Witness for the prosecution

Pigeons never forget a face

New research has shown that feral, untrained pigeons can recognise individual people and are not fooled by a change of clothes.

I'm waiting for a movie based on a pigeon witnessing a murder in the park, and needing to go on a witness protection program.

Above the eyes

Catalyst: Pet Subjects - Dog eyebrows - ABC TV Science

I found this segment on Catalyst this week pretty fascinating. The key to feeling that we can understand dogs, it suggests, is because they are one of the few animals with expressive eyebrows. This is in contrast to cats (and, I would think, horses.)

Now if you look at the equivalent muscle in the cat, it's not strong, and attaches all the way across the eye ridge. Which means the cat can't do much interesting with that muscle. Whereas the dog's levator anguli oculi medialis is perfectly placed to raise just one edge of its eyebrow. But the deeper why question is, why do dogs have this special eyebrow muscle, and most animals don't? Well the best theory concerns the evolution of social living. In general, the most social animals have the most expressive faces.

One study showed foxes who hunt alone had about half the facial expressions of wolves who work in packs. In fact, in wolves and dingoes, the eyebrows are often even a different colour, exaggerating the movement.

Sounds a plausible theory.

That'll help market share

Tiger planes grounded, pose 'serious risk' | News.com.au

Wow. I've travelled on Tiger with the family maybe 3 times, I think, and always noted that, provided you went with the expectation that you were merely catching a cheap bus line that happens to drive at 40,000 feet, the experience was fine.

But they've had services banned for a week for air safety issues!

With there be any customers left at all after this?

Complicated

Fatima conspiracy theories are damaging the Church

This blog entry at Catholic Herald doesn't fully explain the background, but it would appear that in certain Catholic circles, there is much controversy about whether Russia has, or has not, been consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in accordance with the apparent wishes of Mary as expressed via Fatima.

This seems a tad arcane for a 21st century Catholic, who, if raised after the 1960's, probably knows very little about Fatima anyway. In fact, if Australian Catholic practice is anything to go by, attention paid to Mary in any respect by Catholics has taken a dramatic downturn since (I would say) the 1950's. (I grew up in the 1960's, but I think even then Marian devotion was starting to dwindle.) I don't think modern nun-ish feminism has been able to convincingly incorporate her story into anything compelling (maybe the "virginity" is the issue there), and priests simply spend as little time as possible talking about her.

It's a curious thing, to have seen emphasis in the Church change so much in a relatively short time of about 50 years.

Stupid men

Lightning strikes far more men than women, statistics show

Mind you, I have known women who have been completely careless of lightning too.

I have a good "standing outside in the middle of a storm" story, and might post it one day.

Some mildly encouraging news...

Nuclear power debate a 'live debate within the Labor Party', says Martin Ferguson | The Australian

Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson said yesterday the topic remained a "live debate in Australia, despite the best efforts of the Greens and the non-government organisations to demonise the discussion".

Speaking in Sydney at a forum on nuclear power, he said Australia would "eventually have to decide on the issue of energy reliability, at the cheapest possible cost".

Modern media questions

David Duchovny and Tea Leoni separate | News.com.au

SEX-addicted actor David Duchovny has separated from his wife, fellow actor Tea Leoni, for at least the second time.

In 2008 the couple split briefly after Duchovny reportedly discovered explicit text messages on his wife's mobile phone sent by actor Billy Bob Thornton.

The pair spent several months apart while The X-Files and Californication star, now 50, entered rehab for sex addiction.

Don't the examples of Duchovny and Sheen indicate that, if you're a person with an addiction issue in your personal life, it's not exactly helpful to play a person who has the same habits on TV? Mind you, Sheen is mad enough to say he doesn't have a problem.

Extremes

Experts warn epic weather ravaging US could worsen

Towards the end of this report about the extremes of recent US weather, we get this comment:

However, the intensity of future droughts, heat waves, storms and floods is expected to rise drastically if greenhouse gas emissions don't stabilize soon, said Michael Mann, a scientist at Penn State University.

"Even a couple degree warming can make a 100-year event a three-year event," Mann, the head of the university's earth systems science center, told AFP.

"It has to do with the tail of the bell curve. When you move the bell curve, that area changes dramatically."

Is that right? Because if it is, it's a handy retort to climate skeptics who, failing all else, will come up with "but is a 2 degree increase really going to be all that bad?"

And it also suggests that, if indeed formerly 1 in a 100 events do start piling on top of each other at much more rapid intervals over the next decade, this may well be the proof that the public seems to need that serious reduction of CO2 is needed.

More work needed?

Acer's Iconia tablet rivals iPad in price, but not much else

I've been noticing the Android tablets that have been turning up at JB Hi Fi, including this one by Acer. I was wondering if they a good alternative to an iPad, being slightly cheaper and all. (One obvious and fairly big difference is an ability to run Flash.)

But according to the review above, the Acer model has its problems.

I did see a Toshiba one yesterday too, but I had a really bad Toshiba notebook once, so I'm cautious about the brand.

Anyway, we'll see.

Mouse trouble

BBC News - Mickey Mouse tweet by Egypt's Sawiris angers conservatives

One of Egypt's richest men has been accused of mocking Islam after tweeting cartoons of Mickey and Minnie Mouse wearing conservative Muslim attire.

Telecoms mogul and Coptic Christian Naguib Sawiris apologised for re-posting the images on Twitter a few days ago, saying he meant no offence.

But several Islamic lawyers have filed a formal complaint and there are calls for a boycott of his businesses.

Sensitive bunch.

No big surprise

Climate sceptic Willie Soon received $1m from oil companies, papers show

Electric Air

VoltAir shows off electricity powered plane concept at Paris Air Show that is slated for 2035

Hard to believe it could work, and I assume it is only a small aircraft, but I like the idea.

Whatd'ya know...

More on marathoning and heart disease : Science-Based Running

Interesting report on a recent study with some pretty convincing sounding evidence that too much marathon exercise is bad for the heart.

I am not at all surprised. I would have thought it hard to argue that from an evolutionary point of view, human bodies are made for such protracted and repeated bouts of exertion.

Man trouble

The idea is not new, I guess:

...a team of psychologists based in China and Hong Kong believe the ultimate cause of human war rests with the male libido. Historically, they argue that the lure of an attractive female primed the male brain for conflict with other males, an effect that persists in modern man even though its usefulness is largely outdated.

But the way this was tested does strike me as kind of funny:

Across four experiments Lei Chang and his team showed that pictures of attractive women or women's legs had a raft of war-relevant effects on heterosexual male participants, including: biasing their judgments to be more bellicose towards hostile countries; speeding their ability to locate an armed soldier on a computer screen; and speeding their ability to recognise and locate war-related words on a computer screen. Equivalent effects after looking at pictures of attractive men were not found for female participants.

The effects on the male participants of looking at attractive women were specific to war. For example, their ability to locate pictures of farmers, as opposed to soldiers, was not enhanced. Moreover, the war-priming effects of attractive women were greater than with other potentially provocative stimuli, such as the national flag. Finally, the men's faster performance after looking at women's legs versus flags was specific to war-related words, as opposed to merely aggressive words.

Given the huge disproportionate number of men in China, this is not encouraging research for them (or us, I guess), that's assuming you give any credence to this sort of research at all.

UPDATE: here's the link I forgot to insert.

Antarctic thoughts

I mentioned some weeks ago that I was reading Heather Rossiter’s biography of Herbert Dyce Murphy, who, after he stopped being a cross-dressing European spy for England, went on to join Mawson’s Australian Antarctic Expedition of 1911.

I’ve nearly finished the book, and have found it quite enjoyable, even though it clearly has its flaws as biography. (There’s too much of what I am sure must be imagined re-creation of conversations and thoughts that are not clearly acknowledged as such.) But, as I have never read any detailed account of the Mawson led expedition, I found this aspect of it - which is the largest part of the book - pretty fascinating.

Rossiter at one point makes the sardonic observation (after noting a disastrous early 19th century trip to Antarctica by Biscoe):

Thus the stage was set for glory in Antarctica. Glory could be obtained by death. The supreme glory would be attained by a leader’s death described in intimate detail.

Mawson came close to achieving that, but not quite. In fact, one of the most interesting things in the book is that it paints a pretty uncomplimentary picture of Mawson as an aloof, overly serious, and difficult to like leader, especially for an expedition in which he was to be confined for many months on end with his suffering crew in one small-ish hut.

There seem to be many biographies around about Mawson, but Googling terms like “Douglas Mawson’s personality” hasn’t really led me to anything to confirm whether or not he was unpopular with his expeditionary crew.

Rossiter does appear to have read many diaries and a lot of source material about the expedition; but again it’s hard to tell whether she is really just taking Murphy’s view on things, or if there was a more widespread disdain for Mawson’s leadership skills.

And Mawson certainly does have his fans. There’s an active “Friends of Mawson” in Adelaide. There is also going to be a museum sponsored Mawson Centenary 2012 Expedition (leaving Hobart on January 3) for which you can buy tickets. (That would be pretty interesting, actually.)

Murphy (obviously) did not accompany Mawson on the 3 man trip across the ice from which only Mawson returned. Mawson’s account is the only one we have of how the other two died. (You can download his book about the expedition – The Home of the Blizzard – for free from Project Gutenberg.) At the risk of upsetting Mawson fans and relatives, it did cross my mind that one would hope it did really happen as a series of tragic accidents, rather than an outbreak of shoving between men standing too close to the edge of a crevasse.

Murphy himself headed off with 2 men to see if they (with another team they met up with) could reach the South Magnetic Pole. The account in the book of how difficult and appalling the conditions were, even in Antarctic summer, makes for fascinating reading. They weren’t using dogs, but dragged sleds in that strange, stiff-upper-lip way the British seemed to think was the manly way to do Antarctica; although the expedition did have huskies which Mawson’s team took (and ended up eating.)

As for Murphy’s shorter and unsuccessful trip: snowblindness was a constant risk that was not (for reasons I don’t quite understand) solved by wearing tinted goggles; the wind was fierce most days; the ice surface was wavy and often tipped over the sleds they were pulling (maybe dogs would not have helped anyway?); and the scenery on a ice plateau can apparently be very dull. It’s a wonder it didn’t send the expeditioners mad, really.

One minor point of slight amusement to the modern reader: to save weight and share body warm, the 3 man teams took with them a single, 3 man sized reindeer fur sleeping bag. I wonder if Murphy would tell stories of his cross dressing spy days before they would fall asleep?

It’s also a bit wryly amusing to realise how, well, environmentally insensitive these early expeditions were to the modern eye. Seals, penguins and penguin eggs were all apparently key sources of food for the expedition, at least when they were holed up in the hut near the colonies. No one liked killing penguins, apparently, yet the number of meals which seemed to feature them was quite high. I wonder if their flesh tastes a bit fishy?* Penguin eggs rated quite highly, apparently. (Reading this also made me realise I don’t know anything about the rate of egg laying for different bird species. We all know chickens produce constantly; but is that special to them? Presumably, birds which are on the fly for protracted periods don’t need to lay all the time.)

Anyway, there might well be better accounts of the rigours of this expedition, but I think you could do worse than read this one. Anyone who wants to correct my possibly false impressions of Mawson as a crook leader is welcome to pay for me to listen to the lectures on the Mawson Centenary Expedition in January!

* Update: A description of the taste of penguin can be found here. Doesn't sound all that great:

'It is rather difficult to describe its taste and appearance; we have absolutely no meat with which to compare it. The penguin, as an animal, seems to be made up o fan equal proportion of a mammal, fish, and fowl. If it is possible to imagine a piece of beef, an odriferous codfish, and a canvas-back duck, roasted in a pot, with blood and cod-liver oil for sauce, the illustration will be complete.'

Small is better?

Small Nuclear Reactors Get a Customer - Technology Review

A short article here on another nuclear company in the States proposing to build a nuclear power station using small reactors.

The reactors themselves are not any particularly new design, though, and are not the "nuclear battery"type that Toshiba and Hyperion are developing. It remains unclear how much cheaper and quicker it could be to establish this modular nuke station.

The comments thread after the article is well worth a read too.

Universal

End of financial year

I'm a tad busy, but a short video on the start of a universe is in preparation...

Contact

It only came to my attention tonight, when I was trying (unsuccessfully) to find another Blogger's email address, that I couldn't find my own email address here.

I'm sure it used to be in my profile, but it's been turned off. I have a vague recollection that I may have done that deliberately, but I forget when.

Now I understand why the emails of offers of free holidays to Tromso, Norway, or other assorted gifts in cash or kind, have not been arriving. Ever.

Anyway, I've opened a new handily named Gmail account which I'll use just for here, and have a link to it at top right hand side.

Also, as I've noted before, the search function at the top of a Blogger page is very hit and miss. The search function that appears as a Gadget on the right below my email address is (I think) generally more reliable. I've moved that up so it's easier to find.