Odd

How to be a bona fide hipster

Lisa Prior has this throw away line today:

Hipsters are hard to describe because they are so full of contradictions. But like a toupee or AIDS-related wasting, you know it when you see it.

Even l can see gratuitous offence to people suffering life threatening disease in that.

Typical Labor

Doubt cast over intervention income management legality - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

They try to placate the claims of racial discrimination by agreeing to allow the Racial Discrimination Act to apply to the Northern Territory intervention. Surprise! There is immediately the view expressed that it is impossible to make the current income management part of the intervention non-discriminatory.

It's an invitation by the government to be taken off to the Human Rights Commission and courts for protracted argument about discrimination. Like that'll help the remote communities. (And will the challenge be funded by government money paid to aboriginal advocacy groups?)

Here's a plan, Labor: why don't you make the changes you think make it non-discriminatory, but still avoid the need for argument by leaving in place the revocation of the Racial Discrimination Act? You can then claim the moral high ground without wasting time and effort trying to "prove" it.

Westfield of London - does it have giant faces?

Mega-mall: Is this the future of shopping? - This Britain, UK - The Independent

The report is about Frank Lowry opening a massive Westfield mall-ish thing in London. It's of some interest.

The main point of my post, however, is to ask the question: which advertising/design guru came up with the awful idea of using enormous large prints of beaming, happy people, or alternatively food stuffs and gift items, as a feature on both the outside and inside of shopping centres?

Maybe its day has gone already (I don't drive past the place often), but one prominent Brisbane suburban shopping mall a couple of years ago had a makeover in which gigantic prints of happy people, fruit and vegetables, and assorted other shopping stuff, appeared on the outside of the centre's main building. I have seen something similar appearing in other shopping centres more recently too; it would seem to have suddenly become a favourite idea of the design consultants who shopping centres no doubt engage to freshen up their look.

Another similar problem: cinema complexes in those same malls that feature giant posters of the current movie stars, as at the date they were built. Of course, 15 years later, those same stars may be no longer the box office crowd pleaser they once were, but we still have their mugs up there trying to pull us in.

Most recently, a jewellery shop inside my local suburban mall was refurbished with by large, permanent backlit posters featuring a man and woman in an obvious sexual endeavour. (At its worst, the guy is shirtless in an predatory position above the semi-reclining, jewellery clad, woman, who is of course pleased with the attention.)

(Obviously, this post would be much better if I was able to illustrate this with photos.)

The problem I have with this type of design: it has looked cheap, tacky and dated as soon as it appeared. I can't imagine a look that is likely to date faster. Furthermore, it's just inherently inane: you don't need to drape shopping malls in giant prints of fruit, vegetables and people to let passers-by know that inside they will indeed find fruit, vegetables and people. Trying to tell women that jewellery is somehow associated with a better sex life seems outright dishonest: the number of men in history who have slept with a woman because they were particularly impressed with her attractive pendant could probably be counted on one hand.

Someone needs to taken to task for this. Maybe Councils need their own design consultants to enforce better taste against the shopping centres. And then we will need a Design Court system to resolve disputes, with lawyers who specialise in recognizing good taste. Or just invest me with power to adjudicate. That'll help.

Quick Pixar review

Saw Wall E on the weekend.

Charming enough, but not especially memorable. Like Ratatouille, the reviewers liked it more the public, it seems. Its relatively modest box office (for Pixar) is quite understandable: kids can't be counted on to like dystopia movies (even ones with optimistic endings), and their parents don't like being reminded they are too fat.

Overall, it's a mid-level Pixar. Thinking about the body of work again, I increasing tend to rate the funniest, wittiest script of them all as being in Monsters Inc, although A Bug's Life is full of wit too. (You really ought to rent Monsters Inc if you have never seen it.) The most exciting visually was easily The Incredibles. Toy Story had much charm, and the great advantage of novelty. Ratatouille is still the most adult themed, even if it does feature talking rats.

Finding Nemo remains, to my mind, a bit of a dud, but Cars was the least successful of all.

In any case, the supporting Pixar shorts are always excellent. "Presto," showing with Wall E, is one of the best.

Add to my to do list

How Webby is William Shatner?

William Shatner is apparently posting Youtube digital diary entries. They sound funny, even if it is unclear whether that's intentional.

Must watch tonight.

By the way, re the famous Shatner rendering of "Rocketman": have I mentioned before that I saw that on TV when the science fiction awards show it was featured in was first shown in Australia in 1978? Yes, I realised its glorious inanity as soon as I saw it. It's something to tell the children about when I am older.

Greenwashing

The absurd claims companies make to boost their environmental credentials | Environment | The Guardian

Not a bad article here, listing the ways companies exaggerate or lie in their process of trying to claim Green credentials.

There are many examples given, but I particularly like this one:

...what are we to make of Fiji Water's claims to be cutting the carbon footprint of its water by 25% and offsetting the rest? "Every drop is green," it says. But isn't the whole idea of bottling water on a remote South Pacific island and shipping it to your dinner table just a tiny bit barmy?

High on list of things to do when I become Benevolent World Dictator will be to ban the production of bottled water. (Well, I suppose we can let a little bit into India for the tourists to drink.)

For your McMansion on the Moon

‘Waterless’ Concrete Seen As Building Block On Moon

There are little details in this report, but it says sulphur could be used as the binding agent on lunar concrete. But where does that come from?

Doctors and the "E" word

Erectile Dysfunction Gives Early Warning Of A Heart Attack, Warns Expert

Interesting to note:

...the link between erectile dysfunction and the risk of heart disease is being ignored by doctors, writes Dr Geoffrey Hackett from the Good Hope Hospital in Birmingham.

Over many years Hackett reports regularly seeing patients referred with erectile dysfunction after a heart attack, only to hear that they had developed erectile dysfunction two to three years before—a warning sign ignored by their general practitioners.

This part is amusingly put:

"Continuing to ignore these issues on the basis that cardiologists feel uncomfortable mentioning the word 'erection' to their patients or that they may have to deal with the management of a positive response, is no longer acceptable and possibly, based on current evidence, clinically negligent"

Shut up Sam

What the hell? Sam de Brito, possibly the most undeservingly paid blogger in the world (well, I assume he gets paid something by Fairfax, despite the fact that he uses his blog constantly to promote his own books), confesses recently to spending a $1000 on cocaine on a weekend.

But that's OK, because he then writes how much he regrets it, in the process telling us that he lied to friends and (apparently) partook in some particularly perverse sexual activity. (Oh, why hold back Sam, you're usually talking about men needing to be more sensitive and open, aren't you?)

So, what's the upshot of this? An invitation to talk at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research on some panel about stress, drugs and mental health! He then finds the audience was not compassionate enough to a woman with a rambling question.

de Brito recently said of himself:

I like to think of myself as a New Age Yobbo, someone who knows a bit about books and fashion and sociology, uses some ten dollar words but can also regress to the grubbiest of Australian stereotypes if the situation calls for it.

Like telling us about the time he caught crab lice from a one night stand with a backpacker.

Look, I suppose there may at least be some redeeming value to confessional memoirs written by people towards the end of their life once they feel they have obtained some wisdom from the experience. But it's simply unedifying, and serves no public benefit, to publicise exploits you regret as soon as they have happened, even if you purport to be doing it as a mea culpa.

In particular with any talk about drugs, anything short of painting the experience as horrific almost certainly just has the effect of confirming to the young and impressionable that its worth trying it for themselves, to see what the fuss is about. (And even then, showing a near death from an overdose in Pulp Fiction was said to have caused an increase in heroin use in Australia. The person who claimed this: Phillip Adams, who is not exactly know to be into promoting moral panics.)

I find it a remarkable indictment of modern corporate mores that Fairfax should give this guy the space to run his tedious self-analysis on their pages. I can imagine quite an outcry if his stuff had appeared in mainstream newspaper 30 years ago. By all means, he could do this schtick on Blogger; then, while he may be as annoying and objectionable as he is now, at least it wouldn't be compounded by the fact that he is getting corporate support to share his faults with us all.

And why can't Sam get enough insight to realise that less "sharing" and navel gazing, and more "doing" (of worthwhile, responsible and mature acts) may be the way to become the better person he says he wants to be.

Tipler's back

How to test the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics

Frank Tipler, the physicist who every other scientist thought went over the top with "The Physics of Immortality", only to see him outdo his idiosyncratic application of science to religion in "The Physics of Christianity," has recently published a possible way to test whether the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum physics is correct.

How neat. We may soon know if there are multiple versions of ourselves spread out across the multiverse. Can you imagine the number of books that would be written on the philosophical implications of that? (Well, there probably are quite a lot already, but establishing that it's true would be a philosopher's playground for another century or two at least.)

My hunch, however, given the vigorous debate that already goes on about what quantum physics means, is that most scientists won't accept that Tipler has provided a proof at all. (The fact that he starts using capital letters in one part of the arXiv paper is not too encouraging.)

Still, many years ago on The Science Show (Radio National), I remember someone was talking about a potential way that MWI might be testable in future. I can't remember the details, but it was certainly different to what the relatively simple method Tipler is suggesting.

Tiny nuclear power plants actually coming?

Nuclear-In-A-Box Startup Hyperion Raising More Cash - NYTimes.com

Interesting, the idea of nuclear power becoming very local. (Hyperion says their model will power about 20,000 homes.)

The Greens will love the idea. Ha.

Don't tell Andrew Bolt

Less Ice In Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 Years Ago

Andrew Bolt and others have been posting a lot about the Arctic ice melt (and apparent recent rapid re-freeze), so he's bound to take encouragement from this article that suggests that the Arctic ocean had much less ice 7,000 years ago too, before our modern CO2 increase, of course.

My general impressions are as follows:

* the issue of the coming and going of Arctic ice is clearly not fully understood.

* of course there are AGW advocates who leap too quickly onto anything that appears to prove greenhouse warming. Those who wildly overstate the case as to the short term effects of AGW (such as Tim Flannery, Al Gore, etc) are usually not the scientists themselves.

* most climate scientists were actually somewhat cautious in what they said about the big 2007 melt. At Real Climate, for example, they said:

The disappearance of the ice was set up by warming surface waters and loss of the thicker multi-year ice in favor of thinner single-year ice. But the collapse of ice coverage this year was also something of a random event. This change was much more abrupt than the averaged results of the multiple IPCC AR4 models, but if you look at individual model runs, you can find sudden decreases in ice cover such as this. In the particular model run which looks most like 2007, the ice subsequently recovered somewhat, although never regaining the coverage before the meltback event.

* even if the current round of substantially lower than average summer ice is caused by completely different cyclic factors from CO2 increase, it may be a worry if the cycle continues because of its potential to have an enhancing effect on any warming that is caused by CO2 in coming decades.

Methane coming out of the Arctic ocean may well end up being a major concern too. We will hear more about that soon, it seems.

* Above all, remember my official line is that ocean acidification is a big enough issue alone to limit CO2 anyway. Doesn't matter if temperatures go up or down: a huge gamble with what will happen to ocean ecology is in play if CO2 is allowed to soar to levels not seen for millions of years.

Curious...

Doctor shares secrets to calm your child

A doctor who has written a book about soothing babies and toddlers says this in the above interview:

Q: Do you have any ideas on how to have the happiest teenager on the block?

A: I can't tell you the whole secret approach, but I can tell you part of it uses a lot of duct tape. In a lot of ways, they're like toddlers - they want a lot more authority than they're prepared to handle, and they've got a lot of immaturity. A lot of the communication techniques that work with toddlers works with them as well. What hasn't been acknowledged is how important the nonverbal part of communication is. The way you acknowledge someone's feelings is actually more important than what you say. Even with the right words, if it's done in a very flat, psychiatrist voice, it makes you want to be more distant and find someone who does understand you. These books deal with discipline as well, but it turns out that 90 percent of getting your kids to behave well is respectful communication.

I can't quite tell if the duct tape bit is a joke or not.

The noddy girls identified

Labor's script is showing, brown noses out of joint - Annabel Crabb - Opinion

Annabel Crabb's column today answers the question: just who are those two nodding women MPs who always manage to get their face in shot on TV behind Kevin Rudd in Parliament?

What it doesn't tell us is: how do Parliamentarians score those seats? They must be worth an absolute mint in terms of free publicity to your own electorate.

The rest of the column (about how the Dorothy Dixers got emailed to journalists yesterday) is pretty interesting too.

PS: Christian Kerr's take on the day goes into more detail about the issue of how Rudd got his Reserve Bank advice second hand. Seems Kevin was hyperventilating at certain points during Question Time, but I don't recall seeing that part on the TV news.

Onsen appreciation

The Gangster In My Tub - The Atlantic (November 2008)

The Atlantic has a short article explaining the pleasures of Japanese onsen which is right on the money:

Why is all this fun? Japanese people sometimes explain the attraction with mumbo-jumbo about how onsen provide a spiritual experience. Personally, I think there’s something in the lizard part of our brain that really likes sitting around in hot water with no clothes on in a beautiful mountain setting. Also to be taken into account is that after the onsen, you can put on your yukata (a bathrobe-like garment provided by every ryokan) and eat wonderful food—the culinary quality at Japanese inns is amazingly high.

As the article mentions (and has photos of) the Yakuza at an onsen, I should mention that I have never seen a tattooed Yakuza in an onsen or sento. (I understand that they are not welcome at the great majority of such establishments.) I did read in an old edition of the Lonely Planet guide to Japan that a member of the Yakuza may be quite happy if you show an interest in his tattoos. I thought this odd advice: generally speaking, isn't it more prudent to avoid engaging gangsters in conversation about mutual interests?

Speaking of tattoos: God I've seen some awful examples on women at the shopping centre lately. What are they thinking?

Godless England

There's a God-shaped hole in Westminster | Rachel Sylvester - Times Online

Seems about right, this column.

Fighting over Radio National

One thing I have learnt about Radio National since Stephen Crittenden spat the dummy about losing his show is that they don't update their presenters' photos often. (Have a look at Stephen's unflattering unhappy photo in the News.com story on this compared to his RN bio.)

I am being needlessly bitchy, I suppose, as in fact I would prefer The Religion Report stay. He doesn't do a bad job, I reckon, and I occasionally get to listen to it.

However, there is a lot of dross on RN and, apart from Crittenden's show and (perhaps) the Media Report, the other ones mentioned for axing will not be missed by more than a handful of listeners.

The really great presenters of the Radio National are, I reckon, Alan Saunders and Norman Swan. Both just come across as good natured polymaths, and don't wear their political ideology on their sleeves as do so many other Radio National presenters.

If you have a spare half hour, you could do much worse than listen to Saunder's "By Design" show of last week which featured Paul Keating and Elizabeth Farrelly talking about Sydney's Circular Quay. Quite entertaining in parts.

Excrementally interesting

Excerpts from The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters.

It's all about China and excrement, but it is interesting.

The Japanese, incidentally, followed the Chinese system of really appreciating the value of their poo. Have a look at this Youtube entitled "The role of human excrement in Japanese agriculture" for a brief summary.

Strange missiles

UFOs, alien abductions and Tina Turner feature in Close Encounters secret files - Telegraph

The Telegraph reports that some more recent government UFO files have been released, including some on a few very odd "unexplained missile" cases from 1991.

These cases don't particularly suggest aliens involvement (not in the traditional flying saucer sense), but they remainpuzzling nonetheless.

Proposed end of the world update

Also while I was away, Rainer Plaga made his response to the criticisms of his original paper suggesting that the Large Hadron Collider could create a dangerous, earth threatening, mini black hole.

He added an appendix to his paper on arXiv, here, saying that Giddings and Mangano's criticism that he used an equation incorrectly is just wrong. For the earlier explanation of the background, see my posts here, here and here.

I'm in no position to judge the accuracy of Rainer's rejoinder, just as I had trouble understanding Giddings and Mangano's criticism. And no physicist on the Web seems to have commented on Rainer's response.

So: who knows? Some informed comment on this would be welcome, but I guess money worries are more important that the end of the world...

UPDATE: the accident that shut the LHC down appears to require more work to fix than first thought. Nature is reporting it won't be turned on again til June 2009, but even then some seem to think that is optimistic.