Shopping underground

Salon, of all websites, has an article about renewed interest in the recreational and commercial use of underground spaces in the US.  I like this paragraph:

Historically, developers have spent a lot of time trying to make underground spaces feel like they’re not underground. But the weirdness of an underground park is exactly why we like it. It’s intriguing and strange and a little bit spooky. “The underground can be claustrophobic, but it can also be this cozy, Fantastic Mr. Fox layer of reality,” says Barasch. So, rather than turn underground spaces into sterile retail or prefab food courts, ablaze with primary colors and piped-in pop music, developers could instead embrace the natural state of these spaces — their “undergroundness” — when designing for them. This doesn’t mean making them cheerless, it simply means respecting their subterranean identity, much like the High Line kept in place some of the former railroad’s industrial decay.

Movies to see

After a year of not too much to get excited about, it's surprising to see that there are at least 3 movies of interest which are about to be released in Australia and are getting strong reviews:

1.  early reviews of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol are very good, and as I anticipated, Brad Bird has apparently made an excellent live action director.  A couple of reviewers are actually calling this the most enjoyable MI movie,  so I am keen to see it.

The NYT has an interesting article about Mr Bird in which it's noted that Tom Cruise contacted him after The Incredibles and asked, if ever he wanted to do live action, to direct him.  There you go - Tom has good intuition about some things, at least. 

2.  Tintin starts on Boxing Day, and it's likely my family will be there to see it at the earliest opportunity.  The reviews remain mostly strong, and I see it has already made a couple of hundred million dollars in Europe.  (It seems particularly popular in France - I am a little surprised at the weakness in the English box office.  Maybe some people did pay attention to the relentless and bizarre Guardian obsession against the film?

3.  Spielberg's War Horse also gets released on Boxing Day, and although it seems to me to be getting very little in the way of pre-publicity,  some preview audiences have been pretty impressed.  I am pretty sure I will have to overcome my horse aversion as see it.

Saturday night cooking report

Why did it take me so many years to get around to cooking a version of paella?  I've like the idea of this dish for a long time.  I think I have rarely eaten it, but I have always like watching how it's made on cooking shows.

Finally, I was prompted by a Slate article headline I saw this week: 

Paella Is a Party! Stop wasting your time with risotto.

So, last night I finally got around to making a relatively straight forward chicken and prawn paella, and it came out pretty good. The recipe was based on one from from taste.com.au (which had many, many versions to try), but I did vary it a bit:

Ingredients (serves 6)

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 6 chicken thigh fillets, halved
• 12 medium green king prawns, peeled leaving tails intact, deveined
• 2 chorizo sausages, coarsely chopped
• 1 brown onion, coarsely chopped
• 1 red capsicum, seeded, coarsely chopped
• 2 cups arborio rice
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 tsp ground smoked paprika
• 1/2 tsp saffron threads
• 400g can diced tomatoes
• 1 litre chicken stock
• 1 cup water
• Fresh continental parsley leaves, to serve

The chicken is cooked in the olive oil first (and set aside), then the prawns (also set aside) and finally the chorizo.   Leave the chorizo in and add the onion and capsicum and cook til softened.  (Actually, I think next time I would just add the choriso, onion and capsicum at the same time.)  Add the rice, garlic, paprika and saffron (personally, I don't think the absence of saffron is going to be noticeable) and stir for a minute, then add the tomato and stock.  Leave to cook under low heat for 15 minutes (no stirring is important) Add the chicken gently and let cook for another 10 minutes.  

Now, the recipe then calls for the cup of water, add the prawns on top, cover and cook for 5 minutes.  This reheats the prawns, but I think you would always have to leave the cover off again to let all the additional water be aborbed/steam off.

I changed the water to half a cup of white wine and water, but even then, I think next time I would try a bit less liquid at this stage. 

This receipe is also devoid of green (well, save for the parsley, which I didn't have.)  So we added a cup of frozen peas that had been unfrozen in boiling water, and stirred it in at the last minute.

Some recipes note that it is important to let paella rest for 5 or 10 minutes after cooking, and I think there is  something to that.

I'm not sure that arborio rice is really the best for this too; next time I would be inclined just to try any old medium grain rice; but don't get me wrong, it tasted pretty good even with arborio.

Anyway, even the kids found it acceptable, and my wife liked it too, although we both agreed a little bit of chilli flake would be nice too if we were cooking it just for ourselves.  In any event, it was another happy Saturday night when a new recipe is successful.

The kind rat

Helping your fellow rat: Rodents show empathy-driven behavior

Rats will try to free trapped fellow rats, it seems. How nice of them.

Higgs interrupts my busyness

Is the Higgs boson real? | Ian Sample | Science | guardian.co.uk

The Guardian reports on rumours of a significant Higgs announcement, and helpfully provides some physicists' commentary.

Climate change not in retreat

Three-quarters of climate change is man-made : Nature News & Comment

Interesting new study with some interesting conclusions, using a new method:

Knutti and Huber found that greenhouse gases contributed 0.6–1.1 °C to the warming observed since the mid-twentieth century, with the most statistically likely value being a contribution of about 0.85 °C. Around half of that contribution from greenhouse gases — 0.45 °C — was offset by the cooling effects of aerosols. These directly influence Earth's climate by scattering light; they also have indirect climate effects through their interactions with clouds.
The authors calculated a net warming value of around 0.5 °C since the 1950s, which is very close to the actual temperature rise of 0.55 °C observed over that period. Changes in solar radiation — a hypothesis for global warming proffered by many climate sceptics — contributed no more than around 0.07 °C to the recent warming, the study finds.
To test whether recent warming might just be down to a random swing in Earth’s unstable climate — another theory favoured by sceptics — Knutti and Huber conducted a series of control runs of different climate models without including the effects of the energy-budget parameters. But even if climate variability were three times greater than that estimated by state-of-the-art models, it is extremely unlikely to have produced a warming trend as pronounced as that observed in the real world, they found.

The Kevin problem

Julia Gillard rallies as Tony Abbott's rating falls, while Kevin Rudd blasts Labor conference | News.com.au

Is it just me, or does News Ltd seem especially keen to talk up "Kevin Rudd is bound to challenge" stories i the last few weeks?

I would assume he was upset at not being mentioned by Gillard at her conference speech, but surely the point is that no commentator seems to think that Rudd has more than a handful of rusted on supporters within the Parliament. Maybe he is also smarting over not being recognized for priming Slipper to take over the speaker role: but then again, he denied he was directly involved in a plot.

Anyhow, I would have thought that most Australians at this time of year were not playing too close attention to the Labor conference, and for those that did, it seems to me that they probably got the impression of Gillard coming out of it pretty well.

Sure, the party now supports gay marriage, but no expects that it will pass on a conscience vote. There - those that want it can now blame the Coalition for not doing a similar thing, as I wouldn't mind betting that the few Labor people who would not vote for it might be matched by the few Coalition that would cross the floor. A conscience vote on this seems to me the right thing to do on a matter that a large section of the community does think relates to a very ancient tradition and matter relating to morality.

Uranium to India was a clear Gillard win, and the endorsement of a disability insurance scheme is a real Labor style reform that might go over with the electorate as very worthwhile.

But what to do about Kevin if he maintains his unhappiness in the new year? I mean, until the pokies reform is bedded down (probably by a compromise of some sort), I can't see Gillard's approval, or Labor's primary vote, climbing too high just yet. So Kevin will still have something to agitate over.

Yet with a hung parliament, he can't afford to resign and have a by-election, even if a plum UN job was beckoning him.

He is, basically, the unsolvable problem, at least for the next 6 to 12 months.

Soon another "9" will be dropped

On 29 November, the right wing(nutty) site World Net Daily ran a special deal on Herman Cain's book, modestly called "This is Herman Cain - My Journey to the White House", for $9.99 "while supplies last":

"This book is sure to be a collector's item – given the circumstances of his presidential campaign," says Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WND. "Just look at what presidential memorabilia of the past is selling for these days."

I dare say this collectors item will be available within a week for .99c.

Another unhappy artist

Kurt Vonnegut's dark, sad, cruel side is laid bare | Books | The Observer

I've never read Vonnegut, although I suspect he might be OK. According to the review of a new biography, he didn't have a very happy life, even not counting his horrific war experiences.

The unlucky lights

Finland: in search of the northern lights | Travel | The Observer

A nice bit of travelogue in The Observer about how difficult it can be to spot the Northern Lights even if you allow yourself plenty of opportunity to do so.

Watch the toads

New study suggests how toads might predict earthquakes

We've all heard of strange animal behaviour shortly before an earthquake, but it appears toads have an idea of what's going on quite far in advance:

Grant was studying the toads that lived in a pond near L'Aquila, Italy, in 2009 in the days just before a devastating earthquake struck. In those few days just before it happened, she noted that the toads began leaving. Their numbers dwindled from just under a hundred, to zero, causing her to write about her observations in the Journal of Zoology. That caught the attention of Freund, who was doing work for NASA in studying what happens to rocks when put under extreme stress, as in say, when an earthquake is in the making. He contacted Grant, and the two of them began investigating ways that such rock pressure could impact the environment where the toads lived.

After some experiments in the lab, the two write that when rocks underground come under pressure as a result of geological processes, they let off charged particles. Such particles can very quickly rise to and above the surface of the Earth, impacting such things as pond water and the biological material in it. In the case of the pond in Italy, it seems the toads may have been reacting to changes they felt in the water itself as ions interacting with it react to form minute amounts of hydrogen peroxide. Or it seems possible that ions interacting with organic material in the pond caused substances to be released that either were toxic or less ominously, simply irritating. Either way, it would explain their sudden exodus.

Of course, they are excluding the possibility that toads are psychic. Maybe they lick themselves and then can see the future...

Dire movie alert

Jack and Jill - Movie Reviews - Rotten Tomatoes

Adam Sandler's latest movie, which has just opened in Australia, has earned a spectacularly low 4% approval rating on Rottentomatoes.

Some review comments:

Picture "Tootsie" if everyone in the cast had a head injury....

Jack and Jill is mental destruction-a collision of half-baked comedy sketches, violent potty humor, shrouded racism, shotgun cameos and unapologetic product placement....

Unpleasant even by Sandler's usual standards, it's easily the star's worst film....

Movies like this should be stricken from film history and put in a closet never to be seen again. It's just bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

The worst Adam Sandler film ever? That indeed sounds like a serious warning.

Barry is not impressed

Rustlings from Republican Environmentalists | Planet3.0

Barry Bickmore, who holds the very lonely position of being a Republican scientist who believes in AGW, is very unhappy about the Republican candidates.

He gets a bit personal - although your average "skeptic" can hardly fault him for that.

Bickmore's Youtube lecture "How to avoid the truth about climate change" is also on the post, and many have said it is very good, but I haven't got around to watching it yet.

This week's bad climate news

Abrupt permafrost thaw increases climate threat

Permafrost thaw will release approximately the same amount of carbon as deforestation, say the authors, but the effect on climate will be 2.5 times bigger because emissions include methane, which has a greater effect on warming than carbon dioxide.

Doesn't work the same way at Catallaxy...

Researches find poop-throwing by chimps is a sign of intelligence

Feeling sleepy

Banishing consciousness: the mystery of anaesthesia - health - 29 November 2011 - New Scientist

I'm not sure how long New Scientists keeps its free articles available for now, but this one, about recent research into trying to work out how anaesthetics work, is pretty interesting.

Back to Schmittner

RealClimate: Ice age constraints on climate sensitivity

Real Climate has a long and fairly technical look at the Schmittner paper, and also concludes that there is reason to think its estimate of climate sensitivity, although within the ballpark of current "best estimate" anyway, may be on the low side.

But the bit I wanted to note here was about the poor reporting of the paper, which I think occurred just about everywhere. Even The Economist called its report "Good News at Last?", which is kind of a meaningless statement unless you are prepared to address the question "compared to what?"

Anyway, as Real Climate points out, part of the problem was really with the press release itself, and some fairly careless comments by some of the authors, who surely have to be more cautious about "sceptics" taking quotes out of context:

Unfortunately, the media coverage has not been very good. Partly, this is related to some ambiguous statements by the authors, and partly because media discussions of climate sensitivity have a history of being poorly done. The dominant frame was set by the press release which made a point of suggesting that this result made “extreme predictions” unlikely. This is fair enough, but had already been clear from the previous work discussed above. This was transformed into “Climate sensitivity was ‘overestimated’” by the BBC (not really a valid statement about the state of the science), compounded by the quote that Andreas Schmittner gave that “this implies that the effect of CO2 on climate is less than previously thought”. Who had previously thought what was left to the readers’ imagination. Indeed, the latter quote also prompted the predictably loony IBD editorial board to declare that this result proves that climate science is a fraud (though this is not Schmittner’s fault – they conclude the same thing every other Tuesday).

The Schmittner et al. analysis marks the insensitive end of the spectrum of climate sensitivity estimates based on LGM data, in large measure because it used a data set and a weighting that may well be biased toward insufficient cooling. Unfortunately, in reporting new scientific studies a common fallacy is to implicitly assume a new study is automatically “better” than previous work and supersedes this. In this case one can’t blame the media, since the authors’ press release cites Schmittner saying that “the effect of CO2 on climate is less than previously thought”. It would have been more appropriate to say something like “our estimate of the effect is less than many previous estimates”.

Well, it's hard to see how that last suggestion would have made that much difference, but still, it seems to me the authors could have been more careful.

The Junior Justice League

Babies embrace punishment earlier than previously thought

"We find that, by eight months, babies have developed nuanced views of reciprocity and can conduct these complex social evaluations much earlier than previously thought," says lead author Prof. Kiley Hamlin, UBC Dept of Psychology.

"This study helps to answer questions that have puzzled evolutionary psychologists for decades," says Hamlin. "Namely, how have we survived as intensely social creatures if our sociability makes us vulnerable to being cheated and exploited? These findings suggest that, from as early as eight months, we are watching for people who might put us in danger and prefer to see antisocial behavior regulated."

For the study, researchers presented six scenarios to 100 babies using animal hand puppets. After watching puppets act negatively or positively towards other characters, the babies were shown puppets either giving or taking toys from these "good" or "bad" puppets. When prompted to choose their favorite characters, babies preferred puppets that punished the bad characters from the original scene compared to those that treated them nicely.

The researchers also examined how older infants would themselves treat good and bad puppets. They tested 64 babies aged 21 months, who were asked to give a treat to, or take a treat away from one of two puppets – one who had previously helped another puppet, and another who had harmed the other puppet. These older babies physically took treats away from the "bad" puppets, and gave treats to the "good" ones.

More physics

Four reasons why the quantum vacuum may explain dark matter

I'm pretty sure I had a post when the idea covered in this article first came up, but it's worth revisiting.