Tim Colebatch on the budget

Takes guts to squeeze the middle class

I haven't noticed Tim Colebatch writing at The Age much lately, but here's his take on the budget delivered last night.

I still say he's the clearest, most balanced economics columnist around today, so I find his view of the budget pretty convincing. Short version: it does cut quite a bit, and the real issue in getting back to surplus is the drop in revenue.

Harrison the Wise

‘Cowboys & Aliens’ star Harrison Ford: Most special-effects films are soulless now

I've said much the same myself at this blog over the years:

“I think what a lot of action movies lose these days, especially the ones that deal with fantasy, is you stop caring at some point because you’ve lost human scale,” Ford said. “With the CGI, suddenly there’s a thousand enemies instead of six – the army goes off into the horizon. You don’t need that. The audience loses its relationship with the threat on the screen. That’s something that’s consistently happening and it makes these movies like video games and that’s a soulless enterprise. It’s all kinetics without emotion. I don’t have time for that.”

I certainly hope the oddball combination of cowboys and aliens works.

Ecstacy down; shamans up.

Designer drugs beat Ecstasy�(Science Alert)

Here's a story detailing the current trend in ecstasy and "designer drug" use in Australia and elsewhere.

The trend is down, as it has been in many other countries over a number of years. I thought the explanation may be in the recognition of undesirable effects on long time users, but it might be more mundane than that:

Regular ecstasy users have also indicated that there has been a marked drop in the purity of ecstasy, with a significant number of tablets containing no MDMA, the active ingredient of ecstasy.

Ha.

Mind you, drug users value playing with their brain chemistry over common sense:

Designer drugs which have been picked up by the survey, albeit in small numbers, include mephedrone and BZP, a central nervous system stimulant which reportedly has more side effects than amphetamines.

“In our 2010 survey, 16 per cent of users reported recent use of mephedrone, a synthetic stimulant closely related to amphetamines but with hallucinogenic properties,” said Dr Burns.

Oh yes, like that sounds like a good idea: combine amphetamines with hallucinations. Not only will you find bugs under your skin, you'll be awake for 30 hours to watch them.

It is of interest to me, though, to note that one particularly intriguing drug, DMT, has a small number of illegal users here. This drug was the subject of an interview with researcher Rick Strassman at Boing Boing recently.

If you're going to have a hallucination, I suppose having one in which spirit guides or angels are there to meet you is probably the most interesting kind to experience.

But, as with nearly everyone else older than a teenager, I don't believe the "Doors of Perception" theory that any drug is really letting you see into the true nature of reality. I therefore still wouldn't trust what exactly DMT is doing to my neurons to let me "see" the "spiritual" world. My intuition is that it can't be healthy.

Thanks, Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi helps fund Qld cyclone shelters

Since I have done my fair share of ridiculing the laws and society of the Gulf states over the years, I should say that this gift to my home State was very nice of them. Thanks.

Do not trust them

Favorite Denier Tricks, or How to Hide the Incline | Open Mind

Good post by Tamino (he's been on a roll lately) showing why you cannot take any graph, or any statement, at Watts Up With That on face value.

In other climate change news, this paper, about observed changes to cloud cover over 25 years sounds to me like an important one, but I haven't seen it written up anywhere yet.

TV reviews from the weekend

Bolt Report: I didn't see all that much of it (and the time slot of 10am on a Sunday is going to help ensure this continues in future. I reckon all people interested in politics, even on the right, are going to be more interested in a range of views from Insiders rather than the mono-view of Andrew Bolt, and an hour devoted to politics on a Sunday is more than enough for most people.)

The opening part, where Andrew got to editorialise (it was rather like him reading out one of his own columns) reminded me of Alan Jones' short-ish TV career. I seem to recall he did much the same thing. The problem is, it doesn't make for great television, particularly when those watching already have read his views in the Herald Sun. Just how often can we expect something unexpected from him in one of these openings?

And then the panel "debate", in which three commentators who hate the Gillard government got to express their hatred of the Gillard government. I didn't see all of this, but I was hoping Mark Latham would at least get to say at some point "And by the way, Andrew, I think you are completely and hopelessly wrong on climate change. I consider it the most important political issue for years to come." Because that is what Latham believes. But, I am guessing, Mark didn't get past the invitation to put the boot into former co-worker Gillard.

No, I think the show is not going to work. Andrew Bolt worked best in debate on Insiders, where he had other people to rein in his tongue when needed. Too much control in his hands will not work, I expect.

Dr Who: Apart from the irritating reversion to Russell Davies era reference to homosexuality, where a 1969 FBI agent notes his desire to marry his black boyfriend (oh yes, so very likely, that scenario), I realised something after watching this somewhat confusing and rambling episode.

Namely, the greatest bits about the modern revival of Dr Who are definitely not the episodes with the long story arcs. Yet Steven Moffat is concentrating on the long story arcs to the detriment of the show overall.

Think about it: the most memorable parts of the new show have been individual episodes in which characters and situations rang emotionally true. For me, none of these memories come from the multipart episodes with complicated plots.

Let's face it, with time travel done in the rubbery way it is on this show, we know that there is never any dire end of the universe situation which can't be undone. So it's starting to get tedious that great dramatic "this will be the end of everything" plot arcs still seem to be what the show is now concentrating on. And since Moffat took the helm, the stand alone episodes have, by and large, been weaker than they were when he was writing them for Russell Davies.

There is a small element of interest in trying to pick up hints as to what is going on in the current series, but really, I did consider the first Moffat series story arc to not be particularly effective or memorable. They are just too cluttered.

Anyway, I'll keep watching, but I think I have now put my finger on the problem with the Moffat approach.

Update: I've decided my take on Dr Who sounds too cranky. I still like the characters in the current series quite a lot, it's just that I've decided that Moffat is way too fond of the long, complicated plots running through a series. Now, I suppose you could say that the "traditional" show has always been long stories told in weekly episodes, but they were never as grandiose and messianic as the long arc plots as they developed under Davies. (In fact, I don't think there was much in the way of long episodic stories under the first season or two of Davies, but they did come much more to the front as he went on.) And, as I say, I tend to find it is the "stand alone" episodes turned out to be the most memorable. So I would prefer it to go back to that "new" direction.

A handy Hayek summary

Friedrich A. Hayek, Big-Government Skeptic - NYTimes.com

I've never been all that interested in books by economists with a broader philosophy about society: short summaries of their views seem to be all that can hold my interest.

This review of a new edition of one of Hayek's books seems to provide a useful summary with respect to him.

I note these bits:

(It may, however, surprise some of Hayek’s new followers to learn that “The Constitution of Liberty” argues that the government may need to provide health insurance and even make it ­compulsory.)

So, Labor was following a Hayek line in introducting Medicare?

And the last paragraphs seem key:

In the end, what drove people on the left crazy about Hayek back in the 1950s is the same thing that makes him appealing to a Glenn Beck today. Hayek made the slipperiest of slippery slope arguments: the smallest move toward the expansion of government would lead to a cascade of bad consequences that would result in full-blown authoritarian socialism. If anything, however, the history of the past 50 years shows us that the slippery slope has all sorts of ledges and handholds by which we can brake our descent into serfdom and indeed climb back up. Voters in the United States and Europe took seriously the arguments about the dangers of big government and reversed course after the 1980s. Indeed, the pendulum swung so far backward that financial markets were left dangerously unregulated prior to the financial crisis. President Obama’s return to “big government” didn’t last more than a year before it was met with fierce ­resistance.

In the end, there is a deep contradiction in Hayek’s thought. His great insight is that individual human beings muddle along, making progress by planning, experimenting, trying, failing and trying again. They never have as much clarity about the future as they think they do. But Hayek somehow knows with great certainty that when governments, as opposed to individuals, engage in a similar process of innovation and discovery, they will fail. He insists that the dividing line between state and society must be drawn according to a strict abstract principle rather than through empirical adaptation. In so doing, he proves himself to be far more of a hubristic Cartesian than a true Hayekian.

Hard to believe....

Rampaging dollar 'could hit $US1.70' as budget and industries threatened | The Australian

This rise against the US dollar is all very nice for the Australian tourist, although I still don't understand why our dollar has made a slower rise against the Yen.

Magical intrigue in Iran

Ahmadinejad allies charged with sorcery | World news | The Guardian

Maybe it's just me missing the articles, but this story seems to have been overlooked this week in the wider media, given the excitement and intrigue of the Bin Laden killing.

It's pretty fascintating:

Close allies of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being "magicians" and invoking djinns (spirits).

Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds".

The arrests come amid a growing rift between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei which has prompted several MPs to call for the president to be impeached.

The article then explains the people involved in a power play underway in Iran, then gets back to the magic bits:

But the feud has taken a metaphysical turn following the release of an Iranian documentary alleging the imminent return of the Hidden Imam Mahdi – the revered saviour of Shia Islam, whose reappearance is anticipated by believers in a manner comparable to that with which Christian fundamentalists anticipate the second coming of Jesus.

Conservative clerics, who say that the Mahdi's return cannot be predicted, have accused a "deviant current" within the president's inner circle, including Mashaei, of being responsible for the film.

Ahmadinejad's obsession with the hidden imam is well known. He often refers to him in his speeches and in 2009 said that he had documentary evidence that the US was trying to prevent Mahdi's return.

What a fantastic Muslim conspiracy theory: the US trying to prevent the return of the Hidden Iman. I presume that someone, somewhere, is figuring out how the death of Bin Laden factors into this.

Suggested posters for today's No Carbon Tax rally in Brisbane

Only time for a couple.....

Sketchbook Pro improves

Yay. Sketchbook Pro, my iPad sketching and art app of choice, has finally been changed to make it easier to keep favorite brushes and colours on the screen.

This news will mean nothing to nearly every reader, but it's significant to me. I find doodling with a finger is the second most enjoyable thing about an iPad.

Doesn't look like this on TV...

One in three Africans is now middle class, report finds | Global development | The Guardian

Sounds to me like the African Development Bank might be talking things up a bit, though, when the report notes figures like this:

Possession of cars and motorcycles in Ghana, for example, has gone up by 81% in the past five years.

The significance of that all depends on the base you're coming off, after all.

Anyway, it's of interest. I tend to have little interest in visiting the place partly because I've read about too many parasitic and other diseases that can be caught there. (Yes, I know, tourists do go there and survive.)

A story of fish, ice and history

I mentioned in my photo post of Tasmania yesterday the Salmon Ponds just outside of Hobart, and how much I enjoy visiting them.   (I had previously been there by myself in 1995; this time it was to show my family.  Children like it a lot because you buy fish pellets with which to feed the large, hungry trout and salmon.) 

The place provides a short history on the introduction of trout and salmon from England to Tasmania which involved several failed attempts to ship the eggs there under sail.   The credit seems to belong mainly to one Sir James Youl:  born in Parramatta, educated in England, moved to Tasmania, then to England again.  (Call me ignorant if you will, but I find it  a bit surprising to realise that “normal”people from even the first half of the 19th century were undertaking the lengthy voyage to and from England for reasons such as education.)  The short story of what he did regarding shipping fish is shown in his entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography:

Youl is best remembered for the introduction of trout and salmon to Australasian waters. Earlier attempts in 1841 and 1852 had failed because of the difficulty of keeping ova alive under artificial conditions en route to Tasmania. His shipments on the Curling in 1860 and Beautiful Star in 1862 failed, and next year he directed experiments involving the use of moss in ice-vaults. On 21 January 1864 the Norfolk left England carrying more than 100,000 salmon and trout ova packed in moss in the ship's ice-house. Ninety-one days later the first successful delivery of living ova was made into Tasmanian hatcheries on the River Plenty. Victoria and New Zealand had supported the Tasmanian ventures and their rivers were soon stocked also.

But the details are a bit more interesting, and by the wonders of Google Books, you read it all as recorded in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London from 1870.   The story starts at page 14.  You can download the entire volume as a 47 MB .pdf  if you want a full nine hundred or so pages of the Proceedings for that year.  (If you do download it, make sure to check the index at the back, where the digitiser’s fingers are caught on the scan on more than one occasion.  I suppose he or she must have been tiring of the job by then. )   

So, back to the story.  It seems they first tried to ship out salmon spawn, but these attempts all failed.  They then hit on the idea of transporting the fertilised eggs, but in the first attempt in 1852, in a large tub of water with 50,000 odd ova, they hatched too early, the water got too warm and putrid, and none survived. 

Someone hit on the idea of keeping the eggs cold, so the next attempt in 1860(the first involving Youl, it seems) involved using ice in the ship to cool the water.  But all did not go well:

Note the reference to Wenham-Lake ice?   I noticed at the Salmon Ponds this visit that the ice used in these attempts came from America.(!)

I have a vague recollection that I had once read about the American ice trade of the 1800’s, but I’m not sure.   But again, to my surprise, I see now that an enterprising fellow by the name of Frederick Tudor, made a highly successful business of cutting ice from the lakes of New England  and shipping it to England and even further afield (it even made it to India.)  

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but this strikes me as a little known and unusual example of  global enterprise:  ice shipped from America then used in attempts to get fish eggs to Australia.

So back to the fish.   The next attempt was in 1862, involving a different set up, but the ship struck bad weather, the ice again ran out, the water temperature rose and the eggs again all died.  But this time they found that some eggs, laid in moss and put directly in the ice box, had survived longer.

This led to Youl in England running experiments with the fish eggs on ice.  (You can’t freeze the eggs, just keep them really cold.)   It slows the development down, long enough to get them to Australia.

So the successful method was eventually implemented in 1864, with the fish ova packed in wooden boxes between damp moss (some had charcoal in them too), holes were drilled in the sides, and they were packed in ice in the ship’s ice house.   They survived the 3 month trip, and were taken up the Derwent River, being carried overland on poles to the Salmon Ponds, were they hatched and a significant number survived.

Maybe it’s just because I love eating salmon and trout (it’s certainly not because I am a fisherman of any note), but I find this unusual bit of Australian history a pretty fascinating story of 19th century determination and enterprise.

Old horse news

I was Googling the news for horse accidents (as one does - they've been causing much mayhem lately) and noticed that at the end of the links there were several for Google News Archives, which led to scanned newspaper articles like this one from Alabama in 1924 - advising us that the Prince of Wales had been knocked unconscious when thrown from his horse.

Have News Archive links always been automatically showing at the end of Googles News searches? If so, I can't say I have noticed til now. What it is this - a conspiracy to make us learn more history?

You see, the rest of the news from Alabama in 1924 is pretty interesting:

* 4 Army Airships Ready to Make Attempt at Flight Around the World. (All to prove American air supremacy.) Now I’m curious as to whether they made it.

* Arthur Brisbane (modestly noted as “the World’s greatest editorial writer”) gives financial advice: “Be careful how you sell francs short and be careful how you buy European bonds. Invest your money in United States optimism, and you will come out right in the end.”

I wonder how that panned out…

Maybe this will convince the public...

BBC News - Giant ants spread in warm climes

A giant ant growing over 5cm (2in) long crossed the Arctic during hot periods in the Earth's history, scientists say, using land bridges between continents.

The ant, named Titanomyrma lubei, lived about 50 million years ago and is one of the largest ant species ever found.

Fossils were unearthed in ancient lake sediments in Wyoming, US.

Writing in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, a Canadian-US team shows that giant ants, now and then, almost always live in hot climates.

Fight the return of ants as big as hummingbirds - fight global warming!

Holiday snaps

The family was off to Tasmania a couple of weeks ago, and as is traditional around here, it’s time to put up some photos:

Penguins at Low Head, at the mouth of the Tamar River north of Launceston.   The family was pretty impressed how you just had to stand still, and the fairy penguins would wander past your feet on the way to the shrubbery.   I expected penguin tours to keep you at a further distance.

   We stayed just the one night at Low Head at    the Pilot Station.  This house was ridiculously good value, and only vaguely gave the impression of being haunted. 

It sits right on the water, so you get this view from inside:

Very pretty.

Next:  the drive along the north coast is prettier than I expected.   And the small town of Stanley, famous for the large protuberance into the ocean called the Nut, didn’t fail to charm:

The photo above was somewhere on the north coast, and I believe they were onions in the field.

Onto Hobart, and one of my favourite places near there is the Salmon Ponds, where trout and salmon were first introduced to Tasmania from England in the 1850’s.  This is of itself a pretty fascinating story, but today the ponds are notably for the large, large fish they still breed there, and the lovely gardens:

And of course, Hobart itself is a charming small city, and here’s your stereotypical harbour view:

We stayed at an odd sort of motel at Sandy Bay, but it was in a great location, close to the university, and heaps of cheerful places to eat (with a lot of Asian food in particular.)    The streets are full of quite charming cottages and houses:

 

That’s enough for now, I’ll do a separate post for a few more pics.

How come Bear Grylls never used this technique?

Pizza cake ... how to turn a pile of earth into a wood-fired cob pizza oven in a matter of hours

From one universe to the next

Some Black Holes May Pre-Date The Big Bang, Say Cosmologists - Technology Review

Some wild physics time. Considering that there was recently a paper speculating that it might be possible for a planet to orbit inside a black hole (I was sure I posted about that, but where?), could it be that black holes could be used as a lifeboat to get from one collapsing universe to a new expanding one?

Of course, there are a couple of problems here: not many scientists expect the current universe to collapse; and even if it did, getting out of the black hole lifeboat may be an issue.

The Chinese believe...

It seems there is no serious doubt amongst Chinese scientists that global warming is happening, Yet surely, if you were to believe skeptic arguments that scientists like to please their financial masters, China would be the country with political incentive to pooh-pooh climate change and encourage research to show it is either not happening, or not so serious.

Yet such thoughts seem rarely to occur to climate change skeptics.

It won't be hot every day...

Persisting cold extremes under 21st-century warming scenarios

A paper here notes that models still suggest that cold extremes will still happen during the 21 st century despite a general warming trends.

You have to point to this sort of stuff so that skeptics don't claim cold snaps mean no global warming.