Babies make us nicer

Basics - In a Helpless Baby, the Roots of Our Social Glue - NYTimes.com

A primatologist argues that:

...human babies are so outrageously dependent on their elders for such a long time that humanity would never have made it without a break from the great ape model of child-rearing. Chimpanzee and gorilla mothers are capable of rearing their offspring pretty much through their own powers, but human mothers are not.

The difference this makes, she argues, is that humans developed a comparatively good temperament. Sounds vaguely plausible, but the main reason I wanted to do a post about this is because of the odd hypothetical example she gives:

...our status as cooperative breeders, rather than our exceptionally complex brains, helps explain many aspects of our temperament. Our relative pacifism, for example, or the expectation that we can fly from New York to Los Angeles without fear of personal dismemberment. Chimpanzees are pretty smart, but were you to board an airplane filled with chimpanzees, you “would be lucky to disembark with all 10 fingers and toes still attached,” Dr. Hrdy writes.

So be warned: never fly Chimp Air, no matter how cheap the fare.

It gives me great pleasure...

Regular readers could guess how happy it would make me to see David Byrne appearing on Colbert Report. (The answer for irregular readers: very.)

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

David Byrne Pt. 1

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Joke of the Day
Stand-Up Comedy

(Honestly, it is really is a very relaxed and enjoyable interview of the Colbert variety.)

You can then watch Byrne performing the chair choreography song I like from his new CD.

Important stem cell news

It's good that the use of embryos for stem cell experiments or therapy may turn out to be unnecessary, although I still suspect that much of the promise of stem cell therapy as whole has been oversold.

Discover magazine explains more.

Wine wins one, loses one

Drinking wine lowers risk of Barrett's esophagus, precursor to esophageal cancer:

Drinking one glass of wine a day may lower the risk of Barrett's Esophagus by 56 percent... Barrett's Esophagus is a precursor to esophageal cancer, the nation's fastest growing cancer with an incidence rate that's jumped 500 percent in the last 30 years.

I find this a little surprising, given the bigger news of last week:

Low to moderate alcohol consumption among women is associated with a statistically significant increase in cancer risk and may account for nearly 13 percent of the cancers of the breast, liver, rectum, and upper aero-digestive tract combined...

Giant horse madness

Many Just Say Neigh to ‘Blue Mustang’ at Denver Airport - NYTimes.com

From the report:

A statue of a giant male horse — electric-eyed, cobalt blue and anatomically correct — was installed in February 2008 on the roadway approach to the terminal, and it is freaking more than a few people out.

What is it with artists and giant horses? As was recently noted here, England is to get an "angel" in the form of a giant horse statue.

Real horses are dangerous, but even as statues, they still manage to kill. As the NYT explains about that Denver blue horse:

Haters of this work say that “Blue Mustang,” as it is formally known, by the artist Luis Jiménez (killed in 2006 when a section of the 9,000-pound fiberglass statue fell on him during construction), is frightening, or cursed by its role in Mr. Jiménez’s death, or both.

I keep telling people that horses are evil, but do they listen?

The New York Times also notes this odd consequence of the horse:

... the controversy has also stirred up people in other ways. Conspiracies have floated around the Internet for years about secret bunkers or caverns beneath the terminals at the Denver airport. Symbols of Freemasonry are also said to abound on airport floors and walls.

“It’s brought out the conspiracy theorists who think there are aliens living under the airport,” said Patricia Calhoun, the editor of Westword, an alternative weekly paper in Denver

A story that features both evil horses and underground aliens: that's quite a rarity.

LP finally does St Mary's

I was wondering when Mark Bahnisch would make a comment on the renegade parish of St Mary's South Brisbane, given his Catholic background. Finally he has posted about it, and (surprisingly) in the comments section there is moderately voiced discussion between him and Currency Lad (amongst others) about the issues and matters liturgical.

I was a little surprised to see that the parish is not even to Mark's liberal tastes, and he also notes the peculiarity of why a priest such as Father Kennedy (who makes comments sounding as if he doesn't even believe in a "real" God anymore) wants to remain within the Catholic fold. This must be a sign that the parish is doomed.

UPDATE:

By the way, it would appear likely that Peter Kennedy, and [one suspects] many of those in the congregation at St Mary's, are non-realists when it comes to belief in God. Non-realism gets a decent explanation here. A key point from that link is this:

We should give up all ideas of a heavenly or supernatural world-beyond. Yet, despite our seeming scepticism, we insist that non-realist religion can work very well as religion, and can deliver eternal happiness.

Seems that for non realists, "eternal" gets a just as rubbery a definition as "God". It's basically a philosophy of re-defining away those elements of religion you can no longer believe in.

As I said once at CL's blog, the real fight within Christianity in the coming decades is going to be between adherents to realism and the growing band of non-realists.

Nothing like bad timing

While glancing through a (better than usual quality) table of half price books at a suburban bookshop yesterday, I found "Burn: the Epic Sory of Bushfire in Australia" by ABC favourite Paul Collins (better known for his commentary on religion.) It was published in 2006.

It must be annoying to find, just when your history book is suddenly all relevant, it's being flogged off on the cheap. Maybe there's a market for a revised edition now?

Anyhow, Paul Collins was interviewed on the ABC recently about his take on the recent events. It's an interesting read.

Do nothing til 2020?

Over at Unleashed, Alan Moran from the IPA has a reasonable article explaining some of the pros and cons of carbon tax Vs emissions trading scheme. (He leans towards a carbon tax.)

However, his controversial conclusion is this:

One key outcome of the Treasury modelling offers a particularly promising policy approach. This is the Treasury estimate of the costs of doing nothing to 2020 and then catching up with the 2050 target thereafter should the need and achievability of such action prove necessary. That cost is put at 0.3 per cent of GDP by 2050.

Even if this is not overstated, 0.3 per cent of GDP seems a reasonable insurance policy price to pay rather than imminently embarking on measures that will be in the White Paper's words, "the most significant structural reform of the economy since the 1980s". By 2020 we will be clearer on the need for emission reduction policies and will, presumably, have access to all the technological advances that Treasury claim will be forthcoming.

At one level, this makes sense, in that Australia's overall contribution to CO2 is so low anyway. But if the real global problem is turning around the carbon producing juggernauts of China and India, putting off a decision until 2020 is hardly going to encourage them to start taking faster action now.

Meanwhile, the global economic crisis should have the contradictory effects of reducing emissions for now, but also making it harder to fund the research and development needed to get really serious changes to energy production.

Life is complicated.

One seriously strange fish

This blog needs something interesting to look at again, and this is the best I can up with at the moment: a very weird looking fish with a transparent head and dopey looking eyes.

Links clean up and additions

This post is just to remind me of some of the websites I want to add to my blog. It's well overdue a bit of a clean out. I'll get around to editing the blog soon enough, and anyone who has any other suggestions to sites I might like, let me know.

My additions to come (more may be added when I remember then again): Backreaction (physics blog); Dezeen (architecture and design); Air and Space Magazine; Bravenewclimate; Watts Up with That; Modern Mechanix blog; Treehugger; Marohasy.

Big Hollywood.

Near miss noted

Crikey - Sky not falling, just passing quite close

An "intruder" asteroid was detected by Australian comet hunter Rob McNaught at an observatory on Siding Spring Mountain on Friday night and will have a close encounter with Earth at about 1am tomorrow.

The object, estimated to be around 35-60 metres at its widest, is similar in size to the dead comet shard that exploded with the force of a large hydrogen bomb over a then largely uninhabited region of central Siberia on 30 June 1908.

This time there will be no collision, but the object catalogued as 2009 DD45 will come as close as around 63,000 kilometres from the earth’s surface somewhere over the Pacific west of Tahiti.

Ready for your close up, Your Excellency?

Glenn Milne informed us on the weekend that Governor-General Quentin Bryce has, for reasons unknown, been requesting (and getting) briefings from government officials including the head of the Defence Force, the head of Foreign Affairs, and Treasury. This is not normal, apparently:

A spokeswoman confirmed the official briefings by three departmental heads was the first of its kind in the 107-year history of the office.

If I were the suspicious type who found this Governor-General kind of irritating (oh, wait a minute, that is me) I would say that it sounds something like a reverse palace coup in the planning. I suspect Bill Shorten (still dating the GG's daughter, I assume) may be installed as first Australian Emperor if the Labor Party loses the next election. (Remember you heard it here first, unless someone at Andrew Bolt's has already noted this.)

But even before this weekend's news, I had been meaning to point readers towards the gallery section of the Governor-General's website. I would be curious to know who selects the photos there, as it seems that under Quentin Bryce's reign there has been a significantly increased emphasis on having her appear, if at all possible, in every single photo. (There are very few exceptions.)

Now of course, any gallery of the activities of an GG is going to mainly feature scenes in which the he or she appears. But try this: go to the archives and compare, say, the 2007 photos of our last Governor-General to those of Quentin Bryce. Under Michael Jeffery, you will find quite a few photos of other people without the GG being in shot. (There are a couple of "Santa" photos too; if one ever appears while Quentin Bryce is there, I would be looking very closely at the eyes to check that it isn't her.)

Back to the current photo selections: the one from 9 November 2008 in particular (see a full-sized version here) makes it seem that there is a distinct emphasis now on Governor-General herself, rather than the office.

Not very endearing for this reader, at least.

Perfectly apt, really

Imagine ... Lennon's classic played on church bells

Apt because it is to be performed in an Anglican cathedral.

But he's getting really tired of eating crackers

Parrots teach man to speak again - Telegraph

Proof the internet is evil

Internet 'is causing poetry boom' - Telegraph

Opinion Dominion explains...

It's war: minister takes aim at defence | smh.com.au

Our Defence Minister thinks his department is "at times incompetent".

No doubt it is. The problem is that, at least as far as the uniform side of the fence is concerned, they expect people who may be quite good and competent at one job (flying a plane, being an engineer or battlefield tactician) to be sensible and competent in another role they never really intended taking on when they joined (management of personnel, running a quasi-judicial system for disciplinary breaches, conducting fair internal enquiries.)

Time and again, you can see a person who may have been quite good at his or her original job making a complete hash of the more generalist duties that certain positions may require. It's not for lack of attempted training and assessment; Defence spends an inordinate amount of time on management training, and assessment is continual. It's just that some people with good technical skills in some areas just don't seem to be able to engage common sense when it comes to other areas.

It's often truly puzzling as to how some really bad decisions can be made by uniform men or women who are clearly not dumb. Of course, this also means that Defence then has to spend an inordinate amount of time on internal review of such decisions.

I don't know the answer; maybe its inherent in having a relatively small defence force. But it is still discouraging.

Local food in Japan

This is a feature of Japanese towns and cities that I have often noticed as being quite different from most Western cities:

"Locally grown for local consumption" is a common practice in many cities in Japan. Small plots of urban land dedicated to farming can be found in cities of all sizes. Kunio Tsubota of the Kyushu University Asia Centre writes in Urban Agriculture in Asia: Lessons from Japanese Experience "The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) estimates that about 1.1 million hectares of farmland exist in "urban-like areas" and are producing ¥2.6 trillion worth of products."

Tsubota states that municipalities desire some farmland in urbanized areas because the land provides open areas necessary for emergencies, residents don’t want buildings constructed on green spaces, and that it’s more cost effective to grow crops than to convert urban farm plots into parks, and then maintain the parks.

One thing I have noticed, though, is that a lot of these Japanese urban farms may be right beside busy roads, and I wonder whether car and truck exhausts so close leaves a residue on fruit and veggies. (I guess it would just wash off anyway.)

There are parts (but getting smaller over the years) of some Brisbane suburbs which still contain small market farms. In fact, fruit and vegetables brought in some of the Vietnamese dominated shops, which I think get their stuff from such local farms, can be incredibly cheap compared to the supermarket. We usually get our pork from a "pork butcher" that seems to supply all the local restaurants too, and is always cheaper than the supermarket.

Urban farming therefore makes some sense, doesn't it? (As does living near asian migrant areas!)

Further to that Tarantino post...

A few posts back I had a link to a Guardian blog which embedded the ugly trailer for Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" (yes, that spelling is apparently correct.)

The trailer is also on Youtube, but this time it has the Motion Picture Association of America preview rating at the start, which says the preview is "Suitable for All Audiences".

Are they mad?

Probably as mad as Quentin Tarantino, who thought that Kill Bill was a film that would be quite fun for boys and girls above the age of 12.

Given that he displays an emotional age of a 13 year old boy (and an unpleasant one at that,) I shouldn't be surprised. (Look at how juvenile most of the comments following any Tarantino clip on Youtube are as well.)

That young men should be getting excited about such a splatter-fest film is not a good sign. The only positive thing is that critics have become cynical of Tarantino's endless repetition of his one trick oeuvre.

Mad grandmother

BBC NEWS | Americas | US fortune 'not solely for dogs'

Talking about the $8 billion estate of the late Leona Helmsley, the article notes:

Helmsley also left $12m to her pet dog, Trouble, while explicitly leaving out two of her grandchildren.

A Manhattan judge later reduced the trust fund for the nine-year-old Maltese to $2m and the grandchildren received $6m each.

How do you spend even $2 million on a dog? Diamond encrusted collars?

On David Cameron's loss

A lesson for us all in a short life, well lived | Libby Purves - Times Online

Libby Purves writes very well about this.