Odd

Boy, 5, taken by crocodile in Daintree, Queensland

It's a tragedy, no doubt, but it does sound surprising that the kids were allowed to play there at all:

A QUEENSLAND tour guide plunged into a croc-infested mangrove swamp in a desperate bid to save his five-year-old son snatched by a 3m crocodile.

Steve Doble, who owns Daintree Rainforest Rivertrain, flung himself into the waist-deep floodwaters only to find his youngest boy had vanished.

He was alerted by the screams of his older son Ryan, 7, who had to be treated for shock after witnessing the attack.

Jeremy Doble, 5, is missing feared dead after he was taken by the crocodile, believed to be the dominant resident male Goldie, in the swamp behind his family home about 9.15am (AEST).

Locals said the "sweet, gentle-natured" child and his older brother were playing on a boogie board as their father fixed a broken mangrove boardwalk nearby, The Courier-Mail reports.

UPDATE: I should have guessed. The version in the Cairns Post is quite different:

Mr Doble was working on the boardwalk when Ryan’s screams alerted him to the tragedy. The boys were chasing their pet dog and Jeremy jumped into the flooded creek after the animal. Ryan told police he saw a large croc immediately after his brother vanished.

It also says that there were "unconfirmed reports" that the father jumped in after his son.

Such is journalism.

David Byrne in Brisbane (and elsewhere)

Regular readers may recall that one of my not entirely "conservative" features is my high regard for David Byrne and nearly anything he does. (OK, I don't automatically buy every new CD any more, but his lifetime body of work is incredibly strong.) I recommend his journal again for the quality of the writing and breadth of interest he shows, although he has become a bit slack in updating it lately.

So, proving again that I must be the coolest conservative-ish blogger in Australia (ha ha), I went to his Brisbane concert on Saturday night.

This particular tour, featuring his songs with producer Brian Eno, has been on for a good few months now, getting positive reviews everywhere, and with good reason. It is a more theatrical show than his last tour, with three dancers often on stage doing what might be called somewhat whimsical choreography. David often joins in too, and the effect is a bit like a smaller scale "Stop Making Sense".

I guess I enjoyed the last show a little more, as some Brian Eno produced songs from Talking Heads are not amongst my favourites. On the other hand, some of the songs from their just released CD are immediately appealing. Have a look at this one, for example, and just ignore the first jiggling 15 seconds, it settles down after that:



And here's a still photo I took during Burning Down the House (err, no bad taste intended, Victorians) performed for some unexplained reason with everyone on stage wearing a tutu:


Someone at the concert has posted a very clear and up close video of a new song which featured some very David-esque choreography. You'll like it if you like that sort of thing.

Ah I can't help myself. Finally here's a very good quality clip from the recent Singapore concert of an old favourite, "Heaven":



OK. I'll stop now.

The slowly revealed tragedy

It's slightly surreal how the death toll from the Victorian fires has risen during the day. Last night it was 40 feared dead; by tomorrow, it seems a good chance that a 100 or more will have been found.

It would seem that there is considerable way to go in educating people who live in high fire danger areas how to react appropriately when a fire is approaching. Still, I guess that even doing the "right" thing and not fleeing in a car when the fire front was too close did not save many people who perished in their houses. (Some areas, such as those suburban areas close to Bendigo, also might not really have been considered by the residents to be at high risk of such devastation.)

Scary photos are over at Caz's. Sympathy and prayers are offered.

Can someone explain this?

Donor - Annual Returns

(It shows the Law Society of NSW donating $16,000 to NSW Labor last financial year. They made no donation to any other party, apparently.) I know some people say that Law Societies are like solicitors unions, but I never expected that they would see any particular benefit in not being at least even handed in political donations.

While we are at it, the page for donations to the Queensland Labor Party shows substantial donations from "Australian Taxation Office" at Chermside. Huh?

Proof of alternative universes

Good Lord. Opinion Dominion knows that it has truly entered Bizarro World when it finds itself agreeing with (most of) Ken Lovell's comments over at LP. (Earlier opinion of Mr Lovell's posting career at Road to Surfdom was expressed here.)

UPDATE: some very sensible commentary here by Harry Clarke on why Ken Henry's views on alternatives to "his" stimulus package should not be taken as sacrosanct.

I would like to know why, amongst journalists who comment on economics, they don't express skepticism of the economists who (by and large) have been caught by surprise by the unfolding events of the last 12 months, yet now sound so certain as to what the "fix" should be.

Many applicants for this priesthood

Found this snippet at the end of an article about a temple in Kyoto:

Fans of religion and alcohol might also enjoy Matsuo-taisha shrine in Arashiyama, Kyoto Prefecture. It's dedicated to the god of sake, and is a place of pilgrimage for sake brewers praying for good fortune. The priests can reportedly outdrink most people, arguing that it's their sacred duty to imbibe.

Something different

There have been too many words around here lately, so here's something different (if not all that new):



There's something a bit disconcerting the first time you see a human shaped robot copying human actions too closely, I find.

It gets worse

Donating a kidney through your vagina or rectum. -By William Saletan - Slate Magazine

If the news earlier this week about a donor kidney being removed through the vagina didn't make you feel queasy enough, William Saletan explains above how the next step (for men) will likely be to try doing it via the rectum. (Germs are no problem: just bag the kidney first.)

Let's all join in a collective sound signifying revulsion now, shall we?

I have a theory: the anal probe claims by some alleged alien abductees are in fact misunderstood prophetic dreams from the future's hospitals. (Short surgeons with masks look like aliens a little, don't they?)

Another Oscar year to ignore

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button review | Film Reviews - Times Online

The big nominee in yet another year of Oscar nominations that the public just doesn't much care about (God we've had a run of Oscar seasons like that the last few years) is Benjamin Button. One reviewer is not impressed:

The film won an astonishing 13 Oscar nominations, just one short of the record set by All About Eve and Titanic. This is mystifying. It is a tedious marathon of smoke and mirrors. In terms of the basic requirements of three-reel drama the film lacks substance, credibility, a decent script and characters you might actually care for. That it should be pitching for the most coveted prizes in cinema is a far stranger fiction than the story itself.

Yet, with typical Hollywood star myopia, Kate Winslet was on Leno the other night saying something like "oh it's been such an extraordinary year for fabulous movies, of course I didn't expect to win.." etc.

(Actually, she did not come across as all that likeable in that appearance. I would link to it if I could, but it appears to be region blocked by NBC. How odd.)

Crazy brave commentary

All this political commentary in the press ("A Leader out of his League" is the ridiculous heading given in The Age to Michelle Grattan's musings) about Malcolm Turnbull's (well, actually, his whole party room's) decision to oppose the governments latest stimulus is just silly guff in my opinion. (It's his "suicide note" according to Mark Bahnisch, who likes to complain about commentary that concentrates on the political game instead of the policy substance, except of course when he thinks the game is running Labor's way.)

I can see no substantial risk to Turnbull if, as appears likely, the government will get the Greens and independents on side in the Senate with some relatively minor variations to the package. The Opposition's opposition is not going to delay it for long. A week or two, maybe? Big deal.

Furthermore, if, as just about everyone from the PM down expects, the economy really tanks and a lot more action is needed, that's further debt on its way. This package alone may not be scaring too many economics commentators with its future debt implications, but the next stimulus might make them more hesitant.

At which point, Turnbull can say "see, I told you not to spend quite so much on the last stimulus, and to target it better."

Besides which, I reckon Rudd just looks like a fake actor when he tries to do "outrage" in Parliament. Just because Howard was able to make hay out of Beazley's delaying tax cuts, the dynamics are quite different now, and people are not going to be readily sucked in to believing all the self-serving ideological dressing on the economic crisis Rudd spent his Christmas holidays apparently dreaming up.

Finally, I see that Kerry O'Brien is continuing the same pandering tone with Kevin Rudd this year. His approach in a Rudd interview is always along the lines "help me to understand why what you say is right." But when it comes to the Liberals it's "clearly you are wrong. Confess!"

UPDATE: Andrew Bolt points out that there are indications that the public is not uniformly rushing to condemn Turnbull's caution, contrary to what most commentators predicted.

Un-informed

Ocean Acidification and Corals - Watts Up With That?

Watts Up With That has become a favourite blog for global warming sceptics, often quoted by Andrew Bolt, Jennifer Marohasy, etc. (I see Jennifer is away for an undefined period; probably to seek a credibility transplant after some of her recent efforts.)

But Watt's Up is spreading its wings to encourage scepticism about ocean acidification, with the above "guest post" by Steven Goddard.

It is, without doubt, the most starkly uninformed sceptical post about ocean acidification I have even seen at a blog that likes to credit itself as having a scientific attitude.

Worthy of Ted Baxter

Hamster labelled a murder suspect | Weird True Freaky | News.com.au

Go to the link to see the amusing news video.

And by the way, it's sad to think that probably half of my readership are too young to know of the Mary Tyler Moore show.

Stimulus issues

One thing seems to be missing so far from commentary on the stimulus package: criticism of the cash handouts.

As I noted only a couple of weeks ago, Peter Martin had belatedly pointed out that the US experience indicated that temporary gifts of cash did not do much to increase consumer spending.

So what do we get now as a big component of stimulus? More immediate cash. I am waiting for Peter Martin's comments on this, as he is yet to express his own opinion.

Oddly, Ross Gittens has seemingly decided that economics is just a magic art that no one can ever truly know anything about anyway:

It's all very well for Gerry Harvey to say the cash splash failed because he saw no sign of it in his stores. The economy is just a bit bigger than Harvey Norman. The fact is we don't yet have most of the figures for what happened in the economy in December, or even the last three months of last year.

And even when we get the figures it won't be easy to detect what effect various government measures have had on them. For instance, since there are no miracle cures, evidence of the economy's continued decline doesn't prove the measures did no good.

To measure accurately the effect of the measures you have to know something we'll never know: what would have happened in the economy had the authorities not done what they did.

As for my take, which is just as good as anyone else's at the moment, the package deserved better targeting; much better targeting.

Top marks for creativity, at least

Ehud Barak proposes tunnel connecting Gaza to West Bank - Telegraph

Respect your mice

From a report at Physorg.com:

Humans and mice are both good at assessing risk in everyday tasks, according to a study by Rutgers University scientists published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

The finding leads Gallistel, professor of psychology and co-director of the Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science, to conclude that risk assessment is not basically a high-level conscious activity, but one that is programmed into the brains of animals - mice, humans and many others....

"These animals [the mice] were doing something that, on the face of it, was mathematically complicated," Gallistel said.

Seems to me the lesson to take from this is that the banking and investment industry may as well be run by mice. Send them to Wall Street, I say.

Psst...don't tell Kevin

It does seem odd that when thinking about ways to stimulate the Australian economy, one of the first things our PM should announce is spending on home insulation.

But, it could have been worse:

In their search to find programs upon which to rest the complaint that the stimulus bill is too generous, some conservatives have seized upon one of their favorite whipping boys: the arts. "Even [House Republicans] can't quite believe it... $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts," declared Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana).

Pence was being sarcastic, of course, but the rest of the article is a defence of government spending on the arts as a stimulus measure:

Arts are actually a great form of economic investment, particularly public art, and they should be amply funded in the stimulus package. Every year nonprofit arts organizations generate $166.2 billion in economic activity, support 5.7 million jobs, and send almost $30 billion back to government, according to Americans for the Arts. There is hardly a person more likely to go out and spend her stimulus check than a starving artist.

One suspects a certain rubberiness in those figures. It also continues the line that was behind much of Rudd's first stimulus idea: that that the poorest people are the best to "stimulate". If we follow that logic too far, we'll end up with the most confortable old age pensioners, unemployable Bachelor of Arts graduates and no-audience polemic playwrights in the world, while the government and those actually doing productive work get pooer. Then I guess it'll be their turn for stimulus.

Michael Crichton would have loved them

Technology Review: The Army's Remote-Controlled Beetle

A giant flower beetle with implanted electrodes and a radio receiver on its back can be wirelessly controlled, according to research presented this week. Scientists at the University of California developed a tiny rig that receives control signals from a nearby computer. Electrical signals delivered via the electrodes command the insect to take off, turn left or right, or hover in midflight.

A fuel cell and battery aircraft: cool

How Things Work: Flying Fuel Cells | Flight Today | Air & Space Magazine

Well, it was only a powered glider, but it's still impressive:

....his HK 36 Super Dimona carried a 200-pound hydrogen fuel cell that ran an electric motor to turn its propeller. The fuel cell couldn’t quite put out the energy required for takeoff—45 kilowatts—and got help from a lithium ion battery to lift off the runway in Ocaña, Spain. At 3,300 feet Barberán disconnected the battery, and for the next 20 minutes the Super Dimona flew straight and level at about 60 mph on just the fuel cell. It was the first time a piloted airplane had flown powered by a fuel cell alone.

Urgent geek toy alert

A TARDIS Of Your Very Own | Discover Magazine

More details here.

Luke, use the Force

It sounds like this would be an interesting book: real life accounts of people who believe they have had otherworldly assistance when in a dire situation. (Well, some of them just believe it was their brain playing tricks, but it's still an interesting phenomena, even it you are allergic to the paranormal.) The comments after the article are worth reading too.