from a challenging environment. Our PM is good at avoiding the question, and is still at the stage of blaming the previous government for most things.

I still can't warm to his personality. Beneath all the standard politician talk, I get the impression that he's a tightly sprung, over-controlling robot, who is not as self-effacing as he likes to portray. There is a faux humility in the continued references to his upbringing in Nambour, which I am very tired of hearing about.

Taking fuel efficient flying seriously

It's interesting to see that soaring fuel costs are leading to jets being flown a bit slower, in order to increase fuel efficiency.

But, for the short inter-city hops in Australia, why don't airlines seriously consider going back to modern turbo-prop aircraft? According to to The Times last month:

“Propeller-driven planes achieve massive fuel benefits on shorter journeys,” Kapil Kaul, of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, said.

For a trip of less than 600 nautical miles, or about 90 minutes’ flying time, a turboprob may use as much as 70 per cent less fuel than a similar-sized jet, he said.

According to Treehugger, the environmentalist website, travelling on an aircraft such as a Bombardier Q400, one of the most advanced turboprops, can be more environmentally friendly than going by car (but not quite as green as taking a train).

This post makes the same point.

Of course, such fuel efficiency doesn't hurt from a greenhouse gas point of view, but even if you are a complete skeptic on that, the economics still make a lot of sense.

On IslamicTube today

Wandering around the internet today, I stumbled across IslamicTube.net. It's an Islamic version of YouTube; full of Islamic fun.

In today's "featured" category, there's an extract of a talk from an American sounding black Muslim about how AIDS was deliberately injected into Africans as part of an evil American/WHO plan to keep the population down. You can see it here.

They also seem very keen on little kids who can talk about Islam. There's this 2 year old who knows a series of answers to questions about Islam. Watch it and guess which question and answer I find most worrying:



(This version is on Youtube; I don't think you can embed the videos from Islamictube.)

Going back to AIDS, you can go to the "Science and Facts" channel on IslamicTube and watch the series "Medicine and Islam", which seems entirely devoted to camel's milk. I haven't watched it all, but it would seem from the heading that AIDS gets a mention.

Yes, I must spend more time on IslamicTube.

Of interest if you want to live on the moon

100 Explosions on the Moon

NASA has started watching the Moon to see just how often they can see the flash of a meteor hitting it. It turns out they can see a lot of flashes:

Over the past two and a half years, NASA astronomers have observed the Moon flashing at them not just once but one hundred times.

"They're explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the Moon," explains Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). "A typical blast is about as powerful as a few hundred pounds of TNT and can be photographed easily using a backyard telescope."

As an example, he offers this video of an impact near crater Gauss on January 4, 2008.

Long term residents would live under a couple of meters of dirt to avoid radiation anyway, but here's another reason for them to find a nice cave to live in.

A pleasant surprise

A Modest Glass of Wine Each Day Could Improve Liver Health

Researchers at UC San Diego School of Medicine are challenging conventional thinking with a study showing that modest wine consumption, defined as one glass a day, may not only be safe for the liver, but may actually decrease the prevalence of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD).

Who'd have thought you can say "I'm drinking for my liver"?

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.