A very late review - Super

Well, now that no one is interested at all in my opinion about the moderately-successful-but- already-culturally-insignificant-after-only-3-years movie, Superman Returns, I'll give it anyway. (The reason being it was on commercial TV last night, and for once I was able to sit down and watch a movie from beginning to end.)

Back in June 2006, I posted a bit of Anthony Lane's review, as his generally cool attitude to the comic book superhero genre seemed to match mine.

But I must say, Superman Returns had more pleasures than I expected: it looked great with an obvious big budget; Kevin Spacey proved to be the best Lex Luthor I can recall; and the lead actor (whose name I can't even recall) did a very good job as Christopher Reeve - I mean, Superman. It was just good to hear John William's theme again too.

As nearly every reviewer noted at the time, the Christ analogy was impossible to miss, although I thought there were other allusions to Superman as mythical figure. His pushing the newly created island-continent thing off the Earth reminded me of Atlas, and the subsequent fall through the sky was a bit like a falling angel.

Yet, this same quasi-divinity had apparently shot off for 5 years without realising he had got Lois Lane pregnant.

Talk about your movie mythology trying to have it both ways: all knowing son and saviour hovering in the sky and rescuing people, but not clever enough to use a condom when he bedded Lois in that Super bed that really needed a firmer mattress. Not only that, he leaves for 5 years to check out if Krypton really had exploded (answer: yes) without apparently giving any prior explanation to his girlfriend. Maybe he left a note she didn't get? I don't think his lack of explanation was ever addressed.

Really, this Superman has trouble with priorities, it seems.

Lois in the meantime had settled for a "safe" boyfriend to help raise her son, while evidently still holding a flame for the absent Super boyfriend.

I thought the movie could have played this troubled modern on/off relationship thing more creatively. We were meant to be sympathetic to the boyfriend, who really doesn't know what's going on, but wouldn't it have been good if Superman discovered he was cheating on Lois? He could then be in some jeopardy and Superman has the opportunity to rescue him. Does Superman rescue the schmuck? Maybe he does, but only on the promise that he (the boyfriend) will be faithful to Lois in the future (but wait a minute - that would prevent or delay Superman's own desired re-union with Lois.)

Maybe Superman could rescue him only if he promises weekend custody of the boy with his real Dad. That would be very Supermodern. Oh, I just thought of another variation - the boyfriend could be having a gay affair - how does the modern superhero movie directed by a gay jewish man deal with that? At the very least, the movie could have been turned into a precautionary tale against unprotected sex - with a tie-in range of branded Super condoms ( advertising by-line "Don't make a Super mistake".)

Ah, I'm just being silly. Even with its somewhat unfortunate modern love triangle and lack of backstory to justify our hero's actions 5 years ago, I had a good enough time with it. I rate it MHSE (mostly harmless, somewhat enjoyable.)

French oyster mystery

Plague strikes French oysters - Telegraph

Something is killing the oysters of France.

Here's something I didn't know:

Last year, France's oyster industry – Europe's largest – was hit by its worst crisis since the native European or "Portuguese" oyster was all but wiped out 30 years ago. Since then almost all oyster farms in Europe have been restocked with the Pacific "creuse" oyster from Japan and British Columbia.

So the oysters I can get from France are exactly the same species as those farmed in much of Australia. (However, I generally go for Sydney Rock oysters over Pacific, as I don't really like the larger size of the latter.)

Foreigners be warned

Pocket knife lands tourist, 74, in lockup | The Japan Times Online

As I love to point out injustice in Dubai, perhaps it's only fair that I also link to a story of the problematic application of justice in Japan:

On July 2 in Shinjuku, a 74-year-old American tourist walked into a police box to ask directions. Inside the koban were an older (senior) officer and his younger (rookie?) colleague.

The American asked where Kinokuniya bookstore was, and the older police officer responded by asking the tourist if he had a pocket knife. The American, being the law-abiding citizen that he is, said "yes" and handed it to the senior officer. After a quick measurement of the blade, the officer arrested the 74-year-old for having a pocket knife 1 cm over the legal limit.

The most shocking part to the story is that a new revision of a law regarding pocket knives was subject to a moratorium until July 5, meaning those possessing knives that violate the new rules had until July 4 to dispose of them! Moreover, two other American tourists were arrested that same day at the same koban.

The conclusion to this man's story was nine days in a holding cell. Welcome to Japan!

It is strange, but in a law abiding and supremely polite place like Japan, it is still generally a good rule of thumb that foreigners should avoid approaching the police (in their neighbourhood bases known as "koban") for assistance unless absolutely necessary.

Eco notes from the Guardian

* Some novelist I haven't heard of goes for a drive in a new model Prius and makes some funny comments. Such as:

The car gently forces you to drive in an environmentally responsible way, and that means you don't have to feel so guilty about the fact you are transporting yourself to buy a pack of decaf tea from Tesco's in three tonnes of hi-tech metal.

* There's an anti-wind power column that makes a good start:

How would you imagine an environmentalist would react when presented with the following proposition? A power company plans to build a new development on a stretch of wild moorland. It will be nearly seven miles long, and consist of 150 structures, each made of steel and mounted on hundreds of tons of concrete. They will be almost 500 feet high, and will be accompanied by 73 miles of road. The development will require the quarrying of 1.5m cubic metres of rock and the cutting out and dumping of up to a million cubic metres of peat.

The answer is that if you are like many modern environmentalists you will support this project without question. You will dismiss anyone who opposes it as a nimby who is probably in the pay of the coal or nuclear lobby, and you will campaign for thousands more like it to be built all over the country.

The project is, of course, a wind farm – or, if we want to be less Orwellian in our terminology, a wind power station.

but then goes off the rails by arguing that technology is never, ever the real answer. Just how far back towards the campfire he wants us to live is not made clear.

* Roger A Pielke Jr has a good column on how CO2 response is still all in the realm of symbolism politics, so realistic goals are subject to somewhat silly criticisms:

Evidence for this claim can be found in the global reaction to the commitment made by the Japanese government last month to reduce emissions by 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. The announcement was met with derision. For instance, Yvo de Boer, head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, expressed shock at Japan's lack of ambition, stating, "I think for the first time in two-and-a-half years in this job, I don't know what to say."

Yet, Pielke notes, it is not as if the Japanese targets will be easy to reach:

To meet its 2020 target, Japan expects to do the following: construct nine new nuclear power plant plants and improve utilized capacity to 80 percent (from 60 percent); build about 34 new wind-power plants producing around 5 million kilowatts; install solar panels on 2.9 million homes (an increase of 2,000 percent over current levels); increase the share of newly built houses satisfying stringent insulation standards from 40 percent today to 80 percent; and increase sales of next-generation vehicles from 4 percent (2005) to 50 percent (2020).

And furthermore, the British target is virtually impossible:

The U.K. targets are a perfect example of what happens when symbols become disconnected from reality. To achieve a 34 percent reduction from 1990 emissions by 2022 while maintaining modest economic growth would require that the U.K. decarbonize its economy to the level of France by about 2016. In more concrete terms, Britain would have to achieve the equivalent of deploying about 30 new nuclear power plants in the next six years, just to get part way to its target. One does not need a degree in nuclear physics to conclude that is just not going to happen.

Towards the end, Pielke makes this point, which I find quite convincing:

...policies focused on targets and timetables for emissions reductions avoid questions about the realism and costs of the steps actually needed to reduce emissions. As Stanford's David Victor explains, "setting binding emission targets through treaties is wrongheaded because it 'forces' governments to do things they don't know how to do. And that puts them in a box, from which they escape using accounting tricks (e.g., offsets) rather than real effort." Until policies focus more directly on improving efficiency and decarbonizing supply, accounting tricks will dominate the policy response, just as occurred in budget policy.

Takeaway innovation

Gulfnews: Food outlets in Dubai safeguard themselves

The Gulf News has been following the story of a couple of kids who died soon after they ate takeaway food from a Chinese restaurant in Dubai.

Yes, those deaths are sad, but it's hard not be a little amused at the innovation this has led to. Yes, it's a case of parachuting in the lawyers, who no doubt helped the disclaimers that some outlets are forcing customers to sign:

"Please note that the Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates takes no responsibility whatsoever for any food or beverage bought from the hotel or any outlets of the hotel for personal consumption.

---

---

"This is due to the fact that the Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates has no more control or any way of ascertaining the safety and hygienic condition of this food and beverage once outside the premises. Please sign the waiver below to indicate your acceptance of the terms stipulated.

"Otherwise the hotel is unable to permit any food or beverage to be purchased," the disclaimer reads.

In another story noted in Gulf News, a Sudanese female journalist is challenging her arrest for wearing trousers in public. Several women were arrested by the "public order police", and "all but three of the women were flogged at a police station two days later."

Mind you, some women turned up in trousers at the court in support of the journalist, so it would appear that there is indeed a Great Trouser Showdown currently taking place in Khartoum.

It's a different world out there.

The problem with Tamiflu

Tamiflu causes sickness and nightmares in children, study finds - Times Online

A total of 103 children took part in the London study, of which 85 were given the drug as a precaution after a classmate received a diagnosis of swine flu. Of those, 45 experienced one or more side-effects. The most common was nausea (29 per cent), followed by stomach pain or cramps (20 per cent) and problems sleeping (12 per cent). Almost one in five had a “neuropsychiatric side-effect”, such as inability to think clearly, nightmares and “behaving strangely”, according to the research, published in Eurosurveillance, a journal of disease....

Health officials in Japan have recommended against prescribing Tamiflu to teenagers over fears it causes a rise in “neuropsychiatric events”. The researchers said that clinical trials had shown that about 20 per cent of adults reported side-effects of either nausea or vomiting after taking Tamiflu.

Something I don't understand ...(part of a never-ending series)

As far as I can make out, the English system of nationalised health services is too "socialist", with too little choice for the average punter. The US system is far too private/profit orientated, and is ridiculously inefficient when you compare money spent with actual health outcomes.

For all of its faults (and you have to assume that there is always going to be someone within every country that is not happy with some aspect of their own system,) the Australian system seems to be in a relatively happy position in the middle of those two extremes.

Does anyone in America recognize this? I certainly haven't heard anyone there going around pointing to us an example of a successful mixed system, with adequate universal cover but a system that allows those on moderate income to chose the level of additional private benefits they want. But it's true, isn't it?

Latest gay accessories

Three cats, two men — and now two babies

....the two dads — who outlaid $40,000 to collect eggs from one woman and rent a womb from another to gestate their babies in a Mumbai fertility clinic, are determined to bring another vexed issue into the public domain.

If they can pay taxes and raise children (one of them is the biological father and on the birth certificate, but they will not identify him publicly), why can’t they be lawfully wed, they argue. Tomorrow, in a bid to focus more attention on the issue of the gay marriage, Mr Elwell and Mr West will dress the little girls in symbolic rainbow coloured woollen hats (their neighbour’s mother knitted the garments for them), and take part in a mass mock wedding ceremony at the top of Collins Street.

Wrong in too many ways to count.

Surprising news items

* Archaeologists in Israel find a first century cup with a clear inscription on it, but it'll be weeks before they understand what it means. Somehow, I expected first century Aramaic would be more easily read.

* A horrifying crime has one less victim than you would expect. (Baby cut from mother is found alive, with the presumably crazy women who decided this was a quick way to experience parenthood.)

* China gives birth to almost enough people for another Australia every year. And has 13 million abortions per year (perhaps more if unregistered clinics were counted.) As far as the top in the rate of abortion, however, Russia still easily holds onto that dubious title. What exactly holds back that country from effective use of contraception?

Colbert interview of the week

OK, so the week's not up yet, but Colbert's interview with Arianna Huffington allowed him to be pretty funny:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Arianna Huffington
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Tasers

Amusing review

The Bleat, Monday, July 27

James Lileks has seen Watchmen at home and didn't like it. A pretty amusing list of reasons why is at the link.

Let's see, maybe the best section is this:

Reminded me of the Dark Knight comics: Reagan was President, which somehow explained why the cities were such horrid dystopias. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? Some how? Same here: the reign of Nixon (Jeezum crow, Nixon) ties in with urban decay, filth, moral calumny, and all those incidents of debauched decline Rorschack decried as he walked the mean streets. If there’s one thing we know for sure about hated iconic Republican presidents, they prefer a society full of prostitutes, child killers, drug addiction, and other sundry pleasures of modern life.

Uh huh. Imagine someone setting a comic like this in the 90s, with Dr. Bronx and the Jokester heading off to Bosnia to kill Serbs at the request of President Clinton - who’s in his third term, because he suspended the Constitution to prepare for Y2K - and later the Jokester, fresh from killing Vince Foster and Ron Brown, argues with InkBlot over who killed the American Dream, with InkBlot insisting it was supply-side economics. Meanwhile, ominous newspaper headlines note that North Korea has activated a plutonium factory, and the League of Solemn Scientists move the hands on a prop clock.

De-romancing the shaman

Do shamans have more sex? Why New Age spirituality is no more pure than old-time religion. Slate Magazine

Good article here on shamans not exactly being pure, spiritual purveyors of ancient wisdom.

The breakthrough mankind has been waiting for*

Long Duration Space Underwear

As Japan's first astronaut to spend long duration missions on board the International Space Station, Koichi Wakata has had the opportunity to do all sorts of interesting experiments the past few months. For example, he conducted several different cellular growth and crystal growth experiments, and has even flown a magic carpet in space. One other experiment has been – shall we say – kept under wraps. Wakata has been wearing the same underwear on board the ISS for two months.

"(For) two months I was wearing these underwear and there was no smell and nobody complained,” Wakata, speaking in Japanese, said through an interpreter during a press conference this weekend from the ISS. “I think that new J-ware underwear is very good for myself and my colleagues."

* Alternative title: "The breakthrough mankind has been holding its breath for"

Odd

Homicide By Mentally Ill Has Risen In England And Wales

There was also a rise in the number of homicides by people with schizophrenia – from 25 in 1997 to 46 in 2004 and an estimated 40 in 2005.

Professor Louis Appleby, Director of the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness, said: "There has been an unexplained rise in the number of homicides by people with mental illness and we now have to try to understand why this has happened.

"It is important to emphasise that the increase has not occurred in mental health patients. It is also important to keep these findings in perspective. The risk of being a victim of homicide in England and Wales is around 1 in 1,000 and the risk of being killed by someone with schizophrenia is around 1 in 20,000."

If I lived in England, I would not find those figures particularly comforting.

Solar thermal progress

Technology Review: Cheaper Solar Thermal Power

It seems from the article above that the company Stirling Engine Systems may be doing better than my preferred stirling engine company - Infinia Corp. (I still say that Infinia's solar power dish has a much cleaner, cooler looking design, though.)

Sadly, Infinia say they are not aiming to get into the small scale residential market. If you need a Megawatt, they are interested, but unless you are planning on setting up a small scale aluminium smelter in your backyard, that is a little excessive for most houses.

Ah what a pity. I was hoping that if the neighbours annoyed me (and believe me, they do), I could use a roof mounted Infinia dish to set fire to their washing on the clothes line.

Big drop

No. of foreign tourists visiting Japan plunges 29% in Jan-June

Wow, that is a big drop off in tourist numbers for Japan.

Big

Kingston Unveils the World’s First 256GB USB Flash Drive

Mind you, it says it will only be "built to order", so it's not likely to be cheap. Maybe it comes with leather upholstery in a selection of colours?

But really, this is remarkable, isn't it? The last desktop I bought for home (about 5 years ago; it's on its last legs - I found the motherboard had a burnt bit on it last weekend!) had a hard drive of 40GB. I know that's tiny by hard drive standards, but flash drives with hundreds of GB capacity still surprise me.

Ocean acidification update

It's been a while since ocean acidification has been mentioned here. There have been more studies reported, often with confusing or uncertain results:

* it was reported a month ago that tank studies with fish indicate that they grow bigger ear bones in more acidified water. This is the opposite of what was expected. Does it matter? No one knows, but there is speculation it might affect affect their navigation and orientation. Presumably, the studies to look into that are underway.

* The latest studies for coral are quite mixed. One tank study on a species of Mediterranean temperate coral indicates that it is not particularly sensitive to more CO2. (Although it is noted that this might be because it is relatively slow growing coral.) Yet, another study shows a mechanism for how a Hawaiian species can suffer more erosion under higher CO2. A third study, this time on an Atlantic species, indicated that it was indeed sensitive to decreased aragonite saturation (which is a consequence of increased acidification.) The overall picture then: still not good seems a fair conclusion.

Update: overnight, another paper has turned up indicating that coral around Bermuda:

...will experiences seasonal periods of zero net calcification within the next decade.... The Bermuda coral reef is one of the first responders to the negative impacts of ocean acidification, and we estimate that calcification rates for D. labyrinthiformis have declined by >50% compared to pre-industrial times.

* So, what about phytoplankton?, I hear you say. (Assuming you are still awake.) Well, this seems unexpected, but it seems some tank tests in coastal waters off Norway indicate that higher CO2 can lead to a phytoplankton bloom which then leads to more dissolved iron being in the water. (I don't quite follow how that works.) Anyhow, the abstract notes that this may be a good thing:

"If applicable to the open ocean this may provide a negative feedback mechanism to the rising atmospheric CO₂ by stimulating marine primary production."

Of course, whether this happens out in the deep ocean is not known. And are phytoplankton blooms in shallow areas necessarily a good thing? Certainly, some algal blooms are not good.

* On a related issue, if AGW does increase water temperatures, it seems that it will cause a significant shortening of the lifespan of many cold-blooded creatures:

“We were intrigued by the fact that that pearl mussels in Spain have a maximum lifespan of 29 years, while in Russia, individuals of the same species live nearly 200 years,” said Dr. Munch....

For the study, the researchers looked at lifespan data from laboratory and field observations for over 90 species from terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments.

They studied organisms with different average longevities-from the copepod Arcartia tonsa, which has an average lifespan of 11.6 days, to the pearl mussel Margaritifera margaritifera, which has an average lifespan of 74 years.

They found that across this wide range of species, temperature was consistently exponentially related to lifespan.

“It is interesting to consider how cold-blooded species are likely to react in the face of global warming. Because of the exponential relationship between temperature and lifespan, small changes in temperature could result in relatively large changes in lifespan. We could see changes to ecosystem structure and stability if cold-blooded species change their life histories to accommodate warmer temperatures but warm-blooded species do not,” said Salinas.

It surprises me that a consistent relationship between temperature and life span was not noticed before.

* Someone should tell scientists how to write more clearly. There is a lengthy paper here about pH testing of the ocean near Hawaii over a number of years, but I have trouble working out exactly what it concludes. I think it indicates that ocean surface pH is dropping as expected (subject to seasonal variability), but the picture at depth was more complicated than they expected.

Merton and orthodoxy

'I was tired of a Christ who had evaporated' - Catholic Herald Online

I've been posting about religion a fair bit lately, but what the hey, it's my own, relatively unread, blog.

I have never read anything by Catholic monk Thomas Merton, as the spirituality aspect of religion has always held limited interest to me, and I also thought he was promoted as quite a faith liberal.

This article indicates that this view of Merton is misleading (although it certainly points out he was anti-war, anti-technology [another reason why I am not running to buy his books] and all-round political liberal.) The key is this quote:

In fact, he consistently rejected Christian theologies that no longer respected orthodoxy and tradition. "My coming into the Church was marked by a pretty strong and dazzled belief in the Christ of the Nicene Creed," he wrote. "One reason for this was a strong reaction against the fogginess and subjectivity and messed-upness of the ideas about Christ... in various kinds of Protestantism. I was tired of a Christ who had evaporated."

Well, nice to hear.

Looks change

Recently, I was watching with the kids some episodes of the 1980's Spielberg produced TV show Amazing Stories. (Happily, they quite like it. I have to admit it was a pretty uneven series, definitely with too much tendency to the whimsical in the story ideas; but some episodes were great.)

But here's the trivia I wanted to note. The 1980's was dominated by what I would call a glowing, warm style of cinematography. Spielberg was particularly fond of it in his heyday (think ET especially,) but when I was watching Amazing Stories, it struck me that there was a lot of non-Spielberg stuff from the 80's that have the same look. From memory, if you look back at the popular music videos of the day, you would see what I mean, although I am hard pressed to name titles right now.

It is a look that I still find quite pleasing.

Cinematography now, on the other hand, seems to much more commonly favour a blu-ish, washed out colour, hard edged, fluorescent-light style of look. This is especially deemed to be appropriate to hard edged stories (crime and drug stuff in particular.) Maybe it is partly due to the increased use of video in both cinema and TV over film stock?

Whether it's the aesthetic fashion of the day, or partly technological, I have to say I miss the warmth of the 1980's.