More smart rat news...

Rats match humans in decision-making that involves combining different sensory cues: study

Here at the Dominion of Opinion, we* like to note news showing about the intelligence of rats:

A Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) study that compared the ability of humans and rodents to make perceptual decisions based on combining different modes of sensory stimuli—visual and auditory cues, for instance—has found that just like humans, rodents also combine multisensory information and exploit it in a "statistically optimal" way -- or the most efficient and unbiased way possible.

Apparently, this is significant for further studies of autism, in which people combine sensory information in a not normal sort of way.  Unfortunately for rats, this sounds rather like their brains going under the microscope more often than before.   If they were really smart, they would start to act dumb during some of these tests.

* me and my crack team of contributors includes myself and I

Nuclear pessimism

Nuclear power: The dream that failed | The Economist

In any country independent regulation is harder when the industry being regulated exists largely by government fiat. Yet, as our special report this week explains, without governments private companies would simply not choose to build nuclear-power plants. This is in part because of the risks they face from local opposition and changes in government policy (seeing Germany’s nuclear-power stations, which the government had until then seen as safe, shut down after Fukushima sent a chilling message to the industry). But it is mostly because reactors are very expensive indeed. Lower capital costs once claimed for modern post-Chernobyl designs have not materialised. The few new reactors being built in Europe are far over their already big budgets. And in America, home to the world’s largest nuclear fleet, shale gas has slashed the costs of one of the alternatives; new nuclear plants are likely only in still-regulated electricity markets such as those of the south-east.

They do go on to mention that small, modular nuclear might make a difference, but there is not a market for it yet.

Right wing ghosts, and more

I don't read Ace of Spades, although a lot of right wingnut types seem to.

But I do check in on Michael Prescott, and he noted this entry at Spades in February about how the blogger is convinced the house he has just left was haunted by an obnoxious ghost.

Interesting.

This also reminds me, I was talking to a friend on the weekend about the conflict between Freud and Jung, and how the former saw his task as one involving a crucial cultural fight against "the black tide of mud" - occultism. Jung couldn't accept this: he was always interested in paranormal stuff. One of his early studies was to do with a spiritualist medium. He went on to be too interested in too many esoteric things, though, for my taste, and his thinking about it always seemed to be too woolly. Still, I have much more sympathy for his approach than that of Freud.

What I forgot to mention in my Saturday night conversation was that the current version of the purely scientific materialist view of the universe that most people hold is actually pretty fragile when you think about it. I mean, if you have just one personally convincing paranormal experience, this "black swan" of an event should really shake up your idea that only white swans exist.

Of course, people could always dismiss the event as a trick of the mind, and some are no doubt easily dealt with that way. (Sounds in the night are easily mis-interpretted, as are fleeing glimpses of movement and light.) But living in a house that seems persistently haunted, particularly with things involving physical movement, like lights being turned on when it was clearly impossible for a person to have done it (which Ace of Spades seems to be saying happened) - wouldn't that be a "black swan" for most diehard materialists?

I've never had a black swan experience myself, and it's kind of a sad thing that a person like me who would love to have one seems to repulse any hint of the paranormal. But who knows, it could happen yet.

Aldi thoughts

There's a recurring thought I have most times I go into my local Aldi - "if only they had a modest range of clothes and foodwear, I might never need to shop anywhere else." I mean, it has all the basics, and the triumph of the good value Crystal Bay prawns bought for Christmas lunch has sealed my affection for the place for some time.

Anyway, I don't think I have ever posted about my run-down of what is good (and not so good) about Aldi supermarkets, so here goes:

The Good:

* toothbrushes. Dentex, I think the brand is, made in Germany, and excellent and long lasting quality.

* European biscuits, particularly the ones with dark chocolate on one side. I forget the name. Nearly all biscuits sold at Aldi are nice, anyway.

* Bathroom mould killer: a fair bit cheaper than Coles brand.

* canned smoked mussels: I like smoked mussels from a can, but for a long time, even John West ones came from somewhere in China (I think.) This has put me off eating them for years. But today I see they see "Danish" smoked mussels canned in Germany. This sounds a safer bet.

* Cheese. Your basic blocks of tasty cheese from Australia are pretty cheap.

The Bad:

* razors. An awful brand from somewhere in Asia if I recall correctly. But that was some years ago. Maybe the supplier has changed.

* bathroom cleaner: I'm pretty sure it was an Aldi brand that made literally breathtaking mist that required holding your breath and escaping from the shower ASAP. Avoid.

Not much else to complain about. Well, apart from the awful cheap turntable I bought on a whim.

One other thought I had today while in the shop: I noticed cans of champignon mushrooms for sale. People still buy these? What on earth for. I mean, go back 40 years, and there probably weren't even all that many mushrooms for sale in the average supermarket, and a can of champignons had some element of foreign flare about them for the pizza you made at home. But now? They are the most useless canned vegetable on the market, no doubt about it.

In fact, seeing this is already a boring post, I may as well compound that to give a run down of the worthiness of canned vegetables:

In descending order of worthiness:

Italian tomatoes: Essential to have 5 cans in the house at all times.

Chick peas: Another essential. Good for the now popular Moroccan
recipes, as well as making hummus at home.

Assorted beans: Quick and easy to use; saves lots of energy of cooking them
yourself

Water chestnuts: Lovely texture for asian dishes. Nice.

Corn kernels: They still resemble the taste of corn. Useful to have around.

Baby corn: Not much taste, but interesting texture.

Beetroot: Useful for one thing only - a slice on your hamburger.

Asparagus: Sometimes acceptable if only fresh asparagus is from
Peru and you feel guilty about the CO2 expended in
shipping it here.

Peas: Starting to scrap the bottom of taste and utility.
Barely ressembles the taste of the vegetable

Mixed carrot and peas : Carrots are forever available and always
cheap. Why would you bother?

Champignons: Rubbery bits of no flavour or utility whatsoever.

I'm sure you all feel much better informed for having read this...

CGI'd to death

‘Ishtar’ Lands on Mars - NYTimes.com

The title for this story seems a bit harsh - John Carter got a 50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which isn't all that bad - but it seems the movie is doomed to financial failure, and the background of its problems in production makes for interesting reading. Premiere magazine, in the heady days of 1980's blockbusters following Spielberg's and Lucas' rise to power, used to do articles like this. I think the magazine is now defunct.

But back to John Carter: I know for one that as soon as I saw the trailers, the CGI reminded me of those in (I think) Star Wars 2. (It is a sign of the lack of permanent impact of the Star Wars prequels that I just had to check on line to remember it's actual title - Attack of the Clones.)

As I have noted many times, I also did not care a bit for the Lord of the Rings movies, and apart from my cynicism about the value of the story, I just couldn't find myself being impressed by the huge battle vistas which were all clearly made inside a computer.

Of course, I suppose people could cite Avatar in response. I haven't even bothered watching that all the way through no DVD.

Still, I suspect my theory of a public decline in interest in too much CGI, especially in protracted battle movies, might have something going for it.

Remembering Japan

ABC TV remembered the anniversary of the Japanese earthquake by showing Children of the Tsunami. You can watch it online at the moment.

I didn't watch all of it, but the parts I saw were terribly sad, as I expected.

I looked around on the net for other material on the anniversary. The Telegraph seemed to have a series of videos, and I watched two of them by witnesses to the tsunami. (Links are here and here.) Both made the interesting comment that watching it happen had a complete feeling of unreality; both indicating it was so like watching a disaster movie that it was confusing knowing whether what they were watching was real.

Sad and amazing stuff, and for those who pray, doing so for the people affected is well warranted.

Stinks and fixes

Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Great Stink of London

Skeptical Science branches out a bit with this post by comparing how the politics and practicalities of the sewerage pollution problems of London of old compare to the problems of CO2 pollution today.   

Basically right

Media, pollies play 'the game'. Public loses out - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

I have a lot of time for Barrie Cassidy and his analysis of politics and media. I think his take (and that of Gawenda, who he's basically quoting and expanding on) on the current situation with Australian journalism and politicians is very good, with two reservations. First, he praises Paul Kelly, whose political opinions strike me as being a case of wordy, meandering, blather trumping clear analysis. Insiders has been considerably improved by his not coming on and boring us all for 5 minutes every Sunday.

Secondly, he praises Laurie Oakes for being fearlessly independent. Yet it was via Oakes during the last election campaign that harmful leaks from the Rudd camp were fed. I commented at the time that Oakes seemingly felt no shame at being used as the mouthpiece for such dirty politics: in other words, he was a very big part of the "game" that Cassidy complains about.

Apart from those two issue, it's a good analysis. And he is correct to note that some Fairfax journalists have not exactly covered themselves in glory lately either; not just News Ltd journos.

Immoral or not

Morals: Our great moral decline | The Economist

An interesting Economist blog entry on the question of whether American morals really are in decline. 

The Australian campaigns

On Insiders on the weekend, Courier Mail journalist Denis Atkins (a relatively balanced and reasonable commentator) noted that the Gillard government is suffering from a poisonous relationship with The Australian newspaper.

He's not half wrong. It's been quite a while since we've seen the paper go so full on attack, and have such an obvious disproportionate number of articles against, a Labor government.

Looking at today's material on the web, for example:

* economist Judith Sloan attacks the carbon tax. What she fails to mention explicitly is that at Catallaxy blog, she is blithely dismissive of climate science predictions, commenting recently (for example) "they expect us to believe that?" She shows no sign of having read up on the topic in any depth at all: for all I know she may find co-blogger Rafe Champion's gullible swallowing of everything climate change denying blogger Jonova convincing. (I feel fairly certain he finds her convincing because of her photo on her blog.)

* Niki Savva - former Liberal staffer who primarily spends her time telling us how much trouble Gillard is in.

* David Kemp (Liberal identity) complaining about the Finkelstein enquiry about media regulation.

* Peter van Onselsen: with Liberal ties, although he does cop a lot of criticism from the Right for being too "middle of the road".

And the editorial is an attack on Wayne Swan, and the Finkelstein inquiry.

This is all, of course, completely fair and balanced.

Meanwhile, in the struggling Fairfax press, you have Tim Colebatch doing economic commentary in his usual clear, calm and dispassionate way.

Fairfax can't be allowed to die.

The mystery of the universe and Wagga Wagga

The role of quantum expansion in cosmic evolution:

Here's an arXiv paper which seems to suggest that relatively 'normal' quantum effects are behind the expansion of the universe.

Of course, I don't really understand the detail, and why something like this would have been overlooked before, but it is of interest.

As is the fact that the paper is from someone at Charles Sturt University at Wagga Wagga (currently about to go under water in a massive flood as it happens.)

Somehow, I was never expecting the mysteries of the universe to be solved from Wagga Wagga...

Things to note from the last week

The Gillard/Rudd fight: The right person won, of course, but there were many, many words wasted on this in the press. The best articles were those articulating again my early judgement that Rudd has two faces - one for the public, and one for the workplace - and that he is temperamentally ill suited to leadership. I like the article by his former speech writer in that regard, as well as yesterday's article by Peter Hartcher pointing out how much Rudd had unnecessarily insulted the union movement.

Judith Curry and snowy winters: Isn't it odd that Judith Curry is on the team who have written a paper supporting the idea that loss of Arctic ice is behind the recent snowy northern winters, yet she still hasn't raised it on her blog?

It wouldn't be because this idea - that cold and snowy winters in parts of the world are indirectly caused by AGW - is one that her fan base of climate skeptics have ridiculed as being "convenient" for "warmenists"? I see that Anthony Watts has posted on the paper and expressed his skepticism - all while avoiding in his commentary the participation of Curry.

He's then got a long rambling post by D'Aleo that tries to argue it must be something else - anything else - it just can't be this explanation. The comments thread following is very short. No one wants to go hard on dear Judith, it seems.

Nordhaus smites the 16: lots of people have noted the excellent article by economist William Nordhaus in response to the recent climate change skeptics letter to the Wall Street Journal. He is particularly perturbed by their wrong-headed reading of his work on when to take action, and his explanation is worth noting here:

My research shows that there are indeed substantial net benefits from acting now rather than waiting fifty years. A look at Table 5-1 in my study A Question of Balance (2008) shows that the cost of waiting fifty years to begin reducing CO2 emissions is $2.3 trillion in 2005 prices. If we bring that number to today’s economy and prices, the loss from waiting is $4.1 trillion. Wars have been started over smaller sums.¹⁰

My study is just one of many economic studies showing that economic efficiency would point to the need to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions right now, and not to wait for a half-century. Waiting is not only economically costly, but will also make the transition much more costly when it eventually takes place. Current economic studies also suggest that the most efficient policy is to raise the cost of CO2 emissions substantially, either through cap-and-trade or carbon taxes, to provide appropriate incentives for businesses and households to move to low-carbon activities.

One might argue that there are many uncertainties here, and we should wait until the uncertainties are resolved. Yes, there are many uncertainties. That does not imply that action should be delayed. Indeed, my experience in studying this subject for many years is that we have discovered more puzzles and greater uncertainties as researchers dig deeper into the field. There are continuing major questions about the future of the great ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica; the thawing of vast deposits of frozen methane; changes in the circulation patterns of the North Atlantic; the potential for runaway warming; and the impacts of ocean carbonization and acidification. Moreover, our economic models have great difficulties incorporating these major geophysical changes and their impacts in a reliable manner. Policies implemented today serve as a hedge against unsuspected future dangers that suddenly emerge to threaten our economies or environment. So, if anything, the uncertainties would point to a more rather than less forceful policy—and one starting sooner rather than later—to slow climate change.

More Australian floods an indication of climate change? Queensland has been spared a repeat of last year's catastrophically widespread floods, but the extent of the flooding in New South Wales and Victoria this year seems to be unusually extensive, just as was the area of Queensland under water in 2011. There is some talk of the floods breaking 80 year records, but I suspect that there may be numbers yet to be crunched before working out whether it is record breaking in sufficient area before its true historical nature is understood.

Going nuts in Israel. I liked this article on the Jerusalem Syndrome (whereby visitors sometimes start having religiously themed psychotic episodes.)

Respecting the Monkees. There was not a bad word to be said anywhere about Davy Jones upon his premature death: he appears to have been genuinely liked by everyone who met him. I think it is also fair to say that the critical rehabilitation of the group, which has been underway for many a year now, is truly complete. Everyone acknowledges that they had albums just full of great pop songs.

I do have one quibble, though. Daydream Believer is surely only half a song. I mean, it's just crying out for another verse for it to actually make sense. I see it was written by John Stewart of the Kingston Trio, and a few people at this site share my confusion as to what the song is about.

By the way, I am particularly fond of Mike Newsmith's post Monkees career, and will be more upset when he dies.

The Trouble with Warp Drives. Seems that a warp drive might fry the aliens you're going to visit. That's inconvenient. (I wonder if this has anything to do with gamma ray bursts which haven't been explained astronomically yet.)

Using GM crops designed to be Roundup resistant wouldn't have anything to do with this? Hmm? :

Overuse of the herbicide glyphosate (Roundup) has caused US crops to become infested with glyphosate-resistant weeds - and a world-leading researcher at The University of Western Australia is fighting to prevent similar outcomes here.

Winthrop Professor Stephen Powles, who has just returned from a three-week US tour, said a widening epidemic of glyphosate-resistant weeds was causing increasing difficulties for US cotton, soybean and corn growers.

The short article does not mention GM crops at all, but as many have been designed to be Roundup resistant, I expect it is likely part of the story.

Ocean acidification rate is very fast, geologically speaking.

In order to learn about the future, the researchers looked to the past, reviewing climate events over the past 300 million years that showed evidence of elevated atmospheric CO₂, global warming and ocean acidification....

"The geological record suggests that the current acidification is potentially unparalleled in at least the last 300 million years of Earth history, and raises the possibility that we are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change.

"Although similarities exist, nothing in the last 300 million years parallels rates of future projections in terms of the disrupting of ocean carbonate chemistry – a consequence of the unprecedented rapidity of CO₂ release currently taking place."

The Descent into Dumb

The Rush Limbaugh misogynistic (and double and tripled down) attack on a woman advocating for the Obama contraception mandate to apply to her Catholic university's health insurance was a disgrace that was cut from whole cloth, as the saying goes. (The woman said nothing at all about her own sex life; or even directly on the subject of her using contraception personally. Yet the fact that she thinks it should be available on her insurance cover just obviously makes her a slut.)

That he has had many, many defenders, even after his (likely advertising boycott inspired) half baked apology was made, is appalling.

But possibly the absolute worst thing is that many in the commentariate are following the Limbaugh lead in characterising it as being about the government paying for contraception to be provided.

Read any thread on the more rabid right wing blogs, and you'll see it come up very soon. You can even read it at Jerry Pournelle of all places!

This shows they don't even understand the issue - insurers covering contraception (as they already do in the half of the states that have such a mandate enacted already) does not mean the government is paying for it.

What hope is there for the Right in the US at the moment? Very little, as far as I can see.

Update: this article, noting that figures including George Will and David Frum are both warning that the Republicans have to get away from Limbaugh influence, was interesting.

Update 2: here's the blog that called out Ed Morrissey of Hot Air for claiming Fluke was making her sex life a national issue:

Yesterday, Ed Morrissey blatantly lied about Sandra Fluke, claiming the following: “However, let’s keep in mind that it was Fluke who made her sexual activity a matter of national political debate…”

This is a lie, and there is no other way to put it. Nowhere in her testimony did she mention her sex life or her sexual activities. She just didn’t. Read the transcript for yourself, and then tell me whether she is gay or straight, celibate, a virgin, in a current relationship, or even the most basic details of her sexual life and activities. You can’t, because she didn’t discuss that at all. Ed Morrissey is simply lying.

In Australia, the stupid and misogynistic participants of Catallaxy, of course, follow the Morrissey line, including thoroughly conservative Catholic CL who tried to make a joke about Fluke seeing more se(a)men that a battleship. Hilarious! No - a real disgrace from a man who's an embarrassment of an advertisement for his religion. As for the rest of those who share his right wing views at the site who fail to call him out - cowards.

Foreign Minister Carr's first day at the office...

For those who don't understand:

His great favourite is the second century Roman Emperor and Stoic Marcus Aurelius. I think you’d agree that stoicism is a great attribute for a premier, especially one in New South Wales.

Bob has said that the meditations of Marcus Aurelius are as good a guide to practical politics as he’s come across.

Amusing myself, cont.

Weekend calls from Kevin Rudd

Monday's outcome

With apologies to Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Is it on DVD yet?

Away...

Things to do for a week or two...

But I'll come back to moan if Kevin Rudd become PM again.

This time, I am a skeptic

Pass the Ketchup, Test-Tube Burger On the Menu Soon? | Climate Central

Research on growing meat in the lab is in the news again, with a "proof of concept" beef patty coming soon, apparently.

Look, there are some things in science and technology that deserve scepticism, and this is one of them. Growing sheets of muscle fibre does not necessarily mean it is easy to turn them into something resembling the texture and flavour of meat. This was explained on the Science Show last year.

Droning on

There was a really interesting report on Lateline tonight about the rapid expansion of the use of unmanned drones by the US. Lots of interesting bits of information from interviews with USAF staff, such as the the number of drone "crews" soon outnumbering all other pilots. The video (and presumably later transcript) available here.

And while you're visiting the ABC, have a look at this interesting article on the emergence of drone journalism, including some footage taken by camera drone last year. Neat. Flying buzzing cameras make the world feel very modern and science fiction-y. Until they appear at your bedroom window, I guess.

Ten Stupid Things

I have been writing this on and off for a week.

I spend a lot of time criticising the Right now, because it used to be the side displaying common sense and not letting ideology trump results. Then along came climate change denialism, the re-invention of voodoo economics in the States, and the rest is history. So, in fairness, let's start today's list -

On the Left hand

1. Chaotic Leader Wants Second Chance.

So, political leaders are supposed to always be completely open about leadership spills are they? I can't believe such a fuss is being made over the precise extent to which Julia Gillard was involved in the leadership challenge to Kevin Rudd. The sensible attitude to this is "politicians will always be economical with the truth about leadership challenges - and it doesn't matter." Those on the Left who think this is important want their head read.

It's kind of absurd, isn't it, that internal leadership talk should be out and about as Gillard makes an early-in-the-year win on the health insurance rebate: a matter of real significance to the budget bottom line and one that can readily be sold as a matter of Labor principle.

2. Academics for Chaotic Leadership. Chief amongst those needing phrenology are Leftist academics who think Rudd must be re-instated. John Quiggin and Robert Manne both seem to see intellectual and leadership qualities in Kevin Rudd that the politicians who have worked with him can't. In fact, Kevin Rudd and his supporters in Parliament cannot do anything other than continue to hurt the government, and in my view replacing Gillard with anyone at the moment will show a Labor Party that is completely consumed by internal personality politics, just as the Liberal Party was in the tedious 1980's fight between Andrew Peacock and John Howard.

3. Another project where chaotic leader ignored advice. So Kevin Rudd was warned he was spending money on clean coal in a wasteful way. I have been writing posts on the dubious idea for years now; you can search the blog if you want to.

4. Why not send a cheque and let them sort it out? I bought a TV digital set top box for $38 the other day: people are right to wonder how it can cost the government an average of $700 to get them installed for pensioners. For a government that wants to appear economically cautious, this looks silly. It's not much money in the big picture, but it will be taken as confirmation that Labor just can't handle money wisely.

5. Search for a Climate Change Star. Why did the government re-instate Tim Flannery as a climate commissioner? Look, I think he is unfairly (and dishonestly) quoted out of context as a matter of routine now by the Right wing commentariate, but this has become impossible to be undone. Those who trust him and those who don't are in firm camps and neither is ever likely to move: he's damaged goods to the AGW cause. And more importantly, why can't they find an more articulate climate scientist with plenty of experience in the field who can take on the role?

Now for the Right

1. Pope Santorum: "One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is: the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea."

Can anyone outside of the United States believe that Rick Santorum is a serious player for Republican Presidential candidate? That his, not just "worn on his sleeve", but "yes I will talk about it and tell people how they are living their lives wrong" brand of Catholic sexual ethics has a hope in hell of doing anything other than galvanise socially liberal Democrats and sensible Independents against him?

As one cute headline put it: Is Santorum running for president or pope?

It's not a matter of whether you agree with him - as it happens, probably quite a lot of people (even with a not so conservative background) think that too many people take sex and relationships too casually these days. But "the dangers of contraception"?? Catholic priests gave up talking about that from the pulpit, or hearing anyone confess it as a sin, since about 1970.

Rick, Rick: Social conservatism is not inconsistent with responsible use of contraception. Look at your Mormon competitors: big families (by today's standards), conservative values (ask a gay Mormon) and no fretting by their religion that couples can't use contraception responsibly.

But more importantly: politicians can do what they can to bolster family life via various policies, but it's been many a decade since anyone expects them to deliver talks on sexual morality, and in particular contraception. Lead by example, by all means: oh wait a minute, the Mormons seem to be doing that better than new Catholics (but old Christians) like Newt Gingrich.

But that's the problem isn't it: this is really all about American evangelicals who can't stomach voting for a Mormon.

2. Call it "bad judgement" or "just dumb"?

In listening to climate change "skeptics", particularly loudmouth, aggressive, know-it-all ones it from a blog like Catallaxy, or those who comment at Andrew Bolt, there is a continual temptation to react by just thinking "they are so dumb, this is unbelievable."

But that can't really be the explanation. I mean, they hold down jobs, make money, etc. They count amongst their fold a disproportionate number of geologists and engineers, which suggests a personality connection of sorts.

It has to be more a case of reasonably intelligent people displaying bad judgement when the psychological conditions are right. There are many examples of this from history - I guess we shouldn't be surprised that it is happening again.

And yet, as noted in a previous post, how can you show a graphs like these to people:



and yet get a response of "haw, haw, you're convincing no one; give it up, you've lost"? I mean, it sure sounds like dumb.

John Quiggin, even though I think he is wrong on Kevin Rudd, takes a very tough line when he writes bluntly in a recent post:

There is no such thing as an honest climate sceptic. Those who reject mainstream science are either conscious frauds or gullible believers.....While many low-information “sceptics” have simply been misled by reading the wrong material on the Internet, or trusting the wrong sources, the great majority of active opponents of climate science are complicit in their own deception, preferring to believe obvious lies because it suits their cultural and political prejudices.

Is he overstating the case there when he uses "conscious frauds", particularly when you look at what passes for commentary on climate change by economists at Catallaxy?

I'll be polite and say I'm sitting on the fence - I can't work out how they got to the position they are in. But certainly, I think they sound dumb as a matter of routine in the (often snide and dismissive) way they talk about climate change science.

I also can't avoid the feeling that when any economist, being a profession that is supposed to be used to assessing statistics and information of all types, starts being a polemicist for AGW and climate change denial, the credibility of policy views on just about anything else they write about also deserves to suffer.

3. Right wing and US racism

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has been reading comments to stories at Fox News, and it is truly astonishing the racism that is on display there, until Fox disappears them if they get too ugly. Have a look at these:

Fox News Commenters Respond to Whitney Houston’s Death With Deluge of Hatred and Racism

Reactions to ‘Fox News Commenters Spew Racism at Whitney Houston’

Update: Fox News Makes Racist Comment Thread Disappear

Fox Nation Commenters Spew Hatred and Racism at First Lady Michelle Obama

Has this been an issue for comment on any of the popular right wing commentary blogs in the US, such as Hot Air, PJ Media or Instapundit? Not as far as I can see from Googling around. It's just ignored. The Right has developed a blind spot to the ugliness on their own side. They do this with the ugly attacks on climate scientists too.

But they will still take the time to note books criticising multiculturalism, though.

4. We love nuclear power...we just don't want to help it.

Right wing people instinctively like nuclear power. Not because of low emissions, since a large slab of the Right doesn't believe in global warming, but just because it's shiny, new and modern sounding, and used to appear in a lot of science fiction that the libertarian wing of the Right used to read as a teenager.

So they like it, but then they don't care about when it arrives. In a country like Australia, where coal is always going to be dirt cheap without carbon pricing, do they want carbon pricing to make nuclear at least competitive? No, of course not.

This exchange between me and the climate change denialist Rafe took place over the weekend:

Me: Which leads me to a fundamental Catallaxy and Coalition bit of nonsense: you are (mostly) dead keen on nuclear, but totally against a carbon price that would actually make implementing it competitive.

Rafe:

Great idea Steve, intervene to make an existing service more expensive to help an alternative to get up.

R&D will take care of the greater cost of nuclear power, if it is allowed to proceed instead of being brought to a halt as occurred in the US (under Carter?).

Of course, Rafe would have absolutely no idea as to how long the R&D will take and whether it truly has any prospect of ever making it as competitive as coal for Australia. But the free market takes care of everything, doesn't it?

If pressed further, Rafe and other free market types will no doubt complain about excessive regulation of nuclear power being the reason it doesn't evolve faster, and in doing so like to pretend that it isn't inherently dangerous. So we get them and the likes of Andrew Bolt acting as if nuclear accidents are not a big deal. "80,000 people displaced indefinitely from their homes? What's it matter - no one was killed!"

Given what we currently can see as potential sources of energy, and the length of time involved in replacing existing power sources, there is not much chance of the free market dealing with climate change without some involvement of government to skew things towards faster adoption of clean energy. Because the libertarian right hates the government doing anything, they are useless on climate change, and would rather devote their time to dismissing the idea that anything need be done at all.

Their legacy in 30 years time will, I expect, be looked back on with bitterness.

5. Blair's Law on the Right. I'm still on Tim Blair's blog roll, and I see the occasional visitor still drops in here via that. Not sure how much longer that will last, though, when I note here how Andrew Bolt's blog, Blair's blog and Catallaxy are increasingly inter-related and referring each other to stories, and it all makes a pretty convincing case of Blair's Law ("the ongoing process by which the world's multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force") applying just as much to the Right as to the Left.

Does Tim Blair, for example, ever bother reading the comments threads at Catallaxy, where CL (who seems to be in daily contact with him) writes nutty, extremely conservative Catholic stuff about Obama, one recent example starting like this:

Not enough attention is paid to the ‘why’ of Obama’s Hitlerian attack on Christianity, specificially in relation to contraception.

It's all because Obama and the Democrats and "homosexualists" have a "passionate hatred and fear of human sexuality and fecundity," according to the 1950's style Catholic conservative CL, which seems a bit odd to me because most conservatives feel the Left's fondness for non-interference in sex lives indicates they are generally pretty keen on sex.

But the Right is increasingly willing to overlook nonsense in its fellow travellers. The number of people who call out CL on Catallaxy, even when he stupidly starts using slurs like "whore" for female politicians he disagrees with, can be counted on one hand; a hand that's lost a couple of fingers in an industrial accident, even.

Start having a good hard look at yourself, right wing commentariate. You might not like what you see.