Quite right

Survival rests on social revolution | The Australian

Greg Sheridan's discussion of Japan's survival problem seems spot on.

A stepping stone to the green cheese

SPACE.com -- Mouse Hotel Opens on Space Station

Hey, why isn't this getting more publicity? The current shuttle trip to the International Space Station has delivered a half dozen rodent residents who will stay there for 3 months:

The mice are living in a special experiment drawer delivered to the station late Sunday by astronauts aboard NASA's space shuttle Discovery. The drawer is split into partitions to give each mouse ample living room.

"Each mouse is in its own little compartment," Robinson told SPACE.com. "The compartments have screens around them so the mice can hold on with their feet so that they're in control of their environment...so they're not stressed out."

It is hard to imagine how a little mouse brain reacts to permanent weightlessness. Do they just cling motionless to the screens for the first 48 hours thinking "what the hell?"

NASA must have video of mice in space already:

Mice have flown in space countless times before, even on space shuttles headed for the International Space Station. But the critters always stayed aboard those shuttles and returned home, said NASA's space station program scientist Julie Robinson. The longest any mouse has lived in space has been about 30 days, and that was while flying on an unmanned satellite, she added.

However, the only video I could find on the 'net is from a 1950's science fiction film, where they view what appears to be real footage of mice having a parabolic ride on a missile. As expected, the mice looked somewhat alarmed.

We can only hope that one or more of them will escape during their sojourn on the ISS. That would gain a lot of publicity for NASA.

Philosopher gets comic treatment

Bertrand Russell: The thinking person's superhero - The Independent

Some amusing quotes from this favourable review of a comic book treatment of Bertrand Russell:

His bitterly lonely childhood (he contemplated suicide) was enlivened, he said later, by thoughts of sex and glimpses of a totally logical world available through Euclidian mathematics. But even Euclid's maths rested on shaky assumptions and unproven "axioms", so how could it lead to certain knowledge of the world?

Through GE Moore at Cambridge, he discovered Leibniz and Boole, and became a logician. Through Alfred Whitehead's influence, he travelled to Europe and met Gottlob Frege, who believed in a wholly logical language (and was borderline insane) and Georg Cantor, the inventor of "set theory" (who was locked up in an asylum) and a mass of French and German mathematicians in varying stages of mental disarray. Back home he and Whitehead wrestled with their co-authored Principles of Mathematics for years, endlessly disputing the foundations of their every intellectual certainty, constantly harassed by Russell's brilliant pupil Wittgenstein. ...

Doxiadis and his team make us feel how cataclysmic was the moment when Kurt Godel, the mathematician, in a lecture, announced: "There will always be unanswerable questions," and proved that arithmetic is "of necessity incomplete" – pulling the rug from under the study of logic. ("It's all over," remarked Russell's friend Von Neumann at the conference, meaning the whole of philosophical reasoning.)

The sinking tax haven

Bankruptcy threat brings new concept to the Cayman Islands … taxes

Oh, forgot to collect taxes, diddums?

A very peculiar suggestion

New Scientist has finally run an article talking about a recent proposal as to why the arrow of time always seems to move forward, rather than backwards as the laws of physics would allow.

The idea is that things do happen "backwards", it's just that in so doing, quantum mechanics if applied on a big enough scale means they leave no information behind that they have happened.

I keep trying to work out how this relates to the "tree falling in a wood with no one to hear it" question. Of course it still makes a sound; the lack of observation doesn't stop that. In the same way, I suppose, just because a "backwards" event can't be detected might not mean that it hasn't happened.

On the other hand, any scientist who believes this idea doesn't have much right to be a ridiculing atheist who criticises believers because they can't prove their God exists.

The Guardian's explanation of the idea, which apparently quotes the author of the paper directly, makes it sound a much more implausible idea, as it would appear to allow for memories to be created but subsequently erased:

He argues that quantum mechanics dictates that if anyone does observe an entropy-decreasing event, their memories of the event "will have been erased by necessity".

Maccone doesn't mean that your memories will never form in the first place. "What I'm pointing out is that memories are formed and then are subsequently erased," he tells me.

When you observe any system, according to Maccone, you enter into a "quantum entanglement" with it. That is, you and the system are entangled and cannot properly be described separately.

The entanglement, Maccone says, is between your memory and the system. When you disentangle, "the disentangling operation will erase this entanglement, namely the observer's memory". His paper derives this conclusion mathematically.

Yes, the Guardian's headline for the report appears most apt then: "Is quantum mechanics messing with your memory?" But are they quoting him accurately?

Drunk hamsters

How Alcohol Blunts Ability Of Hamsters To 'Rise And Shine'

Big surprise! (That was sarcasm): the more hamsters drink, the more it disrupts their circadian cycle.

Hamsters like their alcohol:

The animals were divided into three groups, differing only on what they drank. The control group received water only. A second group received water containing 10% alcohol and the third group received water containing 20% alcohol. Hamsters, when given a choice, prefer alcohol, which they metabolize quickly.

I would kind of like to see how a drunk hamster acts, but the researchers aren't into such voyeurism. Anyway, there's a cute hamster photo at the link.

Hmm...

This will no doubt be an interesting trial as it progresses, as the claims being made sound, at least in part, a bit like the repressed memory ritual child abuse cases:

A FORMER school teacher has emerged as a key witness to the alleged sexual assaults of students, amid allegations that paint a picture of ''rampant pedophilia'' at St Stanislaus College in Bathurst.

The allegations, including that students were forced to have group sex and were hypnotised to have sex with teachers, were heard during a bail review for Brian Joseph Spillane, a former chaplain at the school.

A sensible teacher who observed abuse is obviously important, but claims of hypnotism being used in any criminal endeavour tweak my scepticism antenna somewhat.

A problem long identified

Lay off the linguistics to address English lag | The Japan Times Online

Another suggestion is offered as to why Japanese language teaching is ineffective (teachers have to study linguistics, which is more about analysing a language rather than how to teach it.)

But really, this is just part of the basic problem that has long been identified: they have an obsession about teaching the technical rules of English rather than the its practical application.

Yet nothing much seems to change. Maybe a new government will actually let some fresh ideas blow into all corners, including this one?

Trouble ahead

UK could face widespread seventies style blackouts - The Independent

The UK faces widespread power cuts for the first time since the 1970s, according to the Government's own predictions.

Demand for electricity from homes and businesses is set to exceed the available supply within eight years....

The latest figures cast doubt over the Government's pledge that renewable sources can make up for lower output from nuclear and coal.

They were slipped out in an appendix to the Low Carbon Transition Plan, which was launched in July. The main document set out a target for "clean" technology - such as wind, wave and solar - to supply 40% of the country's power by 2020.

But the extra section suggests that there will be a shortfall by 2017, when the "energy unserved" level is predicted to reach 3,000 megawatt hours per year...

By 2025 the situation is expected to worsen, with the shortfall hitting 7,000 megawatt hours per year.

That would be equivalent to an hour-long power cut for half of Britain over the course of a year.

Actually, in some recent stormy summers in Brisbane, we've had a lot more than an hour-long power cut in a year.

Yurts for all

Why a yurt is better than a country cottage - Times Online

Here's an article in the Times about a family that uses a yurt as its holiday home. The kids have to find firewood to boil the kettle, and there is no toilet, which is getting just a little too "back to Nature" for my taste.

Still, reading about yurts reminds me of my widely ignored thought that maybe the neverending problem with providing adequate housing for remote aboriginal communities is due to the inappropriateness of trying to provide permanent housing for remote aboriginal communities.

When I read about the current controversy over the cost of a current program to improve housing in the Northern Territory, I can't help but feel I was onto something with my half-baked idea. According to that last linked news report, some people think that it is going to end up costing $1 billion to provide 750 new houses, 230 "rebuilds" and refurbishment to 2,500 other existing houses.

Let's see: a company in Bangalow will sell a 10 metre diameter yurt with a heavy canvas cover for around $20,000.

Let's be generous, and allow another $20,000 for changes in design, some sort of decent flooring, etc. (A clan's bunch of yurts could share a central, simple ablutions block, but admittedly I have no idea how to estimate the cost of that.) Maybe $10,000 to get it there and put it up? Rough figure - $50,000 per yurt. Pretty expensive for a tent, but...

If you assume the 750 new houses will take 1/2 of the billion dollars that may be spent on the current program, you can get ten thousand $50,000 yurts for that price. Let's say that my back of the envelope figuring is way out - surely 5,000 is still in the ball park.

At that rate, it hardly matters if you have to replace them every five years.

Maybe I should start the Yurts for All Party as a way of publicising this idea.

Good TV

Last night's Australian Story was a nice one about competitive paper airplane throwing (and a brain tumour.) Happily, the subject recovered from the latter, and has many years of competitive paper plane folding and throwing ahead of him. (I did get the feeling, though, he would be a bit annoying to live near, as your yard or balcony would always be littered with paper planes.)

The episode can be watched here. (After this week it will be archived as "Fly with Me".)

Last Friday's documentary on the Last Day of World War One was also good. Michael Palin makes an good narrator of serious material, and he recounted many stories of soldiers who were, with great pointlessness, ordered on the battle field in the 6 hours or so between the announcement of the ceasefire agreement being signed, and the time it came into effect (at 11am on 11/11.)

It would seem that the full documentary can be viewed via the link here.

Another African problem?

Interesting claim made here that pornography is behind a lot of sexual violence (and lack of safe sex practices) in Africa.

Occasionally there is talk of the similar effect of pornography in remote aboriginal settlements, but the problem never seems to get detailed reportage.

More notes for future reference

Study debunks daily aspirin to guard heart | The Australian

The study on alcohol, carried out on 8830 people in Britain, Scandinavia and the US, found those who drank the equivalent of 10 standard drinks a week - about 15 units - had an 80 per cent higher risk of having an irregular heartbeat diagnosed within five years.

And the study of aspirin found that healthy adults who took a daily aspirin for up to eight years did not significantly reduce their risk of a heart attack or stroke, but did increase their risk of stomach bleeding.

I think I would average 5 to 7 standard drinks a week, so I trust I'm OK.

At last

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | 'Major win' for Japan opposition

Can you imagine the same party governing Australia for nearly 54 years?

Visit to Narnia (South East Queensland version)

Of course, I had to make the trip to Cleveland Point to have a look at the full-scale Dawn Treader, built for the third Narnia movie. It turned out to be a very pleasant family afternoon out.

Cleveland and the southern bayside parts of Greater Brisbane are not areas I get to all that often, but it is a very pleasant area for a drive. Lunch was had at a much better-than-average quality fish and chip place at Raby Bay, which has a row of nice looking outdoor/indoor eateries overlooking the boat harbour. Most satisfactory.

Then it was onto Cleveland Point. You can get very close to the ship:

and there are a lot of people making the trip to have a look.

Filming has not yet started on the ship, so I don't know how close people will be allowed when that happens.

Here is a better side view of the ship, although there is a fair bit of machinery in the way (as always, click to enlarge):


As you can see from the men standing on the ground on the far side of it, it's really full scale. Compared to the various book cover illustrations over the years, it certainly lives up to expectations.

You can't see it so clearly in the photo, but there does appear to be a purple furled sail on board now.

They were apparently testing the rocking mechanism for the ship today, as you can see from the (rather poor quality Blogger-ified) video below:



All terribly interesting, at least for someone who holds the Narnia films in high regard.

Famous actor sees famous ghost?

Patrick Stewart saw ghost performing Waiting for Godot - Telegraph

Would be good to hear it in Stewart's own words, though.

Noted for future reference

Patient Money - Treatments for Erectile Dysfunction Go Beyond a Pill - NYTimes.com

An article all about alternatives to Viagra and similar drugs, which don't always work anyway:

Even among the name-brand drugs, which also include Cialis and Levitra, the medications do not work for about half of the men with E.D.

Just getting healthier can help:

In a recent study of men with E.D., or at risk for developing it, researchers in Italy found that the men could improve their erections by losing weight, improving their diet and exercising more frequently. After two years of significant lifestyle changes, 58 percent of the men had normal erectile function, according to the study, which was published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine in January.

But if that still doesn't work, you can always go for the needle:

If the pills don’t work for you, you might want to try self-administered injections of alprostadil, a drug that helps blood vessels expand and facilitates erections. Granted, this may sound onerous, but the shot, which is sold under the brand names Edex and Caverject, is done with a fine needle, feels no worse than a pinprick and produces an erection that can last up to four hours, according to doctors who recommend it.

Four hours? You would kind of start worrying at the 3 hour 45 minute mark, I reckon.

Fictional 1930's lawyer not modern enough

Atticus Finch and Southern liberalism : The New Yorker

As mentioned here before, I (like millions of other people) hold "To Kill a Mockingbird", both as a novel and movie, in very high regard. Thus, it is always interesting to read an article considering the work in a new way.

The above New Yorker piece starts well, explaining the nature of racial politics in the South in the 1950's.

But then it takes a strange turn when it starts noting, and seemingly agreeing with, criticism of the fictional Atticus Finch for not having the "top down" civil rights activist attitude that came into being in the 1960's. The article provides quotes from the novel that, quite accurately, show Finch as believing racism would be overcome by getting people to realise the error of not recognising the humanity of their black neighbours. As the articles says:

[In relation to the guilty finding in the centrepiece trial in the story] If Finch were a civil-rights hero, he would be brimming with rage at the unjust verdict. But he isn’t. He’s not Thurgood Marshall looking for racial salvation through the law. He’s Jim Folsom, looking for racial salvation through hearts and minds...

Finch will stand up to racists. He’ll use his moral authority to shame them into silence. He will leave the judge standing on the sidewalk while he shakes hands with Negroes. What he will not do is look at the problem of racism outside the immediate context of Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Levy, and the island community of Maycomb, Alabama.

How much sense does this make, though, when Mockingbird is set in the 1930's? The article mentions the period of the novel, but never seems to acknowledge that it may be quite unrealistic to have a small town lawyer sprouting a civil rights activist agenda in that setting.

Besides which, how can you really object to the philosophy of Atticus Finch when it is, at its core, the true explanation of racism? The book is so appealing partly because of the truth people recognise in that.

The article ends on what I think is a very peculiar note. It criticises the way the novel ends with Atticus Finch agreeing to let the Sheriff lie to the town about how the villain died. (He will say that it was an accidental self-inflicted stab wound, whereas the reader knows the reculsive Boo Radley did it to save Scout.) Here's what the article says:

“Scout,” Finch says to his daughter, after he and Sheriff Tate have cut their little side deal. “Mr. Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?”

Understand what? That her father and the Sheriff have decided to obstruct justice in the name of saving their beloved neighbor the burden of angel-food cake? Atticus Finch is faced with jurors who have one set of standards for white people like the Ewells and another set for black folk like Tom Robinson. His response is to adopt one set of standards for respectable whites like Boo Radley and another for white trash like Bob Ewell. A book that we thought instructed us about the world tells us, instead, about the limitations of Jim Crow liberalism in Maycomb, Alabama.

This is just silly. Boo Radley is not your average citizen, for one thing, and the Sheriff's decision makes perfect sense, and is perfectly just, in terms of the story.

What the hell does this article's author want Atticus Finch to do - tell the Sheriff "No, no, that's not right. I want you to take Boo, the man who has been so cripplingly shy that he hasn't come out of his house in daylight for the last 20 years, but nonetheless just saved my daughter's life, down to your office in the morning for a good and thorough statement to be taken"? Yeah, like readers would think that makes emotional sense.

Admission of a creepy practice

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China admits death row organ use

According to the China Daily newspaper, executed prisoners currently provide two-thirds of all transplant organs.

The government is now launching a voluntary donation scheme, which it hopes will also curb the illegal trafficking in organs.

The truth behind Andrew's holiday

What's this? Andrew Bolt unexpectedly up and left for a month long holiday in Europe to (ostensibly) celebrate his 50th birthday.

Yet at the very same time:

Britain's climate campers set up their annual protest camp yesterday on Blackheath, the historic London open space that was key in the peasants' revolt.

The 1,000-plus green activists are camped this morning on the fields where Wat Tyler's peasant army assembled for its assault on The City of London in June 1381. And they are planning their own assault – on what they see as the companies, institutions and government departments helping to cause global warming (or not doing enough to stop it).

Co-incidence? In my semi-comedic fantasies, Andrew mixes it up with a bunch of semi-feral climate change advocates, either as a convert or a spy.

Anyhow, his column on turning 50 contained a pleasing humility, I thought. The only odd thing is how it doesn't seem to extend to the prospect that his opinion on climate change might be wrong.