Jerry, Jerry

Jerry Lewis detained for carrying gun at airport

Comedian Jerry Lewis was detained by police in Las Vegas late last week when airport screeners found an unloaded gun in his baggage, authorities said on Tuesday. Lewis, 82, had a small .22-caliber handgun when he arrived at the security screening area on Friday at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport

But get this, he was on his way to do a one man show! He's still working? I hope he's arranged for some sight gag at his funeral.

Big news?

'Bigfoot' sighted in remote Canadian forest - Telegraph

There's been a lot of stuff about Bigfoot appearing at The Anomalist in the last month, mainly because of a claim, mysteriously unverified, of a group finding a dead body!

But a couple of people who sight a hairy walking thing in the woods of Canada, that's a bit more interesting.

Gloria Jeans survives

Gloria Jean Speaking Requests

Starbucks decline in Australia has come as a bit of a shock. I think I have said here before, I always thought Gloria Jeans was a better product anyway.

I didn't know anything about where that franchise started, but it would appear (see link above) to have been from Gloria Jean, a hairdresser, in Chicago. But wealth can't stop stuff like this:

Just when she thought life would be really good and she could sit back and enjoy life after selling Gloria Jean's, her husband asked for a divorce by fax and a couple years later she finds breast cancer.

Not quite the Rocketeer

Inventor plans to unveil jetpack at air show

Well, it's not really a jet, has only flown to a height of 6 feet, is very noisy and has a 30 minute range.

I'm underwhelmed.

The shame of seeing a lawyer

In rural Japan, a shortage of lawyers - International Herald Tribune

The most interesting part of this story is about the vastly different cultural attitude the Japanese have towards lawyers:

Here in Yakumo, four clients came to see Hirai on a recent day: an older woman worried about leaving an inheritance to an adopted son; a middle-aged salaryman who had hit a female employee; two clients involved in land disputes, one dating from the 1930s.

Like many Japanese who consult lawyers, the four seemed embarrassed about doing so.

"Japanese by nature don't want to publicize their problems," Hirai explained. "And coming to see a lawyer is to admit that there are problems inside your home or workplace."

It was precisely to dispel the shame of consulting a lawyer that Hirai chose to open his office in the town's most prominent square.

Red State/Blue State

This clip from tonight's Daily Show is quite funny, and it has the added benefit of not featuring much of Jon Stewart:

Kevin and Penny don't spread the word

Magnetic Island News - Magnetic Island, North Queensland, Australia

Late last week on the TV news we saw Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong going for a look at a bit of a look at the Great Barrier Reef, and afterwards talking about how global warming will harm it.

I see from that famous newspaper, The Magnetic Times, that Rudd was told about more than global warming. It would appear that ocean acidification got a detailed mention too. From the above link:

Katharina Fabricius, a Principal Research Scientist from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), who, along with fellow Magnetic Islanders, Dr Glenn De'ath and spatial analyst Stuart Kininmonth, is involved in a soon-to-be released web-based atlas of the reef, told Magnetic Times, "Sheriden had three hours to brief the Prime Minister who then gave a twenty minute speech in the Council Chamber that showed he really got the message. It went really well.” ....

Dr Fabricius described the serious effects of climate change on the reef which has prompted the making of the Atlas. “Climate change is already evident on the reef in two forms. One is water temperature which, from records which go back to the 1870s, shows that the ocean's water temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees C in the last hundred years. Corals have a low tolerance to only minor increases in water temperature, and hot water has led to the mass bleachings that have begun to happen in the last twenty years.”

“Of even greater concern is ocean acidification. The world's oceans absorb about half of the atmosphere's CO2. With increased CO2 in the sea water it becomes more acidic. Models predict that the pH (the measure of acidity and alkalinity) has already declined by 0.1 units which means that shellfish, crustaceans, corals and other marine creatures which utilise the carbonate in the water are less able to calcify.”

Well, why on earth in the evening TV news grabs don't we hear the PM, Penny Wong and others talking specifically about ocean acidification as a vital issue if Australia wants to preserve its extensive coral reefs? They clearly know about it, yet for some reason it still gets little media attention.

It also remains the issue that Andrew Bolt never mentions, I suspect because he can't find any credible ocean scientist type who can rebut the dire concerns other than by saying "it's all a conspiracy, everything will be alright, you just wait and see."

Sony does the right thing - sort of

Sony opens up e-book Reader to other booksellers

As far as I know Sony have never released the Reader in Australia. God knows why; we're not exactly the end of the earth anymore.

But now with this opening it up to be able to buy books other than from Sony, it might be on its way. I hope.

Some updates

* Discover magazine answered my email and said that the mistake in the ocean acidification article was noted shortly after publication, and the error will be noted in the September magazine. Oddly, though, they just leave the web version of the article un-amended. Seems a peculiar way to run things.

* Brideshead Revisited has opened to (surprise!) generally good reviews in the States. There are some, though, who call it a travesty, and that's good enough for me. AO Scott gets amusingly personal with this comment on the lead actor:

Charles is a complicated character, who causes a lot of trouble in the Flyte-Marchmain family even as he pretends to be a detached observer of its internal drama. The role calls for a mix of diffidence and magnetism — Charles is a shy, stoical seducer — but Mr. Goode shows all the charisma of a stalk of boiled asparagus molded into the likeness of Jeremy Irons. The film can’t explain why Julia or Sebastian would conceive a risky, tempestuous passion for Charles other than that Waugh seemed to think they might.

* Anthony Lane reviews Mamma Mia! and has a good line or two:

The legal definition of torture has been much aired in recent years, and I take “Mamma Mia!” to be a useful contribution to that debate.

Sounds fun

Time Lord opens the Tardis to a new generation of Prom-goers - Times Online

Caitlin Moran reports on the Dr Who prom held at Albert Hall.

Dr Who continues to be silly fun, marred only occasionally by Russell T Davies slipping in his hints to impressionable youth that being a sexual libertine, across both gender and species borders, is oh-so-cool.

Has anyone else noticed how important the music is to each episode of the re-invented show? It's loud, often annoyingly so, but there is no doubt that it sells excitement. It's really like Star Wars, where so much its emotional hold came from the score.

Long investigations

While the Qantas incident is all very interesting, it would appear to be an accident that will be explained quickly.

The same can't be said for the British Airways crash in London in January. Since the Air Accident Investigations Branch issued its special bulletin in May, we have heard no more from them. The Wikipedia article notes that the investigators have found:

...cavitation damage to the high pressure fuel pumps of both engines, indicative of abnormally low pressure at the pump inlets. After ruling out fuel freezing or contamination, the investigation now focuses on what caused the low pressure at the pump inlets. "Restrictions in the fuel system between the aircraft fuel tanks and each of the engine HP pumps, resulting in reduced fuel flows, is suspected."

This seems a very peculiar scenario, given that it affected both engines at the same time. I am very curious to see the final explanation.

A question of qualifications

Sceptical global warming bloggers tend to rush to take encouragement when anyone with some scientific sounding qualification agrees with them. For example, Dr David Evans' recent article in The Australian made a big splash in sceptic circles, yet it seemed clear from the opening of his article that he was not even claiming to be a scientist with expertise in atmospheric modelling. (His own biography gives his qualifications as being in electrical engineering.) As Deltoid (far from a favourite blog of mine, but he has his moments) pointed out quickly, Evan's "killer" point about troposphere temperatures had been dealt with over at Real Climate half a year ago, and as far as I can tell, is not actually shaking the foundations of the IPCC to the ground in the way software writer David claims.

In a similar vein, Wikipedia notes that of the "30,000 scientists" who have signed the anti global warming Oregon Petition, those in the most relevant category of "atmospheric, environment and earth sciences" apparently number 3,697. There seems to be no easy way of assessing how many of them have actually worked on issues directly relevant to global warming or CO2. Also, as the Wikipedia article explains, it's hard to tell how many signatures are genuine, and indeed many who first signed in 1998 may well have changed their mind since then. The petition certainly has a murky past.

I don't see why I should be convinced by the opinions of your average physicist, doctor and engineer when it comes to questions of assessing global warming issues. After all, just because Edgar Mitchell has a Ph.D and been to the moon does not mean I give any particular credence to his claim that aliens have been here and the US government is hiding the fact. Perhaps a less extreme example to make the same point is the line up of 9/11 conspiracy believers that includes engineers, architects and physicists.

I am aware that there are warming sceptics that have all the specific qualifications and work experience to mean that they are very familiar with the topic. Fine, their opinion is definitely not to be dismissed without examination. However, I still say that the sceptics make their argument much weaker by cheering whenever anyone who can call themselves a scientist says they agree.

Break needed

No more posting for a week. Tax doom approaches.

A question

The answer to this is probably out there somewhere on the internet, but quick googling hasn't revealed it to me yet.

A few posts back, I mentioned a Nature opinion piece which argued strongly that America could not afford to wait to have an effective emissions trading scheme up and running in 10 or so years time. It argued that the urgency of action needed to limit CO2 to even 550 ppm meant that the US should concentrate on immediate deployment of current clean technology. R&D should be on the technology that needs to be deployed in 20 or 30 years time.

Assuming that the same argument applies equally well to Australia, a valid criticism of Labor's emission trading plans is that they do not place significant emphasis on immediate deployment of clean technology. (The Liberals can be criticised likewise, of course.)

But, my question is: what detailed schemes have been proposed by academics or others in Australia that concentrate on immediate large reductions of CO2. I read or heard about some paper a year or two ago, from which university I forget, which I think set out a rapid plan for significant reduction to CO2 emissions in Australia, and I seem to recall they placed a large emphasis on natural gas for electricity, at least as an intermediate step.

The Greens, of course, are running the argument that current technology can power Australia, but I don't know whether they are working to specific and detailed plans, or if they are just expressing the ideal. Their website seems light on details, so I suspect the latter.

Anyway, if anyone can point me to such detailed proposals, I would be interested.

Breaking rank

Miranda Sawyer wonders why female-friendly films are so bad

I like the way this starts:

We went to the theatre the other night, a desperate evening enlivened only by imagining just how much more fun we could have had with the hundred quid it cost us. The play was The Year of Magical Thinking, a monologue about death performed by Vanessa Redgrave (I know: what did we expect? Custard pies?).

Rampaging beavers

Beaver 'blight' is a warning to UK | Environment | The Observer

Last week, I noted that The Independent was full of praise for the beaver. This week, The Guardian (see above) has a cautionary tale of beavers causing havoc in South America:

'I have seen the impact of all sorts of animals introduced to new habitats, but I have never seen anything like the damage inflicted by these beavers,' said Josh Donlan, of the ACS. 'They move along rivers and lay waste to their banks. It looks as if bulldozers have been let loose. Millions of acres have been wrecked.'

Fifty North American beavers, Castor canadensis, were introduced to Tierra del Fuego, in southern South America, in the 1940s in order to establish a fur trade. It was a catastrophic mistake. Numbers multiplied dramatically and beavers spread across the archipelago, crossed the Magellan Strait and are now spreading through the mainland.

Damn. My plans for introducing them to Australia may have its opponents.

Told you

Malaria resistance gene ups HIV risk (ABC News in Science)

This story reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend in the late 1980's, in which I said maybe HIV had taken hold strongly in parts of Africa because of a genetic susceptibility in the black population. I could not remember for sure at the time when or where I might have read the suggestion, but in any event, it seemed plausible.

My friend dismissed the idea, thinking it was too close to racist.

Years later, we fell out in circumstances in which I do have to take some blame. Now I feel potentially vindicated.

The moral of the story is: you should try hard to keep friends, if you want to be able to laughingly claim vindication 20 years later. Or something like that, anyway...

Homeless, but with internet

Temporary arrangements | The Japan Times Online

Here's a good read about the working poor who are living in internet cafes:

Cyber@Cafe in Warabi, Saitama Prefecture, is home to around 25 people who "live" there. The cafe, located outside JR Warabi Station, occupies three floors of an office building and has a shower room, a washing machine and high-tech toilets for the convenience of its guests. Blankets can be borrowed for free. Guests paying ¥200 can spend 30 minutes in the cafe's comfortable 130 cm × 190 cm cubicles, which each have soft pads on the floor, a pair of black and red cushions, and a personal computer with a high-speed Internet connection.

The biggest attraction, however, is that guests who pay for a month's stay (¥57,600) in advance can register the cafe as their home and have mail sent there for an additional ¥3,000. At least four people have registered the cafe as their home with the local city government, according to Cyber@Cafe owner Akihiro Sato.

At current exchange rates, that's about $600 a month for your own little, tiny room with internet access. There are worse ways to live.

Discover magazine does ocean acidification in depth

There's a detailed article on ocean acidification just up at Discover magazine. (If you have read this article at Online Opinion, you may be surprised at how similar they are, but I have it on very strong authority that the Online Opinion piece was written without knowledge of the coming Discover article). Here's a lengthy section from Discover worth extracting:

Over the history of the planet, there have been many sudden peaks in CO2 related to volcanic eruptions, releases from hydrothermal vents, and other natural events. When the pH of the ocean dips as a result of absorbing this excess gas, bottom sediments rich in calcium carbonate begin to dissolve, countering the increase in acidity. This buffering process occurs over 20,000 years, roughly the time it takes for water to circulate along the bottom from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back up to the surface several times. Currently, however, we are pouring man-made CO2 into the atmosphere at 50 times the natural rate. “That overwhelms the natural buffering system for maintaining balance in ocean chemistry,” the Carnegie Institution’s Caldeira says. “To find any parallel in the earth’s history you would have to look to a sudden violent shock to the system far in the geologic past.”

One such event occurred 55 million years ago at the so-called Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when 4.5 million tons of greenhouse gases were released into the atmosphere. Just what triggered this enormous emission is not known, but scientists suspect volcanic activity may have begun the process. That may in turn have caused the planet to heat up enough to melt deposits of methane frozen in sediments on the ocean floor (something, incidentally, that could happen again), discharging even more potent greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and further heating the planet in an escalating feedback loop.

Whatever the exact cause of the CO2 release at the PETM, the earth warmed faster than at almost any other time in its history. The average temperature soared 9 degrees Fahrenheit, entire ecosystems shifted to higher latitudes, and massive extinctions occurred on land and, most telling, at sea. The abrupt rise of CO2 acidified the oceans. James Zachos, a paleo-oceanographer from the University of California at Santa Cruz, analyzed sediment cores obtained from deep drilling in the ocean and discovered that bottom-dwelling creatures with shells disappeared from the fossil record for a period of more than 40,000 years corresponding to the PETM. And once the oceans turned more acidic, Zachos says, they did not recover quickly: It took another 60,000 years before sediments again began to show a thick white streak indicative of fossilized shells.

Drastic as the PETM was, the event is tame compared with acidification today. “Back then,” Zachos says, “4.5 million tons of CO2 were released over a period of 1,000 to 10,000 years. Industrial activities will release the same amount in a mere 300 years—so quickly that the ocean’s buffering system doesn’t even come into play.”

I wonder when any global warming sceptic is going to come up with convincing reasons why ocean acidification is not something to worry about. In fact, when are they going to give it any attention at all.

UPDATE: I've noticed that the figure of 4.5 million tons of CO2 being released during PETM must be an error. If you follow the link in the article (about PETM,) it indicates it should be 4.5 Gt. Disappointing to see an error like that turn up at Discover, but I'll email them now!

Current movies

Once again, join me for some bagging of movies I do not intend to see.

Mamma Mia has already been mentioned here, and while the music of Abba alone is enough to ensure its avoidance, I thought this snippet from a negative review was pretty funny:

A scene in which the groom’s shirtless beach blanket buddies, who are throwing him a bachelor party, peel him away from his bride in order to force him to join their merry band as they goose-step along the dock, while wearing flippers, with maximal flapping of arms, suggests a re-enactment of the invasion of the Sudetenland conducted by the Village People during a weekend on Fire Island.

On to The Dark Knight. Ever since Heath Ledger died, and there were stories of how playing this role messed with his mind, I have wondered whether this would put audiences off, as it may seem too much like watching someone self destruct on screen. (OK, so the death may well have been an accident, but still he wasn't the happiest chap at the time.)

I haven't read too many reviews, but I get the impression that the question hasn't troubled critics as much as I thought it might. A notable exception is David Denby in The New Yorker, who writes:

....as you’re watching him, you can’t help wondering—in a response that admittedly lies outside film criticism—how badly he messed himself up in order to play the role this way.

This article notes that it was pretty daring of the studio to continue promoting the film by concentrating the attention on Hedger's ghoulish Joker appearance; I actually agree more with the line that it was in rather poor taste to do so and semi-exploitive.

In any event, the movie is being highly praised, with one of the notable exceptions (David Edelstein) being attacked by fanboys for failing to agree with them.

I just can't raise enthusiasm. Of all the superhero franchises, Batman has simply never held appeal. Maybe the childhood exposure to the camp television version (towards which I was also rather cool) means I can't take dark, brooding versions of the character seriously either. I really don't care how good the acting is in any version; the costume, the theatrical style of the villains, the whole concept just leaves me cold.

It seems particularly odd that the latest movie is being described as terribly bleak; a superhero concept that was surely never intended to be taken all that seriously by adults now finds that making any concessions to a child audience completely unnecessary.

I am not a fan of superhero stuff overall, but have found the Spiderman franchise enjoyable enough. Maybe it's the charm of Tobey Maguire that gets me past the costume in that case.