At home with At Home

I didn't have high hopes for At Home with Julia, the short run sitcom based on an "re-imagining" of the life of our Prime Minister and her de facto partner.  However, I have to say I enjoyed it.

Of course, it's absurd to paint the Lodge as just a big house in which the PM or her partner have to cook their own dinner every night, and seemingly can only afford one hired help during the day.  But hey, it's just carrying on the tradition of movies which paint what's surely a ridiculously scaled version of the actual busy-ness of official residences.  (I thought Love Actually was particularly bad in this regard.)  

But the thing I did really like about it was the caricatures of  other politicians - the Paul Keating on the speaker phone droning on bitterly about what happened in 1995 was particularly funny, and although I'm sure the Rob Oakeshott prissiness about what to drink after dinner was unfair, it also amused me. 

I agree with the SMH video review - the best part of the humour was in these minor-ish details.

The actors who played the roles (including just the voice roles) did a piece on Radio National this morning, and it was quite funny.   Go have a listen at the audio link here (not the video, which is just a promo for the show.)

The psychedelic mouse

Did the use of psychedelics lead to a computer revolution?

Well, there are many things I didn't know in this Comment is Free article from The Guardian. (Why don't they put the best CiF articles on the main page like they used. I often forget to check it now.) Anyway, here are the most surprising bits:

...as New York Times reporter John Markoff told the world in his 2005 book, What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, Jobs believed that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he'd done in his life. That 2001 conversation inspired Markoff to write the book: a history of computing with the drugs kept in.

From 1961 to 1965, the Bay Area-based International Foundation for Advanced Study led more than 350 people through acid trips for research purposes. Some of them were important pioneers in the development of computing, such as Doug Engelbart, the father of the computer mouse, then heading a project to use computers to augment the human mind at nearby SRI. Grim also names the inventors of virtual reality and early Cisco employee Kevin Herbert as examples of experimenters with acid, and calls Burning Man (whose frequent attendees include Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page) the modern equivalent for those seeking mind expansion.

Well, if the idea of the computer mouse came up during an acid trip, it could well have started out as literally a mouse, if you follow my drift.

The article also notes a West Coast/East Coast theory of computer development, which I hadn't heard of before either:

Markoff traces modern computing to two sources. First is the clean-cut, military-style, suit-wearing Big Iron approach of the east coast that, in its IBM incarnation, was so memorably smashed in the 1984 Super Bowl ad for the first Apple Mac.

Second is the eclectic and iconoclastic mix of hackers, hippies, and rebels of the west coast, from whose ranks so many of today's big Silicon Valley names emerged. Markoff, born and bred in the Bay Area and 18 in 1967, argues the idea of the personal computer as a device to empower individuals was a purely west coast idea; the east coast didn't "get" anything but corporate technology.

Sounds kind of plausible.

The neighbourhood might be dangerous

Our galaxy might hold thousands of ticking 'time bombs'

A couple of astrophysicists have come up with an idea as to another mechanism which may be the precursor to supernovas, and suggest this:

"Our work is new because we show that spin-up and spin-down of the white dwarf have important consequences. Astronomers therefore must take angular momentum of accreting white dwarfs seriously, even though it's very difficult science," explained Di Stefano.
The spin-down process could produce a time delay of up to a billion years between the end of accretion and the supernova explosion. This would allow the companion star to age and evolve into a second white dwarf, and any surrounding material to dissipate.
In our Galaxy, scientists estimate that there are three Type Ia supernovae every thousand years. If a typical super-Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarf takes millions of years to spin down and explode, then calculations suggest that there should be dozens of pre-explosion systems within a few thousand light-years of Earth.
Those supernova precursors will be difficult to detect. However, upcoming wide-field surveys conducted at facilities like Pan-STARRS and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope should be able to spot them.

Well, how dangerous could a Type Ia supernova be?  According to Wikipedia:

Type Ia supernovae are thought to be potentially the most dangerous if they occur close enough to the Earth. Because Type Ia supernovae arise from dim, common white dwarf stars, it is likely that a supernova that could affect the Earth will occur unpredictably and take place in a star system that is not well studied. One theory suggests that a Type Ia supernova would have to be closer than 10 parsecs (33 light-years) to affect the Earth.[8] The closest known candidate is IK Pegasi.[9] It is currently estimated, however, that by the time it could become a threat, its velocity in relation to the Solar System would have carried IK Pegasi to a safe distance.[5]

Maybe we'll be OK after all.

Harry on carbon pricing

Australian Carbon Pricing - Harry Clarke

Economist Harry Clarke went to a meeting recently that was looking at carbon pricing, and made many interesting observations about the forthcoming Labor scheme.

One point about Tony Abbott's direct action plan which I had not heard raised before was this:

Birmingham claimed that because those direct actions were to be monitored on the basis of effectiveness and cost that the Liberal approach was market-related but missed totally the core point about the informational efficiency of prices in a setting where you want to change the behaviour of millions of agents. Certainly an army of bureaucrats will be needed to implement the Liberal policy which ironically seeks to make cuts in the climate-related bureaucracy.

Harry Clarke is satisfied generally with the the Labor scheme is " a remarkably successful first attempt by government to come to grips with the issue of climate change." He acknowledges it is not perfect, but in such a complicated and difficult area, I think he would say that that is hardly a surprise.

Harry used to visit and argue with the relentless and (frequently) ill-informed commentary at Catallaxy on climate change and carbon pricing. He appears to have given up out of frustration, and who can blame him.

I am pleased to see that the government is planning on getting its carbon scheme legislation introduced into Parliament as early as next week. The army of ill informed people who have been sucked in by the completely ill informed and/or dishonest right wing media figures such as Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones, Michael Smith and Jonova are going to tire of their campaign when the legislation goes through, and the Gillard will at least be able to point to one difficult issue in a decisive way, at last.

Very reasonable

RealClimate: Resignations, retractions and the process of science

Gavin Schmidt's commentary on the recent controversy over a Roy Spencer paper explains the situation very reasonably.

Who's writing them?

NASA Hopes Hard Sci-Fi Will Inspire Future Space Force

Roman might approve of a forthcoming line of science fiction books from NASA and Tor-Forge books. (Disclosure: Tor-Forge and Scientific American have the same corporate parent.)

The partnership aims to create scientifically accurate novels and to get the word out about NASA missions present and future. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center​ is hosting a workshop in November where authors can learn about NASA missions and the science behind them.

Revkin talks extremes

Extreme Weather in a Warming World - NYTimes.com

Andrew Revkin is pretty cautious on the attribution question of extreme weather events and global warming, and this post on the topic is worth reading.

More artificial reproductive stupidity

One Sperm Donor, 150 Sons and Daughters - NYTimes.com

Yes, one sperm donor in the States had been the father of 150 kids, and apparently there are many cases of 50 or so from the same donor. As the article notes:

Critics say that fertility clinics and sperm banks are earning huge profits by allowing too many children to be conceived with sperm from popular donors, and that families should be given more information on the health of donors and the children conceived with their sperm. They are also calling for legal limits on the number of children conceived using the same donor’s sperm and a re-examination of the anonymity that cloaks many donors.

“We have more rules that go into place when you buy a used car than when you buy sperm,” said Debora L. Spar, president of Barnard College and author of “The Baby Business: How Money, Science and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception.” “It’s very clear that the dealer can’t sell you a lemon, and there’s information about the history of the car. There are no such rules in the fertility industry right now.”

Although other countries, including Britain, France and Sweden, limit how many children a sperm donor can father, there is no such limit in the United States.

America: land of the free, and home of the "is that my half brother I'm kissing?"

Sleep your way to evolutionary success

Researchers seem to have a lot of interest in the sex lives of early humans.  Hot on the heals of the story last week that sleeping with Neanderthals had been good for our immune system, there's another story today of early homo sapiens sleeping with other homo-something-or-others which are no longer around:

Hammer and his colleagues argue that roughly 2% of the genetic material found in these modern African populations was inserted into the human genome some 35,000 years ago. They say these sequences must have come from a now-extinct member of the Homo genus that broke away from the modern human lineage around 700,000 years ago.

Hammer says this disproves the conventional view that we are descended from a single population that arose in Africa and replaced all other Homo species without interbreeding. "We need to modify the standard model of human origins," he says.

 Well, I suppose there was no TV in those days, and staring at the cave wall paintings was entertaining for only so long.

The right thing to do….

So that's where it goes

Extreme Flooding In 2010-2011 Lowers Global Sea Level

I find this surprising: it appears that the down bumps on the road to rising sea levels can be accounted for (at least in the last year) by the large scale flood which have happened around the world.

All the water will get back to the ocean, eventually.

It still seems to be that more frequent, larger scale, flooding, might well be the worst, early effect of global warming that AGW proponents did not really spend enough time warning people about.

Later...

Yes, Father's Day was nice, thanks.

I've found the app called Comics for the iPad, which will let me prepare my talentless "comics" easier than before.  This pleases me.

As with all people interested in politics, I am very curious as to what Newspoll will come up with for Labor tomorrow.

I am going to spend today meditating in preparation. 

Update:   could've been worse.  Primary dropping to 25% or below would have been psychologically very  bad, but Gillard can point to no drop in primary of 27%.  But what would have caused a 2% drop in Green vote?  

Odd film alert

A Dangerous Method: 'And out of the spanking comes psychoanalysis' - video | Film | guardian.co.uk

My more regulars readers will recall that I find Jung pretty interesting, and what happened between him and Freud is just about the most fascinating aspect of his life.

Now, it seems that a movie on the topic has finally been made, with David Cronenberg (or all people) the director. I see that it is based on a play, but I hadn't heard of it before.

The link above is a video report on the film's reception at the Venice Film Festival. It sounds like an interesting movie, but perhaps not one to see when tired.

Born into the job

Sex hormones impact career choices

This interesting study looked at job preferences of females with a congenital condition (CAH) that sees them exposed to abnormal levels of male sex hormone while in the womb:

The researchers report in the current issue of Hormones and Behavior that females with CAH were significantly more interested than females without CAH in careers related to things compared to careers related to people. The researchers also found that career interests directly corresponded to the amount of androgen exposure the females with CAH experienced -- those exposed to the most androgen in the uterus showed the most interest in things versus people.

"We took advantage of a natural experiment," said Berenbaum. "We're suggesting that these interests are pretty early developing."

Females without CAH had less interest than males in occupations related to things, such as engineer or surgeon, and more interest in careers focused on interactingwith people, such as social worker or teacher. There was no significant difference reported between males with CAH and males without the condition.

Political punditry

Amongst all the cries of "this is the end of Julia Gillard" and general despair and gnashing of teeth that the "Malaysia solution" was knocked over by the High Court, I would make the following observations:

a.   One of the best comments I saw came from Mumbles blog at The Australian:

....such is the low esteem in which the Gillard government is held it can’t even win a public opinion stoush against a bunch of do-gooding lawyers.

A visitor to this country today would be baffled. This is the most important issue facing Australia?

Only in Australia does the latest development in asylum seeker policy scream across the headlines and lead the evening news. It’s an issue that most of the technocratic class would agree is second order, but it’s a political hot potato because voters feel strongly about it.
Which is well and good, but it’s not as if many Australians could care less about the Malaysia, Pacific or Timbuktu solutions. What they do reckon is that John Howard was tough on border protection and stopped the boats and the Rudd and Gillard governments softened and made a mess of it.

 It was my feeling at the time Howard lost government that the public did have a feeling that it was appropriate to soften the approach to asylum seekers - certainly, Rudd promoted himself as dealing with it more "humanely".   Just goes to show what a fickle bunch Australians are on this topic.

The only right wing commentator in the land who has any sympathy to the Gillard government on the issue is Gerard Henderson.  He seems to always consider it a virtually intractable problem politically, and he's right.

The issues are complicated.  A softening of the approach has the unintended consequence of more drownings at sea.   Some idiot commentators in the blogosphere make this out to be a matter of moral responsibility of the Australian government, which is clearly absurd;  but people can still reasonably have concerns about unintended consequences.  

So, the solution?  I don't know.  Putting them in the Howard era detention centres in the middle of nowhere seems unpalatable in the extreme; but is it worth causing that human suffering if it saves a couple of hundred drownings a year?  (And let's face it, this High Court decision is going to lead to the unintended consequence of lot of boats leaving soon.)  Frankly, the Malaysian solution looked better (see next paragraph).

As for Nauru - maybe it is the best option.   But here's the thing - given the legal uncertainty, the only way I think Labor should agree to it would be if Abbott promised openly that he would not seek to make political points if either the High Court struck it down too, or if it fails to stem new boat arrivals.   There is reason to suspect that, given this judicial climate, re-opening Nauru would not stop the boats cold in any event.

b.   I actually didn't pay too much attention to the detail of how the Malaysian solution was going to work, but I had heard previously on Radio National a regional spokesman for UNHRC talking about how the deal was actually pretty useful for them, in that they thought that a successful arrangement over these people was helping set a better benchmark for the treatment of all refugees in the region.   And you know what - he was on RN Breakfast this morning pretty much making the same point.  They were not a party to the deal, but had been heavily involved in negotiations anyway.   This aspect of the deal seemed to get very little attention.   You can listen to the interview here; I think it starts after the sports report.

Or if you don't want to listen, I see now that the UNHRC website has a statement up that summarises their position:

UNHCR hopes that the Arrangement will in time deliver protection dividends in both countries and the broader region.  It also welcomes the fact that an additional 4000 refugees from Malaysia will obtain a durable solution through resettlement to Australia. The potential to work towards safe and humane options for people other than to use dangerous sea journeys are also positive features of this Arrangement. In addition, the Malaysian Government is in discussions with UNHCR on the registration of refugees and asylum-seekers under the planned Government programme announced in June on the registration of all migrant workers.

The Arrangement and its implementing guidelines contain important protection safeguards, including respect for the principle of non-refoulement; the right to asylum; the principle of family unity and best interests of the child; humane reception conditions including protection against arbitrary detention; lawful status to remain in Malaysia until a durable solution is found; and the ability to receive education, access to health care, and a right to employment.

The critical test of this Arrangement will now be in its implementation both in Australia and Malaysia, particularly the protection and vulnerability assessment procedures under which asylum-seekers will be assessed in Australia prior to any transfer taking place.

UNHCR will continue to monitor and review progress, remaining engaged with the parties to ensure the protection safeguards are implemented in practice as the two governments bring this Arrangement into effect.

 This is hardly the statement of a body that is feeling this was a terrible approach to the issue.



c.  For all this muttering about Gillard now being under threat of being replaced and maybe even Kevin Rudd returning, people are forgetting the key reason I reckon Rudd  was replaced:  people couldn't stand working for him or his office.    There was plenty of evidence around that Rudd had been a very unpopular boss right from the time he had a job in the Queensland government; and that he staffed his PM office with young turks who took every opportunity to throw their weight around and keep people from even getting to talk to Rudd until Rudd deemed he had a minute to spare.   I find it impossible to believe that enough Labor would think that there was sufficient sincerity in a Rudd mea culpa, and promises of "no, I really won't run my office like that again".  

There has also been no comparable complaint about how Parliamentarians have found working with Julia Gillard. 

I think she has to tough it out.  If I were her, I would be hiring the best speech writer she knows, and make an address to the nation within the next fortnight.   She is needs to counter the continual claim that there is complete dysfunction in the government at the moment; sell the mining tax as a reasonable step, re-emphasise that the carbon price is not going to kill the economy, and remind people about how difficult the asylum seeker problem is.

And Bee, for one, welcomes our new AI overlords

Backreaction: Will AI cause the extinction of humans?

Physicist Bee muses a bit about whether we should be scared of AI more intelligent than us. This last point is of note:

Thing is, I don’t really understand why I should be bothered about the extinction of humans if there’s some more intelligent species taking over. Clearly, I don’t want anybody to suffer in the transition and I do hope the AI will preserve elements of human culture. But that I believe is what an intelligent species would do anyway.

Gee. I thought a human/robot war was worth fighting. Bee will have to be rounded up, as she sounds like she may belong to the robot underground.

Rust in space

What would happen to the International Space Station if the astronauts were to leave? - Slate Magazine

According to this article, if NASA has to abandon the ISS, it should still last a few years and be capable of re-use.

One point they make about it I had not heard before:

Assuming the station didn't come careening out of orbit, its interior would stay in pretty good shape for quite some time. Rust is occasionally a problem up there—corroded wiring briefly disabled the orientation system in 2007—but that's only a risk when there is moisture emanating from the humans and animals onboard. NASA could easily dehumidify the station before withdrawing, preventing significant rust.

Actually, now that I think of it, does that make sense? Electrical wiring doesn't normally have much (or any?) iron in it, does it?

Will Google that later...

Productivity talk

There's been a lot of talk of a productivity crisis in Australia lately.  We aren't getting more productive any more, so it seems.

This is not a topic I know anything much about, but I thought the discussion of it by a some prominent Australian economists on Radio National this morning was quite interesting.   (John Quiggin and Saul Eslake feature.)

Can someone give the Prime Minister a hug?

Well, the newspapers are full of condemnation of the Gillard government for having tried a novel approach to the refugee issue and getting it knocked down by the High Court yesterday. Even columnists who the Right (unfairly, for the most part) normally consider to be too sympathetic to Labor are putting the boot in.

This morning on Sunrise, the normally Labor friendly David Koch has got ex Labor senator Graham Richardson on to help condemn the Gillard leadership. Richardson's new media career annoys me, because it trades on whatever Labor connections he still has and lets him continue his previous "career" of attacking his perceived enemies and boosting his political friends. Just as I think it is unseemly for a journalist with close connections to politicians to run for office (like Maxine McKew), I don't care for ex-politicians who want to be on TV every night still trying to play the game from afar.

(A good post by Ken Parish about Richardson's evident enthusiasm to see Gillard replaced as leader is here.)

It's true, as Annabel Crabb writes, the whole problem for Labor has been that it has been trying to find a way to differentiate itself from the Coalition approach, but has always given the impression it was coming up with ideas in a completely haphazard way.

Still, I can't help but feel sorry for a Labor PM (well, any PM other than Rudd) who is stuck on the horns of this dilemma.

One of the more radical suggestions gets a mention in The Age this morning - Labor could just withdraw from the Refugee Convention. It doesn't necessarily mean we don't take the same number of refugees, it would just be that we can deal with those who arrive in a way free of many of the current legal restrictions. But we could still pretty much follow the same assessment process that we use now.

As the article notes, this is likely to appeal to a large part of the population, but it would be anathema to a significant chunk of the Left.

I'm not sure where I stand on the question. To do it would be a triumph for Labor being able to show it is pragmatic, and if they continue taking higher numbers of refugees than before, that it has no great practical effect apart from freeing up the hands of government as to the way in which they can deal with a difficult problem.

The debate could still swirl as to where processing takes place, and be changed from off shore to on shore depending as circumstances change and the political mood at the time.

I guess there might be some downside that I am missing here, but my impression is that it might be worthwhile. But it almost certainly has no chance of happening. Labor is too attached to symbolism.

UPDATE:  gee, even Ken Parish thinks this seals Julia Gillard's fate, and she may as well go down with dignity by allowing on shore processing.

What he fails to address is the humanitarian aspect of not wanting to see hundreds of refugees drown every year on the dangerous trip from Indonesia.  I mean, it is this aspect that really makes the issue morally complicated. 

Big progress

Japan's life expectancy 'down to equality and public health measures' The Guardian

I didn't realise that the Japanese advance in life expectancy had happened over such a short space of time. Maybe I am forgetting what the comparative figures are for the West, but this still seems remarkable:

A baby girl born in Japan today can expect to live to 86 and a boy to nearly 80. But it has not always been so.

According to a paper in a Lancet series on healthcare in Japan, this is a rise of 30 years from the expected lifespan in 1947. While Japanese diet has contributed, it is far from the only factor.

The remarkable improvement in Japanese health began with the rapid economic growth of the late 1950s and 1960s. The government invested heavily in public health, introducing universal health insurance in 1961, free treatment for tuberculosis and cutting childhood deaths through vaccination and treatment of intestinal and respiratory infections.

Following the control of infectious diseases, Japan tackled its high death rate from stroke with salt reduction campaigns and the use of drugs to control blood pressure.

The cultural things that the article notes as significant to good Japanese health are attention to hygiene, and a high degree of health consciousness that means regular check ups. The downside, though, is pretty big (especially for a country that is forgetting to have babies):

The downside of Japan's success in keeping its people healthy is that the population is unbalanced and becoming more so. At the moment, 23% of the population is over 65 but by 2050, that will rise to 40% in a population shrinking from 127 million to 95 million. Other problems include drinking and smoking among overworking business people and a high suicide rate partly attributable to rising unemployment. Unless these issues are tackled, the paper suggests, Japan could lose its position at the top of the longevity table.