Energy dreamtime, & George finds the prostate connection

I was deeply suspicious when I saw Scientific American running an article that claims the entire world's energy can be from renewable sources within 20 years. After all, if that were plausible, any nation with an interest in avoiding reliance on other countries' oil, gas or coal would already be on board with advanced planning for energy independence in our lifetime. Yippee.

Well, Barry Brook and friends have been looking at it closely, and basically rip it to threads. I'm convinced (by Brook, not by Scientific American.)

Meanwhile, on the related topic of global warming skepticism, George Monbiot is getting very depressed that polls indicate people are not so worried about global warming now. He writes in The Guardian: "There is no point in denying it: we’re losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease."

Actually, I don't worry too much about this. People are incredibly fickle when being polled. I suspect that reduced concern may partly be explained by some people (the type that media spin works on) feeling that with Obama as President, and Rudd as PM here, something effective is being done about it, so we can relax. But it only takes an unseasonably warm or hot month to change their minds again, in all likelihood.

What worries me more is that virtually all politicians are displaying absolutely no skepticism towards the economist driven proposal that cap and trade schemes are capable of providing sufficient technological innovation and rapid deployment of clean (or cleaner) energy to make a difference. When you need them to be skeptical, they're not.

But back to Monbiot. He says climate change denial is like a disease, and as I have recently identified, that is true: it must be prostate disease. George sees the old age connection, but hasn't yet caught on to my innovative bit of deductive reasoning:

The Pew report found that people over 65 are much more likely than the rest of the population to deny that there is solid evidence that the earth is warming, that it’s caused by humans or that it’s a serious problem(9). This chimes with my own experience. Almost all my fiercest arguments over climate change, both in print and in person, have been with people in their 60s or 70s. Why might this be?

He doesn't specify, but I would bet that perhaps 90% of those argumentive oldies are also men. As for women skeptics: well, we always have hormone imbalances to fall back on. (Hey if I am being silly about men, I have to be about women too.)

Anyhow, George then goes in for a bit of psychoanalysis about why older people should be more skeptical. It could be all about death denial.

Interesting theory, but I don't know. Does death denial make old folk just get generally cranky and irrational on other topics. (My mother has become so annoyed at what she perceives as other women in her retirement village big-noting their children's careers, she has taken to telling some of them that all of her 7 children have been to university. In fact, it's only one.)

Older people can get wise in some ways, but you probably can't expect them to be reliable in telling where the scientific consensus lies when there are exaggerations on both sides of the debate. I would bet there would be a certain percentage of post 60-ish women who believe everything Andrew Bolt says because he's a nice looking chap.

And finally, speaking of Bolt, I had to laugh on Insiders on Sunday when antagonism erupted between Annabel Crabb (I believe everything she writes because, well, she is cute) and Andrew. If I am not mistaken, Annabel derided Andrew for always quoting "some professor from the University of East Bumcrack." That may not be a precise recall, but "bumcrack" was definitely in there.

Another case of "as I suspected"

The Sydney Morning Herald carries a short story on a New Zealand study indicating that super high speed broadband is not the economic powerhouse that governments like to pretend it will be:

The study found that while there were economic benefits in having ADSL rather than dial-up, there was little extra value in faster forms such as fibre-optic cable.

Motu Economic and Public Policy Research mapped data from a 2006 study on more than 6000 firms' internet services against administrative tax and employment data to measure productivity. It found those firms that took up the kind of slower broadband services that are readily available in Australia achieved a 10 per cent productivity boost by using it to enter new export markets and buy goods and services online, but there was ''no discernible additional effect'' gained from a faster service.

Ken Davidson in The Age recently wrote:

Telstra is obliged under the universal service obligation to offer telephone customers a basic telephony service for $30 a month. The Rudd Government wants to replace this with a new service - the national broadband network - which on the most favourable assumptions will cost customers $60 to $70 a month for a basic telephone service.

And to ensure customers will take up the new service, the Telstra copper wires that enable the $30 a month service will be ripped up.

Sure, very high speed broadband would be nice to have, but I remain far from convinced that it is essential, and certainly it should be done the cheapest way possible.

A brief look at Ayn (rhymes with "pine")

The One Argument Ayn Rand Couldn't Win -- New York Magazine

A pretty amusing review of a new Ayn Rand biography.

Some lines I liked:

"...her temperament could have neutered an ox at 40 paces"

“Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive,” she once wrote, “and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life.”

As a child, she was solitary, opinionated, possessive, and intense—a willful and brilliant loner with literally zero friends. At 9, she decided to become a writer; by 11 she’d written four novels, each of which revolved around a heroine exactly her age but blonde, blue-eyed, tall, and leggy. (Rand was—by her own standards—unheroically dark, short, and square.) At 13, she declared herself an atheist. It’s hard not to suspect, based on many of these childhood anecdotes, that Rand suffered from some kind of undiagnosed personality disorder. Once, when a teacher asked her to write an essay about the joys of childhood, she wrote a diatribe condemning childhood as a cognitive wasteland—a joyless limbo in which adult rationality had yet to fully develop. (It was possibly a good thing that she never had children.)

The paragraph about William James' theory of the foundations of personal philosophy is pretty interesting, too.

By the way, Stephen Colbert explained Atlas Shrugged earlier this year:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Rand Illusion
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Religion

What a surprise

Overweight have less sex

A scientific halloween

Where do ghosts come from? - New Scientist

A good article here on the idea that magnetic fields can cause eerie sensations that are interpreted as ghosts.

The theory has taken several hits lately, it would appear. Particularly when people undergoing lab tests get the creeps whether or not the magnetic field is turned on!

Robotic videoconferencing

Theme-park dummy trick becomes teleconference tool

Have a look at the video. I reckon it is pretty effective at giving the impression of a real presence.

Scratch here, please

Itch: A symptom of occult disease

Stumbling around the internet looking for something else, I found the above article.

It caught my attention because, for the last nine years or so, I have had a persistent itch in the same spot around my left shoulder blade. It turns out it may be a demon poking me there. (Well, that is my initial reaction to hearing the phrase "occult disease".)

My actual theory is that it is caused by chicken pox, which I caught as an adult about 9 years ago. I don't recall having the itch until after that. As the virus sits there and may re-appear as shingles at any time, I think I may have a little bunch of it there that can't be bothered growing enough to actually give me shingles, but makes its presence felt anyway.

It's as good a theory as any.

Social issues

China strives to pleasure sex-starved | The Australian

They could've chosen a better headline, but the article is a pretty interesting one about social change in China.

The big dance

Elina-shatkin's list of L.A. Halloween Events 2009

As you can see from the above list, they certainly take Halloween as a very, very big opportunity for fun events in the US (or at least Los Angeles.)

Of note in the list is this:

Join thousands of participants around the globe for Thrill The World, an annual worldwide simultaneous dance of Michael Jackson's "Thriller." The event begins on Oct. 25 at 12:30 a.m.GMT (that's 5:30 p.m. Pacific time). Find an event in your area. Don't know the "Thriller" zombie dance? You can find an event in your area with rehearsals or you can check out Thrill The world's online instructional videos.

That does sound kind of fun, at least to watch if not participate.

It has its own website, and claims that 22,923 people danced this year, yet I don't believe I have ever heard of this before. I suggest Peter Garrett should lead the line up for the Australian version: he hardly needs the make up.

Chick lives

Trick or Tract: Satan, Jack Chick, and Other Halloween Horrors

If ever you had something even vaguely to do with some fundamentalist Christians, you probably have seen a Jack Chick cartoon book. I know I saw a few when I was in high school, although exactly where I got my hands on one I can't recall.

According to the above post, in America, some people like to give these to visiting kids as a Halloween "trick or treat" gift!

There's a link in the article to the Jack Chick publication website, from which I learn he is still alive, and still producing his idiosyncratic booklets in which he manages to make his preferred brand of Christianity look like humourless, creepy conspiracy-mongering. (You ought to read what he thinks about Catholics; many lines are very funny.) As Joe Carter aptly says, Chick produces fundamentalist tracts with cartoon artwork in the style of R Crumb.

Amazing, but not in a good way.

Mix up in the lab

IVF mother: 'I love him to bits. But he's probably not mine' | Life and style | The Guardian

There are, according to this story, increasing numbers of IVF mothers who fear they have been implanted with the wrong embryo. But they are then faced with the question of whether they get DNA testing to confirm their suspicions, because of the possible complications if it is not the mother's.

I seem to be the only person in the world, apart from the Pope, perhaps, who still actually considers the whole IVF industry as basically undesirable, and a poor reflection on a world with high rates of abortion of what would be adoptable healthy babies. Some fertility clinic practices have been an absolute scandal. Yet people are so swayed by seeing someone happy with their IVF baby that they don't give the bigger picture a second thought.

An unpleasant man

James Cameron and “Avatar” : The New Yorker

You only have to read the first couple of pages of this l-l-long profile of director James Cameron to get confirmation that he is, indeed, a complete jerk.

His new movie, Avatar, seems to me to run a risk of failing because it looks like the biggest CGI-fest ever, just at a time I suspect the public is getting sick of films where all of the background (and many characters) are obviously not real.

We'll see.

Unusual connections

Did Portnoy's Complaint deserve the "Booker Prize"?

Mary Beard in The Times writes about a recent literary festival in which she was on a panel considering which books from 1969 should have won the Booker Prize. This entailed her re-reading Portnoy's Complaint, which she really disliked. (I have never read it, nor seen the movie, and have no interest in doing so.)

The point of this post, however, is to note this comment on her blog, which shows there are some quite unusual theories out there:

I cannot resist praising Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation (ZONE BOOKS, 2003) by my colleague here, Thomas Laqueur, which rightly links concern about masturbation with the development of ideas of credit in the eighteenth century.

What other sexual/financial connections might there be? The rise of cybersex is behind the global financial crisis, maybe?

Anyhow, this is curious enough to make me look for reviews of the Laqueur book. This one starts in way which I find funny, although I am not sure if that was intended:

Thomas Laqueur has been preoccupied with masturbation for more than a decade...

But for more detail on Laqueur's ideas, try this summary:

He sees the promise of abundance offered by the new commercial economy, with its reliance on credit, as strikingly similar to the lure of masturbation, with its addictive pull and reliance on the imagination; the consumer, the speculator, and the masturbator were thus all engaged in the same kind of activity...

I guess it's entirely appropriate that banker rhymes with ...... then.

I think Laqueur may have spent too much time alone.

The changing sea

Climate Change Caused Radical North Sea Shift | Wired Science | Wired.com

Quite an interesting report in Wired about long term changes in the ecology of the North Sea. It's all about less fish and more crabs and jellyfish.

Sure, overfishing has played a large part, but a slight change in temperature seems to have also caused significant changes in the plankton mix.

I didn't realise the North Sea had been so well studied for so long.

Next time you are doing business with a used car salesman...

try spraying him in the face with citrus scented cleaner:

...research found a dramatic improvement in ethical behavior with just a few spritzes of citrus-scented Windex.

How odd. (OK, the study is not about used car salesmen per se, but it's still worth a try.)

Nice house

Aluminium House, Kanazawa City, Japan by Atelier Tekuto-- The Architectural Review

Here's a pretty cool looking Japanese house made, it would seem, almost entirely of aluminium.

I am told that steel frame houses in Australia are noisy due to the expansion and shrinking of the frame in hot weather. I wonder how an aluminium house would compare.

Of course, being a Japanese architect designed house, there must be a death trap involved. In this case, it's probably the roof top "yard". Don't let the dog chase a ball up there.

Close shave - with video

Asteroid blast reveals holes in Earth's defences - space - 26 October 2009 - New Scientist

Why didn't I read about this somewhere else before now?:

On 8 October an asteroid detonated high in the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia, releasing about as much energy as 50,000 tons of TNT, according to a NASA estimate released on Friday. That's about three times more powerful than the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed.

However, the blast caused no damage on the ground because of the high altitude, 15 to 20 kilometres above Earth's surface, says astronomer Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario (UWO), Canada.

Brown and Elizabeth Silber, also of UWO, estimated the explosion energy from infrasound waves that rippled halfway around the world and were recorded by an international network of instruments that listens for nuclear explosions.

So how big was it likely to have been?:

The amount of energy released suggests the object was about 10 metres across, the researchers say. Such objects are thought to hit Earth about once per decade.

No telescope spotted the asteroid ahead of its impact. That is not surprising, given that only a tiny fraction of asteroids smaller than 100 metres across have been catalogued, says Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yet objects as small as 20 or 30 metres across may be capable of doing damage on the ground, he says.

People did notice this (and it presumably would have been a big flash if it had been at night):

The explosion was heard by witnesses in Indonesia. Video images of the sky following the event show a dust trail characteristic of an exploding asteroid.

I recommend having a look at that last link to see the big smoky looking trail it left in the sky.

The lessons: at any time, your city could be taken out by an unexpected small asteroid. (Unless you encourage government to spend money on more extensive searches.)

Suitable for comedy

Dear Prudence answers readers' questions live at Washingtonpost.com. - - Slate Magazine

I hope that link always works to the right page. If it does, I strongly recommend question 3 and the advice that follows.

It certainly sounds like a situation that, if shown on something like Seinfeld, you might find improbable.

Perfect for that Fail blog

Cop caught taking up-skirt videos during anti-pervert campaign

Still nutty

Film-maker Paul Haggis quits Scientology over gay rights stance | World news | guardian.co.uk

This story is noteworthy in two respects:

a. Haggis leaves Scientology over anti gay marriage statements by someone in the San Diego branch. This makes them "bigots, hypocrites and homophobes", and the organisation one "where gay-bashing is tolerated". Where once Haggis was dupe of a dubious religion, he's now a dupe of gay rights propaganda.

b. He also is upset that the organisation denies the policy of "disconnection", in which followers are encouraged to break off contact with those who have criticised the church. Says Haggis:

"I was shocked," wrote Haggis. "We all know this policy exists. I didn't have to search for verification - I didn't even have to look any further than my own home. You might recall that my wife was ordered to disconnect from her own parents … although it caused her terrible personal pain, my wife broke off all contact with them."

Um, how long ago did this happen, and is it not a much, much more important reason for doubting the bona fides of the group than its support for Proposition 8?