Unusual holiday destination noted

Reunion Island

It's not often on Getaway that I notice a story on a holiday destination I have never really heard of before, but this week they did an item on Reunion Island, and I really couldn't recall ever seeing anything on TV about this place.

It certainly looks like a spectacular destination for volcano viewing and rugged, green scenery. And with a French heritage, it sounds like quite an exotic destination.

Where's my lotto entry for tonight...

That Catholic issue

There were two interesting articles by a Jesuit, James Martin, in Huffington Post recently about the Catholic sex abuse issue. The best one is about homosexuality not being the "cause" of it. It ends with a comment made by the Pope himself indicating that he doesn't believe that either. The arguments are basically the same as I indicated in my post earlier this week.

His other article, arguing that "it's not about celibacy" either, is less strong. He puts up a strong defence of why celibacy is valued by the Church, but it doesn't sit well with this crucial line in his homosexuality article:

Pedophilia, say experts, is more a question of a stunted (or arrested) sexuality, more a question of power, and more a question of proximity (among many other complicated psychological factors). Simply put, being gay does not make one a pedophile.

Um, doesn't celibacy for men who have (presumably, in many cases) entered into celibacy as virgins (or at least with little in the way of long lasting sexual relationships) just about guarantee a "stunted or arrested sexuality"?

The fact that Catholic priest's rate of abuse is not so bad when compared to society at large is still no reason for believing that removal of celibacy would make it less likely. (I suspect, on the other hand, that with married clergy other forms of sexual scandal would increase, such as affairs with the spouse's friends, and allegations of spouse abuse, etc. But such scandal is less harmful than child abuse.)

Not so good news for Europe

Get ready for decades of Icelandic fireworks - environment - 16 April 2010 - New Scientist

Volcanologists say the fireworks exploding from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano on Iceland, which is responsible for the ash cloud that is grounding all commercial flights across northern Europe, may become a familiar sight. Increased rumblings under Iceland over the past decade suggest that the area is entering a more active phase, with more eruptions and the potential for some very large bangs.

"Volcanic activity on Iceland appears to follow a periodicity of around 50 to 80 years. The increase in activity over the past 10 years suggests we might be entering a more active phase with more eruptions," says Thorvaldur Thordarson, an expert on Icelandic volcanoes at the University of Edinburgh, UK. By contrast, the latter half of the 20th century was unusually quiet.

As for the question of whether the current eruption could cause significant cooling: apparently, it's not thought big enough yet to do that.

Update: there's a lot more comparative detail on the size of the Iceland volcano (and why it is not close to be being a big climate influence) here.

By the light of a gecko

The Wisdom of the Lileks

I particularly liked this bit of Lileks this week:

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last ten years – aside from the fact that a man who can write a self-refuting line like “Only a Sith believes in absolutes” and be paid a billion dollars – it’s this: web communities create in-breeding. It’s less the planet-holding-hands-and-singing-the-Coke-song than Cities in Flight, domed off, heading on different trajectories. If you doubt this, subscribe to a few Twitter feeds from people who believe different things than you do, and you will find dross passed off as insight, biscuit-crumbs strewn as if they were pearls on silk, all because the writer believes he or she is speaking to an audience that need not be persuaded. The worst part of the internet is its ability to let the pre-persuaded accrete, and declare the sun moves around them.

Oh, and from the same column:

I suppose I could assume everyone who’s sensible and/or hip to the new “cyber” tools for interpersonal avoidance masquerading as immediate communication is already hooked up with the RSS and the Twitter and the Tumblr...

Nun power

BBC News - Kung fu empowers Nepal nuns

Maybe the dwindling number of Catholic nuns is all to do with the lack of martial arts training. Introduce it and we can get them back into schools again as scarier-than-ever disciplinarian teachers.

Some habit he's got going there

Broadcaster Larry King seeks 8th divorce | Reuters

King has been married to seven different women, but this is his eighth divorce, because he remarried one of his former spouses and then divorced her again.

I remember, years ago, that David Letterman had a funny video segment that was a "guide" to being a new wife for Larry King. I wonder if it is around on the net somewhere.

I can't find it, but I did turn up this Letterman Top 10 Complaints of Larry King's new wife.

Tracking heat

'Missing' heat may affect future climate change | e! Science News

This'll turn up on AGW skeptic sites before long, but it is an interesting detailed explanation of Kevin Trenberth's email comment on the "missing heat" problem in climate science which came to light in the "climategate" email leak.

It occurs to me too that the Icelandic volcano may have a cooling effect for a year or so, as may a spotless Sun. (Although it still seems no one really understands the Sun's cycle properly, and sunspots have been appearing again this year.)

Both of these will presumably affect Europe and the Northern Hemisphere, which may mean some cold winters there to come, despite the fact that as soon as those factors go, AGW could kick back in with a vengeance.

This is not what we need to convince politicians of a need for action.

A worrying comment

Is Japan hurtling toward a debt crisis? - The Globe and Mail

Japan's budget, announced last week o kick off the fiscal year, promises to spend a record trillion dollars, and the government must issue a record ¥44.3-trillion of new bonds this year.

The heavy spending and financing are raising worries in Japan about the country's long-term fiscal health, amid concern that Japanese government bonds are turning into an asset bubble fuelling a public debt that is the highest among advanced economies.

Japan's debt, mostly owed to creditors within the country, is more than 200 per cent of annual gross domestic product, compared with 113 per cent in Greece, 50 per cent in Spain, and 69 per cent in the United States, according to the New York-based ISI Group.

This is the part that really caught my eye:

“I'm actually envious of the Greek situation,” said Masaaki Kanno, chief economist at J.P. Morgan in Tokyo, and a former senior official of the Bank of Japan. “They have market pressure forcing them to take action sooner than later. In Japan, even if the government tries to cut spending, social security costs will likely grow ¥1-trillion every year. The government deficit is likely to grow forever, in a sense.”

Near fiction

Accused murderer Des Campbell allegedly said he couldn't have sex with "filthy rich" and "pig ugly" Jenny Fisicaro | The Daily Telegraph

It's rare that you get a murder trial in which the claims are so much like a story you'd find unlikely on a cheap TV police show. (If the characters were richer, it could be a movie.)

It also appears to be an entirely circumstantial case, as (I assume) there are no witnesses to the fall off the cliff, and forensic evidence of a shove in the back is probably hard to come by.

Here's today's report on yesterday's evidence. Fascinating.

Dubious trips to no where

Obama aims to send astronauts to Mars

OK, so maybe getting rocket development more directly into private hands is not a bad idea. (Emphasis on maybe.) But I still can't believe that any sane person would think that the long, confined and radiation ridden rocket trip to Mars would be worth it simply to orbit the planet. Yet this what Obama is suggesting:

"So, we'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to earth, and a landing on Mars will follow."

A trip to an asteroid, provided the astronauts can actually get onto it, may be worthwhile. But orbiting Mars so as to send back holiday pics from orbit that any robot probe could do? I don't think so.

If you want to test on a long term basis whether your rocket's life support system works for 12 months at a time, just do it near the Earth.

South America gets all the good parasites

BBC News - New species of nose-dwelling leech discovered

It must be "New South American Parasite" week:

A new species of leech, discovered by an international team of scientists, has a preference for living up noses.

Researchers say the leech can enter the body orifices of people and animals to attach itself to mucous membranes.

They have called the new blood-sucking species Tyrannobdella rex which means tyrant leech king.

The creature was first discovered in 2007 in Peru when a specimen was plucked from the nose of a girl who had been bathing in a river.

The creature lives in the remote parts of the Upper Amazon and has a "particularly unpleasant habit of infesting humans", the scientists say.

Studies also revealed that it had "a preference for living up noses". The research published their findings in the online scientific journal PLoS One.

Yuck, again.

Germans just don't get cupcakes

Colbert's long-ish segment on fast food last night had many funny bits, but the German trying the cupcake really had me laughing:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Thought for Food - Mentally Ill Advertisers & German Cupcakes
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

New parasitic news

BBC News - Parasite 'a growing stroke risk'

Just what we need: news of a parasite that I haven't heard of before that is gaining global popularity:

Some 18m people worldwide have Chagas disease, caused by an infection with the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi.

Recently, researchers discovered having this disease puts the individual at increased risk of stroke due to heart complications and blood clots.

Chagas disease is endemic in Latin America. But emigration of millions of people to Europe, North America, Japan and Australia over the past 20 years has also made Chagas disease an emerging health problem in these countries with the potential to cause a substantial disease burden, say the investigators.

They don't actually explain what bugs can give you the disease, apart from having a photo of some unnamed blood sucker. Wikipedia explains that it is usually via a bug with particularly unpleasant habits:

In Chagas-endemic areas, the main mode of transmission is through an insect vector called a triatomine bug.^[1] A triatomine becomes infected with T. cruzi by feeding on the blood of an infected person or animal. During the day, triatomines hide in crevices in the walls and roofs. The bugs emerge at night, when the inhabitants are sleeping. Because they tend to feed on people’s faces, triatomine bugs are also known as “kissing bugs.” After they bite and ingest blood, they defecate on the person. Triatomines pass T. cruzi parasites (called trypomastigotes) in feces left near the site of the bite wound. Scratching the site of the bite causes the trypomastigotes to enter the host through the wound, or through intact mucous membranes, such as the conjunctiva.

Yuck.

"Hot" tourist spot

Wonder lust: Chernobyl - environment - 13 April 2010 - New Scientist

There's a short item here about what you can do as a tourist in the Chernobyl area. It's still not high on my wish list, no matter how many birds, bears and other assorted wildlife may have moved into the town. (For all we know, some of them may have gained mutant super powers. That would be my concern.)

Fixing NASA

Findings - NASA, We’ve Got a Problem. But It Can Be Fixed. - NYTimes.com

There's some interesting comment in this article about how NASA and space exploration has not followed the usual economies of new transport systems:

The main problem with NASA is not lack of money. Its current budget is about the same size, when adjusted for inflation, as the average during the 1960s and early 1970s. But space exploration has become so costly that this level of financing won’t even pay for a return to the Moon anytime soon, which is what prompted the White House to cancel the Bush administration’s lunar mission.

Normally, once a pioneer makes the first trip somewhere, the cost goes down as others follow and technology improves. That’s why so many colonists could follow Columbus to the New World, and why the masses today can afford to fly in Lindbergh’s path back to Europe. The real costs of shipping freight by rail and air have declined by an order of magnitude since locomotives and airplanes were invented.

In space transportation, though, many costs have actually risen since the days of Apollo.

Since Obama announced his changes to NASA, which include abandoning the current return to the moon rocket development, some have argued that this may work out better in the long run. I don't really know enough to know, but I can certainly see the argument that NASA needed shaking up in some major way.

Local drama

A fairy tale gone wrong - latimes.com

This South East Asian version of an international celebrity marriage gone wrong should have attracted some Australian media interest, I would have thought. Instead, it appears in the LA Times. Odd.

Death for mingling

Cleric's support for men and women mingling in public sparks furor in Saudi Arabia

The Christian Science Monitor notes in the above report:

....Sheikh Ahmed al-Ghamdi recently declared that nothing in Islam bans men and women from mixing in public places like schools and offices.

Supporters of the status quo responded harshly. Anyone who permits men and women to work or study together is an apostate and should be put to death unless he repents, said Sheikh Abdulrahman al-Barrak.

The article goes on to give some examples of Saudi segregation which shows how extreme it is:

Men and women enter government offices and banks through different doors. Male professors teach female university students from separate rooms using closed-circuit television. Companies must create all-female rooms or floors if they hire women. And the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce just announced different work hours for male and female employees so the two don't mix on arrival and departure.

I wonder what outdoor events women attend there. 'Cos I am thinking, if ever there is a brave man in Saudi Arabia, it would be the first male streaker at a women's only sporting fixture.

A specialised conference

34th Annual Larval Fish Conference

Who knew that larval fish scientists had their own conference. I assume the venue does not need to be especially big!

Anyhow, the story at the link is about research indicating that lower ocean water pH may not affect the growth of some reef fish, but it does appear to affect larval fish behaviour, quite possibly in a way that let more of them perish.

Ocean acidification - it's just one big gamble.

And by the way, Andrew Bolt deserves special criticism for posting a Youtube video from pro CO2 site CO2 Science showing how much better a cowpea plant does with CO2 at 1270 ppm compared to one at 470 ppm.

First, we aren't yet at 470 ppm, and it would take many, many decades to ever reach 1270 ppm.

But more importantly, when we start deciding that the planet should be ideally adjusted to suit plants rather than humans, then he may have a point.

Tough sentencing

Man convicted of stealing 2.5 yen worth of electricity › Japan Today

An unemployed man in Osaka City was sentenced to one year in prison suspended for three years on Tuesday for stealing electricity worth 2.5 yen from a shared electric outlet at his apartment building.