The war on baby girls: Gendercide | The Economist
It's ironic, I suppose, that while feminism is traditionally a left wing concern, it is this far-from-left-wing periodical which is making one of the strongest call to action against abortion of girls.
Friday, March 05, 2010
Save the oyster
Ocean acidity and its effects examined
The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting article here on local research into ocean acidification.
The Sydney rock oyster has shown adverse sensitivity to acidification, but research is being done to see if they can breed strains that are more resistant to it.
While not getting my favourite oyster would be a worry, the far bigger concern is the effect on phytoplankton and small shelled fishfood like the pteropods.
The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting article here on local research into ocean acidification.
The Sydney rock oyster has shown adverse sensitivity to acidification, but research is being done to see if they can breed strains that are more resistant to it.
While not getting my favourite oyster would be a worry, the far bigger concern is the effect on phytoplankton and small shelled fishfood like the pteropods.
The Arctic methane worry
Methane bubbling out of Arctic Ocean – but is it new? - environment - 04 March 2010 - New Scientist
Update: On the other hand, the Christian Science Monitor's take on the story indicates that the current level of emissions is not so large on the global scale:
The PhysOrg version of the story has more detail, including this somewhat worrying conclusion:A wide expanse of Arctic Ocean seabed is bubbling methane into the atmosphere. This is the first time that the ocean has been found to be releasing this powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere on this scale.
The discovery will rekindle fears that global warming might be on the verge of unlocking billions of tonnes of methane from beneath the oceans, which could trigger runaway climate change. The trouble is, nobody knows if the Arctic emissions are new, or indeed anything to do with global warming.
The East Siberian Arctic Shelf, in addition to holding large stores of frozen methane, is more of a concern because it is so shallow. In deep water, methane gas oxidizes into carbon dioxide before it reaches the surface. In the shallows of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, methane simply doesn’t have enough time to oxidize, which means more of it escapes into the atmosphere. That, combined with the sheer amount of methane in the region, could add a previously uncalculated variable to climate models.
"The release to the atmosphere of only one percent of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits might alter the current atmospheric burden of methane up to 3 to 4 times,” Shakhova said. “The climatic consequences of this are hard to predict.”
Update: On the other hand, the Christian Science Monitor's take on the story indicates that the current level of emissions is not so large on the global scale:
They are estimated at nearly 8 million metric tons a year, making them roughly equal to the amount that, until now, scientists had attributed to emissions from all the world's oceans combined, the researchers calculate. Still, the emissions represent no more than about 1 percent of total global emissions.I guess the worry is whether it is currently coming from thawing shallow hydrate deposits or not, and if it is, whether that will increase dramatically.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Fake cigarettes for health
Be Healthy And Smoke Your Vitamin C
I like the cut-away diagram at the post: it looks like a missile interior. Watch out for the Nosemint too..
I like the cut-away diagram at the post: it looks like a missile interior. Watch out for the Nosemint too..
There's a country that knows how to name space stations
The Great Beyond: ‘Heavenly Palace’ in space to launch next year
China has announced it will launch the first module of its space station next year.How very Chinese.The unmanned ‘Heavenly Palace’ module will be transformed into a permanent taikonaut residence and space lab within two years of the launch, says Qi Faren, a member of the influential National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
This and that
I've been busy today, and will probably be posting less frequently for a little while. But tonight, here are a few fun things that have caught my eye:
* It's all an illusion: This is a pretty amazing video that demonstrates the remarkable degree to which television can now fake the background scenery via green screen. I had no idea that this technology was so ubiquitous on TV, and so seamlessly used in so many different ways:
The company which put this together has a website here.
* Jesus told me so (just yesterday, in fact): I think I have mentioned viXra before. Its purpose is to provide an outlet for papers (mainly on science) which arXiv will not run for being just a bit too "out there", even though some pretty odd things have ended up on arXiv.
Of course, everyone assumed that this would mean an unreadable mess of papers explaining every crank theory under the sun. Yet, my impression from reading some of the abstracts on the physics sections is that it may not be all rubbish; certainly some of titles just as impenetrable as some of those on arXiv, and are not obviously nutty.
But the best feature of viXra is the section "religion and spirituality", as it features several papers written by (wait for it) Jesus Christ Himself. Yay.
As the layout of viXra is identical to arXiv, the mere appearance of the list of articles by "Author: Jesus Christ" is amusing. Here's a screenshot (click to enlarge):
Sadly, I think Jesus needs a good editor to review his message writing style. He seems fond of ending this way:
* Working at the office from home: this last bit is not funny, just a recommendation for some software.
I had long been vaguely aware that software was available that would let you operate a computer remotely, but I didn't feel a big enough need for that to actually pay for such software. I didn't know until recently that there were also freeware solutions for this.
A couple of months ago, a computer magazine disc had the free version of LogMeIn, but it didn't work well. (Screen resolution of the window showing the remote computer was pretty poor, and it would not work with my beloved Wordperfect documents at all.)
But now I have tried Teamviewer in the free version (for private and non-commercial use, of course.) It works extremely well, although the slight time lag when you're at home editing a document on your work computer (did I say "work"? I meant, the computer in my other home) takes a little bit of getting used to.
It's worth a try if that sort of thing might be useful for you too.
* It's all an illusion: This is a pretty amazing video that demonstrates the remarkable degree to which television can now fake the background scenery via green screen. I had no idea that this technology was so ubiquitous on TV, and so seamlessly used in so many different ways:
The company which put this together has a website here.
* Jesus told me so (just yesterday, in fact): I think I have mentioned viXra before. Its purpose is to provide an outlet for papers (mainly on science) which arXiv will not run for being just a bit too "out there", even though some pretty odd things have ended up on arXiv.
Of course, everyone assumed that this would mean an unreadable mess of papers explaining every crank theory under the sun. Yet, my impression from reading some of the abstracts on the physics sections is that it may not be all rubbish; certainly some of titles just as impenetrable as some of those on arXiv, and are not obviously nutty.
But the best feature of viXra is the section "religion and spirituality", as it features several papers written by (wait for it) Jesus Christ Himself. Yay.
As the layout of viXra is identical to arXiv, the mere appearance of the list of articles by "Author: Jesus Christ" is amusing. Here's a screenshot (click to enlarge):
Sadly, I think Jesus needs a good editor to review his message writing style. He seems fond of ending this way:
This article is written by Me, Jesus Christ, and Me allow you to read this article in order you can read and repent and receive Me, Jesus Christ. Me allow My messenger, that is this writer, to type this article in order you can repent and do your repentance properly. That is My message: be hurry, be hurry to repent and receive Me, Jesus Christ, all corners of the world. Tweet this message quickly to all over the world including all your friends quickly today.I guess it's a case of "my tweet Lord". (Rolling in the aisles, are we?)
* Working at the office from home: this last bit is not funny, just a recommendation for some software.
I had long been vaguely aware that software was available that would let you operate a computer remotely, but I didn't feel a big enough need for that to actually pay for such software. I didn't know until recently that there were also freeware solutions for this.
A couple of months ago, a computer magazine disc had the free version of LogMeIn, but it didn't work well. (Screen resolution of the window showing the remote computer was pretty poor, and it would not work with my beloved Wordperfect documents at all.)
But now I have tried Teamviewer in the free version (for private and non-commercial use, of course.) It works extremely well, although the slight time lag when you're at home editing a document on your work computer (did I say "work"? I meant, the computer in my other home) takes a little bit of getting used to.
It's worth a try if that sort of thing might be useful for you too.
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Lots of ice found?
Radar Finds Ice Deposits at Moon's North Pole
This sounds impressive:
This sounds impressive:
Numerous craters near the poles of the Moon have interiors that are in permanent sun shadow. These areas are very cold and water ice is stable there essentially indefinitely. Fresh craters show high degrees of surface roughness (high CPR) both inside and outside the crater rim, caused by sharp rocks and block fields that are distributed over the entire crater area. However, Mini-SAR has found craters near the north pole that have high CPR inside, but not outside their rims. This relation suggests that the high CPR is not caused by roughness, but by some material that is restricted within the interiors of these craters. We interpret this relation as consistent with water ice present in these craters. The ice must be relatively pure and at least a couple of meters thick to give this signature.Of course, the poles should have been a priority for human exploration on the return to the Moon. When that's going to happen now, though, is anyone's guess.
Monbiot's back, making some sense this time
Are we really going to let ourselves be duped into this solar panel rip-off? | George Monbiot |
There you go. If like me you always had a hunch that Germany and England going mad with installing solar cells on buildings made no sense at all because, well, it's hard to imagine the sun giving you a sunburn in England, let alone contributing power to your house, it turns out George Monbiot agrees completely.
He does note, though, that PV on the roof makes more sense in areas where peak power demand does tend to occur in summer on sunny days (for airconditioning). In England (and I assume Germany) however:
There you go. If like me you always had a hunch that Germany and England going mad with installing solar cells on buildings made no sense at all because, well, it's hard to imagine the sun giving you a sunburn in England, let alone contributing power to your house, it turns out George Monbiot agrees completely.
He does note, though, that PV on the roof makes more sense in areas where peak power demand does tend to occur in summer on sunny days (for airconditioning). In England (and I assume Germany) however:
"..peak demand takes place between 5pm and 7pm on winter evenings. Do I need to spell out the implications?"George is going off about the UK just setting high feed in tariffs, just at the time Germany is realising they can't be sustained. He writes about the UK:
On Germany:It expects this scheme to save 7m tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2020. Assuming – generously – that the rate of installation keeps accelerating, this suggests a saving of about 20m tonnes of CO2 by 2030. The estimated price by then is £8.6bn. This means it will cost about £430 to save one tonne of CO2.
Last year the consultancy company McKinsey published a table of cost comparisons. It found that you could save a tonne of CO2 for £3 by investing in geothermal energy, or for £8 by building a nuclear power plant.
By 2006 its generous feed-in tariffs had stimulated 230,000 solar roofs, at a cost of ¤1.2bn. Their total contribution to the country's electricity supply was 0.4%. Their total contribution to carbon savings, as a paper in the journal Energy Policy points out, is zero. This is because Germany, like the UK, belongs to the European emissions trading scheme. Any savings made by feed-in tariffs permit other industries to raise their emissions.Good reading.
A bit of an oversight
Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found that patients admitted to hospice care who have an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) are rarely having their ICDs deactivated and are receiving electrical shocks from these devices near the end of life....Read about it here.
ICD shocks may cause physical and psychological distress for patients and their caregivers. Patients report that receiving shocks from an ICD is comparable to being "kicked or punched" in the chest. Receiving ICD shocks has been associated with the development of adjustment disorders, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and panic disorder. Family caregivers who observe patients being shocked report feelings of fear, worry, and helplessness, and have been shown to have increased rates of depression and anxiety. For patients with advanced disease, an ICD may no longer prolong a life of acceptable quality, and cause needless discomfort.
Why the LHC may blow again
'Subtle defect' worry at LHC (Blog) - physicsworld.com
Here's a short article on the issues that are causing the LHC to run at lower power for a couple of years, until they close the whole thing down to check every part of it for a defect in the electronics.
Seeing I was talking about spinning superconductors and anti-gravity effects a couple of posts back, it would be a nice result if the LHC at full power causes the whole thing to levitate off the ground and drift off into space. (I know, it's not the superconductors themselves moving, but it's a nice image, isn't it?)
Here's a short article on the issues that are causing the LHC to run at lower power for a couple of years, until they close the whole thing down to check every part of it for a defect in the electronics.
Seeing I was talking about spinning superconductors and anti-gravity effects a couple of posts back, it would be a nice result if the LHC at full power causes the whole thing to levitate off the ground and drift off into space. (I know, it's not the superconductors themselves moving, but it's a nice image, isn't it?)
Fodder for skeptics
Climate Feedback: The climate machine
The Hadley Centre is working on a more complicated model of the Earth for the next round of future climate predictions.
The only problem is, climate skeptics/deniers are bound to leap onto this:
The Hadley Centre is working on a more complicated model of the Earth for the next round of future climate predictions.
The only problem is, climate skeptics/deniers are bound to leap onto this:
The scientists – such as Jones – who have developed HADGEM2-ES hope that by representing the earth system in greater complexity they will be to simulate the present-day climate with greater realism. This should, in theory, lead to more realistic projections for the future, but many of the climate modellers I spoke to were keen to point out that simulating the climate with more complex models may well lead to greater uncertainty about what the future holds. That’s because including sources of large feedbacks – such as forests that can expand or die or tundra that can release vast amounts of methane – adds a whole new suite of factors to which the climate can respond.No one ever said climate science was easy...So, it’s quite likely that the next IPCC report will have much larger error bars on its estimates of future temperature or precipitation, compared with AR4. Climatologist Jim Hurrell of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, who is heading up development of the NCAR Earth-system model, had this to say:
“It's very likely that the generation of models that will be assessed for the next IPCC report will have a wider spread of possible climate outcomes as we move into the future".
Dark news
Dark matter could meet its nemesis on Earth - New Scientist
That's interesting. They may be able to test Modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) via an experiment on earth.
Actually, that puts in mind of the claims in the 1990's of some Russian scientist's experiments with a spinning superconducting disc that seemed to produce a slight anti-gravity effect. Here's a Slate article about it from 2002.
Haven't heard any more about that for a long time. I guess the secret, alien-run Earth Quarantine Force that kills off potential technology that could get us to the stars saw to that. (Hey, it's a working hypothesis, OK?)
And I am also reminded of an interesting recent article on dark energy on arXiv. As you may recall, Einstein added a deliberate fudge (the cosmological constant) to general relativity to make sure the universe wasn't expanding. (Expansion was not an idea in vogue at the time Einstein was doodling in the Patent Office.) Now that observation shows it's currently not only expanding, but accelerating, the talk is all of the mystery of dark energy.
Well, a couple of European physicists argue that there is no need to call it dark energy at all: it's just what happens with relativity. They argue that people are misunderstanding the cosmological constant totally, and (I think) people just have to get used to the idea that general relativity implies expansion.
I don't fully understand the argument: I'll have to re-read it again. But it does seem to me to be an argument that the answer to dark energy is fundamentally staring us in the face.
It's not that other scientists haven't thought of this; it's just that most seem to say "that's too easy, it can't be right." They write:
That's interesting. They may be able to test Modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) via an experiment on earth.
Actually, that puts in mind of the claims in the 1990's of some Russian scientist's experiments with a spinning superconducting disc that seemed to produce a slight anti-gravity effect. Here's a Slate article about it from 2002.
Haven't heard any more about that for a long time. I guess the secret, alien-run Earth Quarantine Force that kills off potential technology that could get us to the stars saw to that. (Hey, it's a working hypothesis, OK?)
And I am also reminded of an interesting recent article on dark energy on arXiv. As you may recall, Einstein added a deliberate fudge (the cosmological constant) to general relativity to make sure the universe wasn't expanding. (Expansion was not an idea in vogue at the time Einstein was doodling in the Patent Office.) Now that observation shows it's currently not only expanding, but accelerating, the talk is all of the mystery of dark energy.
Well, a couple of European physicists argue that there is no need to call it dark energy at all: it's just what happens with relativity. They argue that people are misunderstanding the cosmological constant totally, and (I think) people just have to get used to the idea that general relativity implies expansion.
I don't fully understand the argument: I'll have to re-read it again. But it does seem to me to be an argument that the answer to dark energy is fundamentally staring us in the face.
It's not that other scientists haven't thought of this; it's just that most seem to say "that's too easy, it can't be right." They write:
There is probably nothing very original in this note. The points we make here can be heard in discussions among physicists. However, for some reason they do not have much space in the dark-energy literature.And towards the end of the article, they summarise it like this:
..to claim that dark energy represents a profound mystery, is, in our opinion, nonsense. \Dark energy" is just a catch name for the observed acceleration of the universe, which is a phenomenon well described by currently accepted theories, and predicted by these theories, whose intensity is determined by a fundamental constant, now being measured. The measure of the acceleration only determines the value of a constant that was not previously measured. We have only discovered that a constant that so far (strangely) appeared to be vanishing, in fact is not vanishing.
Our universe is full of mystery, but there is no mystery here. To claim that the greatest mystery of humanity today is the prospect that 75% of the universe is made up of a substance known as `dark energy' about which we have almost no knowledge at all" is indefensible.
Why then all the hype about the mystery of the dark energy? Maybe because great mysteries help getting attention and funding. But o ering a sober and scienti cally sound account of what we understand and what we do not understand is preferable for science, on the long run.Pretty interesting, hey?
Monday, March 01, 2010
More crazy killers than you thought
Scale of mental health homicides 'is being played down' - Crime, UK - The Independent
The film-maker Julian Hendy began studying mental health homicides in Britain following the murder of his 75-year-old father, Philip Hendy, in Bristol in 2007. He investigated more than 600 cases, in a documentary, of homicide by people with mental health problems, dating back to 1993, and concluded there were more than 100 incidents a year, compared with the 50 stated officially...
Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of SANE, said :"This brave film reveals the reality of under-treated mental illness while raising urgent questions about the way we treat such homicides.I wonder if there are slippery figures quoted in this area in Australia too."Unfortunately, to reduce stigma there is a trend to underplay the scale of these tragedies, but this prevents lessons from being learned," she added.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
An Anthony Lane moment...
Reviewing "Shutter Island", Lane complains:
The final twist is a fizzle; not because we see it coming (though we do) but because Scorsese, with a great weight of exposition dumped in his lap, struggles to keep it snappy. He even has a character stand beside a whiteboard and point out written clues. It’s like having “I Walked with a Zombie” interrupted by “Sesame Street.”
Run away! Run away!
Yang Guoxiang | Military Aviation | Air & Space Magazine
A good interview here with a Chinese pilot who, in 1971, couldn't get a test H Bomb to leave his aircraft, and decided to return to base with the dangerous load still attached. The reaction at the base was slightly comic, in retrospect:
A good interview here with a Chinese pilot who, in 1971, couldn't get a test H Bomb to leave his aircraft, and decided to return to base with the dangerous load still attached. The reaction at the base was slightly comic, in retrospect:
There were 10,000 people on the airbase, although only a few knew about
the mission I was on. If anything went wrong, thousands would lose their
lives. The bomb under the fuselage would be hanging just ten
centimeters (four inches) above the ground as I landed....No one could be sure whether or not the bomb would explode if it
touched the runway, but I was confident that I could set the airplane
down gently. So I landed with the H-bomb hanging under me. It was a
perfect landing. When I shut down the engine, there was total silence; I
was completely alone. The airfield was deserted. All 10,000 personnel
were sitting in tunnels under the ground. I could not leave the cockpit:
there was no ladder for me to climb down from the fuselage that was
high above the ground.I called the tower and asked for help. The tower told me to work my
And I had caused a big mess. When I notified the tower that I was
way back to the tail and jump. The people in the control tower were
angry; in their eyes I had put 10,000 lives at risk.
returning with the bomb, the evacuation siren went off. It was lunchtime
at the airbase; everyone was sitting down and eating. They had to rush
out, put on gas masks and scramble into the tunnels. A big rice cooker
caught fire because there was no one left to take care of the kitchen.
Everyone there then still remembers my name: I could have brought them
their Judgment Day.It took a long time for anyone to come near my aircraft. Our
procedures for dealing with the H-bomb meant we had to wear rubber shoes
and clothing that would not create static electricity. No metal was
allowed in the area of the bomb. In the nuclear weapons storage bunker,
all steel columns were wrapped in copper. Now that I had unexpectedly
brought the H-bomb back, there were no service vehicles equipped with
the required shielding. I sat out on the field for a long while.
Australians behaving badly overseas - 1945 to 1952 edition
I don't recall reading any Australian reviews of this 2008 book about the role of Australians in post WW II Japan, but it sounds pretty interesting:
But still, the book apparently makes the point that:
Some 20,000 Aussies served for over six years in Hiroshima and environs, doing their part in the demilitarization, democratization and rebuilding of Japan. The British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF), as the Australian contingent was formally known, made its presence felt, and not always for the good. ...However, there is one line which makes me wonder about the author:
Predatory male sexual behavior? Yes, lots of that, often involving rape, assault and sometimes murder. Combing historical records and firsthand accounts, the author paints a sordid picture, explaining why local Japanese referred to the Australians as yabanjin (barbarian). Gerster writes: "Quite apart from the assaults and rapes was the ruinous cultural violence of men misbehaving because they could." More often than not, their antics were fueled by excessive drinking, which helps explain why so many Japanese pedestrians were victims of hti-and-run accidents. ...
Local women were discouraged from taking up with the soldiers by authorities who "warned that if they consorted with the Australians, they would give birth to kangaroos." Many apparently took their chances due to destitute circumstances and the shortage of Japanese men.
The Pacific War left a bitter legacy in Australia as many soldiers had suffered horribly as POWs. Even today, the author asserts, "anti-Japanese sentiment is endemic in the general community."If there is any, I thinks it's fed by the whaling issue more than any other.
But still, the book apparently makes the point that:
It is all the more striking then to discover that many Australians developed respect for and intimacy with the former enemy, overcoming their prejudices in a way that left them out of sync with popular attitudes when they returned home.
Worth being reminded
This is not a new conclusion, but it would appear to be based on new modelling, and is worth bearing in mind:
The sun goes through an 11-year solar cycle during which its luminosity varies according to the number of sunspots appearing on its face. The normal cycle has a small effect on Earth's weather. But sometimes lulls in sunspot activity can last several decades, driving down the sun's luminosity to a "grand minimum". The Maunder minimum lasted from 1645 to 1715 and may have contributed to the little ice age.
Stefan Rahmstorf and Georg Feulner of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany modelled what would happen to temperatures on Earth if a grand minimum started now and lasted until 2100. They found that while temperatures would go down by as much as 0.3 °C, global warming would push up temperatures by 3.7 to 4.5 °C - more than negating any effect of a global minimum
Hadn't heard that one before
Jesus’s trip to Stonehenge and other bizarre notions - Catholic Herald Online
This is a pretty amusingly savage review of a book that promotes the idea that Jesus visited England (and specifically, Stonehenge!) during the "missing years" between his childhood and adult ministry.
I had heard of purported visits to India and/or Tibet before, and of post-crucifixion tourism to Japan. But Stonehenge: that's a new one for me.
This is a pretty amusingly savage review of a book that promotes the idea that Jesus visited England (and specifically, Stonehenge!) during the "missing years" between his childhood and adult ministry.
I had heard of purported visits to India and/or Tibet before, and of post-crucifixion tourism to Japan. But Stonehenge: that's a new one for me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)