Three unusual weather stories

It's a risky business drawing connections between particular examples of unusually bad weather and climate change. Half the time anyone does this, someone will come up with an example from the last 100 years which was in fact worse. Still, I am getting the impression lately that there is something a little peculiar going on. My, very cautiously offered, evidence:

1. The Tennessee floods. Record breaking rain, and a meteorological explanation given for it in the CSM.

2. Rain in the Arctic in April. This is, it seems, very, very unusual at this time of year.

3. This morning: a deadly tornado and storm in China, which is, according to the BBC, pretty unusual.

Greece explained

Greek lesson in the perils of overspending

Tim Colebatch does a good job at giving a concise summary of what's been going on in Greece. 

Happy blog-a-versary

My last post reminded me, by virtue of my searching for an old post here, that this blog has just turned 5 years old. Yay.

That's some sort of achievement, I think, given that it's all written by yours truly with only the occasional short break while on holidays.

Keep those cards and donations coming*. (I don't even bother putting a Paypal button on here any more, but if anyone wants permission to send me money, just send me an email and that can be rectified!)

Which also reminds me: no comment yet on any of my lake, mountain, water and/or duck photos of New Zealand. That's it, I'm bringing out the sheep photos now:



* As if, you cheap bastards. :-)

Smelly ape sightings

In search of the skunk ape » Big Story » Valdosta Daily Times

A skunk ape seems to be a skinny relative of Bigfoot, and some people think they have seen one in South Georgia, USA, recently.

As I noted here way back in 2006, I did once know someone who was scared mightily by a strong, foul smell and some crashing around the bush sounds while he was camping  in some State forest near Brisbane.  The association of strong smells with sightings of odd creatures has interested me ever since.

No good will come of this

Steven Spielberg is to direct War Horse - Telegraph

Spielberg is apparently to direct a boy and his horse novel set in World War 1. But the bad news:

For fans of Morpurgo, it is also good news that the screen adaptation is being written by Richard Curtis and Lee Hall, both past masters at bringing a tear to the eye.

Richard Curtis! I hate all his post-Blackadder work.

Need a stiff drink?

African moonshine: Kill me quick | The Economist

In a Kenyan slum:

The equivalent of $1 is enough to buy four glasses of illegally brewed chang’aa—and oblivion. Some drink the local special, jet-five, so called because the fermentation of maize and sorghum is sped up with pilfered jet fuel. It can damage the brain. Elsewhere in Nairobi, chang’aa is spiked with embalming fluid from mortuaries. The name, meaning literally “kill me quick”, is well chosen.

And Uganda may have this distinction:

The UN’s World Health Organisation reckons that half of all alcohol drunk in Africa is illegal. Neighbouring Uganda may consume more alcohol per person than any country in the world. Much of this is waragi, a banana gin. Some 100 Ugandans died from toxic waragi in April alone.

Not worth the effort

Mind Hacks: Paradise learnt

An interesting story here of a man who, starting at the age of 58, has pretty accurately memorised the whole of Paradise Lost (a mere 10,565 lines.) He's now 74 and still got it on (in?) his brain.

Do such amazing feats of memory training help your general cognitive abilities though? Apparently not:

Although not formally tested, JB's everyday memory is apparently normal for his age, with his exceptional memory for Milton's poem apparently arising from his relentless practice and dedication.

This is a common pattern in mental practice or 'brain training' style scenarios where we get better at the tasks we repeat but that improvement doesn't seem to carry over very effectively into other areas of mental life.

So I guess some mornings he still can't find his car keys, but at least he can recite line 8,576 of a poem while he's looking for them.

Smile your way to 100

Longevity subject to lifestyle

Professor Richmond and her team studied 188 Australians who had made it to 100, and found that maintaining social networks, keeping physically and mentally active, and being open to change were common traits.

“About 20 to 30 per cent of the likelihood of living to 100 is because of your genes. But that leaves 70 to 80 per cent up to environmental factors,” Professor Richmond said.

“The major finding of this study is the impact of personality.”

Sounds a little dubious to me, but what do I know?

Plenty more where they came from

There are many photos of lakes and mountains on my hard drive that I am yet to post here, and I may just keep doing it until someone says something nice about any of my photos.

Much trickier than a cat up a tree

Bear rescued from tree in Oxnard, on the way back to wild | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times

Have a look at the photo to see what I mean.

Unlucky for some

Are You Living in a Former Meth Lab?

According to this article in Discover, living in a house that used to be a methamphetamine lab is decidedly unhealthy:

The chemicals used in methamphetamine production are highly toxic and can include not only pseudoephenadrine—the main ingredient in meth and active ingredient in decongestants—but also 32 other precursor chemicals. These include acetone, the active ingredient in nail polish remover, and phosphine, a widely used insecticide.

Home-cooking meth spreads toxins to every inch of the room where the meth was cooked and beyond. Nothing escapes contamination—the carpet, walls, furniture, drapes, air ducts, even the air itself becomes toxic. "Ingesting some of these chemicals, even a tiny drop, can cause immediate death," said Smith.

There are specialist meth lab clean up businesses in America:

In dealing with toxic chemicals, most meth lab clean-up crews follow general guidelines. In the room where the meth was made, they scrub all surfaces, repaint the walls, replace the carpets and air filters, and air out the property. However, there are no national standards for meth lab cleanups—regulations differ from state to state. And in some states, getting a license to decontaminate a house is as easy as taking a few hours of class and a written test. "There are some bad certification methods out there. You could be a pizza delivery guy, study for a month, pay $250 and be certified," said Joe Mazzuca, a methamphetamine contamination expert and CEO of Meth Lab Cleanup, a nationwide meth-lab-specific cleanup company based in Boise, Idaho.

Finally, guess the State which is the meth lab capital of the world:

And although meth houses are more concentrated in certain states—Missouri is the meth capitol of the world, with 1,471 labs discovered in 2008 alone—there are meth houses in all fifty states, and they can be found in posh towns.

What a distinction. And why Missouri?

Revkin doesn't care for "clean coal" either

Coal Sans CO2: Appealing Pipe Dream - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

I see Andrew Revkin thinks CO2 capture from coal is a pipe dream, literally:

Overall, I have yet to see anyone rebut the simple calculations of Vaclav Smil, the resource and risk polymath at the University of Manitoba, who has shown how capturing and processing just a small percentage of today’s CO2 from coal combustion would require as much pipeline and other infrastructure as is now used globally to get oil — a costly commodity — out of the ground. Imagine the price required on carbon to make that doable beyond boutique scale.

Great moments in British legal history

Bid to impose asbo for wearing low-slung trousers dropped | Society | The Guardian

Prosecutors have abandoned a legal attempt to make a young man pull his trousers up, it emerged today.

Ellis Drummond, 18, was facing an asbo preventing him from "wearing trousers so low beneath the waistline that members of the public are able to see your underwear". He would have been banned from displaying his underpants anywhere in public in the borough of Bedford, and wearing a hood up in any public place in the area.

Somewhere last week, I think it was in New Zealand, I did spot the lowest worn pants by a stupid teenager ever. I mean, the top of the back of his jeans sat at the base of his backside, so that his entire buttocks would be exposed if it weren't for his underpants. It looked very strange.

Surprised by salmon

During last week's drive through the south island of New Zealand, I was surprised to pass by a couple of salmon farms in the middle of the country, which obviously were based in fresh water. As Tasmanian salmon farming is in the ocean, I kind of assumed that salmon would not happily live all their life in fresh water. Seems I was wrong.

At the Mt Cook Salmon website, they talk of the history of salmon farming in that country:

In 1900 the first attempt was made to ship Sockeye ova (eggs) to New Zealand from Canada which had been gathered from Weaver Creek , British Columbia in 1898. This shipment turned bad en route. A second shipment of 500,000 ova was supplied free of charge by the Canadian Fisheries Department, collected from the tributaries of Shuswap Lake in the Kamloops district of British Columbia. This time 160,000 survived and were hatched at the Hakataramea Hatchery near the Waitaki River .

The bulk were carefully liberated into streams feeding into beautiful Lake Ohau . However, instead of running to the sea, and returning to fresh water to spawn (as is the normal life cycle) the Sockeye developed into a non-migratory population.

This is the only self-sustaining population in the Southern Hemisphere and forms the basis for the fish farmed today by Mt Cook Salmon. Chinook salmon introduced around the same time established normal migratory patterns and can be caught in the major South Island east coast river systems today.

I remember when visiting the Salmon Ponds in Tasmania many years ago (it's a historic trout hatchery, actually), it told the story of how some early fish pioneer tried to introduce salmon to Tasmanian rivers by importing fertilised salmon eggs (not an easy feat when they had to be shipped from England), then releasing them in the rivers and hoping that they would head out to sea and back to the rivers to spawn. They did leave the rivers, but never returned.

I always thought it was a sad image, this man going to the rivers every year for a decade or two, waiting forlornly for his cherished salmon to return.

But now that I think of it, the Salmon Ponds themselves contain some giant salmon, as well as very big trout, in its freshwater ponds, so I must have known then that salmon could spend all their life in fresh water. I must concentrate more on keeping my salmon knowledge current.

Incidentally, I did enjoy one very good salmon meal in New Zealand, in a Japanese restaurant which grilled the skin crispy, had a teriyaki sauce and put it on a bed of wasabi flavoured mashed potato. (The mild wasabi mash was very good of itself.) I thought the salmon was less fatty than Tasmanian salmon, and now I see that Mt Cook Salmon does claim this is a feature of its product:

Our salmon live in fast flowing cold water and develop firmer flesh with less inter-muscular fat. This makes for a tastier firmer textured fish.

Well, another reason to visit New Zealand again.

The shrinking children of Japan

Number of children in Japan falls to record low for 29th year in row | The Japan Times Online

From the report:

In a report issued on the eve of Children's Day, a national holiday, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said kids comprised 13.3 percent of the population as of April 1.

I wonder what the equivalent figure (for under 15 year olds) is in Australia.

Here we go - that just took one Google - it's at about 19%. I thought we might be higher than that.

Not great news for coral

New study sheds light on corals' susceptibility to temperature change | e! Science News

It's about coral and their symbiotic algae (the loss of which causes bleaching), and here's the bottom line:

"The differential mortality that we witnessed suggests that the relationship between certain populations of Pocillopora and the species of algae they associate with is quite stable," said Warner. "And this stability, ultimately, is an Achilles heel for Pocillopora. The inability of the corals to shuffle their symbionts or to establish symbioses with different species of algae means that we may see a significant loss of coral populations in the future, especially if extreme temperature disturbances, such as the cold anomaly we documented in 2008 or the hot anomaly that took place in 1997, become more frequent or severe."

Back and forth on Limbo

A Doctrine in Limbo » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog

You can read a long discussion here on the exact nature of the Catholic Church's teaching on Limbo.

All quite arcane, but of some interest.

It also reminds me: in a book I never quite finished on the history of Christianity in Japan, the point was made that the Jesuits found one of the greatest problems was getting people to accept the teaching that their deceased ancestors, who had never heard of Jesus Christ, were simply never able to reach heaven by an unfortunate circumstance of the time in which they had lived. Given the heartfelt reverence with which the Japan viewed their deceased relatives, many felt this was simply a hurdle which prevented them from accepting Christianity.

Priests and models

Catholic sexual abuse scandal sharpens church rift over what a priest should be - CSMonitor.com

A good article here on the debate over what type of priest the Catholic Church should aim for today. The complaint by some is that the current Pope wants to urge a model that some consider inappropriate for the modern, urban setting many work in:

Pope Benedict this spring put forward the Vatican model priest at the end of his letter to the Irish church. Jean Marie Vianney, a 19th century French priest who overcame a lack of education to serve his flock 16 hours a day or more and was known for his radical piety, is the model. Mr. Vianney’s talent for reading thought and tales of his levitation have also brought a cult of mysticism and secrecy around him; he is venerated by hardcore groups like the Society of St. Pius X, whose namesake pope beatified Vianney in 1904.

"Vianney is thought to be a useful model for many new Catholic priests in rural or developing nations," says Andreas Batlogg, editor of the Jesuit-based Catholic intellectual journal Stimmen der Zeit in Munich, Germany.

Yet Benedict’s choice of Vianney caused loud and palpable groans in many parts of US and Europe. Modern-oriented Catholics and theologians see the choice as a political model of a priest closed off from society, overly idealized, hard for young Catholics to relate to, and one whose effect will be to increase a sense of distance between priests and ordinary people, and promote a view of priests more spiritually gifted than regular Catholics.

“We need an example, but this is a pastor of 230 people in a small French village in the 19th century,” says Mr. Batlogg.

Well, more levitating priests would give a certain supernatural zing to going to Mass that's been missing for a while!

I don't mean to sound too sarcastic, though. My support for relaxation of the celibacy rule means the priesthood would comprise more a leadership which is not as set apart from the laity as the priesthood of old. But, with fewer and fewer priests, there is no doubt that more services (not actual Masses, but whatever they call the distribution of Communion when a priest is not available) will be lead by non-priests anyway. I would prefer to have married priests than these Mass substitutes that people envision.

Still, I can see the appeal of a priesthood that does retain some degree of separation from everyday life, so my feelings about this are somewhat mixed.

A funny line

From Mind Hacks:

The Independent covers the frankly mind-bending news that David Cronenberg is to make a film on the relationship between Freud and Jung with Keira Knightley playing Jung's lover. I would have gone for Bruckheimer for director myself.

An unhealthy habit

Vitamin D deficiency in pregnant Arab women requires urgent attention

I suppose Catholic nuns must have had the same deficiency, but then they weren't usually pregnant either.