Bits and pieces

Yet again, I spent too much time today arguing on Catallaxy. Bad, bad.

Meanwhile, on the internet more generally, I note:

* I didn't catch all of the Oscars on Monday, but what I did see seem very strangely directed and not terribly funny. Steve Martin, I thought for the first time, actually is starting to look old. (That white hair has made him look the same age for close to four decades.) Still, at least it wasn't very overtly political this year, and James Cameron lost (yay!). The funniest commentary I have read about the show is here.

* Slate has a somewhat interesting review of a book about why gay rights have advanced quickly in America. It mainly talks about the idea that conservatives are motivated by a combination of disproportionate disgust at the messy details of gay sex and overactive imaginations. It's an argument that has some explanatory power for some of the reaction towards homosexuals by teenage boys (and Tony Abbott), but it hardly explains why, in various societies where homosexual/bisexual behaviour was unremarkable, no one until now has ever thought it made sense for gay relationships to be given the status of marriage.

* It's a jet pack, yes, but it's terribly loud and made in New Zealand, which given its reputation for flightless birds, does not inspire much confidence. The big question: how do you stop a disaster from one of the fans breaking? Video available at the link.

* SBS has been showing a documentary series about a couple of Australian guys who wrote an ambitious musical (Angels, mostly to be performed by a cast flying around on trapezes, it seemed) and went to Broadway to try to stage it. I've only seen one episode, and it was a little like watching a slow moving train wreck. I felt sorry for the one who wrote the music; he looked so stressed and lonely the whole time while his buddy was out wheeling and dealing to try to get finance. The story of what happened can be read here and here, if you don't want to watch.

Blood post

I'm not doing bad at not posting here during the day, except for the fact that I've been making comments all day at Catallaxy instead. (It's a strange blog at the moment, that one, about which I am tempted to post here one day. But not yet.) Tomorrow, I have to stop even that.

Anyhow, tonight's little post is about the fact that I finally finished Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood". What a fine book it turned out to be. I'm not one for crime fiction or true life crime accounts generally speaking, but Capote's book is so intelligent and well written I couldn't help but be impressed.

In many respects (apart from the complete lack of swearing) I felt that the book does not feel dated at all, even in its succinct but (I believe) accurate discussion about psychiatry and criminal responsibility. It was also interesting to note how capital punishment was a controversial topic in the heartland of America even 50 years ago. I don't particularly care if some scenes are not accurate; there appears to be enough "first hand" content in the book (such as letters and other material) to feel pretty confident that the psychological account of the life of the murderers is more or less correct.

For a somewhat flamboyant, eccentric, gay socialite, Capote certainly seems to show a surprising degree of empathy with conservative middle America, and perhaps in that respect it does feel a little dated. (It's easy to imagine that any modern writer from New York on a similar project today would be more condescending towards the religious townfolk.) But the main point about Capote is his fine writing style, and it's a pity that his literary output was so limited.

I see that the Wikipedia article on the book has a link to site containing photos which are of interest if you know the story.

Now it's time for me to read the last Michael Crichton novel, about pirates. A bit of a change of pace.

Four more than I had heard of

Knowing the mind of God: Seven theories of everything - physics-math

That's a bit embarrassing. I thought I read enough about physics on the 'net, but I can only recall reading about 3 out of this list of seven.

Oh well. The real TOE has probably not even been thought of yet.

Self control issue

Every Sunday, after (usually) fairly light browsing and posting because of domestic activities, I get the feeling that it would be easy for me to just stop posting for a few weeks to catch up on work.

Then on Monday I get to work, and if no one rings in the first hour, I look around my usual haunts on the internet, find something worth a post, and then the cycle of continuing to look for stuff that I want to post about recommences, to the detriment of getting more work done.

This post itself is evidence of my poor self control.

By posting about it here, maybe it will be like my mini Internet Anonymous first meeting "Hi, I'm Steve, and I spend far too much time on the internet."

So, that's that then. Now I'm on the path to recovery, I really do have a pretty intense period of work coming up. I'm going to try to only post on evenings, if at all. In a couple of weeks, I should give it up totally, as I expect to have a particularly stressful couple of weeks at work. But maybe if I can become a night blogger only, I can cope. Or is that like an alcoholic promising to only have 2 drinks a night with dinner?

We'll see.

Hard to believe

Catalyst could power homes on a bottle of water, produce hydrogen on-site (w/ Video)

With one bottle of drinking water and four hours of sunlight, MIT chemist Dan Nocera claims that he can produce 30 KWh of electricity, which is enough to power an entire household in the developing world. With about three gallons of river water, he could satisfy the daily energy needs of a large American home. The key to these claims is a new, affordable catalyst that uses solar electricity to split water and generate hydrogen.

The Swiss tackle the serious issues

BBC News - Swiss ask whether animals need lawyers

Swiss voters will go to the polls on Sunday to decide on a proposal to appoint state-funded lawyers across the country to represent animals in court.

Supporters of the initiative say such lawyers would help deter cases of animal cruelty and neglect, by making sure that those who did abuse or neglect animals would be properly punished.

It's the obvious place for a sequel movie "Ace Ventura: Pet Attorney".

Monbiot on feed in tariffs again

There is no 'green treachery' in questioning this solar panel rip-off | George Monbiot | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Monbiot continues to make some sense about feed in tariffs and solar. 

Next time, ask if their hearing aid is on

What do you mean you 'had sex'? | Booster Shots | Los Angeles Times

A telephone survey in Indiana on what people think constitutes "having sex". Some results are not surprising, as by all accounts Bill Clinton's definition has been widely adopted, especially by the young.

But this?:

Among older men (age 65 and older), 23% did not consider penile-vaginal intercourse to be sex.

One suspects either a failure to have the hearing aid on, or a lack of familiarity with terminology, or both. "Pea Nile vege Nile what?"

The Economist comes out swinging on "genderside"

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.

Hamas deals with the serious problems

BBC News - Male hairdressers banned from women's salons in Gaza

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 Arctic methane worry

Methane bubbling out of Arctic Ocean – but is it new? - environment - 04 March 2010 - New Scientist

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 PhysOrg version of the story has more detail, including this somewhat worrying conclusion:

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.

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..

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.

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.

How very Chinese.

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:

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.

Lots of ice found?

Radar Finds Ice Deposits at Moon's North Pole

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:

"..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:

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.

On Germany:

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....

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.

Read about it here.

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?)

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 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.

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".

No one ever said climate science was easy...