Registering a complaint

Yesterday, January 24 2009, was remarkable even by Brisbane standards for its extremely unpleasant combination of high humidity, high temperature and near complete lack of breeze or air movement for most of the day (especially in the western suburbs). The air in the house felt as if it lacked oxygen. Unwisely, (but I was being social,) I had two mid-strength beers at lunch and that was enough to leave me with the slightly thick head that I usually suffer if I drink any alcohol in the middle of the day, especially in hot weather. I clearly don't have the constitution to be an all-day alcoholic.

The internet tells me that at least one other person felt yesterday was horrible too. Oddly, the weather bureau's record of observations for the day doesn't make it sound as bad as it was.

Still, it was not as bad as an week in (I think) either early 1997 or 1998. I believe it was in February of one of those years that there was a run of hot humid nights, with minimums of 27 or 28 degrees, and one evening I had to go and see a movie just to get into airconditioning. On leaving the cinema, after 11pm, my glasses immediately fogged up completely. That is not a common occurrence here, even with our routine high humidity.

Financial woes

Alan Wood gave a pretty good explanation of the international financial system problems in The Australian today.

I am told by a friend who returned from Taiwan recently that in China there is a new expression (which I can't recall, sorry) for the hundreds of thousands of suddenly unemployed people in the southern cities who are out of work but not yet returning to their rural homes (partly out of embarrassment, and partly out of hope they'll find a job somewhere in another factory.) They are just milling around the cities during the day, apparently. Transport for return home for Chinese New Year would usually be fully booked, but this year it is said to be not so crowded.

And worse times are coming, of course.

Conspiracy of the day

I think I spotted it in comments in Huffington Post yesterday, and the writer may have been joking. But it was to the effect that the fluffed Presidential oath was deliberate, so that the "real" oath taken in the White House could be secretly done with a Koran!

This has probably spread wildly through certain corners of the internet already, but I can't be bothered checking. It is pretty good as far as nutty conspiracy theories go, though. (I am waiting for 9/11 Troofers to start being disillusioned with Obama. It won't take long.)

(And Lefties have nothing to feel superior about. It was conspiracy all the way after the second Bush election.)

Tiltshifting toy

Found via Red Ferret, I've been fiddling at TiltShiftMaker.com with attempts at tiltshifting some photos. (Boing Boing had a fair few posts about it: the 'art' of manipulating normal photos to make them look as if they are really of models.) Here's my best result, which I think does have a bit of a model town appearance (it'll look better if you enlarge it):



The original photo appeared at an old post here.

Small things amuse small minds, hey. (Boom boom).

Oddest story of the day

Monks pledge lush new life for 'the Paris Hilton of cows' - The Independent

It's kind of hard to summarise, just read it. And don't miss this line:

The decision to kill Gangotri, a 13-year-old Friesian blue injured by an overly vigorous mating session, enraged Britain's Hindu community who claim that animal welfare officers and police distracted the monks to make a lethal injection "in secret".

An advance, of sorts

Instant syphilis tests to be offered

The Age reports:

Health authorities thought they had consigned syphilis to the history books but the disease is back, and in epidemic proportions.

In 2001, there was just one case of syphilis recorded in Victoria compared with the 1,000 cases seen in the past two years.

Nationally, the rise has been more than seven-fold since 2003, with the number of infections rising from 164 to 1,166 in 2008.

That surely must be taken as confirmation that safe sex campaigns are failing badly. The outbreak, incidentally, is almost entirely amongst men who have sex with other men.

The "advance" I mention in the title to this post: there is now a 15 minute pin prick blood test for it. And what's more, if you go to Melbourne's midsummer gay and lesbian festival, you can be tested for free. Huzzah.

As the Pope would say, kinda says something about a "festival" when one of its features is free STD testing, doesn't it?

Mmmm, polar bear - full of Vitamin C

Q and A - How Did People Avoid Malnutrition in Societies Where Historically There Was Little or No Produce?

Well, who knew this?:

The researchers, from the University of Calgary, also found that the fresh animal foods these Inuit ate, including fish, birds and animals like seal, whale, polar bears, musk ox and caribou, provided them with surprisingly high levels of vitamin C, in some cases more than a Canadian national study found in the diets of Inuit living in places with more access to processed foods.

Catholics with a fantastic advertising agency

I trust Currency Lad and Saint have seen this.

More sensitive souls you would rather not meet

Edmund White on the French 19th-century poet, Arthur Rimbaud

Pretty funny in parts, this description of the early relationship between Rimbaud and Verlaine. A highlight:

Rimbaud could certainly be as pitiless as a real assassin. He once had Verlaine play a "game" in which Verlaine would stretch out his hand on the table and Rimbaud would stab at his spread fingers. Verlaine thought the point of the game was to show that he wouldn't flinch, that he trusted Rimbaud. But Rimbaud quite simply stabbed him in the wrist.

Not just me, then

In my earlier post on the inauguration, I was too polite to mention that the parts of Obama's speech that I heard did not particularly impress. But I have always been cynical of his oratory skills (would he impress so much if he didn't have that voice?), so I did not feel I was in a position to judge.

But clearly, it was not just me.

(Incidentally, John F Kennedy did not that good a voice to listen to, but the eloquence of the words came through nonetheless. His inauguration speech is worth re-watching, but certainly the sense of it coming from a different era is very strong.)

Cheap

It would appear that electric cars will be extremely cheap to power:

... the i-MiEV — which goes on sale in the UK later this year — is based on the i, Mitsubishi's existing city car. With room for four adults, it has a top speed of 87mph and produces the equivalent of 57 horsepower. Its lithium-ion battery has a range of 100 miles and can be charged from flat to 80% in 20 minutes using Mitsubishi's bespoke high-powered charger; otherwise, a normal mains electricity socket will charge the battery from flat to full in six hours. Mitsubishi estimates that the car can travel 10,000 miles on £45 of electricity at current UK domestic prices.

About AUD$90 for 16,000 km? It seems a Honda scooter will get you about 50km per litre, so 16,000 km at $1 per litre would cost around $320. And you get wet with it. On the other hand, scooters are cheap to buy, although some do look a little toy-like. (Actually, now that I look at the latest models, there now seems to be quite an effort to make 50cc scooters look "sporty". Have a look at the European models in particular. It must be a pretty funny job, coming up with designs that try to make a 60kph machine look fast.)

Anyhow, electric still looks promising.

Noticed in today's real estate listings...

A medieval castle once ruled by Charlemagne, the “King of the Franks,” is for sale in Italy, dungeon included.

Located (exactly) on the border of Tuscany and Umbria, the castle dates to 802...

Features include restored stone battlements with gun ports, four turrets, a moat and the dungeon, an add-on amenity reportedly built in 1500. Five buildings are clustered around the circular courtyard and the property includes about 32 acres of olive groves and woodlands.

There are photos too.

Well at last. I've been looking for a house with those features for the longest time.

How "Hollywood"

The Los Angeles Times has an inauguration day editorial that calls on President Obama to actively support gay marriage. Talk about a Hollywood set of priorities.

The first comment from a gay reader is also noteworthy for its less than black-friendly attitude on a day when one might have expected a more congratulatory tone:

As a gay man, I have been active in the fight for gay rights for the last 30 years. One thing I have learned is that African-Americans have never been interested in any other civil rights struggle but their own. They certainly have not been friends of the gay or Jewish communities, and their relations with the Hispanic communities have been strained at best. They do not even show much interest in the struggles of other Africans in countries such as Sudan. These battles are mostly fought by wealthy whites such as George Clooney. Barack Obama's rejection of gay marriage is in keeping with his culture and no surprise.

Congratulations America

So, Barack Obama has not (yet) been revealed as America's new alien lizard overlord in disguise, or even the Antichrist. (Will the Antichrist be capable of placing his/her hand on a Bible, I wonder? Maybe he can, but with wisps of smoke emerging from under his palm.)

But enough silliness, and no further snide remarks (apart from saying that the largely unseen invocation prayer by Gene Robinson a couple of days ago really was outstandingly awful,) and instead let's all be happy that the most powerful nation on earth remains a robust democracy which manages transitions of power peacefully and with considerable grace.

More on expert opinion and climate change

Further to my complaint that prominent greenhouse skeptic bloggers don't place enough emphasis on the question of qualifications and experience of the scientists they like to quote in support, here's a story of a recent survey designed to get a better idea of what those closest to the field think:

Doran found that climatologists who are active in research showed the strongest consensus on the causes of global warming, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role. Petroleum geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 and 64 percent respectively believing in human involvement. Doran compared their responses to a recent poll showing only 58 percent of the public thinks human activity contributes to global warming.

"The petroleum geologist response is not too surprising, but the meteorologists' is very interesting," he said. "Most members of the public think meteorologists know climate, but most of them actually study very short-term phenomenon."

He was not surprised, however, by the near-unanimous agreement by climatologists.

"They're the ones who study and publish on climate science. So I guess the take-home message is, the more you know about the field of climate science, the more you're likely to believe in global warming and humankind's contribution to it."

Of course, skeptics will say "well, that's just climatologists defending their funding", but honestly, doesn't the greatest fame in science often come to those who do the groundbreaking work that shows the established beliefs of the majority in his or her field are wrong? Why wouldn't that work to encourage those in climatology to publish work that disproves AGW?

The other point is: why are oil geologists such a contrary bunch? What is it about looking for oil that makes them think they know better on climate change?

The tunnel problem

There's a good article in Slate about possible technical solutions to preventing tunnelling from Gaza to Egypt. Unfortunately, there are no obvious easy answers, and a lot of ideas have been considered seriously, including building a moat! (It's amazing how hard it is to secure even a very short border, isn't it?)

While you're at Slate, it's worth reading Christopher Hitchens' "no regrets" column.

(And while I am at it, can someone tell me if I am placing that apostrophe correctly when a person's name ends in "s". I can't recall lately, and both choices look wrong to me.)

UPDATE: there's a follow up post at Slate in which Saletan expresses his annoyance at the way a Foreign Policy blog ridiculed the idea that technology can solve the Gazan problem.

Saletan's response is well argued (he never claimed it was the sole solution), but also, it argues along the lines I was suggesting recently. Namely, that the issue of the potential for legitimate "above ground" trade via Egypt is an important one, despite (I would add) it seeming to attract very little in the way of commentary from a media which is happy to keep running commentary that blames Israel for creating a "prison" state. (Only it's a prison with a potentially open door to goods from a neighbouring arab State.)

Improbable stories from the near future

[Yes, I have realised, I still don't know how to spell "Barack" correctly. So sue me. Anyway, what's wrong with being "Bruce" or "Barry" instead?]

Answer: None

If there is some award for the silliest "Jews are as bad as Nazis" comparison in the press, this one from an opinion piece by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The Independent would have to be in the running:

How many Palestinian Anne Franks did the Israelis murder, maim or turn mad? Unless the Israeli state can see that equivalence there is no future for Palestine...

Let's remind ourselves from Wikipedia:

After the war, it was estimated that of the 107,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands between 1942 and 1944, only 5,000 survived.

The comparison with Gaza (for the current conflict) is about 1,300,000 with 1,298,700 survivors. Yes, I can see the similarity.

After all, as Yasmin likes to point out, Israel's blockades have created a Gazan prison, although she forgets to note that there is a border with Egypt. So I suppose it's a bit like that tragic situation in Holland in World War II when that long established Jewish country on the border wouldn't let Anne Frank or her family flee from the Nazis, or even let proper trade be established with the Jews.

Spookily similar, I say.

Fighting Arabs

Why the Arabs splinter over Gaza - International Herald Tribune

Not a bad summary here of the rivalries within the Arab world that has stopped them from having anything like a uniform response to the Gaza situation.

The famous landing

As I have missed all TV news since Friday, I hadn't seen 'til tonight this video of the actual river landing in New York. It's very impressive: