A good news medical research story

Scientists cure paralysis in mice (ScienceAlert)

The research is from Western Australia, and indicates a possible cure for "floppy baby syndrome", which is one of those tragic diseases where the child is paralysed and usually dies while still a baby.

Spinning games

How Rudd spins the gallery | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Bolt is right: where's the lefty complaint (from the likes of David Marr) about the Rudd government intense manipulation of the media?

(More than one journalist on Mediawatch last night complained it was worse than the Howard government.)

In other Bolt related commentary: I find Gerard Henderson's defence of GG Quentin Bryce a little puzzling. The overtly political role of her African trip seems to me very different from other GG's visiting nations to support Australian activities. (I know there was some of that in Africa, but damn little as far as I could see.)

Henderson even calls Bryce a successful Queensland State govenor. Funny, but from up here, she attracted plenty of negative attention. It's worth remembering this quote, which was repeated in The Times:

"She's a control freak. She's all sweet and understanding in public, but in private it was a whole different ball game," one disgruntled former staff member told The Australian newspaper.

No wonder Kevin Rudd likes her!

The Economist on North Korea

North Korea v South Korea: A merry dance | The Economist

This short story from a few days ago about strange political behaviour from North Korea, even before today's nuclear and missile tests:

On May 15th, it announced that it was unilaterally tearing up wage and other agreements governing the Kaesong industrial zone, a joint North-South business project just inside North Korea. South Koreans, it says, can either lump it or leave. The 100 or so South Korean firms that employ 38,000 North Koreans and generate millions of dollars a year for the cash-strapped regime of Kim Jong Il are making contingency plans to bring their people home.

This row joins a veritable conga of others, and not just with South Korea.

It's all a worry, to say the least.

UPDATE: Time magazine's article on this is also worrying. It appears most analysts believe Kim has another half dozen nuclear weapons.

As the article notes, the US has virtually nothing new to try because "the North hasn't given Obama even the slimmest reed on which to hang an alteration in policy."

Can't the West (or South) make contact with any sane potential replacement for the ruling family from within North Korea? Does anyone know whether the 26 year old son rumoured to be the replacement for Kim Jong Il is more sane than his father?

An innovative salary package

If Plastic Surgery Won’t Convince You, What Will? - NYTimes.com

The opening paragraphs in this story in the New York Times show how, um, advanced, the Czechs are when it comes to salary packaging:

PRAGUE — When Petra Kalivodova, a 31-year-old nurse, was considering whether to renew her contract at a private health clinic here, special perks helped clinch the deal: free German lessons, five weeks of vacation, and a range of plastic-surgery options, including complimentary silicone-enhanced breasts.

“I would rather have plastic surgery than a free car,” said Ms. Kalivodova.

Her reasoning is a model of altruism:

“I feel better when I look in the mirror,” she added. “We were always taught that if a nurse is nice, intelligent, loves her work and looks attractive, then patients will recover faster.”

(To be fair, the story notes that this scheme has had significant criticism within the country.)

Peter Kennedy alert

Australian Story tonight is about soon to be ex-priest (well, I bet that's the outcome anyway) Peter Kennedy of St Mary's South Brisbane "parish in exile" notoriety.

His previous media appearances have left me puzzled as to why he appears to be viewed as somewhat charismatic by his followers. We'll see how he comes across tonight.

Meanwhile, in this week's homily from his fellow renegade priest Terry Fitzpatrick, we have these comments about how priestly doubt is, seemingly, virtuous:

Jesus' bodily rising into heaven is an item of faith that the institutional church wants us to believe was an event that actually took place. If you do as the Christian tourist of Jerusalem they will take you to the place just outside of the Old Jerusalem where they claim Jesus bodily disappeared into the clouds and then hurtling, one presumes, through space in a journey to "heaven". Scientists tell us that traveling at the speed of light the body would still be somewhere on the outer reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy.

It is almost unbelievable that we are required, in an age of scientific understanding to submit our intellects to a literal belief in a bodily resurrection and ascension of Jesus into heaven....

The impertinence of certainty was brought out clearly for me just recently with two interviews which were on the radio. The first was on the Richard Vidler program when Peter Kennedy was asked by Richard about his views on heaven and hell and Peter's response was summed up by him saying he was not really sure about what he believed, or how he could articulate what he now believed, it was all very incredibly mysterious this life we are emerged in. The following day Archbishop Bathersby was interviewed on the Madonna King show and when asked about what he believed about heaven and hell, he said he had never been more certain and about heaven or hell.

I've always quite liked the ascension: it has a certain dramatic flair that seems very apt. As I recall, Jesus disappeared into the clouds. What happened there, by way of how the destination of heaven was reached, is left open: it seems more than a bit disingenuous of Fitzpatrick to talk of Jesus bodily soaring through the galaxy. (I know people say that Jesus' followers thought heaven was just beyond the crystal sphere that is the sky. However, I am not sure how we know that with absolute certainty.)

Seems to me that Kennedy, Fitzpatrick and some undefined proportion of their followers are cultural Catholics only: in all other respects, they have at least two ready made churches to which they could belong: liberal Anglicanism or the Reformed Catholic Church (which could really do with more professional website design.)

Update: while we're talking bodily levitation, I assume that Terry Fitzpatrick takes the Mitchell side of this exchange on the topic.

Update 2: What's happened to the link to Fitzpatrick's homily? It's not working now.

Anyway, I note that in this post (which linked to his homily) they have a link to a review of a new book by Richard Holloway, who I see (via Andrew Bolt's blog) is heading to Australia for the Sydney Writers Festival. He is an ex bishop who, as the Sydney Morning Herald reports " still preaches from the pulpit, performs baptisms and weddings and even presides at communion", yet describes himself as a "Christian agnostic".

As I say, Kennedy and Fitzpatrick (and their congregation) are perfect matches for liberal Anglicanism.

Update 3: I had many interruptions while trying to watch the show last night, and it's not yet available on the Australian Story website. I did notice lots of attention given to Terry Fitzpatrick being a nice father to his son. It was all a very soft treatment of Kennedy, from what I could tell, but that's pretty typical of Australian Story generally.

Update 4: gosh, I find myself agreeing with Mark Bahnisch who writes of last night's show:

It must also be said that the show approached the genre of hagiography, and was full of half-truths at best. Unfortunately, Australian Story generally appears to be an outlet for PR spin, under the guise of human interest, and almost every episode, really, is quite an indictment of what the ABC should be about…

No need to post now

Rudd on the turn? | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

I was going to do a short post saying the same thing: yesterday's edition of Insiders was remarkable for the uniformity of the criticism of Rudd's political "spin" style. Even David Marr got in the act, and Andrew Bolt wasn't there to be in furious agreement with him.

But on another minor point: has anyone else noticed how our PM, when talking "off the cuff" to a camera crew, seems to often studiously look down, and does not make much eye contact with the camera? You can see it at the 48 second mark of this clip from last week. I am sure some body language expert could make something out of that, but personally, I think it looks better to look at who you are talking to. It's a wonder his spin team haven't got him to stop doing it.

Sure to impress Tim

Australian film wins Cannes first film prize - smh.com.au

Tim really, really did not like this film, and cannot understand the critical reaction. So, naturally, it won something at Cannes.

Quality TV

Around The World In 20 Years - TV Reviews - smh.com.au

Michael Palin's re-visit of Dubai and India, shown here on the ABC last night, seemed particularly enjoyable. ( I see that it was on in the UK at the end of last year.)

I particularly liked:

* the Indian pants washing that was (allegedly) superb at removing stains, but seemed to mean you would have to replace the buttons every time;

* the surprise that they still build substantial dhow-like boats in a part of India with wood from Malaysia. (I assume wood from Malaysia is still relatively cheap.)

* the swing chair in the Taj Mahal hotel. (I wonder if the room survived the terrorist attack.)

For those who care..

I did spot the space shuttle on Friday evening, after all. (I had forgotten how significantly less bright it is compared to the International Space Station.)

Git along, (really) little doggies

Farms downsize with miniature cows - Los Angeles Times

Miniature cows really do seem to make sense, and not just for those looking for innovative ways to grow their own food in the backyard:

Their miniature Herefords consume about half that of a full-sized cow yet produce 50% to 75% of the rib-eyes and fillets, according to researchers and budget-conscious farmers.

"We get more sirloin and less soup bone," Ali said. "People used to look at them and laugh. Now, they want to own them."

In the last few years, ranchers across the country have been snapping up mini Hereford and Angus calves that fit in a person's lap. Farmers who raise mini Jerseys brag how each animal provides 2 to 3 gallons of milk a day, though they complain about having to crouch down on their knees to reach the udders.

Talking mussels

The Minimalist - ‘Un-Frenching’ Mussels - NYTimes.com

The New York Times runs a recipe for "Southeast Asian Mussel Salad". I'm not convinced: I'm a big fan of mussels, but even so I don't think they look attractive outside of their shell, and so resist recipes that involve them naked, so to speak.

As it happens, here at Opinion Dominion HQ, we ate them on Friday night. One thing that puzzles me a bit is how cheap they now are. In Brisbane, they are sold in 1 kg plastic packets from either South Australia or Victoria. Even at an expensive fish shop, this costs around $11 to $12. The ones we ate on Friday were from the dirt cheap Vietnamese fish shop not far from where we live, and cost $7.00!

I don't know what the mark up would be, but that just seems to me to be extraordinarily cheap for a farmed product that has to be grown in the ocean, fished out of the sea, sorted, packed, and transported in a refrigerated truck for 1,000 or so kilometres to meet their fate in some white wine, garlic and breadcrumbs.

Now that I am on the topic, Sydney rock oysters have been very cheap for a very long time too, even from the expensive fish shops. (Mind you, they often are very small.)

I can only assume that being a shellfish farmer is not an instant way to riches.

More muddled private lives of the rich and famous

Oh God, I wanted her to die - Times Online

This is interesting summary of David Niven's unhappy second marriage. Mind you, he has to take some responsibility for her alcoholism as it seems to have been pretty much a response to his being a philanderer of (apparently) the highest order.

Interesting twist: his wife claimed to have had a "quickie" with President Kennedy in the White House.

And in associated news: a young aide (aged 19!) who had an 18 month relationship with JFK is finally writing a book about it.

That cat

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Daily/Colbert - Keyboard Cat
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Don't believe it

In The Australian today, they extract some Tarantino love from The Times:

QUENTIN Tarantino swaggered back to the scene of his greatest triumph yesterday with a World War II revenge film that critics at the Cannes film festival greeted with relief and cheers. Innglourious Basterds, set in Nazi-occupied France, is a violent, occasionally funny love letter to cinema filmed in four languages and starring Brad Pitt.

Yet, as I can't stand Quentin Tarantino and his movies, I have been taking an interest in critical reaction. A Los Angeles Times blog (and that paper, if any, should have a reliable take on movie critics) notes that the film is being "spun" heavily, and the biggest critics are not so impressed:

...a highlight from the [The Guardian's] Peter Bradshaw review: "Quentin Tarantino's cod-WW2 schlocker about a Jewish-American revenge squad intent on killing Nazis in German-occupied France is awful. It is achtung-achtung-ach-mein-Gott atrocious."

The reviews keep coming in from all media outposts, with Variety mixed, the Hollywood Reporter largely negative and Time magazine's Richard and Mary Corliss declaring the movie "a misfire." My colleague Ken Turan, who was also at the screening, calls the film a "self-indulgent piece of violent alternate history."

Even the positive reviews in a few English papers have parts that indicate reservations that have perhaps been overcome as a result of the reviewer being a bit too excited at being in Cannes. For example, in The Independent it gets 4 stars but these comments:

The way the Germans are drawn is so broad that it makes the characterisations in Allo, Allo! seem restrained....

The violence is often extreme – the Jewish Nazi hunters have a habit of scalping their victims; one hunter likes to batter in his antagonist's head with a baseball bat; and a shoot-out in an underground bar is sheer bloody carnage – but it comes in bursts and has a comic book element about it.

Some will be offended, although it's hard to get too upset about a film made with such geekish enthusiasm.

And in The Times review (also giving it 4 stars) is this:

What’s difficult to square is the occasional Springtime for Hitler scenes, featuring an apoplectic Führer, with the darker corners of the film. The almost casual savagery perpetrated by Pitt and his German rival can occasionally look unnervingly out of place next to the lighter Mel Brooks-style moments.

Interestingly, in the comments that follow The Times review, there are many people wondering why reviewers seem to be in love with Tarantino. For example:

Despite what most critics will say about this, people are sick of Tarantino's formula of 1970's cultural references, inane dialogue about superheroes or old TV shows, gratuitous over-the-top violence, and ideas ripped off from Sergio Leone. He tries way too hard to be "cool", and it's annoying.

I am feeling reasonable satisfied there is enough negative talk out there (even within the positive reviews) that this film will not be seen as a critical or even commercial success.

(Although, sad to say, Tarantino fan boys will probably buy enough DVDs to let him make another movie.)

Playing along with "tag"

As if this blog didn't already have enough random thoughts spread liberally throughout, Saint has tagged me for a "8 random things about me" thing-ee.

I guess I should feel honoured that, after 4 years of blogging, someone finally tagged me for something. Who knows, that long awaited $100,000 payment for posting some information that has changed some rich eccentric's life may soon be on its way too. (See that Paypal button? I don't even know if it works.)

Anyhoo, as they say in the classics:

1. I had my appendix out at about age 8. As a result, I knew that nurses shouldn't let a drip empty so that air gets into your vein, as (so I was told) you could die from an air bubble in your blood stream. Which leads to:

2. A couple of years later, while on holiday one Christmas in a country town in Victoria, I got a bout of gastro and was taken to a very doddery old doctor. He decided to give me an injection to quell the vomiting. When filling the syringe, I could see that he had sucked up some air along with the medicine from the ampoule. I expected him to invert the needle and squeeze the air out, as I had seen doctors and nurses always do, and which I understood to be rather important due to the potentially fatal result of injecting someone with air.

He didn't. He just took my arm and gave me the injection, air and all. OK, it wasn't a huge amount of air, but he emptied the syringe, including the bubbly bits at the end.

It seemed to me that there was a distinct possibility that I was about to die, and in a pretty pathetic sort of way if it was due to the simple carelessness of a doctor who should have retired 10 years earlier. I didn't say anything, and left the surgery, whereupon my my mother asked me if I was alright. She said that as soon as I had the injection, I had gone a ghastly shade of pale, and injections had never been a bother to me before.

I explained the story to her. She understood my shock, but after sitting down and still being alive 10 minutes later, it seemed my brush with death would pass.

However, I still occasionally wonder if there is a bubble lurking in me somewhere.

3. I highly recommend Victorinox steak knives. A sharper steak knife surely does not exist.

4. As a young adult I once got sick on home made Harvey Wallbangers. Last time I checked, I still feel queasy at the smell of Galliano.

5. I have eaten fish sperm (well, fish seminal vessels, to be precise.) Hey it was in Japan, OK?

6. The most famous person I have ever been physically close to in real life: probably Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, in the bookshop at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. (I think he worked at the Museum at the time.)

7. I once landed in a glider while accidentally leaving the landing gear up. (I lost interest in learning how to fly them soon after that.)

8. After getting over the shock of having Sister Lawrence (the scariest Irish nun in the school) as my Grade 1 and Grade 2 teacher, I was routinely pretty well behaved in school. But in (I think) Grade 4, we had a new lay teacher, who on the first day mis-interpretted something I did and instantly decided I was in fact a trouble maker. No, no, no, I tried to say: I am one of the good boys. The injustice and novelty of the situation did not last long: within a week she was hit by a bus on the way to school and died.

Maybe this is why, ever since, I have felt all of my opinions are directly vindicated by God.*

I suspect anyone I want to tag has probably already done this. Caz?

* a not entirely serious suggestion.

Rain

It started raining in the western suburbs of Brisbane last night at around 7.30. It was light to moderate intensity, and didn't stop all night.

But this morning, it has become heavier and heavier. It's 2.30pm now, and after a slight easing and lightening of the sky, it seems to have just re-started with renewed intensity. (Mind you, weather radar indicates it has stopped for a few hours north of the city.)

Rainfall totals around here for the last 24 hours are going to be phenomenal.

UPDATE: Well, glad that's over. It's Thursday morning, the sun is (nearly) out and rain has stopped after another solid drenching last night.

The good thing about it: if your house didn't get water inside during that event, it never will. (Save for wind blowing the roof off, of course.) Many parts of Brisbane had 200 - 300 mm of rain over 24 - 48 hours:


(Remember, this only shows one 24 hour period to this morning.)

Dam levels are up to 72% (yay) after being down to about 16% a couple of years ago.

My house is OK, except the phone is cut. Water in a Telstra pit somewhere, no doubt.

Someone who works at my office is an hour late to work, stuck in traffic somewhere. (A lot of roads are still cut this morning.) I think she's also had no power at home since yesterday afternoon.

Anyhow, work will be busy, I can't get onto the internet at home. Blogging will be light for a little while.

Lie down to lose weight

Sleep May Be Factor In Weight Control

Here's another study suggesting that there is a connection between inadequate sleep and weight gain. It has some surprises:

"When we analyzed our data by splitting our subjects into 'short sleepers' and 'long sleepers,' we found that short sleepers tended to have a higher BMI, 28.3 kg/m2, compared to long sleepers, who had an average BMI of 24.5. Short sleepers also had lower sleep efficiency, experienced as greater difficulty getting to sleep and staying asleep," said lead investigator Arn Eliasson, M.D.

Surprisingly, overweight individuals tended to be more active than their normal weight counterparts, taking significantly more steps than normal weight individuals: 14,000 compared to 11,300, a nearly 25 percent difference, and expending nearly 1,000 more calories a day—3,064 versus 2,080.

However, those additional energy expenditures did not manifest in reduced weight.

Go to sleep and lose some weight. I guess you could call it the Garfield Plan for weight loss.

Religion and violence

'Religious violence' a small part of the story

Dr John Dickson argues against the claim that religion causes violence, from the Christian perspective. It's not a bad essay.

But the main reason it is worth a post is because of some of the, shall we say, more than slightly antagonistic comments in response. For example, "No guy" writes:

Sorry "Doctor", bet you are a theist, therefor your reasoning is based on faith, which makes no sense, as reason and faith a polar opposites. Therefor everything you've said in this article is null and void because you believe in an invisible magical man in the sky. So all the effort you've put into writing this article is wasted. You are a religious person, therefor anything you say can not be trusted, because you blatantly and ignorantly refuse to think logically, with reason, and instead rely on faith, or an absence of reason.

Well, argument over then.

And Elizabeth S:

You believe you can only justify love and compassion because some celestial dictator has told you to do so or because only he/she/it can imbue value in the world??? What a creepy worldview.

(Elisabeth does raise an old philosophical question, it must be admitted, but it deserves more thought than dismissal as "creepy".)

There is certainly an aggressiveness in the new style atheism, isn't there?

An unusual suggestion

Is Everything Made of Mini Black Holes?

These guys suggest that the LHC may indeed make mini black holes, but they might behave exactly as "normal" sub atomic particles.

The suggestion has been made before that evaporating black holes may leave a "remnant", the exact nature of which seemed to be left rather vague, but I'm pretty sure it has been said that they may just look like an electron.

The difference in this paper is that they propose a different theoretical basis by which the LHC may create mini black holes in the first place. (Not via tiny extra dimension, which has been the idea behind existing speculation on the LHC creating mini black holes.)

If the new theory is true, I would assume it must have major cosmological implications. That's not really covered in the paper, I don't think, but maybe such further speculation will come soon.

Meanwhile, we may all have black holes in our brains.

Really?

Technology Review: TR10: Traveling-Wave Reactor

Technology Review has a short article about a proposed new reactor design that sounds almost too good to be true:

As it runs, the core in a traveling-­wave reactor gradually converts nonfissile material into the fuel it needs. Nuclear reactors based on such designs "theoretically could run for a couple of hundred years" without refueling, says John G­illeland, manager of nuclear programs at Intellectual Ventures.

Gilleland's aim is to run a nuclear reactor on what is now waste.

...the traveling-wave reactor needs only a thin layer of enriched U-235. Most of the core is U-238, millions of pounds of which are stockpiled around the world as leftovers from natural uranium after the U-235 has been scavenged. The design provides "the simplest possible fuel cycle," says Charles W. Forsberg, executive director of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Project at MIT, "and it requires only one uranium enrichment plant per planet."

I wonder how you stop the reaction, though...