Overstepping the mark?

Of course, we all know that the apparent evidence coming out relating to the way Craig Thomson’s credit card was used does not look good for him, but I am surprised that no one has come out yet to say that some journalists are surely overstepping the line in declaring already that he has committed crimes.

In particular, Michael Smith, who has played a big role in this, said directly yesterday “Craig Thomson stole money from the Union,” and invited Thomson to sue him if that wasn’t true. (There is no transcript, but you can listen to what he said at the second recording at the link.) Now, given that Thomson did cease his high profile defamation case against Fairfax, Smith knows that he is at little risk of facing a fresh one.

But as a right wing radio talkback jock who has clearly always hated the Gillard government, Smith clearly hopes that Thomson is charged with offences and that this will bring down the government if Thomson loses his seat.

But surely he realises that statements like that can be, at the very least, problematic for getting a fair trial? Is it only because there is no actual charge yet (and may not be for some weeks or months) that he feels he can talk about the situation like this? Certainly, this site indicates that sub judice rules apply from the time someone is charged, arrested or a warrant is issued.

Still, I am interested to see if anyone else comes out and criticises Smith for coming out directly with this statement.

UPDATE: Andrew Bolt refers to the "illegal use" of union funds, and indeed the current head of the union assumes a crime has been committed. Paul Sheehan also says "crimes have been committed", but in all cases they do not say specifically by who. It may be that Smith is the only journalist who has come out and said Thomson has stolen money. What will Alan Jones say about it today, though? Andrew Robb has also said Thomson is a thief, but under parliamentary privilege. Talking outside of parliament, I think George Brandis has been more careful to couch it terms of possible crimes that may have been committed.

The best commentary on the matter I found this morning in The Age by Shaun Carney, which includes this:

But the niceties of the law do not really interest the Coalition; they are merely vehicles by which they can continue their assault on Thomson's state of mind and Gillard's political authority. Any legal case against Thomson for misappropriation of union funds would take years to be mounted, listed and heard.

Even then, a conviction might not meet the relevant section of the constitution, which deems a person unfit to sit as an MP if he or she has been ''convicted and is under sentence, or subject to be sentenced, for any offence punishable under the law of the Commonwealth or of a State by imprisonment for one year or longer''.

Yesterday, opposition leader Tony Abbott veered close to over-reach, with his extraordinary claim that the issue was stopping the government from dealing with more serious problems.

He told the ABC in the morning that ''while the government is completely distracted by the Craig Thomson matter it's not properly able to attend to the pressing problems the country faces''. He made the same claim later in the day while arguing that normal parliamentary business cease in order for Gillard to make a statement about the matter. The ''distraction'' has been generated all along by Abbott. The Thomson affair merely adds to the semi-permanent state of crisis that continues to engulf the Gillard government. Its opponents, both inside and outside the Parliament, are trying everything to blast the government from office. Last week, around 3000 protesters gathered outside Parliament House to voice their opposition to the government and its carbon pricing policy. On Monday, a few hundred more turned up, most of them by truck, calling for a new election.

I'm not sure he's right that it will take "years"to get to trial, but he's certainly right that the "distraction" claim by Abbott is a silly bit of political game playing.

Meanwhile, the business of government continued, with plain packaging for cigarettes legislation passing through parliament.

As I have said before, there is no actual crisis relating to economic management, or any persistent failure of this government to get its legislative intentions through parliament. It is pure political spin by those who oppose the Gillard government (and, admittedly, that includes a lot of the general public) that there is an actual governance crisis happening.

Red Potatoes

Rice is nice but spuds are new top banana

Facing more frequent droughts, falling water tables and widespread soil erosion, the government has designated the potato as a ''strategic'' crop in the latest five-year plan and is investing millions of dollars in researching new varieties.

This northern spring Beijing hosted its second international potato expo, hoping to cash in on China's new-found love for the spud. The potato is proving attractive both to Chinese consumers and to government officials charged with achieving China's target of being 95 per cent self-sufficient in food.

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With 20 per cent of the world's population, and just 7 per cent of its arable land, China is also hoping that the potato - which produces three or four times more calories per acre than rice or corn - can alleviate poverty by boosting farmers' outputs and incomes.

Probably some Chinese geneticist is working right now on the stir fry-able potato.

When ideology trumps common sense

Is there really a free market economist in Australia who believes that having quarantine services to our island continent to help prevent things like foot and mouth disease, rabies, screw flies, giant African snails, and other agricultural diseases and blights of many kinds which are clearly of great economic cost in other countries from getting a foothold here is a case of mere "rent seeking" and should be abolished?

Yes there is, and his insurance argument is even nuttier, as people in the thread have tried to show.

Amazing.

I think he is also known for being sympathetic to the completely free flow of people between countries. As wildly impractical and unpopular as this would be, at least you can argue that that would have some humanitarian benefit - no more fleeing masses of humanity held up for years in refugee camps. But I wouldn't have thought the likes of the giant African snail, or various bacteria and fungal spores, have quite the same claim to freedom of international movement.

No, this is a case of ideology stupidly trumping common sense. That is all there is to it.

When common sense and reading trump science

There are, I argue, cases where the reasonably well informed public can look at a science report and say "well, that sounds like a ridiculously premature conclusion," and you then have to wait around for years before science finally cottons on.

One reason I like to cite studies confirming the connection between marijuana use (at least at a young age) and mental illness is because I reckon this is what happened in that case. Many parents and relatives of those who developed schizophrenia in their early adulthood in the 70's or 80's, and who knew their child had gotten into marijuana use in their teenage years, were basically ahead of the science.

Anyway, here's another area where the science report was against common sense. It appears that, some years ago, a study involving testing for sexual arousal of self described bisexual men claimed that they didn't seem to be bisexual at all. The same university now has a study saying, hey, we seem to have found some men who do show a bisexual arousal pattern after all.

The apparent conclusions of the original study were surely always wildly implausible and stupid, given the evidence of everything from ancient history to Oscar Wilde (see item 2) and even present day tabloid interviews with "gay" icons like Ricky Martin. We won't bother discussing what the Greeks and Spartans got up to, but people might have missed Martin recently saying this last year:

Oprah read out a passage from his new memoir 'Me', which said: 'The thing is I didn't just like her a lot this woman drove me crazy, the attraction, desire and physical passion I felt for her tore me up in every way.

'It was physical chemistry overload, the way we both moved together. The whole thing drove me insane.'

These days, Ricky is more certain of his feelings.

'I am not bisexual, I am a gay man,' he declared.

'For many years I thought I was, I was confused because when I was with a woman everything was perfect but people loved to see me with women and I thought 'I'm gonna make this work'.

'I felt it with a woman, I felt passion and it felt good. And I'm sure I'm not the only gay man that felt attraction towards women. I never lied I told her it felt amazing.

'Sometimes I really did fall in love with women, for many years I did. They're still my friends today.'

Sounds like an endorsement of the fact that he got highly aroused by some women, and could fall in love with them, as he could also do with blokes, yet for whatever reason "bisexual" is not a good enough description for him. Whatever. It is, incidentally, a sign of the worrying consumerist modern attitude to reproduction that few people even care to remark on how a man like him, for whom making babies the natural way and in a loving relationship was always an eminently achievable thing, should instead choose to have twins by impregnating a surrogate mother with donor eggs, and neither female participant knew who the father is.

The New York Times report on the recent bisexual affirming lab study contains this obvious statement about any study that hopes to prove something by putting arousal to the test in a lab:

Despite her cautious praise of the new research, Dr. Diamond also noted that the kind of sexual arousal tested in the studies is only one element of sexual orientation and identity. And simply interpreting results about sexual arousal is complicated, because monitoring genital response to erotic images in a laboratory setting cannot replicate an actual human interaction, she added.

“Sexual arousal is a very complicated thing,” she said. “The real phenomenon in day-to-day life is extraordinarily messy and multifactorial.”

Now, I suspect that someone reading this blog might say, why do I allow for skepticism of some science studies, but am so against skepticism of climate change science.

The difference here is, there is not much scope for common sense when assessing many of the basics in climate change. You can't directly sense the immediate warming effect of greenhouse gases; you can't directly know what the climate was like before you were born. Hence, the original type of skepticism was often against there being any possible greenhouse effect at all, because it is easy to pretend, based on your senses, that nothing is happening.

Of course, climate change skepticism has largely moved away from that approach now, although Judith Curry still engages in lengthy and tedious debates with hold outs. It's mainly "lukewarmerism," or (the other popular approach of the last couple of years) natural cycles which we don't understand yet. It doesn't matter that a cycle has to be driven by something changing, and modern technology has given us excellent means to detect all climate forcings as they happen; it's all an appeal to drawing charts as if it always is going to reveal a truth. (It seems to me you used to see this a lot in financial chartists too, but no one pays much attention to those approaches any more.)

The one area in climate change where I think you can have a valid skepticism is on the issue of attribution of particular unusual events. This is difficult statistical matter at the best of times, but NOAA itself seems to be very keen lately to say that particular events, such as the remarkable Russian heat wave of last year, are not attributable to climate change.

I, on the other hand, suspect that NOAA is being a bit overly cautious on the issue, and that it is likely to become clear in the next 5 to 10 years that (not widely anticipated) changes to atmospheric circulation are indeed attributable to changes related to AGW, and are a serious consequence of it. I could be wrong, but that is where I judge the correct skepticism of climate science should currently take you.

More Republican embarrassment

Tax poor people: Republicans want the IRS to nail "lucky duckies." - By David Weigel - Slate Magazine

A fascinating article here on the weird ways Republicans - even non climate change denying ones like Huntsman - think about taxes, and how they got there.

There is now an exceptionally high degree of ideologically driven agenda around amongst right wing economics commentary coming from the States (and Australia) which has been fully absorbed by the likes of the Tea Party, and thus become more politically influential than ever. It leads to blow outs into nuttiness, especially in the area of tax, whether it be arguing against increasing taxes on the obviously rich (people earning over $1 million a year, as Buffet recently suggested, and the WSJ criticised because it was "lending his credibility" to tax increases on the middle class,) or arguing that any increases in taxes from the mining sector in Australia is going to lead to catastrophe.

Of course, the fact that carbon pricing can involve a "tax" is also enough for many to run screaming from that relative mouse in the room. (Well, OK, more like a rat maybe. I am trying to find the right metaphor for a relatively small effect on the total economy.)

As far as I am concerned, the economists of either the left or right who cling too closely to ideological driven agendas of what will work are not to be trusted. This happens on the Left too, of course, and in fact that used to be why moderate right wing parties used to be thought to be sounder economic hands. The evidence from the US is that this is, by and large, no longer the case.

Vital science

500 years ago, yeast's epic journey gave rise to lager beer

Well, I didn't know that the origin of the type of yeast which led to lager beer first being made in Bavaria 500 years ago was a bit of a mystery. This article explains all, starting with this:

In the 15th century, when Europeans first began moving people and goods across the Atlantic, a microscopic stowaway somehow made its way to the caves and monasteries of Bavaria.

The stowaway, a yeast that may have been transported from a distant shore on a piece of wood or in the stomach of a fruit fly, was destined for great things. In the dank caves and monastery cellars where 15th century brewmeisters stored their product, the newly arrived yeast fused with a distant relative, the domesticated yeast used for millennia to make leavened bread and ferment wine and ale. The resulting hybrid — representing a marriage of species as evolutionarily separated as humans and chickens — would give us lager, the clear, cold-fermented beer first brewed by 15th century Bavarians and that today is among the most popular — if not the most popular — alcoholic beverage in the world.

One of the scientists says:

"People have been hunting for this thing for decades," explains Chris Todd Hittinger, a University of Wisconsin-Madison genetics professor and a co-author of the new study.

I guess this says something about the sometimes peculiar priorities of science. They don't even seem to suggest that this discovery will lead to better beer, so what was the point?

Answer: very

BBC News - Who, What, Why: How dangerous is firing a gun into the air?

In this article, the BBC handily provides a long list of incidents in which people in various countries have been inadvertently killed by celebratory bullets falling to earth.

Is this why we like the look of grass?

New human gene in wallabies (Science Alert)

Here is a bit of odd information about the biology of kangaroos that comes at the end of this story about how genetic sequencing of wallaby genes shows up "surprising similarities" with human genes:

She said kangaroos and wallabies, like all marsupials, have many unusual biological characteristics. “They give birth to tiny under-developed young after a very short pregnancy, which is then followed by a long and sophisticated lactation period while in the mother’s pouch.

“This includes the simultaneous provision of two types of milk from adjacent mammary glands to offspring of different ages. This is like the left breast and right breast making milk of two completely different compositions," Professor Renfree said.

Neat trick.

Clear reception?

Spirit Voices: The First Live Conversation Between Worlds | Society for Psychical Research

So, a paranormal investigator making a TV series in an allegedly haunted Irish hotel claims he got recordings of perfectly clear spirit voices making meaningful responses to a medium in another room.

Sounds kind of easy to fake, andthis bit of video shows his methods (using violin sounds in the recording process) seem a tad arcane.

Still, his books seems to have reasonably impressed someone reviewing for the Society for Psychical Research.

I wonder if the reason we don't hear from the dead so often is due to high "roaming" charges for their mobile phones to Earth.

Incidentally, this also reminds me of Robert Rankin's black comedy novel Fandom of the Operator, in which someone discovers that there exists a literal telephone service to the dead. I thought the book was pretty awful, actually, and have blanked out all other details of the plot, but I liked the premise, at least.

I mean, it is pretty intriguing to think about the societal implications of having scientific proof of an afterlife, isn't it? On the one hand, most humans have believed it for most of history anyway, but on the other hand, removing the mystery beyond all doubt would put a fair bit of a spanner in the works of modern philosophy and science, to put it mildly.

New, old movies

What's going on in Hollywood at the moment? Here are three old franchises undergoing actual, or planned, expansion. My comments follow, in increasing order of alarm:

* Ridley Scott is making a prequel to the Alien films. (Might be OK, but bear in mind he only made the original one, and he has a very hit and miss record in his career.)

* Ridley is also, according to that link, going to make another movie in the Blade Runner universe. (Given that we are only 8 years away from the setting for the original movie, it had better a sequel in order to have any plausibility at all.)

* Sarah Jessica Parker is said to be interested in a third Sex and the City movie, and/or TV series. (Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.)

How (some) clever people make money

Lottery wins come easy, if you can spot the loopholes - physics-math

Appleyard on the riots

One Hot Breath | Bryan Appleyard

I had been wondering what Bryan Appleyard would say about the recent British riots, and now I know.

He notes that it has made him feel as left as he ever has in his adult life, and he looks back at the role of Milton Friedman's influence. An interesting take, anyway.

A an odd app

The Book Bench: The Victorianator : The New Yorker

I thought of Tim, the only bushranger, right wing, cat and chicken wrangling pub poet and zine creator in all of Australia:

Here’s how it works: a poem appears on the screen of your iPhone (you need an iPhone for this app). You read the poem aloud into the phone (using the speaker setting) in a monotone. Then a steampunk robot takes you through a series of gestures that produce voice effects on the poem you just read. So, for example, sweeping an arm toward the sky will raise the pitch of the poem, whereas extending your arm will extend the sound of the word. The variations in pitch make the poem sound like it’s being read by an eminent Victorian; you’re scored on how closely your gestures match the robot’s.

I thought he would like that, wouldn't he, Tim?

Exhibition report 2011

I missed the Ekka last year – I think we were about to go to Sydney at the time – so last Sunday it was off for a full day of

with just a few other

Actually, they really have to do something about that showbag place: it’s too small and was really dangerously crowded on the day we went.  I think later in the week they did limit the number of people in there at any one time.  I miss the now demolished old Industrial Pavilion (just the facade has been kept, and a new convention type facility is being built, but I can’t tell for sure if showbags are going to be back in the new building.)

In fact, I hold some fear for the atmosphere of the show in future, having seen a model of the redevelopment this year.  For those readers outside of Brisbane:  the shows grounds are pretty close to the inner city, and as they don’t get used all that much for most of the year, the Council and State government had been trying for a long time to get the RNA to turn it into high density residential, and move out to some other site for the Ekka; pretty much as happened in Sydney.   However, the RNA owns the land outright, and instead has come up with the idea of building apartments around the site, along with some commercial retail,  but still leaving enough exhibition style buildings to run the show there every year.  This is going to take 15 years to achieve.  

As far as I could tell from the model on display,  the apartments are going to go on the outer edges of  the grounds,  which seemingly means demolishing the (admittedly unremarkable) wood buildings current used for cows and horses during the show.  It seemed as if a lot of  the show will be held in mere temporary structures, like the showbag half tent thing pictured above.  I’m not at all sure how this is going to work out.  Still, they have said in the past that part of the redevelopment would include a permanent farmer’s market,  which would be good to see in Brisbane.

Anyway, back to the present, and one of the more unusual entertainments this year  was the Sideshow Superstar show.  It was four people doing a modern version of slightly grotesque “sideshow”  acts in an auditorium room.  You know: sword swallowing; putting a spinning drill bit up your nose; a somewhat tattooed man lifting a car battery via chains attached to metal spikes through his nipples – that type of good clean fun.   I only took photos of Ruby Rubberlegs, a not very tall woman who managed to make herself very compressed indeed:

It was actually a pretty professional short show, and I found it pleasing to see this type of act at this venue.   I felt it was something the kids would remember for quite a while, even though my daughter couldn’t bear to watch many parts.

As for the day generally, my wife seems to have overcome her resistance to my desire to spend a full day there every year.  (As far as I’m concerned, you should try to arrive not later than 10am and then only leave at 8.30 after the fireworks.)   This year, she didn’t complain at all, despite 2 years ago saying next time I could take the kids by myself.   She didn’t even complain (much) as we found we were sitting right in the smoke and cinder drift from the fireworks.  I sort of like a bit of firework smell anyway, but perhaps not as much as this year.  

I just remembered, I’ve been meaning to make this point for some years now:  it makes me feel good about Australia when you see Asian or other immigrant families or teenagers sitting on Machinery Hill and enjoying the traditional “ring events” like the 4 cars doing the same driving tricks that they have been doing for, um, the last 45 years.   This is as good a sign of healthy cultural assimilation as I know of.  Lately, many young men also seem to really get into the freestyle motocross show, which has the advantage of only having been there for 7 years now, apparently*.   In fact, when we were leaving at about 8.45, there was a very long line of people waiting to get autographs from the riders at their autograph booth.  The act is pretty impressive and dangerous looking, though, I must admit.  I will probably start complaining that it’s getting stale in 10 years time, though.

On a final note, this feature outside the (pretty pathetic inside) Carnevil ride was very popular in Sideshow Alley:

Every garden should have one.

And that’s it, til next year.

* I guess there is a chance that, like the car driving, my son will still be watching it in 40 years time.   

Unlucky way to die

3 die of rare brain infection from amoeba in water

I think we've all heard of the fresh water amoeba that can kill if it gets into your nose. There have 3 cases in the US this summer, but this guy was particularly unlucky:

The third case, in Louisiana, was more unusual. It was a young man whose death in June was traced to the tap water he used in a device called a neti pot. It's a small teapot-shaped container used to rinse out the nose and sinuses with salt water to relieve allergies, colds and sinus trouble.

Health officials later found the amoeba in the home's water system. The problem was confined to the house; it wasn't found in city water samples, said Dr. Raoult Ratard, Louisiana's state epidemiologist.

A strange way to assess it

Boys reach sexual maturity younger and younger

The article starts:

Boys are maturing physically earlier than ever before. The age of sexual maturity has been decreasing by about 2.5 months each decade at least since the middle of the 18th century.

Fair enough - although that sounds like a lot of earlier maturing has been going on. But look at the odd way this was assessed:

Goldstein resolved this gap by studying demographic data related to mortality. When male hormone production during puberty reaches a maximum level the probability of dying jumps up. This phenomenon, called the "accident hump", exists in almost all societies and is statistically well documented.

Goldstein discovered that the maximum mortality value of the accident hump shifted to earlier age by 2.5 months for each decade since the mid-1700s, or just over two years per century. Accordingly, the age of boys’ sexual maturity decreased at the same rate. Essentially, the data showed that the age of sexual maturity is getting younger and younger since the accident hump is occurring earlier and earlier. (Research included data for Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Great Britain and Italy. Since 1950 the data is no longer clear but indicates stagnation.) The maximum of the accident hump occurs in the late phase of puberty, after males reach reproductive capability and their voice changes.

Huh. I didn't know that an "accident hump" so clearly existed.

Wow - clever dogs

Sniffer dogs can be used to detect lung cancer

There was some British documentary on TV a couple of years ago in which medical researchers were being very dismissive of the reliability of dogs to be able to smell cancer in humans.

Yet this story of success in dogs smelling lung cancer in Germany sounds very impressive:

This new study aimed to assess whether sniffer dogs could be used to identify a VOC in the breath of patients. The researchers worked with 220 volunteers, including lung cancer patients, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients and healthy volunteers. They used dogs that had been specifically trained.

The researchers carried out a number of tests to see if the dogs were able to reliably identify lung cancer compared with healthy volunteers, volunteers with COPD and whether the results were still found with the presence of tobacco.

The dogs successfully identified 71 samples with lung cancer out of a possible 100. They also correctly detected 372 samples that did not have lung cancer out of a possible 400.

The dogs could also detect lung cancer independently from COPD and tobacco smoke. These results confirm the presence of a stable marker for lung cancer that is independent of COPD and also detectable in the presence of tobacco smoke, food odours and drugs.

Author of the study, Thorsten Walles from Schillerhoehe Hospital, said: "In the breath of patients with lung cancer, there are likely to be different chemicals to normal breath samples and the dogs' keen sense of smell can detect this difference at an early stage of the disease. Our results confirm the presence of a stable marker for lung cancer. This is a big step forward in the diagnosis of lung cancer, but we still need to precisely identify the compounds observed in the exhaled breath of patients. It is unfortunate that dogs cannot communicate the biochemistry of the scent of cancer!"

Rating Republicans

Rabett Run: Republican climate cladistics

Eli Rabett saves me the bother of researching, and categories the Republican leaders who are or (or might be) in the Presidential race according to their climate change responses.

Currently, of those running, Romney and Huntsman come out in the lead, by at least not retreating on past acknowledgements that there is a problem to be addressed.

Morano approves Perry, which means we need lots more corndog photos. (See previous post.)

Flood statistics up in the air

So long, '500-year flood'? - Omaha.com

I have been saying recently that one of the largest effects of climate change - much more frequent, economically and socially disruptive, floods - may well be the first consequence of global warming that people find is convincing proof of AGW.

The above article talks about the revision of flood statistics in the US, following a lot of flooding recently.

One suspects the same thing may be said about Australia soon.

Captain a bit dull

Based on the pretty good reviews for Captain America at Rottentomatoes, I took the kids to see it today, but I think we were all a bit underwhelmed.

Sure, it looks great, but I only have middling interest in all Marvel stuff:  in fact, now that I think of it, the first and third Spiderman’s might be the only Marvel movies that I thought were very good. 

I think this movie suffered, a bit more than your average superhero special effects movie, with on screen physics that never felt dangerous.  I mean, the way the hero jumped, ran, shot and flung that shield around, he never really seemed to be in any danger; and even when his pal met his fate, it was all in such an obvious CGI background, it didn’t feel “real”either. 

The movie’s production design was all retro with quite a dash of alternative universe; in this respect, I kept thinking about Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow in comparison.  I thought that earlier movie looked great, even though you knew it was all CGI background.  Maybe it was the fact that it wasn’t really trying for any realism at all that this didn’t bother me, as well as the publicity that indicated it had all been quite economically.  (A mere $70 million dollar budget, according to Wikipedia, which it failed to recover at the box office.)    I actually think the script for Sky Captain was a bit wittier than the later Captain, too. 

Anyway, I won’t be hanging out for The Avengers movies.  Ho-hum.