Continuing the bird theme

Man v bird: the brush turkey battle

Brush turkeys are headed south, apparently. This article talks about how they live:

...with female brush turkeys laying 20 to 30 eggs a year, the population is sure to continue thriving, even though mysteriously, no-one looks after the chicks.

"These are very unusual animals. Basically, the eggs get laid into the bottom of a combust heap, they dig their way to the surface and simply no-one looks after them - absolutely no parental care," he said.

"There's no parents to teach them what a cat looks like or what food is, or anything.

We had a chick turn up in our yard earlier this year. Unfortunately, it became a victim of our dog, right in front of the kids too.

Reviewing fun

The Time Traveler's Wife. - By Dana Stevens - Slate Magazine

Eric Bana's latest movie is receiving some pretty bad reviews in the States. This is not an entirely bad thing, as it allows critics to be pretty witty. This opening paragraph from Dana Stevens, for example:

Physicist Dave Goldberg has a fascinating Slate piece this week on how The Time Traveler's Wife stacks up against other movies with a time-travel theme. In a survey of physicists' speculations on the possibility of time travel, he mentions one theory involving "gargantuan cosmic strings […] of matter of almost unimaginable density and length." That about sums up The Time Traveler's Wife, adapted from Audrey Niffenegger's best-selling novel by Bruce Joel Rubin (who also wrote Ghost, another metaphysically inflected love story). I'll take Goldberg's word that the movie obeys the laws of Einsteinian physics (no alternate universes, you can't change history, etc.), but it's in flagrant violation of the rules of narrative logic, character development, or the most basic audience satisfaction.

Surprising bird news

BBC - Earth News - Blue tits embrace 'aromatherapy'

No, it's not from the files of Benny Hill, Naturalist; it's the story of research into why blue tits like to put nice smelling herbs in their nest:

They found that aromatic plants, including lavender (Lavandula stoechas), apple mint (Mentha suaveolens), the curry plant (Helichrysum itlaicum) and Achillea ligustica significantly change the composition of bacterial communities living on blue tit nestlings.

"They reduce the number of different bacterial species, and the total number of bacteria, especially on chicks that are most vulnerable because they are both highly infested by blow fly larvae and carry great amounts of bacteria on their skin," says Mennarat.

In more local bird news, the Courier Mail last week ran this photo, apparently showing three pigeons co-operating to each get a drink and a bath.

I'm impressed.

We've had a bird bath in our back yard for about 6 months now; it's visible from the kitchen and dining room. Watching birds bathe is pleasing.

The coming disaster in Japan

Shaken and stirred in Tokyo's quakes

Here's an ABC journalist's first hand account of the recent, relatively mild, Japanese earthquakes. He notes:

But thankfully it was not the much-dreaded Great Tokai Earthquake. That is the big one, the terrible tremor which hits central Japan about every 130 years.

The problem is, it is overdue.

The last Great Tokai Earthquake was in 1854 when a massive magnitude 8.4 quake struck.

More about the coming Tokai Earthquake can be found here.

It is, of course, a typically Japanese thing that when you go to the website of the Japanese Meteorological Agency page about the Earthquake Early Warning system, they have a cute little graphic for it:

If I am not mistaken, that would be based on the underground catfish that the Japanese folklore says causes earthquakes. Cute but deadly.

UPDATE: lots of information about the history of Japanese giant-earthquake-causing-catfish lore can be found in this essay.

The ugly tourist

In Philippine town, the U.S. airmen are long gone, but the tawdry streets remain

The LA Times has a story about the prostitution that continues near the former Clark Air Force base, even though the Americans left there in 1992.

The picture painted by this article is very ugly - quite literally in the sense that it seems most of the clientele are greying sex tourists from all over the world chasing extremely young girls.

There is also mention of an Australian buying some Viagra from a street vendor. Travelling to another country for exploitative sex, but even then having to use Viagra to achieve it with girls about whom he also says:

"You can get a young girl here to do anything if you promise to marry her"

strikes me as a very special form of depravity.

Science fiction fodder

Here's a fun paper on arXiv: Are Black Hole Starships Possible? (Tentative answer: yes. However, the means of creating a useful sized black hole are somewhat far off into the future.)

Interestingly, the paper also notes that alien spaceships using such technology might be detectable by gamma ray telescope. (The suggestion is not new in regard to possible anti-matter powered ships.)

Flying books

Eerie occurrences at naval museum attract ghost hunters - Enquirer.com

A brief report on poltergeist type phenomena going on in a US Museum.

Ghosts and hauntings interest me, but I have no interest whatseover in the "ghosthunter" style TV shows with their ridiculous bunch of mediums and "sensitives" walking around with night vision cameras following them.

Which reminds me - I think I saw an ad on ABC TV a few weeks ago for a one off show that (as far as I could make out) may have been about a stone throwing poltergeist story in outback Australia. I missed it, and now am having trouble googling any details about it.

I know there have been one or two real life stories in Australia, so I would have liked to have seen it.

Does any reader know anything about it?

Strange photo from Saturn

Like the fist of an angry god | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Worth a look.

Mayhem in space planning

NASA should avoid a straight shot to Mars, panel says

There is plenty of speculation about how NASA should proceed from here: scrap Ares as a flawed design, not enough money to go to the Moon again, certainly not enough for Mars. Even "let's do other deep space stuff instead - how about an asteroid?"

But - I didn't realise this:

The budget would delay the first Ares I flight until December 2018. That is almost three years after NASA currently plans to send the International Space Station careening towards Earth to burn up in the atmosphere and plunge into the ocean. The current budget projections have also not set aside money for the space station's end-of-life plans.

Bloody hell. The thing seems barely to have been finished (in fact, is it really finished now, it's hard to keep track) and it is only supposed to last another 5 years?

The only thing it seems to have achieved is giving astronauts experience at piecing together big things in space. I guess that's something of value in itself, but all those astronauts doing it are probably at the peak of their career anyway and won't be on the next wave of exploration.

NASA had better start publicising some science done on board if it wants to maintain some credibility for its planning.

And finally - readers know I am strongly of the view that going back to the Moon is a practical, achievable thing that is relatively low risk to astronauts (compared to all the radiation exposure they will have on a trip to Mars). It's rarely spoken about, but isn't there a partial science justification in terms of good astronomy to be done from there? Perhaps radio astronomy from the dark side, or your usual astronomy from anywhere.

Would be easier to do the type of sky surveys required to spot deadly (but relatively small) asteroids that were mentioned here recently from the Moon? You at least are assured of long, clear nights!

Update: a NASA page, containing some links, that talks about lunar astronomy as a possibility. People seem to like Hubble photographs so much, I suspect they would be impressed by similar quality photos from the Moon.

If it is a good place to search for earth approaching asteroids, even better: you can sell a return to the Moon as an insurance policy for the future of civilisation.

Warning

Bird specimens stolen from national collection - Crime, UK - The Independent

Thieves have stolen a priceless collection of tropical birds from the Natural History Museum.

Curators said almost 300 brightly-coloured specimens were taken from a collection in Tring, Hertfordshire.

They said the birds, some of which are more than a century old, are a priceless part of the world's ornithological heritage.

Well, I suppose this means that the next time a stranger approaches you in the car park and offers a really cheap price on a rare 19th century stuffed spangled drongo from the back of his van, you should immediately call the police.

It's also interesting to note this bit at the end about the extent of the collection:

The Natural History Museum holds 70 million specimens brought together over 350 years. The majority are held at its South Kensington headquarters.

The ornithological collection in Tring is one of the world's largest and holds 750,000 birds representing 95% of known species.

750,000 stuffed birds?! Maybe a few more live ones would be around today if the collectors of the past were a little less enthusiastic.

Mocking chicken

Today's lunch comprised a fried egg, tomato and cheese sandwich.

It's a curious thing, isn't it, how the combination of egg and tomato seems to result in a completely new, distinctive, taste.

It put me in mind of a party dip from my childhood, "mock chicken", eaten on Jatz crackers, which I haven't seen for a very long time. Recipes for it are on the internet, although there are variations, and I am not sure which most accurately represents what was once common in 1960's Brisbane. I'm sure the essential components were egg and tomato, but whether it also had cheese and onion, I don't know.

Incidentally, I am drawn to any recipe with "mock" in the title. I recall years ago, when visiting somewhere historic in Australia, looking at a reproduction of an old, simple Australia cookbook, maybe dating from early last century or perhaps even colonial times. It had a recipe for mock duck, which, I swear, went like this: "Take large piece of beef steak. Tie in the shape of a duck. Bake." That was it.

While on the topic of food pretending to be something it isn't, I have a confession to make: I don't mind many of the vegetarian sausage products made by health food companies. They could fairly be called mock sausages, although the marketing departments prevent truth in advertising. We serve them to kids sometimes as a healthier version of a hot dog. With tomato sauce, they don't really seem to know if it is meatless or not, and I am happy to eat them too.

I even had a period in my life when I used to buy TVP, textured vegetable protein, and make a chilli con carne recipe which was on the side of the box. Buried in a chilli tomato sauce, I thought the cubed version of TVP did have a resemblance to meat. But the digestive consequences of beans, chilli tomato sauce and TVP in the once dish were, shall we say, nothing short of explosive. I didn't even like being around myself the next day, so, kind husband that I am, I haven't cooked it since I got married. I don't think you can even get the cubed version of TVP now, anyway.

I'm tempted to try making some mock chicken soon, but anyone who can remember their mother's version of it is welcome to comment.

Spotting the influence of aliens

Newfound planet orbits backward - Space.com- msnbc.com

This story reminds me of something I have been meaning to post about for a while.

Astronomers keep finding signs of planets around other stars. Yet they all seem to be pretty weird in one way or another, and don't resemble our solar system at all.

My question: has anyone seriously put their mind to the question of how odd a planetary orbit or solar system would have to look to be indicative of alien mega-engineering?

Presumably, thought has been given to what a Dyson sphere or "swarm" would look like (or a Niven "ringworld"), but isn't it possible for there to be other planetary engineering, on a less grand scale, that may be visible from Earth?

Would a weird enough orbit of something assumed to be a planet be enough?

Update: another "backwards planet" found.

By the way, just to be clear, I am not suggesting that a retrograde orbit alone is anything to be very suspicious of. Seeing we have a retrograde moon in our own solar system, it can just happen. Still, what would it take to assume alien engineering?

Credibility own goal

Plimer resorts to attack as the best form of defence | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Ian Plimer agreed to be asked, in writing, a series of questions by George Monbiot about apparent errors and uncited claims in his book. Plimer has not yet responded, except to provide a list of convoluted questions back to Monbiot.

If Plimer merely does this, and does not answer Monbiot's direct questions, it will be pretty much impossible to read it other than having the subtext "hey, I am a Professor, I know so much more than you, mere journalist, that I don't have to provide citations for any claim, or explain any apparent error."

I hope Andrew Bolt is reading this exchange.

Update: this comment in the thread following Monbiot's post provides a good "translation" of what Plimer's questions mean.

A peculiar case

Piracy fears off UK coast after cargo ship disappears in English Channel - Times Online

I have no comment: it's just a very strange case of a missing ship, possibly hijacked by somewhat mysterious parties.

Why acupuncture seems to work

Chinese Acupuncture Affects Brain's Ability To Regulate Pain, UM Study Shows

I find it remarkable that sticking fine needles into skin seems to genuinely help with various aches and pains. This study suggests the brain mechanism behind it, but I guess it still doesn't explain why the fine needles (which you can barely feel, from the one time I had some in me) in skin cause that reaction in the brain. (To be more specific, maybe it's not surprising they cause some reaction in the brain, but that it should be big enough to have effect of other aches and pain still seems very odd to me.)

Discouraging news

Earth could be blindsided by asteroids, panel warns - space - 12 August 2009 - New Scientist

Existing sky surveys miss many asteroids smaller than 1 kilometre across, leaving the door open to damaging impacts on Earth with little or no warning, a panel of scientists reports. Doing better will require devoting more powerful telescopes to asteroid hunting, but no one has committed the funds needed to do so, it says.

Waiting for the return of a spouse

Modern Love - Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear

I found this via the Catholic blog "First Things". Although the writer's response to being told by her husband:

“I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy”

was not apparently motivated by faith, the idea of not immediately abandoning a relationship for that reason has obvious appeal to those who believe marriage is truly "til death do us part".

It is an interesting column, and has many comments following it, the great majority of which praise the writer for her simple "I'm not buying it" response. I am surprised that there has not been more of a liberal backlash against it.

What a country

Christians burned to death in Pakistan - Catholic Herald Online

Eight Pakistani Christians were killed, 50 homes destroyed and two churches burned when a rampaging mob of up to 3,000 Muslims tore through the town of Gojra, in eastern Pakistan, last Saturday.

The victims, who included two young children, were either burned alive or shot. ...

The mob gathered after rumours had spread that children had cut up a schoolbook which included verses from the Koran. The children had supposedly been making confetti for a local wedding.

As well as those killed, more than 20 people were injured in the attack as the mob, carrying sticks, clubs and a small number of firearms, took to the streets last weekend.

The attacks came two days after a related incident in the nearby village of Korian where gangs set fire to more than 70 Christian homes and two small Protestant churches.

I missed a lot of media over the weekend, but I don't know that this got widely reported.

Make your own lunar air

Scientists Make Oxygen Out of Moon Rock

Based on experiments with a simulated lunar rock developed by NASA, the researchers calculate that three one-meter-tall reactors could generate one tonne of oxygen per year on the Moon. Each tonne of oxygen would require three tonnes of rock to produce. Fray noted that three reactors would require about 4.5 kilowatts of power, which could be supplied by solar panels or possibly a small nuclear reactor on the Moon.

I wonder, how long does a tonne of oxygen last for, say, a dozen people?

Presumably, find frozen water on the Moon would make oxygen production easier.

There was a lengthier version of this story on Nature News, but I think their stories still disappear behind a paywall after a short time.

The perpetual teenager

Pew, that was a lucky escape | theage.com.au

Catherine Deveny writes about Catholicism, her childhood religion, with all the subtly and wit of a 15 year old know-it-all flaunting a new-found sexuality and atheism to annoy her parents. (That is, with none at all.) Trouble is, she's 40.

I also wonder about this section:

The priest, obviously drawn by the unusual sight of new people, approached us to welcome us to his flock. I shot out my hand. "Hi, I'm Catherine."

All the blood drained from his face. "You're that writer?" "Yes," I replied. I happily introduced my sons, who, in an uncharacteristic display of manners, shook the priest's hand and said, "Nice to meet you." The priest wandered off in a daze. Or was it a trance? Maybe it was religious melancholy.

Why would the priest even recognise her? Unless she gave warning of her attendance (and why would she bother doing that?) I would be quite surprised that she would otherwise be known to him.

She's seems profoundly proud of her kids being brought up as free thinking libertines:

After surveying the ''good news'' of carnage and damnation on the wall, the 11-year-old asked what a virgin was. I explained. Then he said, "Is there something wrong with sex?"

We know what her answer would be. One gets the impression from previous columns that she intends to be terribly non-judgemental and open-minded to the point of quasi-encouragement to experiment, probably as a continuation of her resentment of her parents trying to set some boundaries for her. (Just a guess, there, but she does write in her column today how a comment made in the car by her father, about another family, made her want "to jump over the front seat and ram my father's head into the windscreen".)

If there is any justice, at least one of her kids will have a conservative rebellion and end up very religious. It will, hopefully, annoy Deveny no end.