In other small, furry animal news

Squirrels show softer side by adopting orphans, study finds

As squirrels rarely interact, they learn who their nearby relatives are by hearing their unique calls, he said. If they fail to hear a relative's calls for a few days, they may investigate. "We suspect that, if they find pups on the territory, they remember that their neighbour was a relative and carry the pups back to their nest. This would be quite intelligent behaviour for a squirrel."

It doesn't happen often though, it seems. I wonder if the much maligned grey squirrels of England do the same thing? It would be good for their PR.

From the "a propos of nothing" files...

Agents portrayed Hitler as gay Jewish eunuch

I think everyone knows that British propaganda in WW2 used to help spread the belief that Hitler was short at least one testicle, but I hadn't realised that they were quite this creative until I stumbled across this 1994 article in The Independent:

Special Operations in London sent out to Gibraltar for distribution in Morocco boxed sets of gramophone records in Arabic making lewd suggestions about Hitler's anatomy....

A po-faced official on the staff of Lord Gort, the Governor of Gibraltar, says side one 'records the story of an Arab caravan journeying to Marrakech'. He bemoans the stagnation of trade in Morocco, and blames Hitler and the fact that British ships are detained in Moroccan ports. But by side two the official is becoming upset. 'It states that Hitler cannot marry and that he hates both Jews and Arabs with a 'fiery hatred' and explains the reason.

'Hitler is a bastard - presumably of Jewish blood - and his original name was Schicklegruber. Some 30 years ago he was but a humble house-painter when one day he was painting the ceiling of a synagogue and fell and damaged one of his testicles]'

The doctor, trained by an Arab, is a former violinist used to giving encores, so when he is applauded for taking off the first testicle, he repeats the performance.

That last bit sounds more like an attempt at humour, really. But Adolf Schicklegruber, I like that.

It's also hard not to be amused by the next part of the article:

The second story has Hitler being visited in his bedroom by Mrs Goebbels, who is shocked to find the Fuhrer has gone to the front to have sex with his generals. The official says in his report to Lord Gort that the Arabs would be likely to be impressed rather than shocked by such behaviour.

Local warming

Hundreds die in Indian heatwave | World news | The Guardian

Record temperatures in northern India have claimed hundreds of lives in what is believed to be the hottest summer in the country since records began in the late 1800s.

The death toll is expected to rise with experts forecasting temperatures approaching 50C (122F) in coming weeks. More than 100 people are reported to have died in the state of Gujarat where the mercury topped at 48.5C last week. At least 90 died in Maharashtra, 35 in Rajasthan and 34 in Bihar.

Interestingly, The Guardian does not specifically mention global warming in the context of this story. I assume that is all part of the new sort journalistic reticence to raise AGW, just at the time global tempertures are in fact on the rise?

Hard to change

The science of a healthy marriage - Times Online

There's not much I particularly wanted to refer people in this article by the writer of a new book on the science of marriage. But this paragraph (about an American study on infidelity in marriage) amused me:

Overall, cheating rates were extraordinarily low—only 11 per cent of respondents reported infidelity. But the scientists also found that cheating was associated with some specific risk factors: being a man; thinking about sex several times a day; having a high number of sexual partners; living in the city; being in a long relationship; living together without marriage; having lived together before marriage and being unhappy.

Possibly important

Failure of Bell's Theorem and the Local Causality of the Entangled Photons

Physicist Joy Christian has had a string of papers recently at arXiv (well, I see now that he has been putting his position in print for a few years) in which he argues that "quantum non-locality" is actually an illusion.

His argument is hard to follow (even by other physicists, it seems) but he talk of an topological error and (to quote from an earlier abstract):

When topologies are correctly identified, local-realistic completion of any arbitrary entangled state is always guaranteed in our framework. This vindicates EPR, and entails that quantum entanglement is best understood as an illusion.

To put it another way, as the paper linked to at the top of this article says:

One of the first steps we often take towards measuring a physical quantity is to set up a Cartesian coordinate system {x, y, z} in the Euclidean space E3. This amounts to modeling the Euclidean space as a 3-fold product of the real line, IR3. This procedure has become so familiar to us that in practice we often identify E3 with its Cartesian model, and simply think of IR3 as the Euclidean space.

As we shall see, however, this seemingly innocuous act of convenience comes with a very heavy price: It is largely responsible for the illusions of “quantum non-locality.” Once a coordinate-free geometric model of the Euclidean space is used, the correlations observed in the EPR-type experiments involving photon pairs ... are easily understood, in a strictly local-realistic terms.

Well, it's not clear to me what this means, but my hunch is that if he might be onto something.

There's not too much about him on the web, but there is a bit of a bio here (and proof that he is a "he", not a she.)

Getting rid of quantum non-locality sounds a good way to make the world more aligned with common sense, but maybe Christian's ideas have their own form of counter-intuitiveness as well. (If only I could understand his explanation of the topological issue.)

One disc to rule them all

Japanese team discovers 'super disc' material

A Japanese research team has found a material that could be used to make a low-price super disc with data storage capacity thousands of times greater than a DVD, the lead scientist said Monday.

And the material is a form of titanium oxide, which has this advantage:

Titanium oxide's market price is about one-hundredth of the rare element -- germanium-antimony-tellurium -- that is currently used in rewritable Blu-ray discs and DVDs, Ohkoshi said.

"You don't have to worry about procuring rare metals. Titanium oxide is cheap and safe, already being used in many products ranging from face powder to white paint," the professor said.

Very clever, those Japanese. Now if only they would get out of the lab and have children...

My ovaries are safe, then

Drinking tea may reduce ovarian cancer risk

It's research from Queensland too. Yay.

Mercury still rising

Experts fear Taiji mercury tests are fatally flawed | The Japan Times Online

The Japan Times keeps up its (I think) single handed media attack on the issue of the mercury poisoning in Japan from eating dolphin.

This latest update questions whether the health of those found with high levels of mercury really has been assessed properly, and includes comments from more experts (including one from pilot whale eating Faroe Islands!) saying that it's crazy for the government to let them keep eating it.

For those interested...

in manufactured chicken sandwiches, I have updated my story about them a few posts back.

Funny 'cos it's true...

As a person who still works in Wordperfect, never uses IE if I can avoid it, and thinks Irfanview is the best image viewer, I understand entirely.

Inconsistent from the start

Abbott no Captain Courageous

Lenore Taylor gives a lists of the ways in which Tony Abbott has been inconsistent in policy since he became leader. She doesn't mention how many positions he had on the ETS in the half year before he became leader, but his flexible views are still on display now:

To audiences such as the listeners of climate sceptic and 2GB host
Alan Jones he says things like ''in the end, this whole thing … should
be a question of fact, not faith - and we can discover whether the
planet is warming or not by measurement and it seems that,
notwithstanding the dramatic increases in man-made CO2 emissions over
the last decade, the world's warming has stopped''.

To the environmental business leaders on Thursday he had a
differently nuanced argument: ''I am confident, based on the science we
have, that mankind does make a difference to climate, almost certainly
the impact of humans on the planet extends to climate.''

There are changes in the last few months that even I hadn't noticed, such as the "Green Army" being downsized from 15,000 to 1,000. It's a corny idea in the first place. There is the hint that he will still try to introduce a bigger "baby bonus" as an election promise.

As Taylor notes, it's only the "ham-fistedness" that has suddenly swept over the Rudd government that has stopped more media concentration on this. But it seems to me a very cogent case she makes for Abbott's unsuitability for top office.

And in other commentary: Michelle Grattan rips into Rudd for the decision to run an expensive ad campaign for his mining tax changes:

TO SAY the government is hypocritical is an understatement. After all Kevin Rudd's sanctimonious statements about getting the politics out of taxpayer-funded advertising, we have Labor's $38 million campaign to sell a new tax.

It's back to John Howard and the GST campaign, ''Unchain My Heart''. Politicians with their backs against the wall can't resist dipping into the public honey pot to help get across their message.

Still, you have to wonder about Rudd's reasoning. Maybe the government is simply desperate - the miners' onslaught has bitten more than expected. Otherwise, it is hard to explain why the PM, already under attack for backflips and broken promises, would further trash his reputation.

Yet the advertising was planned only days after the tax was announced. Maybe the government thinks we won't remember what Rudd said three years ago.

Once again the PM is victim of his own hyperbole. In 2007, he condemned partisan government advertising as a ''cancer on democracy''.

The government doesn't just look hypocritical, but dodgy too.

What an appalling choice between hopeless, awful leadership we have coming up in the next election.

Not enough rats

This blog has been lacking something lately: cute rats:

The well travelled chicken sandwich

It's close to lunch time.

Yesterday, I purchased a pre-packaged "herb chicken" sandwich from Coles supermarket. (They are quite nice.) But I noticed on the packet that it appears to have been made by a company in Victoria.

This seems an extraordinarily long distance for a chicken sandwich to have travelled before it reached my stomach. No wonder Australian CO2 emissions are so high, when our chicken sandwiches have to travel a thousand kilometres before consumption.

This is, of course, something about which we should take action. Local chicken sandwich manufacturing could just be the thing for small pockets of high unemployment. But then, how much CO2 can you really save if the chicken sandwich meat industry is all based in Victoria, and the filling has to travel from there until it makes it to the (local) chicken sandwich factory?

Chickens are raised everywhere though. Surely we don't ship chickens from Brisbane to Victoria to be turned into chicken sandwiches which then travel back to Brisbane?

These are all very vital questions, I am sure you will agree. Write to your local politician and demand a Royal Commission into the Chicken Sandwich Industry of Australia.

Meanwhile, I will try to remember the website of the Victorian company, as soon as I buy my new sandwich today, and report here further.

UPDATE: Relax everyone. The sandwich making company involved has got 'fresh operations' sites in each capital city, including Brisbane. It appears quite possible that my sandwich came from Slacks Creek, a suburb of Brisbane, not Melbourne. (Although the website is not entirely clear on the point.)

According to their website, Australian Convenience Foods makes 14,000,000 sandwiches a year. Some of their range is sold to shops frozen. (I don't think herb chicken is, but I can't find it on the website at all.) I am feeling hungry now.

I have also learned of a new product in their range of stuff you microwave at a convenience shop if you're really desperate:

...we have launched a new burger, ready go eat Double Cheese Burger. It offers high satiety, and is a welcome addition for tradesmen and male teenagers looking for a substantial hot snack or meal.

Well, at least they're very honest about the target market. And "high satiety" is a phrase I look forward to using at the next dinner party I'm invited to.

Playing with God(s)

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti: What happens when three men who identify as Jesus are forced to live together?

I have no idea why this story has a run in Slate now, but it's an account of a fascinating experiment, as follows:

In the late 1950s, psychologist Milton Rokeach was gripped by an eccentric plan. He gathered three psychiatric patients, each with the delusion that they were Jesus Christ, to live together for two years in Ypsilanti State Hospital to see if their beliefs would change. The early meetings were stormy. "You oughta worship me, I'll tell you that!" one of the Christs yelled.

As Slate explains, the experiment did not really help any of the three "Christs", and even Rokeach later regretted the unethical nature of what he did.

I'm not so sure he should feel so bad. In the 21st century, we've had years of Big Brother: unethical psychological torture for public entertainment.

Local hero

It's well worth watching this video for a bit of ordinary heroics. It's noteworthy for how little attention the episode, in which he could well have just saved a young life, gets from the other people in the shopping centre.

This is the end....surely

Sex and the City 2 Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes

As I expected, the movie is attracting aggressively bad, and somewhat funny, reviews.

For example, the Salon review notes this about the marriage of "Carrie" and "Big":

Big yearns to lie on the $12,000 leather couch, get fat on takeout food and watch the Weather Channel on his new flat-screen TV -- the character seems to have bypassed his 50s and gone straight to supper-at-Denny's age since the first SATC film -- but through various forms of time-honored feminine coercion Carrie extorts diamond jewelry out of him and drags him to restaurants and red-carpet premieres night after night. Oh, the suffering! They're like the wounded couple in Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage," except with millions and millions of dollars and no souls. When Carrie asks Big, "Am I just a bitch wife who nags you?" I could hear all the straight men in the theater -- all four of us -- being physically prevented from responding.

And that's one of the milder passages from becomes an increasingly savage review.

Surely it's the end of the "franchise".

Conspiracies continue

U.S. Is a Top Villain in Pakistan’s Conspiracy Talk - NYTimes.com

Conspiracy theory is a national sport in Pakistan, where the main players — the United States, India and Israel — change positions depending on the ebb and flow of history. Since 2001, the United States has taken center stage, looming so large in Pakistan’s collective imagination that it sometimes seems to be responsible for everything that goes wrong here.

“When the water stops running from the tap, people blame America,” said Shaista Sirajuddin, an English professor in Lahore....

“People want simple explanations, like evil America, Zionist-Hindu alliance,” said a Pakistani diplomat, who asked not to be named because of the delicate nature of the topic. “It’s gone really deep into the national psyche now.”

One of those pundits is Zaid Hamid, a fast-talking, right-wing television personality who rose to fame on one of Pakistan’s 90 new private television channels.

He uses Google searches to support his theory that India, Israel and the United States — through their intelligence agencies and the company formerly known as Blackwater — are conspiring to destroy Pakistan.

Creator of many worlds

CultureLab: The many-worlds physicist couldn't cope with this one

I've mentioned a fascinating fact about Hugh Everett III here before, and now there is a full biography out about him, his theory, and his sad personal life. Sounds like I should read it.

Be the first to find that hidden alien presence

Moon Zoo

That's my plan, anyway.

Parasite of the day

Dangerous lung worms found in people who eat raw crayfish

I'm not sure why Americans would be eating raw crayfish in the first place (sushi-mi, maybe?), but it can cause a serious parasite infection.

The half-inch, oval-shaped parasitic worms at the root of the infection primarily travel from the intestine to the lungs. They also can migrate to the brain, causing severe headaches or vision problems, or under the skin, appearing as small, moving nodules.

Some of the patients had been in and out of the hospital for months as physicians tried to diagnose their mysterious illness and treat their symptoms, which also included a buildup of fluid around the lungs and around the heart. One patient even had his gallbladder removed, to no avail.

It also happens in Asia:

Paragonimiasis is far more common in East Asia, where many thousands of cases are diagnosed annually in people who consume raw or undercooked crab that contain Paragonimus westermani, a cousin to the parasite in North American crayfish.

Travellers beware, I guess.