Revisiting the War

Spielberg's War of the Worlds was on TV last night, and I hadn't seen it again since it came out in 2005. (I wonder if I have any readers today who were remember my 2005 comments on it. Probably not.)

Anyhow, I have to say again: what a creepy, disturbing, yet quite brilliantly directed movie it is. Yes, it ends abruptly, and via a means which makes little sense now compared to the time when the book was written. I assume that Spielberg and his writers just couldn't come up with an updated variation on the idea. (That was the one - the absolutely only - slightly clever thing about Independence Day. It was a virus that was the aliens downfall, but a computer virus, not a biological one. Unfortunately, that such a crap movie had recently used that updating trick presumably prevented Spielberg's writers from using it.)

While the movie creeped me out again, I was able to concentrate on the direction a little bit more last night. I'll say it again: Spielberg just blows away all the jittery camera, let's-create-hyper-action-by-ultra-fast-editing action directors of today. You know exactly what's going on, and can understand the sequences clearly. He is excellent with tension; he can make Tom Cruise act well.

Enough said? Yes, for now.

Calm Crabb

Annabel Crabb really amuses with this paragraph about a week in which everyone saw the desperation in our PM's media spin blitz:

Having experimented with tub-thumping and name-calling, the Ruddbot has entered a calm, methodical period, during which he calmly, methodically dials the direct line of every radio announcer he has ever met and invites himself on air to talk - with a certain methodical air of calm - about his plan to deal with the 78 Sri Lankans aboard the Oceanic Viking, a plan that takes considerable minutes to outline if you are the calm and methodical type, but for the slapdash and reckless can quite reasonably be summarised using just seven letters and one apostrophe: "We'll see."

A simile too far

I won't explaining how I ended up clicking onto this article, but in any event I have a strong urge to share its, um, wisdom:

If we do not have healthy bowel movements two or three times a day, we are like the tunnel that had three trains go into it, and only one train came out. THERE IS A WRECK IN THE TUNNEL. And that wreck in our intestines is the starting point for all illness.

The article also goes on to claim:

Unless your bowel is working perfectly three bowel movements daily, each the diameter of a banana, about a foot long, fully formed and floating on the water in the toilet bowl you need to get your digestive system in order to get healthy, which includes losing weight as a side effect.

Just a tad over-prescriptive, I think.

Rooting for the psychopath

Earlier this week I briefly noted some extracts of a new biography of Ayn Rand, who, puzzlingly, still attracts something of a following if sales of her books are anything to go by.

Well, now there's a even more informative review in Slate of the two (not just one) new books about her.

She was even loopier than I first imagined:

Her diaries from that time, while she worked as a receptionist and an extra, lay out the Nietzschean mentality that underpins all her later writings. The newspapers were filled for months with stories about serial killer called William Hickman, who kidnapped a 12-year-old girl called Marion Parker from her junior high school, raped her, and dismembered her body, which he sent mockingly to the police in pieces. Rand wrote great stretches of praise for him, saying he represented "the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatsoever for all that a society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul. … Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should." She called him "a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy," shimmering with "immense, explicit egotism." Rand had only one regret: "A strong man can eventually trample society under its feet. That boy [Hickman] was not strong enough."

I take it she would have been laughing and cheering in all the wrong places during Silence of the Lambs. (And probably weeping when Hannibal was so cruelly being carted around on a trolley in a straightjacket.)

Really, I don't know how anyone can trust her take on anything (economics, morality, government, whatever) when she was such a fruitloop.

And also, now that she's been dead for quite a while, isn't there scope for a very funny satirical film about someone like her?

Finally, I get the impression that this bit sums up her most famous novels well:

Her heroes are a cocktail of extreme self-love and extreme self-pity: They insist they need no one, yet they spend all their time fuming that the masses don't bow down before their manifest superiority.

Time travelling baguette

Large Hadron Collider stalled again... thanks to chunk of baguette - Times Online

The rehabilitation of the beleaguered Large Hadron Collider was on hold tonight after the failure of one of its powerful cooling units caused by an errant chunk of baguette.

The £4 billion particle-collider faced more than a year of delays after a helium leak stymied the project in its first few days of operation. It is gradually being switched back on over the coming months but suffered a new setback on Tuesday morning.

Scientists at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva noticed that the system’s carefully monitored temperatures were creeping up.

Further investigation into the failure of a cryogenic cooling plant revealed an unusual impediment. A piece of crusty bread had paralysed a high voltage installation that should have been powering the cooling unit.

Funnily enough, I was just reading again last night about the possibility that the future is preventing the LHC from starting.

Clearly, the future is economical with its methods. Instead of sending back killer cyborgs, it just puts its lunch inside the time machine.

Friends of the Earth don't care for trading

carbon trading 'the next Sub Prime' - Friends of the Earth Australia

Friends of the Earth have come out with a long report critical of carbon trading due to not being an effective means to reduce CO2.

While I have much sympathy with their arguments, it seems they are leaving their run a bit late.

Now that all politicians seem to be utterly committed to an emissions trading schemes, it is hard to see how long it will take for the whole idea to be revised in light of inadequacy. I mean, it'll take years to get it up and running fully, then a number of years to realise it's not working. Probably a good decade or so of wasted time, I reckon.

Kitchen Stadium could not contain him

Who knew that the Chinese were such fans of the host of Iron Chef?:


(Photo found on today's version of The Independent website, but actually comes from Reuters I think. I can't find the description of who it actually is.)

Update: Gosh, it's a Chairman alright, but not Chairman Kaga. It's Mao in young, hirsute mode.

Letting people vote

Maine Voters Repeal Law Allowing Gay Marriage

This seems to be attracting much less attention in Australia than the Californian Proposition 8 vote, but it's interesting to see how, when Americans get to vote on it, they reject gay marriage.

I also note how this is framed in many newspaper reports as "heartbreaking". (It seems that an AP writer is behind a lot of the reports, and his sympathies are clear.)

Credit due

Spencer on Lindzen and Choi climate feedback paper

I don't usually comment on the minute detail of some AGW debates, as they can get very complicated, and other blogs can explain it better.

But - it is interesting to note that skeptical blog Watts Up With That has run a post by soft skeptic Roy Spencer in which he finds a paper by fellow scientist skeptics Lindzen & Choi does not really show what they claim.

Monckton has promoted the Lindzen & Choi paper on Fox News recently, saying that it proves that the IPCC wildly overestimates climate sensitivity.

So, it's skeptical science in dispute with itself. At least I suppose Spencer deserves credit for being forthright about this.

I note, however, that a dispute like this attracts a relatively small number of comments at WUWT. If it's an anti AGW post, though, there tends to be much more excitement in comments.

Agreed

Steve Martin is the Oscars host with the most | Xan Brooks | Film | guardian.co.uk

He may have forgotten how to make a good movie, but I agree with Brooks that Martin is always funny as Oscar host:

Martin, for my money, has been the most reliably witty and sure-footed of all the recent presenters; the host that best navigates the perilous terrain of this most cramped and compromised of roles. His banter is drier, more tart than the showbiz razzle-dazzle provided by Crystal and Jackman. At the same time, however, he appears more at ease with the format than such nervous interlopers as Chris Rock or Jon Stewart. He is the insider's outsider; a pampered creature of the establishment who is still smart enough to treat the whole gaudy affair with an amused contempt.

Because we can

Suicide letter couple found dead

I don't know why people who are over-enthusiastic about suicide think they make good advocates for euthanasia:

Dennis and Flora Milner, aged 83 and 81, were found dead in their home in Newbury on Sunday, police confirmed.

A letter and statement saying they had "chosen to peacefully end our lives" was delivered to BBC South on Tuesday.

They said they wanted to highlight the "serious human dilemma" which prevents people from legally ending their own lives with loved ones around them.

Mr and Mrs Milner's daughter Chrissy said her parents had been in good health but did not want to get to a stage were they would be too ill to care for themselves.

The children are said to "supported their parents decision". One big happy suicide family.

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.