Science roundup from Science Daily

There's no common theme here, they just struck me as interesting:

* a common viral infection may have something to do with high blood pressure. (I think the idea has been around for a while, or at least with respect to atherosclerosis.) This research was done with mice. (The hardest part was probably putting the little blood pressure cuffs on their skinny arms.)

* Having a heart attack right now? Chewable aspirin gets in fast, just like blue liquid gets into chalk. (Sorry, vast international readership, the reference will only be understood to Australians of a certain age, and it's not even that funny.)

* Ginger really does seem to help with nausea caused by anything, even chemotherapy. (I presume it helps with hangovers too?)

* A bunch of students are trying to come up with a good form of radiation shield for a return to the Moon. Just burying the habitat must seem too much like hard work.

* Alcohol labelling helps older people drive safely, but younger people just use it to the strongest alcohol at the cheapest price. Kind of obvious, really. (And would support the idea that the alcopop tax will not be effective in the long run.)

Kind of catchy

You have to watch past the forty second mark to get the full benefit of this, um, unusual language lesson.

Progessive thinking

Peter Daou

Click the link above to read the excitable Peter Daou at Huffington Post:

But as always, the progressive community, a far more efficient thinking machine than a handful of strategists and advisers, is looking ahead and raising a unified alarm. The message is this: anything less than absolute moral clarity from Democrats, who now control the levers of power, will enshrine Bush's abuses and undermine the rule of law for generations to come.

Take some deep breaths, Peter, and calm your "thinking machine" down.

Eek, I agree with Andrew Sullivan

The carbon tax/cap-and-trade royal rumble By Phil Levy | Shadow Government

As I don't obsess about Sarah Palin's last pregnancy and need to read about gay marriage every day, I don't feel the need to visit Andrew Sullivan very often.

But it would appear from the above column in Foreign Policy that he's one of the main proponents of carbon tax over cap and trade.

Well, as I've started saying recently, it turns out that no one is wrong about everything. (If only teenagers could learn that lesson early.)

Actually, the column itself wonders why carbon tax is not taken seriously. It's a pretty good summary of the pros and cons:

Cap-and-trade can do a very good impersonation of a carbon tax when we know the demand for emissions with certainty, when we do a great job of regulating, and when we auction off all the emissions permits. If we're uncertain about the demand for producing emissions, if it is hard to keep tabs on what various emitters are doing, or if politics intrudes into the process of handing out emissions permits, then the two approaches veer apart.

For ease of use and immunity from political meddling, the carbon tax is the clear winner. Taxes can be applied early in the fuel distribution process, which makes the logistical task much easier. That sort of upstream application would make attempts at political interference much more transparent, as well. So what about uncertainty? The big critique of a carbon tax is that it cannot guarantee a country will come in under a pre-set emissions cap. If the desire to pollute is really, really high one year, we could find that a given tax won't serve as a sufficient deterrent, and we'll blow past our limits.

Europe, though, has had the opposite problem with their cap-and-trade system. In the first phase of the program, they printed more permits to pollute than anyone wanted. That drove the price of permits near zero, deeply annoying anyone who had paid up for the right to pollute. It also meant that the system was ineffective in restraining pollution. That would be hard to do with a carbon tax.

Maybe the key paragraph is this:

The Cap-and-Trade Kids argue that, whatever the economic merits, their approach is the only one with a political chance. But why? Carbon taxes have certainly been seen as a political third rail, at least since President Bill Clinton dropped a proposed BTU tax in 1993. People don't want to have to pay more for energy. But how does cap-and-trade overcome this critique? If it's going to rein in eagerness to pollute, it will have to raise the cost of pollution. It may be possible to win support by pretending this won't happen, but it's worth thinking hard about whether such deception is a sound basis for creating a major long-term policy.

Keeping it in perspective

Value for money in the budget? - Solar vs Coal - Rooted

The simple headline is that the budget gave $1.5 billion to solar power development in Australia. But, it is in fact over a 6 year period.

How much money has Kevin Rudd given to the public in the last 6 months? About $21 billion.

And another $28 billion to be spent over the next few years on insulation, school upgrades etc.

Not so encouraging.

Obama gets some common sense: drives Left crazy

Obama does an about-turn on 'torture' photographs | smh.com.au

Have a look at how Glenn Greenwald reacts:

Obama's claim that he has to hide this evidence to protect our soldiers is the sort of crass, self-serving exploitation of "The Troops" which was the rancid hallmark of Bush/Cheney rhetoric.

And he quotes Andrew Sullivan:

So Cheney begins to successfully coopt his successor.

They really do treat Cheney as if he has the infernal power of mind control, even out of office. Cenk Uygur in Huffington Post writes:

This is an unbelievable moment. Dick Cheney's PR offensive over the last month actually worked. Barack Obama just crumbled and will follow Cheney's command to not release the new set of detainee abuse pictures.

I have to admit, though, that I was a bit surprised when I went to the Daily Kos thread on this and found there are readers of his defending Obama's decision.

A bit of division on the Left then. Good to see.

Don't invest in vitamin industry, and get some sun

Vitamin supplements may cut benefits of exercise

I wonder if Olympic athletes regularly take vitamins?

In other vitamin related news, it seems there are there a lot of researchers in the last year or two saying that people may have gone too far in sun avoidance, as it is leading to a Vitamin D deficiency which can cause all sorts of problems. Have a look at this article, for example, and all of the related stories at the side.

I know I barely get any sun myself now, but after having a couple of (minor) skin cancers cut off a few years ago, that seems the right thing to do. But in reality, maybe getting some early morning or late afternoon sun might be better for me in the long run.

Love and dogs

Katz and dogs - Los Angeles Times

Jonah Goldberg writes well here about the overly reductionist approach by which some people dismiss the affection dogs display to their owners.

As Goldberg indicates, if you take this approach to dogs, it can just as strongly be argued to human love. It is an attitude that devalues what should be most strongly held as true.

I'm with George

Meganomics Blog | The Australian

George Megalongenis' take on the budget seems right to me: lots of spending to come; very, very little in the way of budget savings for a few years. It's a budget to set large debt in concrete. (The last bit are my words, not his.)

The trouble with mercury

Dangerous Mercury Spills Still Trouble Schoolchildren: Scientific American

Interesting article here about the big problems caused by people playing with mercury. This bit was news to me:

Some Caribbean religions and folk healers use mercury because they believe its supernatural powers bring good luck and drive away evil spirits. Practitioners apply mercury to the skin, add it to candles or sprinkle it around the home.

About 38 percent of 900 people mostly with Latino or Caribbean backgrounds reported that they used or knew someone who used mercury for religious, spiritual, or health purposes, according to a survey by John Snow, Inc., a Boston health consulting company. The ATSDR report warns that "such use may lead to chronic mercury exposure among those who use it in this manner and for subsequent occupants of the contaminated homes."

"Imagine if you suspected that your apartment might have had a prior occupant that sprinkled mercury on the carpet a decade ago," said Arnold Wendroff, founder of the Mercury Poisoning Project, a website dedicated to the issue. "That's not something you want to live with."

Wendroff has tracked religious mercury use since 1989 after a young boy in a class he was teaching told him his mother sprinkled mercury on the floor of their home to keep away witches. These liquid good luck charms, which can be purchased at medicine shops called botanicas, are often found in 10-gram bottles. Mercury fever thermometers, in comparison, contain only a few grams (.5 to 3.0 g) of mercury.

Shuttle sightings at last

It seems to have been a long time since there was a shuttle mission with a good run of possible early evening sightings over Brisbane (and fine weather to go with them.) But this one seems to be it. See the NASA link here to find your Australian location sighting times over the next week.

This is especially noteworthy for South East Queensland, with its (usually) clear winter evening skies. (The moon won't be around either.) Here's the schedule for Brisbane:

[Apart from the date and time, the columns are: Duration in minutes, maximum elevation above horizon (in degrees), where it will approach from (in degrees and direction) and where it depart.]

Sun May 17/06:42 PM	3	24	10 above NNW	24 above NNE
Mon May 18/06:40 PM	4	33	10 above NW	33 above NNE
Tue May 19/06:38 PM	4	45	15 above NW	44 above NE
Wed May 20/06:06 PM	5	44	20 above NW	24 above ENE
Wed May 20/07:43 PM	<>	15	11 above W	15 above W
Thu May 21/05:25 PM	2	27	27 above ENE	10 above E
Thu May 21/06:59 PM	2	59	21 above W	59 above WNW
Fri May 22/06:15 PM	4	81	30 above WNW	37 above E
Fri May 22/07:52 PM	<>	11	11 above W	11 above W
Sat May 23/05:30 PM	6	74	38 above WNW	11 above E
Sat May 23/07:08 PM	2	41	16 above W	41 above WSW
Sun May 24/06:24 PM	3	77	26 above W	50 above ESE
Mon May 25/05:39 PM	6	78	32 above W	13 above E
Mon May 25/07:16 PM	2	30	13 above W	30 above W

UPDATE: For a nice video of the launch, and comments of a first time launch viewer, go to this Cosmic Variance post.

Hugo makes a trunk call

Chavez launches $15 mobile phone with a name to make his mother blush

It is perhaps the world's cheapest mobile phone. It is the latest offering from Hugo Chavez's socialist revolution. And its name is derived from a slang word for penis. Behold the Vergatorio.

Venezuela's president launched the handset on his TV show with a Mother's Day call to his mum and predicted it would conquer all rivals.....

Verga is slang for penis and vergatario is a newly minted word which signifies excellent but retains connotations from its root.

That smarts

An unusual cause for headache following massive alcohol intake

From the Abstract:

Massive alcohol intake usually resolves in a banal headache. We report a case of a patient presenting with acute alcohol intoxication in which the ensuing “hangover” was due to a knife blade deeply retained in the brain parenchyma.

(Found via Mindhacks, pun unintended.)

Question repeated

Group sex 'ingrained' in rugby league culture | The Australian

As noted here recently, what exactly is it about sport that gave it a reputation for being "character building"?

Update: A story about Australian cricketing hero Keith Miller, as noted by his biographer in Australian Story a couple of weeks ago:

Bill [Miller's son] I think suffered more than the other three. He arrived in England at age 18 to stay with his father, it was a big moment for him. And here was Keith playing around with girls younger than him. This caused a bit of confusion in him because he was the oldest boy and very close to his mother and that would have on reflection probably have been a bit damaging for Bill.

BILL MILLER, SON: He told me that Peg said, 'whenever you're overseas you can fool around but just don’t do it at home'. And of course, he’s my father, I believed him. And it wasn’t until years later I asked Peg that and she said 'do you really think that I would have said that'. And I said 'no you wouldn’t of'. She said 'exactly right'. So that sort of gutted me a bit, that he’d lied to me about that. But I still loved the guy. I used to have some great times with my father.

Update: I saw some of the Four Corners program about the NRL and sex last night. Was it really necessary to show the picture on the mobile phone instead of just saying "yeah, the guys will email me photos of their erection all the time"? The blond woman talking about this seemed to quite happy to run a free service via which women wanting sex with a footballer could have an arranged meeting.

While I guess it's useful to have football clubs running classes on how it's not right to trick your mate's drunk girlfriend into having sex with you, it's kind of disturbing to think that any young bloke needs telling. (I also wonder whether, if the camera is not there, the sessions are received with such gravity.)

Looks cool

Boeing aims sky-high with 'Phantom Ray'

A culinary note

I first mentioned this here a year ago, but it is worth repeating: try adding a splash of Cointreau to slightly sweetened whipped cream.

(The try that with raspberry jam on warm pancakes for breakfast.)

European rat owning readers take note

From Rats To Humans: Around Thirty Europeans Infected With Cowpox Virus By Their Pet Rats

Praising Scrubs

The only sitcom still worth watching in the last few years, the screening of the (likely) last episode of Scrubs has attracted a lot of comment in the States this week.

Slate had an article praising it, not for its comedic value, but for being "the most accurate portrayal of the medical profession on TV." (Bet you didn't see that coming.) Allegedly:

...if you talk to doctors, they'll often sing the praises of one medical show in particular, which they say captures the training process, the profession, and the dynamics of a hospital with remarkable accuracy. No, it's not House, the tale of a misanthrope who happens to be a doctor. It's not Grey's Anatomy, a torrid romance novel disguised as a medical show. It's not even the recently departed ER, which broke television ground with its realistic gore. It's Scrubs.

The article makes out its case reasonably credibly.

But of course, no one watches it for that reason. The show apparently is made by people with sufficient generosity that they allow a huge number of segments to remain posted on Youtube. It seems that with a little effort, you can find nearly any clip from the 8 seasons which you found particularly funny.

In Australia, the show has never has a decent chance to build a following on commercial TV due to the hopeless way (common to nearly every sitcom shown in the last 5 years) that the programmers have chopped and changed the schedule. Currently, I have been watching Season 6 which has had a rare continuous run on Comedy Channel (but even that has a hopeless way of jumbling seasons and episodes, so that still the only way to get a complete story cycle here is to rent the DVDs.)

Anyhoo, I recently saw the popular all-singing episode ("My Musical") from 2007. (It was probably shown here starting at 10.42pm one night of the summer holidays on Channel 7 in 2008.) The highlight was surely "Guy Love", which is good enough to embed:



(A clarification: the women in bed is featured because she has an aneurysm causing her to have musical hallucinations, a storyline evidently based on this true life report.)

I can't help it, I want to embed two other short clips that are particular favourites:

Janitor, the greatest comedic deadpan evil character ever created:



And Dr Kelso has his greatest moment here (although, bizarrely, the person who posted this clip gives away the joke in the heading - don't read it!):



Brilliant. When will there be another sitcom that makes me laugh out loud?

British Muslims are a worry

The Associated Press: Study: Poverty fueling Muslim tension with West

Lots of interesting stuff from this detailed survey:

Despite their desire to belong, only a small number of Muslims questioned in Britain, for example — 10 percent — consider themselves integrated into British society. That compares to 46 percent of Muslims in France and 35 percent in Germany....

Researchers found 38 percent of British Muslims said they had a job, much lower than the figure for the British general public — 62 percent — and lower than Muslims in Germany or France, where 53 percent and 45 percent respectively said they were employed. No figures were compiled for the United States....

...71 percent of Britain's Muslims considered themselves to be struggling to get by, as did 56 percent of Muslims questioned in the United States. Research for the study was conducted in mid-2008, before the full impact of the current financial crisis hit.

Yet, oddly, in another part of the report it says:

The study found that 77 percent of British Muslims feel a strong sense of British identity, compared to 50 percent of the country's non-Muslims. In France, around half of Muslims and non-Muslims say they feel a strong sense of patriotism.

Isn't that inconsistent with the preceding figures?

Jews and birds

On Colbert Report last night, there was an interview with Laurie Garrett, a woman who seems to know a fair bit about swine flu. (It was fairly amusing, and you can watch it here.)

One of the things she said, though, I didn't recall hearing before. It was that Indonesia, which has strains of the very worrisome bird flu, does not share information with the WHO because its Health minister believes that there is a US/Western/Jewish conspiracy to find new flus, make vaccines and force poor countries to buy them. (Colbert's response to this was pretty funny.)

This situation is perhaps even worse than that summary, as noted here:

Falling short of elaboration, Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said on Tuesday that the deadly swine flu virus could have been genetically engineered. She had earlier accused Western governments of making and spreading viruses in developing countries to boost pharmaceutical companies' profits.

Since 2006, Indonesia has refused to share all of its bird flu virus samples with WHO researchers, citing fears that the system is being abused by rich countries to produce profitable vaccines, which impoverished nations have to buy.

A more detailed account of the Health Minister's views can be found here. It does not mention Jewish conspiracy as a possible part of her reasoning, as did Colbert's guest, but it does say that "she is a member of the moderate Islamic mass movement Muhammadiyah, but has also reportedly cosied up to radicals such as the Islamist Hizbut Tahrir group, which believes in replacing Indonesia's secular government with a Muslim caliphate."

I see that in the Middle East, back in 2006, the Jewish - bird flu conspiracy appeared there:

... the Syrian state-controlled paper al-Tawhra asserted that Israel was responsible for the expanding bird flu phenomenon. It said Israel had spread the virus in the Far East to mislead the world while aiming to attack the Arabs.[2]

Damn those Jews are clever.

But seriously, it would be a disaster if belief in Jewish conspiracy contributes to the death of millions of people (including Muslims) due to delays in getting out a vaccine to combat a future mutated bird flu.

Maybe this needs covert operations: blacked up CIA agents who roam Indonesian farms at night, taking blood from chickens and ducks.