The toughest job

Readers will recall that I am making my way through the surprisingly enjoyable book "Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome". This weekend, it was the chapter about slavery, and I have to say that I did not realise that things could be as tough as this:

"They were bound to promote their master's welfare at every turn, because there was no limit to the punishment which he could inflict on them if he was dissatisfied; and they were encouraged to preserve his life by the strongest of all imaginable deterrents; if he was murdered, the whole of his slave-household were put to death without even the formality of a trial, on the grounds that, since they had not prevented the murder as they should have done, they were all accessories after the crime. ...

In AD 61, stung by a personal grievance, a slave of the City Prefect Pedanius Secundus killed his master; the whole vast slave household of four hundred slaves was executed..."

The book points out that this prompted a riot in Rome (people were by this time starting to think the law was - literally, I suppose - a bit of an overkill), and that:

"...despite C. Cassius' eloquent protest that society would collapse if the slaves were not killed, a number of senators had doubts and troops had to be fetched in before the executions could take place."

Talk about your hard nosed conservatives!

Things did improve later for slaves, with Hadrian restricting those who could be killed to those slaves near their murdered master at the time of his death.

But the book also makes the point that well treated slaves were often very loyal to their master.

By the time of Christianity, despite the church institutionally accepting slavery, individual Christians often, at the moment of their conversion, freed their slaves. A good way to mark a conversion, I think.

Look to the skies

Consulting with clouds: A clear role in climate change

Interesting story on new research on clouds and their likely future role in global warming. The news doesn't sound great:

Using observational data collected over the last 50 years and complex climate models, the team has established that low-level stratiform clouds appear to dissipate as the ocean warms, indicating that changes in these clouds may enhance the warming of the planet.

Furthermore, this is something that a lot of current models don't show this, apparently:

...most of the state-of-the-art climate models from modeling centers around the world do not reproduce this cloud behavior. Only one, the Hadley Centre model from the U.K. Met Office, was able to reproduce the observations. "We have a long way to go in getting the models right, but the Hadley Centre model results can help point us in the right direction," said co-author Burgman, a research scientist at the University of Miami.

Together, the observations and the Hadley Centre model results provide evidence that low-level stratiform clouds, which currently shield the earth from the sun's radiation, may dissipate in warming climates, allowing the oceans to further heat up, which would then cause more cloud dissipation.

Presumably, poor modelling of cloud behaviour could have something to do with the recently reported study that CO2 alone did not account for anywhere near enough warming at PETM, 55 million years ago. Skeptics took the uncertainty from that study as encouragement. People like me took as more of a sign that we should be uneasy that warming from CO2 could be at the high end of the current estimates due to poorly unstood feedbacks.

Really necessary?

BBC NEWS | Technology | Wireless power system shown off

This wireless electricity technology that's been talked about from time to time looks ready to actually take off.

I don't quite understand why it has appeal: sure, you can do with a few less electricity cables around the house, but get to have many more magnetic fields too.

They are saying magnetic fields are not dangerous to humans. I don't know enough about biology to know, but I would have thought most people would take a cautious attitude towards it.

Besides, I thought magnetised iron had been found not only in bird brains, but human too? (Yep, my memory is correct.) Maybe people who use this system will become completely hopeless at sensing direction (since magnetite in birds was believed to be related to their navigation skills.)

Wasn't there was a Heinlein short story (or novella?) in which the health of the human species was being weakened gradually by wireless power system?

You heard this caution here first, or last, or somewhere in between.

Research for the future

Experiments Show 'Artificial Gravity' Can Prevent Muscle Loss In Space

....researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have conducted the first human experiments using a device intended to counteract this effect — a NASA centrifuge that spins a test subject with his or her feet outward 30 times a minute, creating an effect similar to standing against a force two and half times that of gravity. Working with volunteers kept in bed for three weeks to simulate zero-gravity conditions, they found that just one hour a day on the centrifuge was sufficient to restore muscle synthesis.

One of the interesting things about long term colonies on the Moon or Mars would be whether the people (or especially, a baby conceived in low gravity) would weaken sufficiently so as to find it impossible to return to Earth.

Maybe just low gravity is enough to provide sufficient muscle tone, but no one will know until we can go there. I imagine mouse or rat breeding on the Moon would be a very interesting experiment.

There was a made-for-TV movie I half watched a few years ago about a Helium 3 mining colony on the moon. In it, a woman fell pregnant, but was spending some time each day in a centrifuge type device to make sure the foetus was used to higher gravity. (I think she was returning to earth to actually give birth.)

It may turn out to have been quite accurate.

Reality fat, and comedy woes

Next on TV: A family of 300-plus folks, heavy girlfriends and, yes, Ruby

Disturbing news of new American reality TV concept:

TLC has ordered six episodes of a show titled, "One Big Happy Family," chronicling the life of an obese North Carolina family: dad, 340 pounds; mom, nearly 400 pounds; and two teenagers, 330 and 340 pounds each.

There's also a overweight dating show on Fox.

Will this trend soon be on Australian TV? Was "The Biggest Loser" an imported concept?

It's all academic to me, I guess, since I don't think there has ever been a reality TV show that I have been able to watch for more than 10 minutes.

The only problem is that surely "reality TV" draws resources away from worthwhile drama, comedy, and other creativity in TV. I mean, with the demise of Scrubs, there is not a sitcom worth watching. (Maybe 30 Rock, which I have never seen due to its odd scheduling here.)

As for the current alleged successes in TV comedy:

Two and a Half Men: a half-clever concept (playing on Charlie Sheen's real life playboy image,) but humour based on wildly promiscuous lifestyles wear thin after a very short time if that is the only joke that exists about a major character. (Having it as a raison d'etre of a more minor character is fine - the whole show doesn't revolve around them.) So I can't warm to this show, and always feel a little queasy when young actors are partaking in double entendre and other low brow humour.

How I Met your Mother: can't get into it. Seems weak and convoluted.

State of the Union: not a sitcom, but Tracey Ullman's latest sketch show. I've always thought she is very talented, with shows that feature a pretty appealing eccentricity. But - she's got too much control now, it seems, and the language and some of the skits are in very poor taste. (We don't really need jokes about ejaculate in a woman passenger's hair, do we?)

The Chaser's War on Everything: haven't cared much for it for a long time, due to its inability to know where to draw the lines between clever, stupid and tasteless. Should have ended about midway last season.

Wind problem for Great Britain

Wind power plan blown off course

The Government was facing a growing credibility gap over green jobs last night as environmental campaigners and trade unionists united to fight the closure of Britain's sole major wind turbine plant.

Only last week, ministers proclaimed a green employment future for the UK involving 400,000 jobs in environmental industries such as renewable energy – yet this week they are declining to intervene over the forthcoming closure of the Vestas Wind Systems plant on the Isle of Wight, with nearly 600 redundancies.

Mars within reach (eventually)

Ion engine could one day power 39-day trips to Mars - New Scientist

Ahem. If people want an idea of what it's like to have been a space enthusiast for the last 43 years, I can tell you that I remember in primary school I once gave a short "topic talk" on the promise of ion engines. This was based on a very detailed book at the local library (in the kid's section, mind you) about the future of space technology. I can still kind of remember the look of the book.

I also remember coming up with a detail about ion rockets which was a bit of a guess, but years later I read something that indicated it was correct.

Mind you, I don't remember anyone in the class room being particularly impressed. I think the teacher's reaction was one of half interested approval, but for all I know she may have thought it was all science fiction.

So, 40 years later the idea is still being talked about as a possibility, and work on them continues at a very slow pace.

Maybe my grandchildren will take a cruise to Mars on a ion rocket, and on the way read this digital evidence of my foresight (and high self regard.)

Travel warning for all male Goth readers

Gulfnews: Sharjah police enforce old law against men wearing accessories

Thirteen-year-old Mohammad was with a group of friends in Al Qasba area when he was reportedly approached by a police officer and taken to the police headquarters. His silver necklace had to go.

Another resident, Jeril Jaison Varghese, says he was in front of the Multiplex in Mega Mall to watch a movie when a CID officer asked him for his identification.

"I was taken to the Sharjah Police office inside the mall by a security guy from the mall. My silver bracelet was confiscated by the CID," he said.

When Varghese asked why his bracelet was being taken away, he says, police said men are not allowed to wear bracelets or any fashion accessories in Sharjah malls even if it is silver and not gold.

Mohammad from Sudan said his 18-year old nephew who came from Abu Dhabi to visit his grandmother in Sharjah was taken last week to the headquarters for wearing a silver necklace.

"The boy was afraid. He was standing in front of his grandmother's house when police took him to the CID. After three hours he contacted us," said Mohammad. Residents said Sharjah authorities should inform people who wish to come here that men must not wear fashion accessories.

Diamond earrings, silver bracelets and necklaces are all verboten for men by law in this corner of the Middle East. Pity that most teenagers don't read the newspaper and don't know about an 8 year old law that they have suddenly decided to enforce. (Pity about tourists too.)

How nice can you make a box?

House in Nagoya by Suppose Design Office

This small house in Nagoya looks almost like an oversized shipping container on the outside, but inside it's really very nice.

One obvious issue though: as many people in comments observe, is it really a good idea to have the toilet separated from the dining room only by glass? Talk about your shy bladders. Maybe when that internal plant grows bigger, you can literally go "behind the bushes" without ever leaving the house.

Someone in comments thinks they can see a curtain rail in the bathroom ceiling, so maybe there is a chance of privacy.

The other practical issues I can see with this design are:

* in summer, so many skylights present a real heat problem, surely.

* with so much internal glass, the owner's had better like having to wiping huge areas with Windex every week.

* it has a fairly typical designer's (and Japanese) disdain for safety about heights. No rails on the stairs, open windows on the upper level overlooking the internal garden. It's like a death trap for small children and drunks. (A very elegant one, but a death trap all the same.)

Fish up, red meat down

Large Study Points to the Brain Benefits of Eating Fish

The study, which included 15,000 people ages 65 and older in China, India, Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Peru and the Dominican Republic, found that those who ate fish nearly every day were almost 20 percent less likely to develop dementia than those who ate fish just a few days a week. Adults who ate fish a few days a week were almost 20 percent less likely to develop dementia than those who ate no fish at all.

“There is a gradient effect, so the more fish you eat, the less likely you are to get dementia,” said Dr. Emiliano Albanese, a clinical epidemiologist at King’s College London and the senior author of the study. “Exactly the opposite is true for meat,” he added. “The more meat you eat, the more likely you are to have dementia.” Other studies have shown that red meat in particular may be bad for the brain.

The story, however, notes that this was an observational study, not a randomized clinical trial, so maybe the figures are not as reliable as they could be.

If they believe it is the Omega 3 that is the protective element, is it so hard to do the proper randomized trial on that as a supplement? Or has it already been done?

Well, that just took a quick Google to find that some studies have been done with Omega 3 as a supplement, and the results are very mixed. (Although it looks to me like the studies were done on people who already have a problem. I guess it is very hard to randomly pick a bunch of 60 year olds, get them to take a supplement for years, and see what protective effect it has.)

Back to the drawing board

Death knell for NASA's Ares rockets? - New Scientist

Quite a detailed explanation here of a major safety issue for the planned Ares rocket. (It's very hard to work out how to get the crew safely away from an exploding first stage.)

Update: I see Zoe Brain had a good post about this before me, which included a very spectacular video of a solid rocket explosion that is well worth watching.

Good sense

PM Kevin Rudd told nuclear is best hope by Rio Tinto | The Australian

MINING giant Rio Tinto has urged Kevin Rudd to immediately begin work on a regulatory regime allowing use of nuclear energy in Australia, arguing the viability of energy alternatives has been dramatically overstated.

The company has advised the government to consider "every option" for power generation because its pledges on reducing carbon emissions and using renewable energy will expose industry and consumers to huge increases in their power bills.

And it says that overly optimistic assumptions on the viability of alternatives such as wind and geothermal power, as well as so-called clean coal technologies, have created a "false optimism" which the government must challenge by commissioning new research.

Of course, the first challenge is to get the Labor Party to change its anti nuclear policy:

....Resources Minister Martin Ferguson emphatically rejected the need for nuclear power generation in Australia, insisting that the nation had ample resources of cheap coal and gas to meet its energy needs.

Mr Ferguson told The Australian he saw no reason for next week's federal Labor Party conference to review the party's prohibition on nuclear energy.

I can't imagine Labor changing its policy any time soon, and even if it did, election predictions on Insiders last week were that the Greens will hold the balance of power in the Senate next time, whether or not there is a double dissolution.

The Greens will doom us if the Senate's co-operation is needed to ensure nuclear power. (I presume it is for the new "regulatory regime".)

Vote Coalition for sensible long term nuclear policy!

Liddle on Dubai

Sordid reality behind Dubai's gilded facade - Times Online

First it was The Independent, now the Times has run a lengthy, detailed article absolutely ripping into Dubai.

It's by Ron Liddle, so there is humour in there too, but he is clearly genuinely appalled at every aspect of the place.

Liddle makes it clear that the most offensive thing is that it is built by appalling treated immigrant labour, about which he writes:

The Indians rioted too last year, but were forced back to work by water cannon. In the year 2005 alone, the Indian consulate estimated that 971 of its nationals died in Dubai, from construction site accidents, heat exhaustion and — increasingly — suicide. The figure for suicides the next year alone was more than 100. The Emiratis were, to give them credit, appalled by this figure, so they asked the consulate to stop collating the statistics.

The whole article is worth reading.

Convenient memory lapse

Neighbour watches woman prepare syringes in front of children: inquest

The neighbour of a Sydney woman whose child died of a methadone overdose told police he watched her prepare syringes full of amphetamines in front of her children on several occasions, an inquest has heard....

In the statement, taken in May 2006, the man - who cannot be named for legal reasons - described being at the woman's home on five occasions sharing $100 worth of amphetamines with her partner and his own partner.

"I have seen [the woman] divide the powdered drugs up and melt her half in a spoon and then put it into two separate syringes. This all occurred in [her] home," the man said in his statement.

"I remember seeing both the two girls running around the house when we used to divide the drugs up."

The man said he often saw "lots" of syringes around the family's home.

But before the coroner today:

...the man could not recall much of what he said in his statement and said he did not know why he had said it.

"Compared to other kids, they were excellent ... always well dressed," he said.

"[The boy] was always smiling.

Drug users are such a likeable bunch.

More lunar comments, and why humanity should expand

* Last night I saw some of the 2007 doco (previously noted on this blog) "In the Shadow of the Moon" about the Apollo program. (It's currently showing on a Foxtel movie channel.) It is very, very good. I see that the DVD version has lots of worthwhile extras. Go on - some reader finally reward me, you cheap freeloaders. :-P

* How come it's now that everyone thinks it's all interesting and heroic? Is it because of a realisation that the manned space program being stuck in orbit for the last few decades is kind of dull by comparison? You fickle public - I've been wanting NASA to go back to the Moon for 30 years, so my retirement cave could be built by now. But no, you wanted to twiddle around on earth, waiting for the next asteroid to take out civilisation.

* Warning: religious speculation and sentiment follows: Actually, I do want to talk more about that last point. It seems to me that to a significant extent, some versions of Christian (and probably Islamic, or even Buddhist) faith act as something of a hindrance to the idea of humanity expanding beyond earth. I don't share the view, and want to explain why.

As far as general anti-science sentiment is concerned, I find it hard to understand why conservative Christians seem to be strongly associated with disbelief of Anthropogenic Global Warming (or ocean acidification): do they just have faith that the Second Coming will happen before people can really stuff up the planet?

Actually, a lot of them resist AGW because of their perception of the environmentalist movement as a replacement religion for the one true religion. I used to pretty much agree with that assessment, and it annoyed me that the Greenies were against space programs and tended to be anti-science and development generally. (The Deep Greens are just anti-people.) But now, I don't see how anyone can plausibly claim that climate scientists as a group are motivated by such quasi-religious views. There are too many who have come to the same opinion; some may have a prior philosophical bent towards being "treehuggers", but it's more plausible to believe that most are actually quite fond of technology, people, and high living standards. Even if they are recommending big changes to the way we use resources, I doubt that many are motivated by valuing nature more than humanity.

On the other hand, environmentalists have seemingly become a bit more sanguine about the practically implausible idea of ever being able to eradicate poverty in every corner of the Earth before you can justify doing something off it.

If anything, the threat of AGW is turning sensible environmentalists into technology fans - especially when it comes to nuclear power. Is it too much to hope that we might also see soon environmentalists warming to the idea of lunar colonies as a lifeboat for the survival of humanity and its knowledge? This function of space exploration is, in my view, actually quite a sound immediate justification. It's also why I think it is rather a waste to go to Mars in the short term, especially if you can find ice on the Moon. Nothing's ever going to be able to come back from the Red Planet in a hurry.

Christian religious ideas can intrude into other scientifically plausible plans for humanity's protection. Once, I was talking to someone about the merits of asteroid watch programs, so that plans could be made to push them out of the way before they can hit the earth. The response (from a not overly devote Catholic) was "But maybe it's God's plan that the earth be hit."

Of course, sensible people don't say that any more about a deadly disease that we can vaccinate against, but when it comes to space projects, I think the sentiment is not that uncommon. It just seems that when the scale of a project becomes very large, it's easy to slip into fatalist mode. If the person is religious, that may entail the idea of not resisting a divine plan.

As for some Christian views about the colonization of space, I suspect there is also skepticism that this is where the future lies due to a limited imagination for the Second Coming. This may be a particular issue for evangelical Protestants, but I also suspect conservative Catholics have this influence.

The thing is, some believers feel that it must only be a earth-bound event. It's been painted that way in popular fictional works in American Protestanism in particular. But even so, my sister made speculative comments to me years ago that maybe it would only involve the earth, and that the rest of the universe would continue. (Indeed, she said that maybe heaven was on another planet. The Mormons are inclined to think that way, but I was surprised to hear it from a Catholic.)

Well, for my part, I have always assumed that the Christian view of the end of the world involves the entire universe. The very fabric of reality would change entirely, not just a single planet. Maybe if you believe in a "steady state" universe, the idea of being able to live for eternity as a resurrected person within the universe we see is half-way plausible. But if you believe (as everyone virtually does now) in an evolving universe that will end in either fire or ice, I don't see how you can believe in just a local transformation.

(By the way, a change to the quantum vacuum energy state does to allow for a possible way for the entire universe to flip into something very different. I like to speculate that a resurrected body in a universe with very different physics may have a chance of avoiding the decay and calamities of normal matter in this universe. But really, I tend much more towards the idea of eternal heaven being extra-dimensional, or in a divine cyber realm, rather than involving any form of dumb matter at all.)

So - maybe it's because I have never believed in a purely planetary Second Coming that I have never had any religious motivation for doubting that God does not care if humanity moves off planet.

Furthermore, there is not a lot of evidence that God takes particular care to preserve humanity from death by natural disaster.

It's one of the odd aspects of faith that believers can realise that the idea of effective prayer raises all sort of philosophical conundrums, yet engage in it anyway as a fundamental part of their faith. (CS Lewis writes well about this.) Similarly, I don't see it as especially problematic that we should indeed hope that it is not within any divine countenance that humanity could be snuffed out by planetary catastrophe, but at the same time take our own collective steps to make sure it doesn't happen.

If you take the Old Testament as a guide, people used to believe that God was not necessarily adverse to instigating widespread destruction, albeit with the possibility of humanity starting afresh. While I would never promote that the idea of the Flood as fact, perhaps it's something of a pity that modern Christians have lost the belief that the entire world could be pretty much destroyed by nature, and instead view God as always being our foolproof protector.

If only all believers could accept that God helps those who help themselves, as the old saying goes, even on the planetary scale. It seems to me to be the sensible way to act, and I don't see the risk of any offence to God. Presumably, He's quite happy to see us out of caves and not being smitten by disease and disaster on as regular a basis as before. Yet He didn't build our cities, hospitals and houses for us, I don't see why it would worry Him if we did it off planet.

It also seems to me that, 60 years ago, at the dawn of the space age, religious figures did not express the type of expansionist skepticism that seems to be around now. CS Lewis, for example, while deeply conservative, read and wrote science fiction, and never to my knowledge expressed views that it would be wrong to explore or live off planet. A few priests in the 1960's might have had sermons about government priorities in spending, but it was not a big feature in my experience. I think there was just an assumption at that time that humans would move outward, and faith would follow. (Ray Bradbury had priests on Mars, and many other writers of the Golden Age of science fiction saw that religion would still be around in the future. I find it an annoying feature of a lot of recent science fiction that so many of its authors have cannot imagine our present religions playing such a role.)

So, it is unfortunate that religion, to some degree at least, can play into the hands of anti-expansionist sentiment that is still strong in some branches of environmentalism. It does not have to be that way.

Stupid fashion of the month

Bleached or shaved eyebrows are now all the rage

Mind you, you can't say that strange ideas as to what looks good with head hair is only a recent phenomena. I have long wondered how on earth the Japanese thought the male top knot with partially shaved pate was a good idea for so long. (And the Japanese certainly have never forgotten that the fashion existed: period dramas featuring it are a perennial feature on NHK TV in particular.)

Happy 40th

Here's some of the more unusual stories around about the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11:

* the Los Angeles Times has a great article on the engineering side of building the Saturn V rocket. It seems it was a remarkably close call that they sorted out all of the engine problems in time, and it's noted that the Russians failed in their competitive attempt due to their engineering failure in overcoming the same problems.

* Edgar Mitchell, a moonwalker from Apollo 14, gives a brief interview about his experience. He's of note because of his (some would say) esoteric interests in ESP, global consciousness, UFO's and such like.

* Those who worked at the NASA Australia radio dishes have been spreading the word that the movie "The Dish" gets the history wrong. The first images of Armstrong stepping out did not come through the radio dish at Parkes:

Some will know the story of the movie 'The Dish' which tells a 'Hollywood-view' of what happened. However, the radio telescope at Parkes was not the dish that provided those first images. In fact those views first came through the NASA station in Goldstone, California, but an incorrect switch setting and poor ground-links meant that their TV picture was upsidedown and poor contrast (although the sound was perfect).

With moments to spare before Armstrong was on the surface, NASA looked to the Parkes Radio Telescope, Tidbinbilla and the Honeysuckle Creek tracking stations. Parkes didn't have a strong signal at the time due to the low position of the Moon above their horizon. Tidbinbilla was supporting the Command Module. Honeysuckle Creek was prime on the Lunar Module with the astronauts on the surface. They had a TV image and this was being transmitted through ABC studios in Sydney to TVs around Australia. NASA saw the feed coming through Honeysuckle and switched over for the international broadcast to their picture - meanwhile the sound for the international broadcast was still coming through Goldstone.

The first 8 minutes of the broadcast including Armstrong's first steps on the Moon were seen through the transmissions received at Honeysuckle Creek. Once the Moon was higher in their sky, the TV picture at Parkes' larger dish were then relayed over to Houston and the remaining 2 hours of the Moonwalk were seen through that antenna.

* According to one report, Neil Armstrong thinks going back to the Moon first is the better choice than planning on going to Mars. I agree. See some of my previous posts here, here and here.

* The Daily Telegraph paints a picture of Armstrong as a recluse who doesn't want anyone knowing who he is. The article gets better, but at the start it makes it sound like he lives in a spooky looking house and the local kids throw stones at "Boo Armstrong". The Independent has a more flattering look at Armstrong and all of the Apollo astronauts.

As for my recollections of the day, I have to make an embarrassing admission. While an avid follower of all things NASA since I was a child, my memory of where exactly I watched Armstrong stepping out has become blurred. This is because some of the time, they set up a TV at school and we watched Apollo 11 stuff in the classroom, but I am also pretty sure that they allowed us home to watch the first footstep there. Certainly, I see other Australians have posted that their school let them go home, so I think I probably watched it in glorious black and white (the only TV that existed in Australia at the time, moon landing or not) at home. I was 8; I guess there isn't a whole lot I can remember specifically about that year.

One would think my memory of this would be clearer, but for years I have realised I do not have as good a recollection as I would have hoped.

Update: the NASA orbiter photos of the Apollo landing sites can all be seen here.

Der Spielgel goes undercover

Pubic Shaving Trend Baffles Experts - SPIEGEL ONLINE

The article notes the shaving industry's promotion of this fashion, with dubious surveys being done for PR purposes, as well as a new issue it is causing for females (dissatisfaction with the external appearance of the region that was formerly not so obvious.)

That second issue was the subject of a (what else) Channel 4 documentary shown on SBS sometime last year.

That cosmetic surgeons should be doing operations to change the appearance of perfectly normal bodies in a region hardly on regular display just reinforce my resolve that, come the revolution (ie, upon my ascension to the position of Benevolent Dictator) that is first profession I would be sending to the Gulag. (At least until they recant and open up as bulk billing General Practitioners in underserviced towns.)

More deep thoughts for a weekend

An interesting sounding paper has turned up on arXiv talking about physicist John Cramer's "Transactional Interpretation" of quantum theory.

Wikipedia has a short entry on the theory, which basically involves the idea of the quantum world being governed by "offer waves" that travel forward in time meeting up with "confirmation waves" that travel backward in time.

The paper talks about the "Quantum Liar Experiment", which has this consequence:

Elitzur and Dolev refer to this as the “quantum liar” experiment because, in their words: “The very fact that one atom is positioned in a place that seems to preclude its interaction with the other atom leads to its being affected by that other atom. This is logically equivalent to the statement: ‘This sentence has never been written.”’

An issue with the transactional interpretation is the nature of the waves. It seems Cramer says they are physical waves, but the author of this new paper has a different take:

Clearly, when we consider experiments like the QLE in the usual conceptual way, we encounter nothing but paradoxes and contradictions, which are always the hallmark of a constraining paradigm. We can break through the impasse by viewing offer and confirmation waves not as ordinary physical waves but rather as “waves of possibility” that have access to a larger physically real space of possibilities.

In the conclusion, it's said:

...TI continues to provide an elegant and natural account of quantum phenomena, provided that we consider offer and confirmation waves as residing in a “higher” physical space corresponding to the configuration space of all particles involved. This space can be considered as a physically real space of possibilities; thus “real” is not equivalent to “actual.” This is admittedly a bold new ontological picture in the context of quantum theory interpretations, but it should be seriously considered because it accomodates the formalism of quantum theory, including its implicit time-symmetric aspects, in a natural way. As a side-benefit, it also provides further insight into the origins of “quantum wholeness.” In this picture, actualized phenomena constitute just the “tip of the iceberg” of a space of physically real possibilities.

What does it all mean? I don't know, but I like the phrase "physically real space of possibilities", becuase I am sure there must be theological fodder in it! (Sounds to me like somewhere God would live.)

What's the hurry?

Doctors split over organ donation switch

DOCTORS are calling for tougher rules on organ donation after a new national protocol said surgeons could start removing organs just two minutes after someone's heart has stopped beating.

While most organ donations in Australia have, until now, involved brain-dead people, a new technique called "donation after cardiac death" has raised legal and ethical questions about what can be done to keep donors' organs viable and who can provide consent for such procedures....

Some doctors have told The Age that they have serious concerns about the protocol, including the minimum time of two minutes between a donor's heart stopping and surgery; the potential for donors to still have feeling during surgery; the risk of ante mortem interventions harming the donor, and what constitutes informed consent for such procedures.