AUSTRALIANS are willing to take a second chance at love, with almost one-fifth of weddings involving a partner who has been married before. However, while only a third of first marriages end in divorce, the figure rises to 60 per cent for second marriages.
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.)
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.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!
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:
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.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.
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.
"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."
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.
....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.Wrong in too many ways to count.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.
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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.
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.* Alternative title: "The breakthrough mankind has been holding its breath for"
"(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."
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.If I lived in England, I would not find those figures particularly comforting.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."
...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.
“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....It surprises me that a consistent relationship between temperature and life span was not noticed before.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.
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.
