...he's just a naughty boy

Ex-spy claims to be ‘new Messiah’ - Gazette Live

A FORMER spy claimed he was the new messiah in a “Sermon on the Mount” on top of Roseberry Topping.

Middlesbrough-born David Shayler, who was jailed in 2002 for leaking secrets including allegations the secret services plotted to assassinate Libyan Leader Colonel Gaddafi, preached to a handful of climbers during the sermon last night.

I like this part the best:

Reiterating his claims to be the new Messiah, Mr Shayler admitted people “might find it strange” for this to happen in Middlesbrough.

He said: “When people think of Middlesbrough, they tend to think of unemployment, child abuse and a failing football team. But I want to set the record straight.

“Why not promote Shayler as the Messiah and get people here on pilgrimages?”

The story has photos of the new Messiah in action too.

An uneven Word

This segment from Colbert a couple of nights ago is of wildly uneven quality. One of the jokes well and truly outlives its welcome, and early on it probably has a greater liberal smart arse quality to it than is usual for the show. But then, at about 3 minutes in, it becomes very funny.



(Not sure if that video link is working right. Will check it again later.)

Catholics don't like Obama

'Catholic problem' dogs Obama and Democrats - International Herald Tribune

I didn't know this:

The problem is all the more compelling for the Democrats because Senator Barack Obama, their likely nominee, lost the Catholic vote badly to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton - like Obama a supporter of abortion rights - during the primaries in states like New Hampshire, Missouri and Ohio. In Pennsylvania, Catholic voters preferred Clinton to Obama by a 40-point margin.

The report puts it down to Obama being seen as being very liberal on abortion rights, but I wonder if there is more to it than that.

Poor Indians

Everything in India is changing but treatment of the poor - International Herald Tribune

The opening sets the scene:

MUMBAI: Here in the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, the doyen of this city's hotels, what you think of the new India may depend on whether you are the person having soap squeezed onto your hands or the person squeezing the soap.

In every men's washroom at the Taj is a helper. As you approach the sink, he salutes you. Before you can turn on the tap, he does it for you. Before you can apply soap, he presses the dispenser. Before you can get a towel, he dangles one. As you leave, he salutes you again and mutters: "Right, sir. O.K., sir. Thank you, sir."

It's the salutes that really appeal to me.

Domestic workers apparently sleep in the hallway:

At 1 a.m. back in the boss's apartment building, the hallways are often covered with bodies. They belong to servants and sweepers who work inside by day but sleep outside by night, who clean the toilets but would not dare use them. They learn to sleep on cold tile, with tenants stepping over them when returning from Champagne-soaked evenings out.

As you can see, the article is about how those who are getting richer in India still treat the poor very badly, and there is a new film on the the subject. I like this comment by a viewer from the middle class:

The film was good but "one-sided," he said: "Maybe there are 70 percent of the people who treat them bad, but there are 30 percent who treat them good."

Not encouraging

Airline cockpit blackouts are not being tackled - New Scientist Tech

In the Airbus A320, failures of the primary wiring system carrying power to the cockpit have not always led to the backup system kicking in automatically, leaving pilots dangerously distracted as they struggle to restore normality. This happened on 37 flights up to May 2007, prompting Airbus to publish a modification to the A320's electrical system.

The bigger picture

Remember the reaction by Ellen DeGeneres to the shooting earlier this year in California of a 15 year old self-proclaimed gay boy Larry King? It's here if you missed it. According to the ever- emotional Ellen, it was all about gay hate and discrimination.

Before I continue, the usual disclaimer (of course he didn't deserve to die.) But, as I suspected at the time, the unseemly rush to embrace this case by gay groups as an example of the poor treatment of homosexuals was a ridiculous over-simplification.

Newsweek bravely runs a long account on the background of the late Larry King. According to the article, he had various diagnoses of psychological problems as a child (ADHD, "reactive attachment disorder", autism). He started telling students he was gay when he was 10. He hung out with girls. By 12, he was on probation for a vandalising a tractor and in counselling. At 14, he told his (adoptive?) father that he was bisexual. His father says he did not reject his son because of this, but Larry started telling teachers his father was hitting him. Authorities put him in a group home, and he was taken to gay youth group meetings.

He started dressing like a girl, wearing make up to school and stilettos (!). (Do they allow girls to wear stilettos?) He told his mother he wanted a sex change operation. The article strongly indicates that he was not exactly shy and retiring about these changes:

....teachers were baffled that Larry was allowed to draw so much attention to himself. "All the teachers were complaining, because it was disruptive," says one of them. "Dress code is a huge issue at our school. We fight [over] it every day." Some teachers thought Larry was clearly in violation of the code, which prevents students from wearing articles of clothing considered distracting. When Larry wore lipstick and eyeliner to school for the first time, a teacher told him to wash it off, and he did. But the next day, he was back wearing even more. Larry told the teacher he could wear makeup if he wanted to. He said that Ms. Epstein told him that was his right.

Ms Epstein, an assistant principal, is gay herself, and is seen by some of the other teachers as having been far too encouraging of Larry. One teacher complained:

She [the teacher] was approached by several boys in her class who said that Larry had started taunting them in the halls—"I know you want me," he'd say—and their friends were calling them gay.

Ms Epstein appears to have generally downplayed the prospect of any action.

The most amazing story of teacher support for Larry is this:

One teacher was very protective of Larry, his English teacher, Mrs. Boldrin. To help Larry feel better about moving to Casa Pacifica, she brought Larry a present: a green evening dress that once belonged to her own daughter. Before school started, Larry ran to the bathroom to try it on. Then he showed it to some of his friends, telling them that he was going to wear it at graduation.

There's plenty more in the article; it's a fascinating read.

The thing is, Ellen got this story completely wrong. Assuming the reporting is basically accurate, (yes I know, perhaps a risky assumption) it shows how amazingly willing the Californian education and child protection system was to accommodate and even encourage a troubled, possibly gay, possibly transgender boy, who insisted that he live out his perceived sexual or gender identity in a highly attention seeking fashion since before he was even a teenager.

His killer had a troubled background too, from a broken home with drugs and domestic violence featuring. His was left alone a lot, and seems to have an unusually detailed knowledge of Nazi Germany. He was, in short, far from your typical example of how a modern, half-way well adjusted American teenage boy would react to silly taunts by a cross dressing boy such as Larry gave out.

Anti-harassment strategies in schools in America seem so to have gone so far that they are emphasising sexual identity issues rather than de-emphasising them, which I would have thought is the more appropriate attitude for the education system.

Here's my simple version of a school policy for sexuality issues, based on privacy:

1. You are all too young to be having sex anyway, you know.
2. You've likely got 60 years ahead of you, as an adult, to work out who you are and who you want to sleep with.
3. We therefore don't care who you're currently attracted to, or even what gender you think you are or should be, and no one else needs to know either. For all you know, your feelings about all this may change in future anyway.
4. You have the right to privacy as to your feelings, and that right should and will be respected. No harassment over presumptions about your sexual feelings will be tolerated.
5. Just get on with some learning, hey?

Sort of a "don't ask, don't tell" policy I guess.

Update: Doesn't it seem that there is an enormous amount of wasted time the American school system could save itself in policing dress codes by introducing student uniforms? What exactly is the reason uniforms seem to have never existed there in the public system?

Solar "superstorms"

Bracing the Satellite Infrastructure for a Solar Superstorm: Scientific American

I don't think that I had heard about the 1859 "once in 500 years" solar superstorm before:

As night was falling across the Americas on Sunday, August 28, 1859, the phantom shapes of the auroras could already be seen overhead. From Maine to the tip of Florida, vivid curtains of light took the skies. Startled Cubans saw the auroras directly overhead; ships’ logs near the equator described crimson lights reaching halfway to the zenith. Many people thought their cities had caught fire. Scientific instruments around the world, patiently recording minute changes in Earth’s magnetism, suddenly shot off scale, and spurious electric currents surged into the world’s telegraph systems.

Well, at least it would save me the cost of a long trip from Brisbane to see an aurora. The downside: it's quite possible that it could knock out the electricity grid for weeks:

According to studies by John G. Kappenman of Metatech Corporation, the magnetic storm of May 15, 1921, would have caused a blackout affecting half of North America had it happened today. A much larger storm, like that of 1859, could bring down the entire grid. Other industrial countries are also vulnerable, but North America faces greater danger because of its proximity to the north magnetic pole. Because of the physical damage to transformers, full recovery and replacement of damaged components might take weeks or even months. Kappenman testified to Congress in 2003 that “the ability to provide meaningful emergency aid and response to an impacted population that may be in excess of 100 million people will be a difficult challenge.”

This seems a good excuse to see what videos of aurora can be found on Youtube. I want to see real-time video too; usually you see time lapse stuff and it doesn't give you much idea of how quickly the aurora move and change.

Here's a clip which seems to give a good idea of their real time appearance:

Last night's ABC

Two stories of note on ABC TV last night:

1. The 7.30 Report ran a story about CSIRO research on ocean acidification in the waters around the Great Barrier Reef. Nothing much new here, as all they are doing now is getting extensive water samples so as to be able to take measurements as a baseline for future changes. Still, of some interest.

2. On Foreign Correspondent, a very remarkable and creepy story from Cambodia about a 7 year old boy who loves his gigantic, boy-eating sized python, which the family believes the spirits sent to look after them. If it was Australia, allowing your boy to cuddle up with a life threatening animal might attract the attention of the child protection authorities.

The way the family treats this python has to be seen to be believed. The video is not up on the ABC website yet, but when it is, it will be well worth watching.

Another bit of obscure WWII history

OPB's 'Wind and a Prayer' revisits Japan's U.S. attack - OregonLive.com

From the article:

The documentary "On a Wind and a Prayer" tells the long, complex tale of Japan's dedicated but futile attempts to harass North Americans by creating panic and tying up various kinds of service crews with unpredictable but widespread damage....

Japan's spotty but persistent assaults on America came by submarine and hot-air balloon. The Gearhart Mountain fatalities resulted from a balloon that had been launched from Japan. Of about 9,200 balloons sent into the prevailing winds starting in November 1944, some 920 should have reached North America, by Japanese estimates. By 1946, 265 had been found. Another 40 have turned up over the decades.

"On a Wind and a Prayer" also touches on Japan's submarine assaults on the U.S. coast, including the February 1942 shelling of an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, Calif. On June 20 another sub bombarded Vancouver, B.C., and the next night another sub fired on Fort Stevens near Astoria. On Sept. 9, 1942, a float plane launched from a Japanese submarine started a small forest fire near Brookings.

The raids caused little damage and no injuries. Nor was there damage or injury to the Japanese subs and crews; decades later, we must admit they were intrepid. They also exemplified the sorry state of coastal security in 1942.

"Wind" also mentions the "Battle of Los Angeles," a profoundly confused panic in which U.S. military units fired some 1,400 artillery and anti-aircraft shells based on rumors. The melee inspired Steven Spielberg's 1979 epic farce "1941." The farrago actually occurred in late February 1942, Spielberg's title notwithstanding. Spielberg did not mention the three people killed by artillery fallout or the three people known to have died of heart attacks caused by the frenzy.

Sounds like a good documentary to watch out for.

Yet more Middle East intrigue

Middle East: Top Assad aide assassinated at Syrian resort | The Guardian

There's also an interesting interview with a former Muslim (son of a Hamas MP, no less) who has converted to Christianity, here.

Ocean acidification, melting ice, etc

I see John Quiggin has linked to me as one of only two conservative bloggers who argues strongly for fast action against greenhouse gases. (Harry Clarke is the other.)

Well, I guess that means I had better start posting again on the topic. In fact I have been fighting the battle at another blog lately, with some success I think. (Well, one hopes there is at least one open minded reader of skeptical blogs who I might have influenced.) The blog in question: Jennifer Marohasy. The main target there: Dr Steven Short, who argues against ocean acidification being a cause for concern, but on grounds I have repeatedly challenged in light of reported experiments. He's far from convinced me of the error of my ways, and his labelling of me as a postmodern, Nazi loving imbecile makes me suspect he's not exactly a shining light of reasoned debate.

On the ocean acidification front, there have been a couple of reports of interest recently. One is about a study of some East Pacific coral reefs which are already in low carbonate saturated waters, and how these may be a model for future reefs as saturations levels fall in future. As the "alarmists" would have guessed, these reefs appear to not be well cemented together, and if repeated elsewhere we will presumably have reefs which are more rapidly eroded, and (in likelihood) only able to build fresh coral at a slower rate than before.

As to other effects of acidification, a study on the fertilisation success rates for sea urchins indicates that they are going to find it significantly harder to reproduce in future due to lower ocean pH. The worry is, of course, that no one really knows what other species of sea creatures are going to have reproduction rates affected. There's a hell of a lot of species to test. The implications of a possible widespread effect on reproductive rates has scientists rightly worried:

..Havenhand said. ‘I really hope I’m wrong about the broader implications of our work. However, the available evidence points to the conclusion that at present acidification is the biggest threat to the long-term viability of our ocean ecosystems and especially to key invertebrate species that maintain many of the marine ecosystems on which we rely for food, protection, and recreation.’

I didn't see much of the Four Corners story last night on melting Arctic ice, but I could imagine Andrew Bolt's blood pressure rising as he watched it. I did have a look at one of the extended interviews on the Four Corner's website (the one with Ted Scambos), and he looked very calm, cool and reasonable while expressing the reasons for his great concern. (But, I can hear a skeptic cry, he thought the 2008 melt would be worse than it is. It seems to me that the 2008 ice cover is no where near a recovery of such an extent to dismiss the overal trend to melting.)

I find it hard to imagine how climate skeptics can watch such interviews and maintain their conspiratorial view against the whole of greenhouse warming science.

And anyway, as I say, if ocean acidification alone is a big enough worry (and I reckon it is) then you don't have to worry about temperatures and ice melts at all as being justification for action.

Link to previous articles: any new reader via John Quiggin's is welcome to look back over my previous posts on ocean acidification here.

When escalators go bad

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Tokyo escalator accident probe

No one seriously injured in this video, but you can see how ugly things can turn when escalators don't do what you expect.

Woops

TV chef Worrall Thompson recommends deadly weed as salad ingredient | Life and style | guardian.co.uk

From the story:

In an interview in the latest issue of Healthy and Organic Living magazine, the TV cook suggested that the weed, called henbane, would make a tasty addition to salads.

Speaking from Spain, where he is on holiday, Worrall Thompson said he had confused it with the fat hen weed, which has edible leaves that can be used in salads or cooked like spinach....

Experts said anyone who had followed his advice and created a salad with henbane should seek medical help and may have their stomach pumped.

Puppet romance

Odd what can be held in the DVD section of Brisbane's Council libraries. My wife found this with the kids on Friday (no input from me at all): two DVDs of the Gerry Anderson puppet show Stingray.

I have a very vague memory of seeing some of this show as a child, but could recall no detail at all except for the fact that it was set underwater. It's remarkable watching it now with hindsight.

Thunderbirds, made after Stingray, is much better known, but it's silliness is nothing compared to that in Stingray.

For example, if you thought that some of the intrigue of Thunderbirds was the question of just which of the Tracy boys might be Tin-Tin's boyfriend, that has nothing on the romantic intrigue of Stingray. It has as a continuing theme the jealousy between lead character Troy Tempest's old girlfriend Atlanta, and the mysterious mute Marina who turns up from beneath the sea in episode one. Poor Atlanta keeps being left behind at HQ while Troy has to be away with Marina on board the confined space of Stingray, as she (obviously) has to help him out on his underwater missions. Even that doesn't explain why in one episode Troy is enjoying an evening meal with Marina while on shore leave in Casablanca.

Incidentally, Atlanta is Stingray's "Moneypenny" role, and is voiced by (and I think physically modelled on) Lois Maxwell, the "real" Moneypenny.

That children should be particularly interested in a puppet version of sexual jealousy strikes me an interesting idea. Clearly, modern children's television has become much less adventurous since the 60's, when puppets smoked, got drunk and complained about women a lot. (These are all features of the few episodes I watched this weekend, while I was feeling unwell.)

Especially ludicrous is the end title sequence, which can be seen on Youtube:



My children, despite being well within the target age for the show, find this sequence hilarious. Did those in the 1960's take romantic puppet love ballads in their stride? Sadly, I can't remember my own reaction from that time.

Worst drink flavour ever...

'Energy boosting' eel drink latest attempt to beat the heat | The Japan Times Online

From the report:

The fizzy, yellow-colored drink contains extracts from the head and bones of eel and five vitamins — A, B1, B2, D and E — contained in the fish.

But, does it taste like eel? Apparently:

The eel involved in recent scandals was prepared in a popular "kaba-yaki" style, in which it is broiled and covered with a sweet sauce. The ¥140 drink costs about one-tenth as much as broiled eel but has a similar flavor.

I feel queasy just thinking about tasting it.

Unexpected science story of the year..

Brian May, guitarist for rock band Queen, completes Ph.D. thesis following 30-year hiatus

It's on astronomy too. Here I was expecting something more in the humanities, involving either dwarves, cocaine, sex, or all three. In science, "thunderbolts of lightning" would have been more apt.

The Middle East via The Times

The Times has a couple of good travel stories relating to the Middle East. First, here's an amusing story on new, quite silly, gargantuan themed resort in Dubai, called Atlantis.

Actually, this part sounds pretty cool (if you are rich enough to afford it):

For more drama, you can always go for the Lost Chambers suites: the bedrooms look out through huge underwater picture windows into the resort’s 11m-litre lagoon, stocked with sharks, rays,angel-fish, trevallies and more, in dense, multicoloured shoals.

Fine for romantics, as long as you don’t mind a fishy audience – though the sight of the rays gliding past is so mesmerising, you might not get round to anything energetic.

But the silly part is the imaginary theme:

It takes a certain damn-the-torpedoes guts to spend £750m on a premise this self-evidently daft: the “discovery” of a 10,000-year-old civilisation that never existed, on an island that’s still being finished...

The keynote attraction...is the Lost Chambers. In a dimly lit stone labyrinth full of startled fish are great bits of fallen masonry covered with mysterious runes (though, presumably, they’re not that mysterious to the guy who made them up). You wouldn’t think you’re supposed to take all this stuff seriously, but they do, they really do.

From the top down, Atlantis’s staff treat their newly constructed ruins with po-faced reverence. Their eyes take on a spooky, glazed look when they talk about it, like freshly indoctrinated members of a Californian UFO cult.

“This is the Abyss,” my guide says. “It was here the Atlanteans mined their minerals – they lowered their miners down this well. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

“But... it’s not real, is it?” I mumble. My words simply don’t register. “We expect a lot of school parties,” he says. “Education is a big part of our work.”

The funny thing is, I quite like fake environments. I love Disney World, for example. But Dubai 's attempt to create man-made excitement out of a bit of desert by the sea leaves me cold. It just seems to be trying too hard, somehow, and too much of it is designed for decadent tastes.

Which brings us to Emirates, the airline which intends first class to be literally a travelling spa:

Although the launch of the A380 initially prompted wild speculation that the aircraft would feature shopping malls and cinemas, Emirates has come up with a genuine wheeze – showers.

You have to have deep pockets of course – the shower spa room is only for the lucky 14 passengers who will occupy the First Class suites, but the favoured few will be allowed to spend 25 minutes in the spa itself – beauty treatments available – and five minutes in the shower which is regulated by a five-minute timer that glows green, amber and red as the allowance runs down.

And you thought getting out of the toilet to get back to your seat in a hurry during sudden turbulence was a worry.

Actually, the most interesting feature of the story is this: the apparent great fuel economy of the A380:

“Emirates will have the lowest fuel economy of any aircraft in the world,” said chairman and chief executive Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al-Maktoum in Hamburg. “We will use just three litres of fuel per passenger per 100km (60miles) – the A380 unites sensible business with social responsibility.”

If only one of them would fit in my garage.

Even more architecture porn (and this time I mean it)

Have a look at item 2, and just try and not laugh.

More architecture porn

This time in the New York Times: a slideshow of houses by John Lautner. Very 60's feel, but in a very good way.

Edit mess

Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan, and the rise of the choppy fight scene. - By Dennis Lim - Slate Magazine

I couldn't agree more with this article's suggestion that current editing of action movies makes a real mess of fight scenes.

All hail Steven Spielberg, whose direction (and whoever does his editting) is like a beacon of clarity.