Not your typical Japanese story

Wild boar goes on rampage in Wakayama; four injured

Hey, shouldn't Australia have more rampaging boar stories than Japan? We have a dangerous wildlife reputation to uphold, after all.

Quantum of Editing

I can't quite recall the last time I went to the cinema to see a film that you wouldn't take an 8 year old to. "War of the Worlds" perhaps? Anyway, it doesn't exactly bother me, given the remarkable paucity of adult films of interest coming out of Hollywood for, what, the last 8 years or so?

So it is with a considerable sense of novelty that I can report on Quantum of Solace, seen last night, in Gold Class no less. Because the tickets themselves were a gift, my wife and I even tried Gold Class food for the first time, as well as a bottle of cheap Australian sparkling wine at a not so cheap price. A food review will follow.

The good things about the movie:

* Daniel Craig: it's hard to know why the owners of the Bond franchise didn't think of this earlier: cast an actor who is fit, buff and looks capable of ruthless killing to play an action hero who, when necessary, ruthlessly kills. Kind of obvious, in retrospect. I'm probably one of the few people in the cinema who hadn't seen Casino Royale (it's on DVD at home; I'll get around to it one day,) so the novelty factor of Craig as Bond may account for much of my enjoyment.

* You really know you've been to a big budget movie with interesting locations and hundreds of extras. It makes watching 99% of Australian movies feel akin to inviting a small theatre troupe of 4 to come and perform a few dramatic scenes in your living room.

* Judi Dench. Makes M feel very real. The producers are probably paying for her to sleep in an oxygen tent, or some such, as a way of extending the life of someone who has become a real asset to the series.

* While the plot exposition was somewhat rushed, I can remember essentially what it was about. This compares favourably to the Timothy Dalton Bonds of the 1980's, which had the curious feature of having plots that evaporated from memory within about 5 steps walking out of the cinema door. (I must admit, all of the Jack Ryan movies affected me the same way. Enjoyable enough while on screen, but just terribly forgettable as soon as they finished.)

The not so good features:

* The editing: this hyper-editing of action sequences was complained about in several reviews, and with good reason. It's a crap method of building excitement artificially which seems only to be really appreciated by the under 30's whose attention span does not extend to reading books. What's worse, when trying to eat nachos in a Gold Class cinema, the time your eyes are diverted to getting a good helping of cheese and avocado onto a corn chip means you've missed 3 key points in a chase.

* I thought that Casino Royale featured the Bond theme only at the end? This movie does the same, which seems a pity really.

Overall, it was still quite enjoyable, and as with many reviewers, I suspect that if the producers let the series lighten up a bit in the next one (and ditch the frenetic editing), it could be something very special. I see that Casino Royale and Quantum have taken over well over a billion dollars combined at the box office (and that's not counting DVD sales). Craig will be a wanted man for some time yet.

Of the reviews I have read, Anthony Lane's in the New Yorker is quite funny but also pretty accurate. I like this line (out of many good ones):

The new movie gives us Bond in mourning—a condition that issues, according to Freud, in melancholy and a general indifference to life, but which causes this particular sufferer to stab people in the neck and toss them from tall buildings.

As for Gold Class cinema food: the beef nachos are pretty good; the salt and pepper squid was meant to be "crispy" but wasn't. (It didn't taste too bad anyway.) Drinking sparkling wine probably improves any movie, and the last alcohol I drank while in a cinema (of sorts) was probably apple cider at a drive in circa 1980.

Here's hoping for more free Gold Pass tickets this Christmas.

Ninja Santa

It's hard finding cheery stuff to post about at the moment. But there is always the recently discovered (by this blog anyway) Ask a Ninja ninja. Here's his take on Christmas, which will probably particularly appeal to the boys in your household:

Larvatus P'd off?

Hey, did lefty blog Larvatus Prodeo just lose its domain name? That's kind of embarrassing, isn't it?

Update: they're back.

There are Christians in Gaza?

Analysis: Cruelty and silence in Gaza | Middle East | Jerusalem Post

I must admit I didn't know there were any there at all (or any who are open about it). Turns out there's around 2,000 to 3,000, and they are not feeling especially wanted, to put it mildly.

Fodder for both sides?

Earth has warmed 0.4 C in 30 years

Go to the article to see a map just released showing where warming has occurred in the last 30 years. The article says:

Half of the globe has warmed at least one half of one degree Fahrenheit (0.3 C) in the past 30 years, while half of that -- a full quarter of the globe -- warmed at least one full degree Fahrenheit (0.6 C), according to Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Globally, Earth's atmosphere warmed an average of about 0.4 C (or about 0.72 degrees Fahrenheit) in 30 years, according to data collected by sensors aboard NOAA and NASA satellites. More than 80 percent of the globe warmed by some amount.

However, the warming is very uneven, being much stronger in the far north, while much of Antarctica cooled.

The part that warming skeptics will take and run with is this:

This is a pattern of warming not forecast by any of the major global climate models.

Still, it does sound like pretty clear evidence of substantial warming. Expect much comment about the map in the global warming blogosphere soon.

(Interestingly, Jennifer Marohasy in her skeptic blog recently posted that satellite temperature data was "inconvenient but accurate". What's she going to say about this, then? Somehow, I don't she and her band of followers are going to be convinced.)

Why new energy develops slowly?

Are Chemists, Engineers on Green Jobs List? - Dot Earth Blog -

The Dot Earth blog has a lengthy post talking about the relatively modest amount of money spent on R&D in the US on energy. I'm sure they won't mind if I reproduce the graph here:

Interesting, hey? The big band of yellow in the 1960's was for the Apollo program.

Gives some plausibility to those who say we need the equivalent of an Apollo program to get energy innovation really going. It's also amazing to note how much health consumes.

More ETS criticism

Money and Lobbyists Hurt European Efforts to Curb Gases - Series - NYTimes.com

Anyone else noticed how much criticism of the European effort at an emissions trading scheme there is at the moment?

Now the New York Times joins in.

The Chinese, food and cruelty

SBS is currently showing a 4 part documentary on Wednesday evenings called "The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World". Last night was episode 2.

I missed part of the first episode, so I'm not sure where in China it is, but the place is truly gigantic. (It can seat 5,000 customers.)

The show is by turns fascinating and (when it comes to treatment of animals) pretty horrifying to Western eyes.

First, the fascinating part. The show seems to give a pretty good insight into the psychology of many Chinese, and if last night's episode was anything to go by, it paints a pretty bleak picture of a materialistic society very obsessed with money. Sure, much of the population was grindingly poor until very recently, so a concern with money is understandable from that point of view. But still, it's not a good a look.

It also indicates that it will be a very unhappy society if lots of people stop making money in the economic downturn. My scepticism as to the successful future of China remains.

The animal cruelty issue was on display in both episodes. Last week, it was the dish where the live fish has its body cooked in boiling oil with its head held out, so it can be served on the plate with its mouth moving. OK, so it's cold blooded; it looks gross to me, but I won't get too worked up about seafood eaten while half alive.

But last night there was a brief scene of a chicken being scolded in boiling water while still alive. The dish was served with the head on, but still I can't see why the scalding and feather removal has to start while it is alive.

I do not understand why the Chinese seem immune to Western ideas of animal cruelty. In Congo Journey, a book I am currently reading, an America watching the way some pygmies kill an antelope makes the observation that it is only with the farming of animals, which involves caring for their welfare, that people start to worry about animal cruelty.

Nice theory, but it doesn't seem to have worked with the Chinese!

Harry Clarke had a post about this topic earlier this year, but none of the comments really enlightened as to why the Chinese don't seem to feel for animals in quite the same way much of the West does.

Still, a lot goes on in Western farming without being noticed. Chickens have a pretty miserable life here too, but at least a quick death.

Same with pigs. The cages they use to stop pregnant sows moving for months at a time while pregnant are (I reckon) just indefensible from a cruelty point of view, and it's only lack of knowledge in the community that hasn't led to the practice being rejected earlier. (The sow can stand, and sort of lie down, but not turn around. It is stuck in that position for up to 4 months. Can you imagine the uproar if dogs were allowed to be confined in that way?)

I see that a website (presumably industry funded) that defends the practice is careful to avoid any photos. A stop to the practice was one of the propositions successfully passed in California recently.

So it's not as if the West is completely cruelty free. Still, it seems hard to imagine the Chinese even getting interested in such issues, and I don't know why.

New technology and evil

Mumbai Terrorists Relied on New Technology for Attacks - NYTimes.com

Satellite phone, GPS, Google maps and VOIP appear to all be believed to have been used by the Mumbai terrorists.

The article also notes that the terrorists were in contact with Pakistan during the siege, and could get updates as to where the Indian military from their bosses who were watching TV coverage.

I must admit, I thought it was foolish of the Australia guy holed up in the hotel to keep ringing and talking to Australian media for this very reason. (Not that his calls would have made Pakistani TV, I guess, but you never know who's watching Australian TV too.)

Sabotage from the future

Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

See the link for an on-the-spot report on the repairs to the Large Hadron Collider, which blew up (well, a section of it at least) not long after it was turned on.

Current expectations are that it may start operating again in mid 2009, although I have read elsewhere it won't be turned up to 11 (so to speak) until 2010.

This is good news for those who worry about micro black holes or other things it may create. (And yeah, I am still curious to know if Plaga is wrong in his latest assertion, and whether absolutely all possible events have been considered. I have said before, the cosmic ray/neutron star argument may suggest there is no danger for stars; planets might be a different matter.)

Anyhow, the post at Cosmic Variance points out that it is still not clear what caused the initial fault which was "...a resistive zone developed in the electrical bus in the region between dipole C24 and quadrupole Q24." As the thing was vaporised, it's not that easy to find the cause of the "resistive zone" problem.

This is good, because it still allows for my pet science fiction-y theory as to what happened. The LHC has been suggested as possibly creating the right conditions for time travel, as well as mini black holes. If it is actually dangerous to the planet, then time travellers from the future (or another branch of the future?) may well have been taking a big interest in it from the start, and are actively sabotaging it. It may not require actual visitors from the future; maybe just sufficient ability to hack information into the computers. Maybe the time travel is allowed by the LHC itself at low power; maybe there is a different mechanism. (I know that it is an example of the grandfather paradox to argue that the LHC works as a time machine that then allows to future to prevent it from being turned on.)

I expect someone else has probably already thought of this, but if not I claim "dibs" on it!

If only X files was still being made...

Keeping it quiet

The gospel truth? | Jerusalem Post

Interesting article here that talks about the academic work on the origins of the Koran, which (as with similar work on the Bible starting more than a century ago) challenges the fundamentalist belief that the books are literally the word of God.

The writer points out that these academics like to keep a low profile, but if we really want Islamic fundamentalism to change, then it should be the subject of popular discussion.

Second post of the week with difficult to find tasteful title

Britain's Tongue, Kidney and Brains Boom - TIME

From the above article:

Lancashire, an industrial area in northwest England, is famous for its offal dishes, including liver, kidney, tripe (the lining of a cow's stomach), cow's heel, sheep's trotters and elder (cow's udder). There were more than 260 tripe shops in regional capital Manchester a century ago, many of which sold faggots, a traditional English dish made from a mixture of pork liver, fatty pork and herbs wrapped in an intestinal membrane.

I trust they have been re-branded by now.

Room for mischief here

First Muslim-friendly virtual world goes online

A trial version of the world's first Muslim-friendly virtual world was launched Tuesday, where users can create an online persona, design their own rooms, buy virtual items and interact with others.

Called Muxlim Pal and created by the Finnish-based company Muxlim.com, the English-language site caters primarily to Muslims living in western countries who long to reconnect with other Muslims and Muslim culture. ...

On Muxlim Pal, which is free of charge to join, users can shop for clothes for their avatar at the mall, hang out at the beach cafe, pray at the mosque or go to concerts.

What makes Muxlim Pal different from other popular websites such as Second Life is that content portraying violence, drugs, sexual references or profanity is not allowed.

I wonder if it is OK for avatar women to show their face there?

Offset disarray

UN suspends leading carbon-offset firm : Nature News

As international climate talks began last week in Poland, the United Nations (UN) suspended the work of the main company that validates carbon-offset projects in developing countries, sending shockwaves through the emissions-trading business....

At its meeting on 28 November in Poznań, the CDM's executive board temporarily withdrew Det Norske Veritas's accreditation after a spot check carried out in early November at the firm's headquarters revealed serious flaws in project management.

The board did not specify which projects are affected, but cites problems with the company's internal auditing processes, and says that one of its staff members was verifying CDM projects without proper qualifications. As a result, "validation activities could not be demonstrated to be based on appropriate sectoral expertise", the board reports.

Det Norske Veritas is a risk-assessment and consulting company with about 8,000 employees in more than 100 countries. Its 2007 revenue was 8 billion Norwegian krone (US$1.1 billion)

More Kyoto criticism

Kyoto is worthless (and you don't have to be a sceptic to believe that now) - Dominic Lawson, - The Independent

Lawson makes some good sounding points about the EU faith in Kyoto, and none of them are encouraging. Here's a key section:

This fabricated market in carbon has at its heart the UN's Clean Development Mechanism. This is how the EU, which had an obligation under Kyoto to reduce its emissions by two per cent by 2012, has managed to claim success while actually increasing its emissions by 13 per cent. By purchasing so called "offsets" from countries such as China, Britain, for example, proclaims itself a "leader in the fight against climate change".

Most of this is entirely fraudulent, in the sense that the Chinese have been paid billions to destroy particular atmospheric pollutants, such as CFC-23, which have actually been manufactured in order to be destroyed – and for no other purpose. This is hardly surprising: if something is accorded a price (especially a fixed one) then companies will queue up to produce it.

The EU is inordinately proud of its Emissions Trading Scheme – which it calls "the world's first carbon market" – and it is this scheme which has created the creative accounting scam known as "offsets". Even mortgage-backed securities, the financial instrument at the heart of the credit crunch, at least had something useful – houses – at the bottom of the pile of junk. Some people have described offsets as the carbon market equivalent of the mediaeval sale of Indulgences by the Catholic Church; but as Prof Prins points out, the Church sold them only as a means of atoning for the sins of the past – "carbon offsets" are sold to absolve us from sins in the future, an even more preposterous transaction.

I wonder why it never went into production

CAR WITH PROP

Science, ghosts and ESP

Ghost Stories: Visits from the Deceased: Scientific American

This is an interesting article (and series of comments following) about the quite commonly reported phenomena of people having an experience of the presence of their deceased partner (or even beloved, dead animal.)

According to the post, over 80% of elderly people experience "hallucinations" associated with their dead partner one month after bereavement "as if their perception had yet to catch up with the knowledge of their beloved's passing." These can be visual, auditory or other experiences.

I did not know that they were so common, but it is a topic of personal interest because my mother reported her own (not very dramatic) experience of this. She told me and her other children, quite some weeks after my father's death, that she had unexpectedly heard his breathing beside her in bed at night. She said it was distinct and clear, and actually a comforting experience. As is typical for these experiences, they did not recur all that often, but felt very "real", and stopped in time.

Many of the people commenting on the above article question (some based on their own experiences) how science can know that these are really hallucinations.

Perhaps the best evidence on the paranormal side is that of crisis apparitions: the well known stories where a person sees someone (usually, but not always, someone close to them) who appears unexpectedly and disappears, with the later discovery that at the time of the experience the person viewed had just died.

These type of apparition greatly interested the early scientists who set up the Society for Physical Research in England in the 19th century, and from the start the question was whether they represented proof of an afterlife, or "only" suggested ESP.

To the mind of nearly all present day scientists, ESP is just as ridiculous idea as belief in the afterlife, so it is still a topic of considerable interest, even if it is one that by its nature is never likely to be open to much in the way of definitive study.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if strong evidence of a repeatable form of ESP was produced. It should, by rights, shake up the scientific establishment to its core; but at the same time, you can imagine the majority of the public shrugging their shoulders and just taking it as confirmation of long held hunches and beliefs based on anecdote and personal experience.

Still, it would be remarkable if it ever occurs.

More advocacy for carbon tax (as opposed to ETS)

Yes you can change the climate, Mr Obama - science-in-society - 06 December 2008 - New Scientist

A post incapable of witty yet tasteful title

NHS funds 'used to import horse sperm' - The Independent

Police are investigating allegations that horse sperm was imported into Britain disguised as human semen for IVF treatment. They are looking at claims that a senior manager in the UK's largest NHS trust diverted NHS funds to buy the horse sperm that was then used to breed mares.

And how was this detected? Pretty easily, since I bet it doesn't take hundreds of thousands of pounds to buy overseas human semen, regardless of the IQ of the donors:

NHS trust sources said police were alerted after internal audits revealed an unusual series of large purchases of human semen from overseas suppliers. Invoices said to be worth several hundred thousand pounds had allegedly been created to account for the transactions.

I can imagine women who have undergone recent IVF in England feeling just a little queasy at reading the news, but apparently they have nothing to worry about:

They stressed there has been no suggestion of any horse sperm being improperly or inadvertently used in the trust's IVF treatments. Imperial College Healthcare has some of the UK's leading IVF treatment facilities.

And, maybe, some of the best criminals too.

UPDATE: a quick cartoon of questionable quality by your blogger (you'll have to click to enlarge):