The wisdom of the Bieber

A very amusing sarcastic column in the Guardian ridiculing a magazine profile of one J Bieber. I like this part:

...interest was piqued to levels of feverish enthusiasm, nay fanaticism, by a quote from Bieber's mother, who is apparently convinced she and her son were personally selected by God "to bring light and inspiration to the world". This may seem to amount to a certain scaling-down of ambition on the part of God, who previously opted to bring light and inspiration to the world by sending His only son to minister among us, heal lepers, walk on water, raise the dead etc, rather than, say, performing tepid R&B-influenced pop and having a "trademark haircut", but you've got to move with the times: it's Cowell's world now! You start bringing everybody down with the whole leprosy thing, you're asking to get buzzed off. And besides, Bieber has an array of miraculous powers entirely of his own, enthusiastically detailed by the writer: "He can break dance and do 'the Dougie' . . . he can solve a Rubik's Cube in less than two minutes . . . this is not your typical teen idol." The Dougie and the Rubik's Cube, you say? It's a sign! A sign! Stitch that, Dawkins! No wonder they call them Beliebers! Count Lost in Showbiz in!

But then, there's also this:

But he saves his greatest wisdom for the subject of politics. "I'm not sure about parties, but whatever they have in Korea, that's bad," he offers, coming down at a stroke against both a Stalinist totalitarian dictatorship and a fully functioning democracy. Perhaps he's a Chomskyan anarcho-syndicalist, which would certainly explain his hit single One Less Lonely Girl Under a Federated, Decentralised System of Free Associations Incorporating Economic as Well as Other Socialist Institutions.

More about the rain

Further to the post below about a couple of Nature papers on the connection between an increase in Northern Hemisphere precipitation and global warming, I can't say that I have seen any substantial Australian media reporting on this yet. (OK, there are short reports, but they certainly haven't been front and centre on websites.) I would have thought they would have attracted more attention here, given our wet, wet summer. (Darwin has just posted a record 24 hour rainfall, which seems pretty remarkable for such a famously wet place.)

But I also see that Andy Revkin is complaining that the Nature abstract, and media reporting, is overselling the papers and overlooking the caveats that appear in the studies themselves. Revkin's post contains much by way of explanation from climate scientists, though, as to how this happens. Real Climate's post on the topic certainly does not oversell it.

Roger Pielke Jnr, meanwhile, continues his "nothing to see here until I say you can see it - in about 30 years time" routine on climate change, by emphasising that, just because it rains more under a warmer climate, it doesn't mean you can say this is connected to worse flooding. As someone in comments notes:

Also I think it will eventually strike many observers as, well, hairsplitting, to argue that a trend of increasing intensity of rainfall events cannot be connected to human well-being unless and until we can show that flood damage unquestionably rises even controlling for all other contributing factors. All analogies are flawed at some level, but its a bit like seeing sparks from a distant fire settle onto one's rooftop, and not worry about them because, watch as you may, they just keep going out. Rain events and major snowmelt events cause floods when they get intense enough, this is like saying a driver who has many close calls is likely to have a serious accident eventually. Even though other things (previously saturated soil for example) certainly help set the stage.

And why just focus on flood? What about the other harms almost surely associated with intense precipitation (rain or snow) events, like traffic fatalities during the events themselves? And for intense rain specifically (but also large snow melt events), how about soil erosion on hill sides (even gently sloping), and sewage overflows into harbors and streams, and leaching of nutrients from lawns and farm fields, and deer kills in deep snow?

Well, the last point about deer kills in snow is an example too far, but I agree generally.

Furry exhibitionists

An odd report at Physorg about prairie dogs – a species so cute it’s always a toss up in my mind as to whether it’s them or meerkats I would rather see illegally released into Australia:

Researchers in the US studying the behavior of black-tailed prairie dogs at a local zoo have discovered they behave differently, kissing and cuddling each other more when people are watching than when they are unobserved.

As I link to Physorg all the time, I’m sure they won’t mind my copying the photo that accompanies the article:

More from the report:

Dr Eltorai said their study showed that like humans, the prairie dogs often behaved differently when they were being watched, and many seemed to enjoy the attention, becoming more relaxed and spending less time watching for potential dangers as the numbers of visitors increased.

Just don't teach them how to use video cameras, OK?

Nature articles on floods, snow and global warming

Well, that's good timing. The Guardian points me towards two Nature articles that argue for the connection between floods in the last decade or so and global warming.

First, to England:

Global warming made the floods that devastated England and Wales in the autumn of 2000, costing £3.5bn, between two and three times more likely to happen, new research has found. This is the first time scientists have quantified the role of human-induced climate change in increasing the risk of a serious flood and represents a major development in climate science.

"It shows climate change is acting here and now to load the dice towards more extreme weather," said Myles Allen of Oxford University, who led the work, which he started after his own home was nearly flooded in 2000. It will also have wider consequences, say experts, by making lawsuits for compensation against energy companies more likely to succeed.

Well, I don't know about that last point, given that it is, in theory, possible for everyone to stop using electricity from coal burning power stations and burn candles instead, but it suits us to continue using their dirty power.

The Guardian article points us to a more general Nature paper about precipitation. From the abstract:

Here we show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas. These results are based on a comparison of observed and multi-model simulated changes in extreme precipitation over the latter half of the twentieth century analysed with an optimal fingerprinting technique. Changes in extreme precipitation projected by models, and thus the impacts of future changes in extreme precipitation, may be underestimated because models seem to underestimate the observed increase in heavy precipitation with warming.

Well, that's encouraging, isn't it.

I know one of one regular reader here who, at another blog where climate science goes to die, or at least be beaten up and sent to the corner so it doesn't interfere with the vital goal of never, ever increasing taxes, likes to argue that if global warming means some people have to move, well, so be it. He suspects the more directly concerning effect of CO2 production will be ocean acidification leading to less sushi-mi available at reasonable prices.

Yet, surely if these studies are right, the effect of major floods over large areas in Queensland this summer show that the "just move"argument is badly flawed, even in Australia. As I have said before, the area flooded enormous, and major towns and cities such as Rockhampton, Bundaberg and Brisbane that can more-or- less live with major floods (say) every 50 - 100 years are not going to economically cope so well with huge floods (say) every 20 years. Not to mention the vast length of connecting roads, bridges and other infrastructure that need to be repaired and rebuilt after every flood.

People (quite rightly) talk about massive disruption if poor, low lying countries like Bangladesh have more major flooding under global warming.

But from where I'm standing, and especially if furthers studies like the two mentioned here are coming, it seems to me Australians should be very worried about more frequent flooding of the scale we just had in Queensland (and Victoria for that matter.)

And on a political note: the use of a levy to raise money to repair flood damage is probably a good idea from the point of view of reminding people that there is a specific cost to events that are linked to climate change.

UPDATE: Climate Progress has a long post on the topic, which includes a list of previous studies which did indeed predict greater extremes in precipitation under global warming. It's not a new suggestion.

Pharmaceutical companies say "phew"

It's been suspected for some time that the large number of women on the contraceptive pill, and the levels of estrogen in their urine, has been causing a large increase in estrogen in rivers and our water supply. However, a new study says this is not true:

Amber Wise, Kacie O'Brien and Tracey Woodruff note ongoing concern about possible links between chronic exposure to estrogens in the water supply and fertility problems and other adverse human health effects. Almost 12 million women of reproductive age in the United States take the pill, and their urine contains the hormone. Hence, the belief that oral contraceptives are the major source of estrogen in lakes, rivers, and streams. Knowing that sewage treatment plants remove virtually all of the main estrogen -- 17 alpha-ethinylestradiol (EE2) -- in oral contraceptives, the scientists decided to pin down the main sources of estrogens in water supplies.

Their analysis found that EE2 has a lower predicted concentration in U.S. drinking water than natural estrogens from soy and dairy products and animal waste used untreated as a farm fertilizer....

Some research cited in the report suggests that animal manure accounts for 90 percent of estrogens in the environment. Other research estimates that if just 1 percent of the estrogens in livestock waste reached waterways, it would comprise 15 percent of the estrogens in the world's water supply.

Interesting, although this still sounds to me likely a surprisingly uncertain area of knowledge.

Why the world wanders

Nouriel Roubini writes about why the world seems to be so lacking in leadership in key areas at the moment (including global warming).  The whole article seems a pretty good summary of the international power vacuum that, I suppose, shows no sign of ending any time soon.  His last paragraph:

In short, for the first time since the end of World War II, there is no nation—or strong alliance of nations—with the political will and economic leverage to secure its goals on the global stage. As in previous historical periods, this vacuum may favor the ambitious and the aggressive as they seek their own advantage. In such a world, the absence of a high-level agreement on creating a new collective-security system—focused on economics rather than military power—is not merely irresponsible, but dangerous. A G-Zero world without leadership and multilateral cooperation is an unstable equilibrium for global economic prosperity and security.

Reefer madness denied

Chris Middendorp, who has some experience has a community worker, writes how he is not surprised about the recent large study that confirmed (again) the relationship between marijuana use, particularly by teenagers, and psychosis:

I've always assumed this connection to be credible. Working for community agencies, I have seen again and again cannabis users develop paranoia, antisocial behaviour and psychosis. In many instances, the symptoms and behaviour cease when the cannabis use stops.

I also think it is revealing that among my circle of friends, of the five who were heavy cannabis users in the 1990s, four developed psychotic illnesses. Years later they are all still regularly hospitalised for psychiatric treatment.

I won't argue that cannabis causes schizophrenia or any other mental disorder, but it seems fairly apparent that cannabis can let the psychotic genie, as it were, out of the bottle.

I've said before that, my (much more limited observations) have also led me to the same suspicion. Yet, as Middenthorp says in the rest of his article, casual marijuana users who have no history of mental illness are loathe to admit that such studies are right. They will argue about other things too:

At a friend's party last month, I fell into conversation with Peter, a 30-year-old man who vociferously complained about Victoria Police's random saliva testing of drivers. It was futile to catch cannabis users, Peter said. "Cannabis doesn't affect your driving," he explained emphatically. I spent 30 minutes listening to Peter and two women discussing the benefits of daily pot smoking and deriding the police as "fascists" for spoiling the good times. These were tertiary educated, employed, middle-class adults.

They were daily pot smokers?

Here's another thing about illicit drug users: they like to claim that they are normal functioning members of society and are harming no one. This is, I bet, wrong in 90% of cases. At the very least, such frequent marijuana users are known technically as crashing bores: like those who spend half an hour arguing that marijuana doesn't affect driving, or disputing the fact that a significant number of young users will end up with a crippling mental illness.

Mars needs women (fertile women)

The Independent notes that future astronauts to Mars, or their kids, may well end up with fertility problems at the end:

According to a review by three scientists looking into the feasibility of colonising Mars, astronauts would be well advised to avoid getting pregnant along the way because of the high levels of radiation that would bombard their bodies as they travelled through space.

Without effective shielding on spaceships, high-energy proton particles would probably sterilise any female foetus conceived in deep space and could have a profound effect on male fertility. "The present shielding capabilities would probably preclude having a pregnancy transited to Mars," said radiation biophysicist Tore Straume of Nasa's Ames Research Center in an essay for the Journal of Cosmology.

The DNA which guides the development of all the cells in the body is easily damaged by the kind of radiation that would assail astronauts as they journeyed through space. Studies on non-human primates have shown that exposure to ionising radiation kills egg cells in a female foetus during the second half of pregnancy. "One would have to be very protective of those cells during gestation, during pregnancy, to make sure that the female didn't become sterile so they could continue the colony," Dr Straume said.

Big numbers

Someone's done some figures about the amount of information humans are now pushing around and storing. Here are some interesting bits (very pun-y):

Looking at both digital memory and analog devices, the researchers calculate that humankind is able to store at least 295 exabytes of information. (Yes, that's a number with 20 zeroes in it.)

Put another way, if a single star is a bit of information, that's a galaxy of information for every person in the world. That's 315 times the number of grains of sand in the world. But it's still less than one percent of the information that is stored in all the DNA molecules of a human being.

and:

"These numbers are impressive, but still miniscule compared to the order of magnitude at which nature handles information" Hilbert said. "Compared to nature, we are but humble apprentices. However, while the natural world is mind-boggling in its size, it remains fairly constant. In contrast, the world's technological information processing capacities are growing at exponential rates."

Strange timing

As soon as the Brisbane flood occurred, there began some claims that the Wivenhoe Dam should have been maintained at lower levels given that the forecast was for a particularly wet la Nina summer.

Of course, given that only a couple of years ago the dam had reached 17%, common sense suggested you would not lightly reduce the levels below the full level for drinking water. (Everyone knows by now that it can hold double that amount for flood mitigation.) In fact, as the Australian reminds us again today, the State Opposition between October and December last year were calling for the dam to hold more than its "normal" drinking water capacity to help off set the next drought. (How the Opposition can make political mileage out of what happened in January remains something of a mystery, then.)

Yet now that there are insurance companies circling and trying to find ways to avoid payments, and an enquiry has just started to look into the whole question, the State government has already decided to empty the dam by 25% as a precaution.

This just seems strangely premature to me. Who, apart from Dr Dragun (who seemed to be the first off the cab to criticise the dam being kept at 100%), has been advising the government about this? Are hydrologists as fractious a group as geologists (the latter seemingly containing a disproportionate number of climate change sceptics?) Is the weather bureau fully confident of further torrential rain in the next few months that could not be handled by faster water release once a bad weather system is on its way? Otherwise, why not wait for the full enquiry, which has just started?

Well, that's ruined the simulation

The Guardian has another story on the fake Mars mission being conducted in Russia, as they are about to "land" on the fake Mars surface.

The absolutely fundamental thing that makes this simulation psychologically different to the real thing is the fact that all of them know, in the back (and probably from time to time, the front) of their minds that they can walk out on it at any time if they are really fed up.

The other simulation ruining thing I noticed is this:

In their spare time the crew do their best to keep boredom at bay with books, DVDs and video games like Guitar Hero. A few months ago the French crew member, Romain Charles, gave juggling lessons with a set of balls improvised from linseed and balloons.

I'm sorry: there is no juggling to be done in space. This simulation just keeps getting less and less credible all the time...

Over-dedication to a career path

Well, I don't think I had heard before that the Captain of the whaling ship which was sunk by a sperm whale (and inspired Moby Dick) then went on to float around the Pacific with some other survivors for 3 harrowing months, ate his cousin to survive, was rescued, got taken back to Nantucket, then went back to sea as captain of the rescuing ship. Only to have it sink too.

The New York Times adds some further details.

Three Science Stories

1. Comforting, probably almost:

Apophis asteroid will probably almost certainly not smash into Earth, say scientists

2. Australian scientist working on a "thinking cap". (Probably more correctly called a "creativity cap".) I heard this guy being interviewed on the radio, and it certainly sounds interesting. This report is a bit light on details, so I must look around for more.

3. The US has been bit hit by a lot of snow lately, but was the January just gone any record for it being a cold month? Nope, apparently not:

Last month was the coolest January since 1994, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, N.C. Across the contiguous United States, the average January temperature was 30.0 F, which is 0.8 F below the 1901-2000 average. And despite several large winter storms across the country, last month was the ninth driest January on record, much drier than normal.

Something I already knew from reading blogs

Extra testosterone reduces your empathy

Spider lost

Wow. That Spider-man stage show really sounds very, very strange. Full details at Slate.

More links to bad reviews at Salon.

Maybe they were going for the Springtime for Hitler effect?

Greene on film

I see there's a new film version of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, but it's apparently had so-so reviews. (It also changes the setting of the film to the 1960's.)

I think I've noted here before that I found the novel very psychologically unconvincing in its portrayal of Pinkie, the amoral protagonist. The woman who tracks him down (I forget her name now) was written much better.

In any event, the reason for the post is to note that I'm currently reading The Quiet American, and it certainly seems to show him as a better, more mature writer. However, a couple of weeks ago the film version of the novel (the recent one with Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser in the lead roles) was on TV and I decided to at least watch the start and see how well it reflected my mental image of the novel.

My immediate impression was that the Michael Caine character look far too cheery and not world weary, jaded and cynical enough. It's virtually impossible to act too glum to reflect a Greene main character, and Cain looked far too contented. Brendan Fraser looked better in his role. The movie also looked a tad too "pretty" compared to images I had of the settings in the novel. But I only watched the first 15 minutes or so, so perhaps it became more appropriately sordid later.

It's been a long time since I saw The Third Man, but I remember being rather under-whelmed by that too, despite its reputation. I just doubt that Greene translates well to the screen, probably because it's hard to get all that internal mental anguish up there for everyone to see.

The other thing about reading Greene that I've realised is that, being the subject of extensive biographies which have covered his, shall we say, bad habits in extensive detail*, and the fact that his autobiography explains how he had a compulsion to try new experiences (even playing to the extent of playing Russian roulette) to make himself feel "alive," whenever a character in his novels is doing something seedy, one immediately has the impression that Greene must be talking about it from personal experience. Thus, in one novel where a character goes to an African prostitute, or (in The Quiet American) uses opium, you can't help but feel you're reading a vignette from Greene's own life.

Maybe that's not always right, but he certainly was a complicated character (caused no doubt at least partly by bipolar disorder.) Not sure that I would ever embark on a biography about him though.

* I trust no one has forgotten this extract from a review of a book about him I posted a few years ago:

Greene as sex addict does not figure strongly in these letters. But in his exhaustive (and, at 2251 pages, exhausting) authorised biography of Greene, Norman Sherry annexes a list of 47 favourite prostitutes scribbled down by Greene in 1948 when his mistress Catherine Walston challenged him about rumours that he paid women for sex.

What I've been doing

Work and money continues to be a major distraction, but I wanted to note:

* Bad weather, part 1: It's a pretty "good" season for extreme weather that may encourage belief in climate change and political action on carbon emissions. So much so that Andrew Bolt seemed to have a fleeting moment of doubt last Friday (hinting that the heavy storms in Melbourne and Victoria, on top of the already unusual slow moving Victorian floods, really are "freaky"), but then he obviously had the strong urge to crush any hint of self doubt by a flurry of anti climate change posts over the weekend. I'm not going to link to them; he's an unthinking promoter of every bad argument against sensible precaution, and it's the political influence I'm sure he wields on the grass roots of the Coalition that makes him not a joke on the issue.

* Bad weather, part 2: Watching Cyclone Yasi coverage last week really made me a little sorry for journalists who were in the wrong spot (Cairns) for any interesting footage of the approaching storm. It is, in any event, impossible to get good footage of a really bad cyclone, given that no one sensible should be on the street, or even close to the windows, but the media seems not to have realised this yet. Skynew's coverage on the night of the storm was particularly ludicrous, with what seemed an hour of live footage of some smallish palm trees and shrubs being blown about in a motel room courtyard in Bowen being the best they could come up with.

Then, in the morning, it felt a bit anti climatic, given that the media still couldn't get into the worst affected areas.

But I thought the best cyclone damage footage to come out a couple of days later was from the Dunk Island resort. It's hard to imagine how long it will take to look good again, and you don't often see that many denuded trees in one place.



Oddly enough, you'll also find that the first comment following this on Youtube is by a guy who says the resort deserved it because the owner tried to hit on his 17 year old daughter during a recent bad holiday! Just a tad defamatory, I would have thought, and doesn't Youtube exercise any control over its comments section?

* Bad weather, part 3: I've had a couple of interesting conversations with people affected by the Brisbane flood. One was with the manager of a nice, new block of apartments facing the river on Coronation Drive. These are obviously built with an awareness that the underground car park can flood in a 1 in 100 flood, but the units are above the flood level. The problem is, they still put the electrical power for these buildings in the car park levels too, meaning the block was without power for 2 weeks, and even now that it is back on, the lifts are still awaiting repair! Given that it is about 8 to 10 stories high, (as are many on that stretch of Coronation Drive), this seems an issue which one would have thought the designers (and Council) should think about more carefully.

The second conversation was with a woman who has (or had) a nice house on the Brisbane river. She has lost retaining walls and is worried about pool subsidence, as well as the issue of what to do with a metre or so of mud in her backyard which might be (temporarily) helping to keep the pool in place. Apparently, the Council is suggesting she has to get rid of the mud, but they don't want it back in the river either. This remains an unresolved issue.

* In praise of animation: I saw Tangled, the Disney animated flick (and said to be the last of their "Princess" movies) and was very impressed. There is one sequence which plays so beautifully, I am not ashamed to say it brought a tear to my eye.

I am not alone in this, even amongst males. (I read - but have lost the link to - some blog review by an American father who said the same; but of course, he might be a big girlie man too.) It is, in a way, surprising that animation can move anyone to tears. But David Byrne had something interesting to say about this a few years ago:

Malu and I went to see The Incredibles, the new Pixar film about disgruntled retired superheroes. I laughed and cried, as I do at lots of animated movies. I wonder if I get more emotionally involved in animated characters than in films using real actors? Other than Spielberg movies that deliberately work the sentimental buttons it's much easier to identify with drawings than with real people.

Maybe this isn't strange. Maybe the fact that they're drawings makes them more ambiguous, more universal, and easier to identify with. Well, it's true with lots of other things — things that use metaphor, allegory and poetic ambiguity are generally more powerful emotionally than straight narrative.

I find myself increasingly in awe of animation lately, and the creativity that goes behind it. This comes from watching the "making of" documentaries that come on DVD's. I re-watched two severely under-rated and under-performing recent animated movies over Christmas (Astroboy, and The Tale of Despereaux,) and watching the documentaries after it just made me appreciate how much thought goes into creating animated worlds.

I suppose you could argue that art direction in any fantasy live action movie also plays a key role that is not often thought about by your average viewer; but with animation, the page is blank and is unaffected by the availability of locations that need to be dressed up. It is, in that sense, arguably the most artistically creative movie medium of all.

But not all animated movies grab me. Despicable Me seems to have done very well at the box office, but when I finally caught up with it on DVD, I found it very flat and not engaging at all.

* Avoiding the discussion: In a move sure to attract some amused comment, I've been busy creating a short, age appropriate, slide show movie with a sex education theme for my son. This is really very time consuming, as all the drawings are being done on my iPad and then transferred to the desktop for compilation. Use a bit of Midi music as the soundtrack, and occasional bits of computer generated voice, and it should all be finished in a week.

My wife knows of the project, and like (I'm sure) everyone else who will hear about it, considers this somewhat eccentric. However, as it is "men's work", she seems not so interested to see it.

This is really the result of not being able to find anything I consider appropriate in tone or content on the internet - which seems to me to be quite surprising, given what you can find on it. [There is a Victorian kid's sex education site, that is clearly designed for kids of about my son's age, but if every link is followed, it's really a case of more information than I feel he needs now. Also, the cartoony look is pretty ugly, and some of the illustrations are of outright questionable merit - one page shows a bunch of cartoon girls using mirrors to check themselves out.(!) I think The Vagina Monologues have got a lot answer for.]

The basic idea is for a short "what to expect from your body within the next year or two", and that does involve some discussion of internal plumbing and understanding of the basics of sexual reproduction. I've thrown in a bit of evolution too; why plants and animals share bits of each other in reproductions seems a sort of basic point to me. But all the issues of when to have sex, etc; that can wait til a bit older, if you ask me. I had better start on that Part 2 soon, though.

As a friend said to me on the weekend, "why not just talk about it?" Well yes, of course, I'll invite questions at the end of the show. Whether or not I'll be in the room to answer them, though, is a different matter. :)

Things to do

It's hard lately to both concentrate on work and survey the web for stuff that interests me and is "blogworthy." Also, the tax department, oddly, does not seem to appreciate the need to be the most reasonable person to comment at a certain "centre right" blog as a reason for delaying payments.

So I have to abandon it all for a week at least, until I can spot where money is coming from again.

My faithful readers can tell me what I have missed in comments section. As I know from when I have been on holidays, it only takes a relatively short time to catch up on favourite blogs when one has been away for a couple of weeks in any event.

This time, I mean it. Away from the web for me.

Watching the war

SBS has, for a long time, been the place to go to watch documentaries about World War 2, particularly on Friday nights.

As it happens, I don't really care for the current series "Apocalypse - The Second World War" because it's one of those with a hysterical sounding narration*, and a gruesomely high body count that makes it unsuitable to watch with my son. (He really likes history, inspired by the Horrible History series of books, and probably already retains more knowledge about certain periods of British history than I can recall. He is usually happy to watch any documentary about war that's on.)

But the reason for mentioning this is to note that SBS2 has also been showing a lot of WWII documentaries. They are not new, and may well have been on SBS1 years ago, but I've been happy to catch up with them anyway.

This week, there was one that was just about the Japanese surrender at the end of the war, and featured as its most lengthy section footage of MacArthur and the other Allies signing the surrender instrument with the Japanese on the USS Missouri. It was a fascinating minor detail of history to learn about the mistake made by the Canadian representative (who signed on the wrong line, which meant those below him also did.) There was then a bit of a agitated discussion with the Japanese as to whether they would accept the document signed this way. It was amended by hand and initialled. The Wikipedia entry about the document is here.

Another recent SBS2 doco from a few years ago was about the Nazi's attempt to get heavy water to Germany to conduct research into an atomic bomb. It included an expedition to retrieve a barrel from the boat (which had been sunk by the allied operatives) to double check whether the Nazis had actually sent a decoy barrel. (Turns out they didn't.)

Anyhow, this is just a pointer to anyone in Australia looking for interesting stuff on TV. Don't overlook SBS2.


* yes, I know, hysteria may be an appropriate response to certain things that happened then, but it still puts me off in narration. But they do show many scenes of death which are disturbing to say the least. Last week, they dealt briefly with Jews being killed in Russia, and showed some film of this incident:

The most notorious one – perhaps one of the single most infamous events of World War II – was the execution of more than 33,000 Jews from Ukraine’s capital Kiev, at the ravine of Babi Yar on 29-30 November 1941.

Such stuff still has the capacity to make me feel sick.

Getting your fears in correct priority

According to this Scientific American blog, in an 8 year recent period in the United States, more spiders killed people than snakes. I wouldn’t have picked that.

But then, 9 people died of alligator or crocodile attack. Who knew cleaning New York stormwater drains could be so dangerous.*

But amongst deadly venomous animals, bees and wasps come out as far the most important: 71% of such deaths.

Which raises an interesting point: when I was a kid, we used to get clover (the type with the white flowers) growing in the yard or on the footpath, and it was very attractive to bees when it was in bloom. This meant that walking barefoot on it was a pretty easy way to get a bee sting, and I certainly had a few as a youngster. (Although I’m pretty sure one was from trying to catch a bee in a jar.)

These days, though, it seems kids are much, much less likely to get a bee sting as an ordinary part of growing up. (I just don't notice clover around much anymore, and even if it is in someone's yard, the kids are probably inside on the computer.) This, I am guessing, makes it much more of a worry that any allergy to bees may not be known until they are much older.

I suppose that, ideally, you never find out you have the allergy. But somehow it seems to me to be safer to know you have it when you’re younger, rather than having a sudden unexpected medical crisis as an adult.

* I may have invented that detail.